E.D.E.N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular

E. D. E. N. Southworth

Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular Novelist

Edited by Melissa J. Homestead Pamela T. Washington

Frontispiece: A carte de visite of a daguerreotype of E. D. E. N. Southworth in her library at Prospect Cot- tage, date unknown. According to a note in Southworth’s hand in her papers at the Library of Congress, the daguerreotype “was taken on the spur of the moment. The artist was here to take the baby. While waiting for her to wake, he wanted to take me. I had no time to get myself up for a picture and so if he took me, he would have to take me, as I was, at my work. I was correcting the proofs. He fixed his camera in the porch door of the library. I told him I must work until he was quite ready; but if he would tell me when I would stop and sit still. I was directing the envelope, when he said ‘now.’ I sat back to rest and he took me.” Wm. B. Becker Collection/Photography Museum.com.

Cindy Weinstein’s “‘What Did You Mean?’ The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom” is a revision of her essay “‘What did you mean?’: Marriage in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Nov- els,” published in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 27 no. 1 (2011), and is included by permission of the author and the University of Nebraska Press. The chapter also excerpts material from “Sentimentalism” by Cindy Weinstein, published in The Cambridge History of the American Novel, edited by Leonard Cassuto © 2011 Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

E. D. E. N. Southworth: recovering a nineteenth-century popular novelist / edited by Melissa J. Home- stead and Pamela T. Washington. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57233-925-5 — ISBN 1-57233-925-X

1. Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, 1819–1899—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, 1819–1899—Political and social views. 3. Women and literature—United States—History—19th century. 4. Social values in literature. 5. Literature and society—United States—History. I. Homestead, Melissa J., 1963– II. Washington, Pam. III. Title: Recovering a nineteenth-century popular novelist.

PS2893.E34 2012 813ˇ.4—dc23 2012017296 Contents

Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction xiii Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington

I. Serial Southworth

E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Serial Novels Retribution and The Mother-in-Law as Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition in the National Era: Setting the Stage for Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1 Vicki L. Martin An Exclusive Engagement: The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 25 Kenneth Salzer The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand: Periodical Publication and the Literary Marketplace in Late-Nineteenth-Century America 49 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas

II. Southworth’s Genres

Illustrating Southworth: Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 77 Kathryn Conner Bennett Maniac Brides: Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 107 Beth L. Lueck Change of a Dress: Britomarte, the Man-Hater and Other Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 129 Annie Merrill Ingram

III. Intertextual Southworth

E. D. E. N. Southworth: An “American George Sand”? 155 Charlene Avallone Revising Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Lost Heiress 183 Paul Christian Jones E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Tragic Muse 205 Karen Tracey

IV. Southworth, Marriage, and the Law

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 221 Ellen Weinauer E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 243 Elizabeth Stockton “What Did You Mean?” The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 265 Cindy Weinstein A Chronological Bibliography of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Works Privileging Periodical Publication 285 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin

Contributors 307 Index 311 Illustrations

Prospect Cottage, c. 1863 xii Saturday Evening Post Prospectus, 1850 xxx “Lord Montressor’s Introduction to the Captain of the Petrel,” 1857 75 “Has a Mother a Right to Her Children?” 1857 84 “The ‘Starving’ Mother and Child,” 1857 85 “The ‘Last esort’R for the Settlement of the Difficulty between the Widow and Her Waiting-Woman,” 1857 88 “Willful Brande and Etoile on Their Way to Embark from the Island,” 1857 90 “Julius Luxmore’s First Glimpse of the Princess of the Isle,” 1857 91 “Interview between Estelle and Barbara Brande,” 1857 94 “Willful Brande and Old Timon Planning the Escape of Etoile,” 1857 96 “The Apparition of Old Neptune,” 1857 99 “T. B. Peterson & Brothers’ Book House,” 1875 153 “An Astounded Bridegroom,” 1867 219

Acknowledgments

The symposium out of which this collection grew received financial support from the English Department and Nineteenth-Century Studies Program at the Uni- versity of Nebraska–Lincoln and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Central Oklahoma. Paul Erickson, Director of Scholarly Programs, arranged for the American Antiquarian Society to give us a meeting space and logistical support. The American Antiquarian Society also provided images from its collection, as did William Becker/PhotographyMuseum.com. Paul Christian Jones has been more than a contributor to this volume, generously sharing information and pointing us to resources, including the cover image of this volume. Andrew Jewell and J. David Macey provided feedback on the prospectus. The Office of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Central Oklahoma supported the work of Jennifer Pruitt, who formatted the manuscript for submission.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in notes throughout this volume.

DU Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth Papers, 1849–1901. Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke Uni- versity, Durham, NC. EDENS Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth Era National Era HP Henry Peterson NYL New York Ledger RB Robert Bonner SEP Saturday Evening Post TBP Theophilus B. etersonP Figure 1. A carte de visite of a daguerreotype of the exterior of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s home, Prospect Cottage, in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., c. 1863. Southworth acquired Prospect Cottage in 1853. Wm. B. Becker Collection/Photography Museum.com. Introduction Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington

In early 1901, Willa Cather visited Prospect Cottage in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the longtime home of the recently deceased novelist Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte (E. D. E. N.) Southworth. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1819 to southern parents (her father from Virginia, her mother from Maryland), Southworth lived in Washington with her family until she married Frederick Hamilton Southworth and moved with him to Wisconsin in 1841. When he deserted her and their two children, she returned to Washington and taught school to support herself, turning to writing to supplement her income from teaching. Within a few years, Southworth became one of the most prolific and popular novelists of the nineteenth century, publishing scores of novels in a career that stretched from the late 1840s through the early 1890s. In 1853, she purchased Prospect Cottage with her literary earnings, and although she lived in England in the late 1850s and early 1860s and spent part of her later years in Yon- kers, New York, she returned to her cottage late in her life and died there in 1899. A mere two years after Southworth’s death, Cather made her visit and Southworth’s literary legacy the subject of a newspaper article for the State Journal of Lincoln, Nebraska, for which Cather had written reviews and cultural criticism as a student at the University of Nebraska and to which she occasionally contributed even after leaving Nebraska in 1895. Cather concisely frames Southworth as a popular writer of melodramatic novels, a southerner, and a celebrity, and enacts in miniature the dynamic Andreas Huyssen describes in “Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other.” At a moment in the evolution of American literature when the “great divide” was opening between mass culture and “authentic” culture, female reader and male author, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Cather sought to establish her own affiliation with the realm of pure art by positioning Southworth, her oeuvre, and her readers on the “wrong” side. Cather’s article provides a provocative jumping-off point for our twenty- first-century collection of essays on Southworth because it maps with precision Southworth’s location in this cultural struggle. Cather’s early-twentieth-century visit to Prospect Cottage came at a crucial moment in her career, when, as her account of the visit demonstrates, she was struggling to find a way to become a “serious” novelist and contemplating the literary legacy of one nineteenth-century popular woman novelist with profound ambivalence.1 Writing throughout as “we,” Cather creates for herself and her readers a collective identity as modern subjects standing in judgment of a quaintly outmoded culture. However, she maintains this position of superior knowledge with difficulty, swinging between dismissive critique and defensive rationalization as she seeks to unlock the secret of Southworth’s popularity with an earlier generation of readers. Southworth’s “physical labor” is central, as Cather imagines her “sitting in the little library facing on the river, writing thousands upon thousands of pages with a fine pointed pen in her tiny laborious chirography.”2 “[P]eople bitten with the passion for creative experiments,” Cather suggests, have an obvious reason for such unremitting toil, but Southworth’s motivations puzzle her because, Cather believes, she wrote only variations of one plot over and over again: “adventures [of] self-sacrificing chambermaids and noble, though affectionate factory girls.” As Huyssen observes, “aesthetic discourse around the turn of the century consistently and obsessively genders mass culture and the masses as feminine, while high culture, whether traditional or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities.”3 Ascribing “pejorative feminine characteristics to mass culture” (i.e., Cather’s dismissal of Southworth’s female protagonists and their “adventures”) was a key move in this aesthetic discourse. Specific commercial- ized print forms of mass culture were, Huyssen observes, targeted for critique, including “serialized feuilleton novels, popular and family magazines, the stuff of lending libraries, fictional bestsellers and the like.”4 Southworth authored serial novels published in popular weekly family “story papers” (magazines published in newspaper format), which in book form became best sellers and favorites of lending library patrons. Southworth’s popularity simultaneously attracts and repulses Cather, the aspiring modern artist. As Huyssen explains, “The constant fear of the modernist artist is being devoured by mass culture through co-option, commodification, and the ‘wrong’ kind of success.” In a state of “constant fear,” the artist “tries to stake out his territory by fortifying the boundaries between genuine art and inauthentic mass culture.”5 In trying to define this boundary, Cather makes an odd move registering her ambivalence: She contrasts Southworth with Henry James, who

xiv Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington was a generation younger than Southworth and known for his experiments in technique. “[I]t must be understood,” Cather insists, as if defending Southworth against a charge of pandering to a mass audience for financial gain, “that this woman was no mere mercenary; I doubt whether Mr. Henry James himself is more sincere, or whether his literary conscience is more exacting than was hers.”6 Cather made her pilgrimage to Southworth’s cottage accompanied by a man with “profound literary knowledge,” probably author and Catholic University of America professor Charles Warren Stoddard,7 and he told her “the story of the woman as he knew her [making] her life seem less comically grotesque.” Cather offers no explanation as to why Southworth’s life would seem grotesque in the first place—that she was prolific, popular, and female is enough. Stoddard told Cather about the thousands of fan letters Southworth received from “readers who worshiped from afar . . . and declared that her novels were their spiritual and intellectual food.” Cather briefly embraces the vision of fame Southworth represents—what author doesn’t long for thousands of devoted readers? Again invoking James as counter-example, Cather asks her readers, “[I]f this is not fame, what is it, please? How many of us ever think of writing to Henry James when we approve of him, or beg him to be merciful and recall his heroines to life when they perish, or care very much whether they perish or not?” However, Cather also imagines readers of the newspaper in which her column appeared making Southworth “the butt of jests” in order to distance themselves from the feminized tastes of the previous century. “We may talk very knowingly about the structural finesse of contemporary French novelists and air our cosmopolitan culture as we will,” she writes, “but most of us had mothers who in their youth considered this woman the inspired priestess of the softer emotions, and her style the most poetic and intoxicating in the world.” The early twentieth century marked the rise of both literary modernism, which defined itself against an allegedly debased, feminized nineteenth-century literary culture, and the academic discipline of American literary history. Cather’s column on Southworth uncannily predicts how most literary historians treated Southworth in the ensuing decades. For the first seventy-five years of the century, they emphatically placed Southworth outside the canon, reserving her a place in niche studies of popular literature and best sellers. She thus appears in Fred Pattee’s TheF eminine Fifties (1940), Frank Luther Mott’s Golden Multitudes (1947), Mary Noel’s Villains Galore: TheH eyday of the Popular Story Weekly (1954), and Herbert F. Smith’s The Popular AmericanN ovel 1865 to 1920 (1980). These studies present popular literature in general and Southworth in particular as a necessary, but artistically inferior, background for understanding the achievement

Introduction xv of canonical male figures. Mott presents himself as an “honest inquirer after the reasons of Mrs. Southworth’s popularity” who represses his “repugnance for her excesses and artificialities” and dons “the gas-mask of tolerance” to conduct an objective inquiry.8 “Howells, Twain, and James are subversive writers!” exclaims Herbert Smith, but their subversion can only be understood against the backdrop of the popular tradition against which they rebelled and which they sought to subvert.9 Smith is willing to concede that “[n]o novelist of this period . . . no, not even E. D. E. N. Southworth—was completely a philistine,”10 but the greatest praise he offers is that Southworth’s sentimental excesses inspired readers to turn to James: “Perhaps an enlightened readership grows up, sighing, by weaning itself from the bathos of E. D. E. N. Southworth to cut its teeth on the irony and psychology of Henry James.”11 Like Cather, these critics also generalize broadly about Southworth’s oeuvre, portraying her novels as indistinguishable from one another and distinguishable from other popular women’s fiction only by their excesses. Cather is vague about the “adventures” Southworth plotted for her heroines but is clear about their social position and their passive virtues: lowly young women (chambermaids, factory girls, lodge-keepers’ daughters), they are “self-sacrificing,” “noble,” “affectionate,” and “virtuous.” Indeed, one suspects that Cather confused Southworth with her successor, Laura Jean Libbey, who, as one recent critic notes, did genuinely “stick to one form—one story really—with tenacity. . . . She told the story of a young girl, suddenly adrift and alone in the world who attracts the attention of a suitor far above her in station. After sensational mishaps and separations, the couple is united in the end.”12 Herbert Smith proclaims that “[w]ith nearly one hundred titles in her canon, [Southworth] really wrote only one story: the trials of perfect virtue triumphant finally over the machinations of perfect vice.” Modern readers who know Southworth through The Hidden Hand will find these gen- eralizations puzzling, as would her nineteenth-century critics. As Linda Naranjo- Huebel argues based on a close reading of magazine reviews of Southworth’s fiction from 1849 to 1854, critics responded with alarm to Southworth’s fiction, which they condemned as “uninhibited” and “unsuppressed,” evidencing a “feminine intemperateness and wildness.”13 Among twentieth-century critics before the 1970s, only Helen Waite Papishvily in All the Happy Endings (1957) anticipated the approaches of later feminist literary historians to Southworth and her female contemporaries. Papishvily finds a feminist subtext in Southworth’s plots, in which deserted women successfully make their own way in the world without the aid or protection of men. By virtue of its sustained attention to Southworth’s works, an early bio-critical monograph

xvi Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington on Southworth, Regis Louise Boyle’s dissertation Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novelist (published in 1939), also represents an interesting exception. Because Boyle studied at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and had the advantage of access to the Library of Congress and people who had known Southworth, her dissertation remains an important, if problematic, source for scholars.14 In the wake of Nina Baym’s Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (1978), Southworth began receiving serious consideration as a writer. In the 1980s, Southworth became part of the larger project of recovering nineteenth-century women authors and their works, appearing in two important feminist studies published in 1984, Mary Kelley’s biographical Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America and Annette Kolodny’s textually focused TheL and Before Her: Fantasy and Expe- rience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860. A century after Southworth’s most famous and popular novel, The Hidden Hand; or Capitola the Madcap, first appeared as a book in 1888 (it was first serialized in 1859), the influential Rutgers American Women Writers series issued an edition with an introduction by Joanne Dobson.15 Featuring heroine Capitola Black, a tomboyish, cross-dressing heroine, it made a splash and appealed to late-twentieth-century feminist sensibilities. The Rutgers series effectively set the agenda for the study of nineteenth-century women authors and their works over the ensuing decade, and Southworth began to receive respectful, if brief, attention in mainstream literary histories such as the Columbia Literary History of the United States (1988) and Columbia History of the American Novel (1991). Southworth was an important figure in feminist monographs focused on women’s authorship and women’s writing in the 1990s, including Susan Coultrap-McQuin’s Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (1990), Barbara Bardes and Suzanne Gossett’s Declarations of Independence: Women and Political Power in Nineteenth Century American Fiction (1990), and Susan K. Harris’s 19th-Century American Women’s Novels: Interpretive Strategies (1990). Southworth continues to be studied in relation to other women writers of the period and appears in twenty-first-century studies, including Karen Tracey’s Plots and Proposals: American Women’s Fiction, 1850–90 (2000), Janet Gabler-Hover’s Dreaming Black/Writing White: The Hagar Myth in American Cultural History (2000), Betina Entzminger’s The Belle Gone Bad: WhiteS outhern Women Writers and the Dark Seductress (2002), Joyce W. Warren’s Women, Money and the Law: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gender and the Courts (2005), and Michelle Ann Abate’s Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History (2008). Southworth also features

Introduction xvii less regularly in thematic monographs focusing on both men’s and women’s texts, including Ken Egan’s TheR iven Home: Narrative Rivalry in the American Renais- sance (1997), Caroline Levander’s Voices of the Nation: Women and Public Speech in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (1998), and Paul Christian Jones’s Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South (2005) and Against the Gallows: American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punish- ment (2011).16 Over the past three decades, Southworth has also been the subject of several dozen essays published in journals and book collections, several unpublished dissertations, and many dissertation chapters. All of this activity points to a lively scholarly interest in Southworth, but, arguably, interest in Southworth has narrowed and calcified rather than broad- ened and deepened. Scholarly books published through 2000 focus on a range of Southworth’s novels (e.g., Kolodny focuses on India: The earlP of Pearl River, Harris on The Deserted Wife, Bardes and Gossett on The Discarded Daughter, Tracey on Britomarte, the Man-Hater, and Gabler-Hover on The Deserted Wife and Virginia and Magdalene). However, The Hidden Hand ’s appearance in a modern teaching edition paradoxically narrowed the Southworth revival and fixed her in readers’ minds as little more than “the author of The Hidden Hand.”17 For example, nearly all of the scholarly journal articles on Southworth published in the first decade of the twenty-first century focus primarily on The Hidden Hand. With no other Southworth novels available in modern editions, few scholars and students appreciate the depth and complexity of her career or the wide-ranging literary, political, and social engagements of her fiction. Indeed, too often, despite the renewed popularity of TheH idden Hand and its place as a standard text in women’s literature classes, the earlier biographical and critical understanding of her career as a whole still holds sway. Southworth is presented as typical of the supposed excesses of all nineteenth-century women novelists: She wrote hastily against the clock and was motivated by money, she created wildly improbable characters and plots, and she serialized her works in popular weekly papers consumed by legions of uncritical and unsophisticated female readers. Southworth’s status as a white southerner has also vexed modern scholars. Willa Cather, who was born and spent her first ten years in Virginia, presents Southworth as thoroughly southern in her sympathies and embraced by the (white) leaders of the region. “[I]t was very much the fashion,” she writes, “for all young ladies of the ‘first families’ of the south to read her latest story as they reclined in hammocks on their wide verandas.” Southworth was also, Cather claims, “feted and banqueted” by these young ladies’ elders “in the capitals of the southern states.” One suspects Cather may have confused Southworth, a strong public supporter of the Union, with her popular contemporary Augusta Jane xviii Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington Evans, an ardent supporter of the Confederacy.18 Cather once again uncannily prefigures how literary historians in subsequent decades treated Southworth’s regional identity. Mott, for instance, claims that Southworth’s fiction published in the National Era, an antislavery periodical, was proslavery propaganda representing happy slaves on southern plantations, and that she resorted to antislavery themes only after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin proved them lucrative.19 The notion that, as a white southerner, Southworth must have supported slavery has continued to shape scholars’ readings of particular novels.20 Essays in this collection begin the work of reading across Southworth’s oeuvre to allow for a fuller understanding of her thinking on race and slavery, its evolution over time, and her deployment of different strategies for different audiences. Taken together, the collected essays argue that Southworth, her fiction, and her readers are more complex than received wisdom suggests. Indeed, literary history has reduced most nineteenth-century American women authors, including those ostensibly more “serious” than Southworth, to a single book, making all of their careers appear narrow and simple: Harriet Beecher Stowe is the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Catharine Sedgwick is the author of Hope Leslie, and so on. By emphasizing the range and depth of Southworth’s career, this collection argues for a fuller and more complex mode of recovery. We present the essays in four tightly focused clusters of three essays each, with essays within each cluster organized primarily chronologically by subject matter. These clusters, focusing on periodical contexts, genre, intertextuality, and marriage, grew out of conversations at a two-day symposium on Southworth held at the American Antiquarian Society in April 2009. Participants found themselves returning repeatedly to a set of common questions and methodological tools that produced answers contradicting the received wisdom about Southworth. If you pay close attention to the serial publication of Southworth’s fiction, you make discoveries about her texts, her creative process, and her engagement with the literary market. If you apply recent scholarship on genres such as the Gothic and the sensational to her fiction, you find that even her most improbable plots perform important cultural work. If you follow her literary allusions to their sources, you discover an ambitious artist at work, responding to and revising a range of literary texts in order to achieve her own aesthetic and social ends. Together, the twelve essays (seven first presented at the symposium) encompass fifteen of Southworth’s novels and novellas, primarily from the first two decades of her career (the late 1840s through the late 1860s). Essays in the first cluster, “Serial Southworth,” treat her novels in their original periodical contexts. In “E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Serial Novels Retribution and The Mother-in-Law as Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition in the National Era:

Introduction xix Setting the Stage for Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Vicki L. Martin recovers Southworth’s participation in the abolitionist program of the National Era. Although Mott and others have characterized Southworth’s early Era fiction as proslavery, Martin’s analysis of her first two novel-length fictions as they were serialized reveals that editor Gamaliel Bailey excised antislavery content from Retribution, which Southworth restored for book publication. As the serialization of The Mother-in-Law concluded, Bailey finally began to appreciate fiction’s value in advancing his antislavery program. Although Harriet Beecher Stowe has been credited with “inventing” the serial antislavery novel, Southworth’s novels preceded Uncle Tom’s Cabin and paved the way for it. Kenneth Salzer takes a new approach to a much-analyzed moment in Southworth’s career,21 her transition from writing for the Saturday Evening Post (edited by Henry Peterson) to writing for the New York Ledger (edited by Robert Bonner). In “An Exclusive Engagement: The Personal and Professional Negotia- tions of Vivia,” Salzer reads the romance plots in Vivia, Southworth’s last serial in the Post, as fictionalizing her conflicts with Peterson and imagining a more satisfying professional relationship with a different editor. Vivia “provides us with compelling evidence,” Salzer argues, that Southworth was “a professional woman writer who had no problem leaving a bad ‘engagement’ for a more equitable one.” The last essay in the cluster, “The Hidden Agenda of TheH idden Hand: Pe- riodical Publication and the Literary Marketplace in Late-Nineteenth-Century America,” defamiliarizes the familiar Hidden Hand by examining the reserializations of the novel in the New York Ledger and Southworth’s three-decade resistance to book publication of the novel. Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas foreground Southworth’s shrewd negotiations with Ledger editor Bonner and book publisher T. B. Peterson about this valuable literary property. Literary historians have seen this long delay in book publication as an enigmatic quirk in the novel’s history, but Scott and Thomas argue that Southworth and Bonner privileged the Ledger audience and The Hidden Hand as a serial novel over its potential in the book market. Recovery of nineteenth-century women’s fiction has focused primarily on the genres of woman’s fiction, the sentimental novel and the domestic novel, but these categories fail to account adequately for Southworth’s range. The first essay in the cluster “Southworth’s Genres,” “Illustrating Southworth: Genre, Conven- tionality, and TheI sland Princess,” argues that Southworth’s Island Princess uses the generic conventions of both sentimentalism and sensationalism. Continuing the conversation of the first cluster, Kathryn Conner Bennett analyzes the novel as an illustrated serial in the Ledger. Indeed, The Island Princess was the first novel Southworth wrote for the Ledger, and Bennett finds that the mixing of generic xx Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington conventions in the novel’s text and illustrations typifies the political conventionality and hybridity of the Ledger. In particular, she finds that Southworth first advances progressive positions on the status of women and African Americans, but then, bowing to Ledger conventions, mutes her positions on gender and race. In “Maniac Brides: Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations,” Beth L. Lueck locates similar generic hybridity in Southworth’s portrayals of race and slavery in two of her early fictions,R etribution and Hickory Hall. Crucially, however, these novels first appeared in theN ational Era, not the Ledger, enabling Southworth to use generic hybridity to take more radical positions on race. Lueck argues that by deploying Gothic and sensational conventions in fictions foregrounding mixed-race characters and marriage plots, Southworth “explore[s] what it means to be black or white, free or enslaved, and rational or insane” in the antebellum United States. In the third essay focusing on genre, “Change of a Dress: Britomarte, the Man-Hater and Other Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War,” Annie Merrill Ingram juxtaposes Southworth’s Civil War novel, in which the title character disguises herself as a man to join the Union forces, with other cross-dressing narratives of the war. Ingram suggests that both Southworth’s fictional and other (ostensibly) factual narratives “reveal that textual borders are just as variable as the boundaries of gender identity.” Intriguingly, Ingram also argues that by engaging the harsh realities of the Civil War, Southworth participated in the evolution of American fiction away from romanticism to realism. In addition to using tools from multiple genres, Southworth wrote in conversation with a range of texts and authors. For instance, Southworth derived the name of her cross-dressing Civil War heroine from Sir Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. The essays in the “Intertextual Southworth” cluster present in- tensive case studies of Southworth’s engagements with literary tradition. In “E. D. E. N. Southworth: An ‘American George Sand’?” Charlene Avallone analyzes Southworth’s transformation of character types, tropes, and plots from the French novelist George Sand, focusing in particular on Sand’s early novels Valen- tine, Indiana, and Consuelo and on Southworth’s early novels The Deserted Wife, The Mother-in-Law, and Shannondale. For American reviewers and for Henry Peterson of the Saturday Evening Post, the elements Southworth’s fictions shared with Sand’s made Southworth and her novels morally suspect and threatening to patriarchal authority. Avallone also argues, however, that Southworth did not merely imitate Sand but “transform[ed]” Sand’s models with her own characteristic “hyperbolic style” and “blend of idealism and parody.” In the second essay in the intertextualiy cluster, “Revising Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Lost Heiress,” Paul Christian Jones argues that Southworth’s 1853 serial novel

Introduction xxi pointedly rewrites key scenes in Stowe’s. Just as Stowe’s novel uses a key scene set in the family home of a state senator to argue for the abolition of slavery, Southworth makes a state governor a key figure to promote the abolition of capital punishment. Jones argues, however, that Southworth critiques Stowe’s model, in which women influence men in power in the home, and advocates instead that women “take an active role in the public sphere” and participate directly in governance. Both Avallone and Jones focus on Southworth’s intertextual borrowings from and revisions of other nineteenth-century novels, while in “E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Tragic Muse” Karen Tracey demonstrates that Southworth reaches back centuries, even millennia, in her intertextual references to plays in The Brothers and The Fatal Marriage. As her title suggests, Tracey also draws our attention to Southworth’s generic range beyond adventure stories or sentimental tales of suffering virtue in two fictions in which she “employs tragic conventions” adopted and adapted from both ancient Greek and British Restoration tragedies. Southworth’s intertextual references to these tragedies allow her “to explore how [America’s] unjust social mores and abuse of power” threatened the stability of the nation on the eve of the Civil War. In The Brothers, first serialized in theE ra, Southworth makes a male slave her tragic hero and advances one of her most powerful critiques of slavery. Southworth’s engagements with social issues and reform figure prominently throughout the collection, particularly her thinking about race and slavery. The essays in the final cluster, “Southworth, Marriage, and the Law,” present a sustained inquiry into how marriage law and the status of women in the nineteenth- century United States engaged her literary imagination. Her difficult marriage and abandonment by her husband feature prominently in Southworth scholarship, and marriage is a central concern of many of her novels. Nevertheless, these three essays apply fresh approaches derived from recent revisionist legal history. In the first essay, “Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife,” Ellen Weinauer considers genre, intertextuality, and legal history in her reading of Southworth’s Discarded Daughter. Juxtaposing Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of dead wives who haunt their husbands (such as “Ligea” and “Berenice”) with Southworth’s novel, Weinauer analyzes the “death-dealing dynamics of legal marriage” for both wives and husbands. Previous scholarship (such as Bardes and Gossett’s Declarations of Indepen- dence and Warren’s Women, Money, and the Law) has argued that Southworth’s fiction promotes women’s rights and the legal reform of marriage to empower wives. Elizabeth Stockton’s “E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Reimagining of the Mar- ried Women’s Property Reforms” diverges, arguing instead that Ishmael and The

xxii Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington L ost Heiress call for men to be legal protectors of vulnerable women. The final essay, Cindy Weinstein’s “‘What Did You Mean?’: The Language of Marriage in TheF atal Marriage and Family Doom,” analyzes the problematic and unreliable nature of marriage proposals and vows in two of Southworth’s later novels. In her seemingly outrageous plotting of failed marriages, Weinstein argues, Southworth anticipates the insights of twentieth-century speech act theory. The essays inthis collection are textual rather than biographical, but the appendix that closes the volume, a new bibliography of Southworth’s works, un- settles entrenched notions about Southworth’s professional life. Researching the bibliography from the ground up rather than relying on previous bibliographies, Vicki L. Martin and Melissa J. Homestead discovered that in the 1850s, Southworth published in several periodicals other than the Era, Post, and Ledger. By organizing the bibliography chronologically by first publication date (whether serial or book), Homestead and Martin make visible other previously invisible developments in Southworth’s career, including the breakdown of her relationship with book publisher T. B. Peterson in the 1870s, the long delay between serialization and book publication for her Ledger novels of 1870s and 1880s, and her previously unrecorded newspaper and magazine pieces from the late 1880s and early 1890s. Homestead and Martin also present for the first time an accurate count of Southworth’s novels (far fewer than the one hundred Herbert Smith claims). Together, the essays and bibliography stand the critical commonplaces about Southworth on their head. She was not always a hasty and careless writer, but often composed carefully in response to a variety of serial contexts and equally carefully revised her works for book publication. She supported herself and her children on her literary earnings, so money mattered; however, she was thoughtful and sophisticated in her approach to audience. She did not merely pander, but challenged readers with her wide range of allusions and with fictional representations of difficult social issues, including slavery. Despite the range of texts, issues, and approaches represented by the essays in this volume, only fifteen of Southworth’s novels and novellas are discussed, leaving much work to be done, whether focusing on similar issues of periodical publication, genre, intertextuality, and women’s status under the law or considering other interpretive questions. Let us briefly trace out further lines of inquiry, adding several additional works from the 1850s through the 1870s, namely, her novels The Missing Bride, or, Miriam the Avenger; India: The earlP of Pearl River; Allworth Abbey; Cruel as the Grave; and The Lost Lady of Lone; and her story “The Artist’s Love.”

Introduction xxiii In terms of place and geography, for example, Southworth ranges far beyond the southern United States. In addition to the Caribbean backstories Beth L. Lueck analyzes in her essay, parts of Retribution take place in France and Italy. Allworth Abbey is set entirely in England, while part of Ishmael is also set there. TheL ost Lady of Lone moves characters from Scotland to England, France, Italy, and back. Stark differences in the legal and cultural constraints on women across these nations allow Southworth to foreground the constructedness of gender. In her American novels, characters move betweens city streets, farms, and plantations and through a variety of interiors, such as courtrooms, cottages, and nun- neries. Caves and ruined chapels in the wilderness bring into focus dichotomies between urban and rural life, and enclosures, whether natural or manmade, metaphorically represent the limits marriage and the law place on women’s lives. Al- though Southworth set none of her novels west of the Mississippi, in works such as India: The earlP of Pearl River, as Annette Kolodny argues, she associates westward movement with independence and renewal. Southworth moved easily between several genres not discussed in essays in this volume. For example, The Lost Lady of Lone deploys devices from detective fiction to present the hero’s quest to find his missing wife, and Cruel as the Grave draws on the captivity narrative tradition to address one of Southworth’s favorite themes, capital punishment. Her ingeniously imaginative and various plots trace storylines for multiple female protagonists of different types and from a range of social classes. The scope of Miriam the Avenger is as broad as George Eliot’s Mid- dlemarch, with both novels encompassing multiple families within a community. Within the interconnected web of Miriam, Southworth creates a community of women from various classes and backgrounds with diverse temperaments and motivations. Eudora, the protagonist of Allworth Abbey, spends the entire novel in jail, where the law has confined her for a series of murders she did not commit, while various other characters, male and female, work to exonerate and free her. Interestingly, Eudora’s parents are a British gentleman and a princess from India, and Southworth suggests Eudora’s status as a racial other motivated her conviction. Through its mixed-race protagonist, Allworth Abbey both explores British anxieties and allegorizes American anxieties about slavery and race and the dissolution of the Union on the eve of the Civil War. The novel published in two volumes as Cruel as the Grave and Tried for Her Life also features a heroine falsely convicted of murder, but Southworth creates an entirely different plotline for Sybil Bernes, who is almost constantly in motion. Sybil’s husband hides her when she escapes from prison, but the police capture and return her. Subsequently, a robber pirate steals her from prison, her husband finds her again, the police re-

xxiv Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington capture her and she is tried and convicted, only to be restolen by the robber pirate and finally reunited with her husband and child. This complex plot demonstrates Southworth’s skill in the craft of fiction while critiquing the multiple ways society confined women and constrained their agency. Southworth did not, as popular wisdom would have it, write only fiction featuring heroines in peril. Ishmael, with its male legal hero (analyzed in Elizabeth Stockton’s essay in this volume) is a Bildungsroman, and India similarly traces the development of a male protagonist (the serial title, Mark Sutherland, foregrounds his prominence). Southworth claimed that the title character of Ishmael was her best; indeed, she liked him so much that she brought him back as a secondary character in Miriam the Avenger and “The Artist’s Love.” Her female characters run the gamut from southern belles (India) to successful teachers (India and Miriam), nuns (Lost Lady of Lone), willful daughters (Shannondale and Miriam), runaway brides (Lost Lady of Lone), evil schemers (Retribution, The Mother-in- Law, Shannondale, Cruel as the Grave, The Lost Lady of Lone), and innumerable self-sufficient women who save their families from financial disaster through their own ingenuity. Despite Willa Cather’s claims, however, there are no factory girls. Southworth uses a variety of motifs and tropes to develop her plots and characters. For example, in Miriam she portrays dominating husbands and fathers as vampires who drain life force and soul from their daughters and wives, and in Cruel as the Grave she uses the masquerade motif to tease out issues of identity, class, and the nature of good and evil. Essays in this collection focus on Southworth’s engagements through her fiction with the social and legal issues surrounding marriage, capital punishment, and slavery, but she also wrote about poverty, the struggles of orphans and widows, unwed mothers and their “illegitimate” children, social class and conflict between the classes, and conflicts between Euro-American settlers and the Native Americans on whose lands they encroached. Southworth’s social agenda is broad, and her manipulation of literary tech- niques points to her engagement with her readers and her artistic predecessors and contemporaries. Making available work on previously unexplored complexities in Southworth’s works from established and emerging scholars of nineteenth-century American literature, E. D. E. N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular Novelist sets a new agenda for Southworth studies in the twenty-first century. Her writing career was as long as that of Henry James, but she was far more prolific than the notoriously prolific “master.” The work of Southworth studies, then, has only just begun.

Introduction xxv Notes 1. On Cather’s life during this period, see James Woodress, Willa Cather: A Literary Life (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1987); and Sharon O’Brien, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).

2. Willa Sibert Cather, “In Washington,” Nebraska State Journal, Mar. 3, 1901, 12.

3. Andreas Huyssen, “Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other,” in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, by Andreas Huyssen (Blooming- ton: Indiana Univ. Press, 1986), 46. For an influential account focusing specifically on the American context, see Suzanne Clarke, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1991). As this collection as a whole makes clear, however, Southworth ranged far beyond the sentimental paradigm.

4. Huyssen, “Mass Culture,” 47.

5. Ibid., 53.

6. Much critical ink has been spilled over James’s sometimes antagonistic relationship to his female predecessors and contemporaries. See, for example, Alfred Habegger, Henry James and the “Woman Business” (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989). Cather’s complex relationship to the Jamesian tradition is beyond the scope of this introduction.

7. Her report on the visit to Southworth’s cottage appeared with a separate Wash- ington item about the poetry of Helen Hay, daughter of the secretary of state, and Cather reports she has heard “both Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Spofford pronounce” one of Hay’s poems to be “excellent.” Four years later, Stoddard published his own condescending account of his relationship with Southworth, treating both his boyhood reading of her novels and his friendship with her late in life. “Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth at Prospect Cottage,” National Magazine, May 1905, 179–91.

8. Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes: TheS tory of Best Sellers in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 142.

9. Herbert F. Smith, The Popular American Novel, 1865–1920 (Boston: Twayne, 1980), n.p. (preface).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 19.

12. Felicia L. Carr, “Laura Jean Libbey,” American Women’s Dime Novel Project, http:// chnm.gmu.edu/dimenovels/authors/libbey.html. Libbey was an astute self-promoter whose financial success makes Southworth’s pale in comparison.

xxvi Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington 13. Linda Naranjo-Huebl, “The Road to Perdition: E. D. E. N. Southworth and the Critics,” American Periodicals 16, no. 2 (2006): 142.

14. Boyle often relies heavily on unsubstantiated anecdote and sometimes seriously misconstrues print and manuscript evidence. For example, on her misreading of copyright records for Southworth’s works, see Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822–1869 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 44–49.

15. In 1997, Oxford University Press published another paperback edition in its Pop- ular Fiction Series, with an introduction by Nina Baym.

16. Andrew King juxtaposes Southworth with her male contemporaries in the context of the periodical circulation of her works in England. TheL ondon Journal, 1845–83: Periodicals, Production, and Gender (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004). Although chapters in this collection consider Southworth’s engagements with European literary traditions, much work remains to be done on the transatlantic circulation of her work.

17. Anthologies often drive classroom practice, and because she was primarily a novelist and wrote some very long novels, Southworth has not been well represented. Lucy M. Freibert and Barbara A. White’s Hidden Hands: An Anthology of American Women Writers, 1790–1870 (1994) derives its title from Southworth’s novel, but she is represented only by a sixteen-page excerpt from it in the section on “Melodrama.” Paul C. Gutjahr includes two of Southworth’s early tales, “The Wife’s Victory” and “The Married Shrew,” in Popular American Literature of the 19th Century (2001), but such shorter works of fiction account for a small proportion of her body of work. Southworth does not appear at all in mainstream survey-course anthologies such as the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, or the Heath Anthology of American Literature. Notably, just about every American literature survey anthology includes The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn in their entirety, despite their length.

18. Cather perhaps relied on what Stoddard had told her. In his own essay about Southworth and her cottage, he blithely characterizes “most of” her novels as “admirable pictures of life in the Sunny South before the war.” Stoddard, “Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth,” 103.

19. Mott, Golden Multitudes, 138.

20. See, for example, Janet Gabler-Hover, “The Resurrected South: Hagar in Southworth’s The Deserted Wife,” in Dreaming Black/Writing White: TheH agar Myth in American Cul- tural History, by Janet Gabler-Hover (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2000). Gabler- Hover acknowledges Southworth’s support of the Union during the war, yet she insists that Southworth’s southern-ness—enlisting even the surname she acquired through

Introduction xxvii marriage as evidence—necessarily made her a proslavery writer who felt “uniquely or- dained to produce a ‘worthy’ fictional paradigm of a revitalized South” (38) with slavery intact. For an important corrective, see Paul Christian Jones, “Revising the Romantic Plantation: E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Abolitionist Project,” in Unwelcome Voices: Subver- sive Fiction in the Antebellum South, by Paul Christian Jones (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennes- see Press, 2005), chap. 6.

21. See esp. Susan Coultrap-McQuin, “The Place of Gender in Business: The Career of E. D. E. N. Southworth,” in Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century, by Susan Coultrap-McQuin (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990), chap. 3.

xxviii Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Serial Novels Retribution and The Mother-in-Law as Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition in the National Era: Setting the Stage for Uncle Tom’s Cabin Vicki L. Martin

E. D. E. N. Southworth began serializing short fiction in the National Era1 in the first year of its existence (1847) and had serialized her first novel, Retribution, and two others, The Mother-in-Law and Hickory Hall, in the abolitionist newspaper before the serial appearance of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in the Era in 1851–52.2 All of these novels are antislavery novels; however, while today Stowe’s novel is the most famous antislavery novel ever written, Southworth’s are mostly unread, especially as they appear in the context of the pages of the Era. Scholars such as Barbara Hochman, who claims that fiction in the Era “assiduously avoided the subject [of slavery] until installments of Uncle Tom’s Cabin began to appear,”3 largely ignore the antislavery nature of Southworth’s Era novels and write them off as being overly sensational or sentimental, as having no social or political merit, and even as being proslavery.4 Stowe’s abolitionist novel seems a natural fit in the abolitionist weekly. How- ever, editor Gamaliel Bailey did not originally include fiction in the Era as a tool of the paper’s abolitionist mission. Instead, he published fiction to build a community of readers. Bailey believed that serialized fiction brought readers to the paper to be entertained, and after reading the fiction, they or members of their families might read and then be influenced by the antislavery news stories and editorials printed near the text of the fiction.5 As Lewis Tappan, one of the found- ers of the Era, put it, “Dr. Baily [sic] put stories in his paper, just as parents put pills into preserves for their children.”6 A close examination of the pages of the Era between its first issue (January 7, 1847) and the issue in which the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin appears (June 5, 1851) confirms that Bailey discounted the value of fiction as a vehicle of antislavery comment. Southworth, however, did not write proslavery fiction for the Era, as some have claimed; instead, drawing on materials that appeared in the Era and similar periodicals of the time, she began, with her first novel, introducing antislavery argument into her fiction. In fact, Southworth’s first two Era novels played a key role in changing Bailey’s mind about the role fiction could play in furthering the Era’s abolitionist project. Indeed, by making Bailey more receptive to fiction as a vehicle of antislavery argument, Southworth set the stage for Stowe’s better-known serial antislavery novel. A close examination of the serial appearances of Southworth’s early novels in the Era also challenges commonly held assumptions about Southworth as a rapid and careless writer who never revised, assumptions that have led one recent critic to claim with assurance that “the texts of her novels are virtually identical in their serial and book forms,” and in particular that her novels were not subject to editorial deletions.7 As we will see, on his way to becoming Stowe’s editor, but not yet fully convinced of the abolitionist potential of the serial novel as a form, Bailey made a notable excision to an abolitionist episode of Southworth’s novel Retribution (1849), which she ensured was restored in the book publication.

* * * * *

Bailey established the Era’s view of literature in the “Introductory,” a prospectus printed in the inaugural issue, in which he asserted that “the cause of Literature will receive a large share of attention” and named John Greenleaf Whittier, who “is admired wherever the spirit of Poetry finds worshippers,” as a corresponding editor.8 Bailey’s appointment of Whittier as corresponding editor indicates that Bailey preferred poetry as a literary genre to fiction, although he assigned an even higher value to essays, editorials, and news stories than to poetry or fiction. For the first seven months, Bailey published a sprinkling of tales and sketches by established writers such as Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Martineau, and T. S. Arthur, among others. These were often reprinted literary pieces which Bailey selected from other papers with which he exchanged issues and republication privileges.9 Then in August, under the heading of “Sketches and Essays,” Bailey began publishing original fiction by writers who would establish their careers by contributing to the Era. First was “Recollections of Country Life”10 by Patty Lee, a pseudonym of poet Alice Carey.11 Southworth’s first piece of short fiction, “The Better Way, or the Wife’s Victory: A Tale of Domestic Trials,”12 followed in the next two issues.13 Both works appear under the heading “Sketches and Essays,”

2 Vicki L. Martin a designation which blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction. In the nineteenth century, episodic short works called “sketches” were often narrated as if autobiographical and are thus sometimes difficult to distinguish from nonfiction. Bailey, in his promotion of Patty Lee’s “Reflections of Country Life,” describes them as furnishing “many a truthful picture of ‘country life.’”14 Another popular term for short fiction of the time is tale (used in the Southworth title), referring to a short prose narrative, either true or fictitious. In the autobiography she published as a preface to TheH aunted Homestead: And Other Nouvellettes (1860), Southworth claims that her early short fiction was based on true stories she had heard during her family’s “frequent visits” to relatives in Maryland and Virginia (her family lived in Washington, D.C.). The memories of these “old retired folks,” she writes, “were magazines of heroic adventures, family legends, Indian traditions, and tales of courage and of cruelty, of wonder and fear. All this was very stimulating nutriment to the mind of the future novelist, who [was] silently absorbing everything.”15 Indeed, her short fiction of the late 1840s and early 1850s is often framed as deriving from the oral tales of such “old folks.” Her first published story, “August Vacations, or Flittings to the Country, A Tale of Real Life” (which appeared in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter),16 begins and ends with a frame story involving a family like Southworth’s traveling from Washington, D.C., to Virginia, with the main story consisting of the telling of a family legend. Southworth’s first two Era sketches of 1847–48, “The Better Way” and The Wife’s Mistake,” and her last, “Neighbors’ Prescrip- tions,” do not have such autobiographical frame tales; they nevertheless have the tone of family stories or neighborly gossip, as confirmed by the title of the book in which Southworth collected them several years later, Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements, or, Christmas Evening Legends (1853). For instance, in “Neigh- bors’ Prescriptions,” a tale of dark humor, the narrator invites her “clement reader to a cup of tea and gossip about the errors and foibles of our neighbors.”17 Of the Era tales collected in Old Neighbourhoods, “The Temptation” most closely parallels Southworth’s life and evokes her family history, and at seven installments, it is the longest of her shorter works published in the Era.18 The story is set in “one of the lower counties of Maryland” with a heroine, Sybil Brotherton, whose family, like Southworth’s, was among the early settlers of Baltimore.19 The plot revolves around Sybil’s marriage to a man who turns out to be abusive and who eventually deserts her and their young child; she refuses, however, to divorce him. These stories appeared in the Era after Bailey’s “Introductory” (discussed above) and several months after the paper’s launch. In these months before Southworth became a contributor, a dialogue commenced in the Era’s pages

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 3 about whether fiction might, like other content in the paper, be an appropriate vehicle for social and political comment. An unsigned review of two European novels, Cinq-Mars and Fortescue, launched the dialogue in March 1847. In his analysis of the novels, the reviewer points out that the “social reformer resorts to [the novel], that he may arouse the public mind to the evils of society, and show it the remedy” and further observes that the better “novels of this day . . . have absorbed much of the literary talent which, in other times, developed itself under the forms of philosophy, poetry, essays, sketches, and dialogues.”20 In August of the next year (a year after Southworth’s first contribution appeared), Isaac H. Julian entered the debate about the value of fiction in his article written for the Era and titled “Literary Aims and Themes.”21 Notably, Julian himself used literature to promote reform, contributing to the Era abolitionist poems and poems commenting on other social issues. In “Literary Aims and Themes,” Julian criticizes writers “who have no higher objects than to gratify their own vanity, and amuse their audience” and pleads for “writers of talent, taste, and industry” to deal with “rational or worthy objects” of their own time, such as the abolition of slavery. He contrasts his vision of the potential of literary authorship to shape the future with literary authorship as practiced by Sir Walter Scott, who “[lived] in the time of the French Revolution, in an age more interesting than any which had preceded it, yet [looked] coldly on Europe as it was, while bending all his energies to the task of tracing an ideal outline of Europe as it had been.”22 Julian advocates that novelists do what he and the other poets published in the Era had been doing since the first issue—use their literary talents to call attention to the evils of slavery. In the months between these two statements advocating that fiction be made a vehicle for promoting reform, the Era published a number of works of fiction on nonpolitical subjects, including five by Southworth (discussed above), and only one piece of abolitionist fiction, a three-part story called “Amanda: A Tale for the Times” by “a South Carolinian.”23 The author very clearly establishes his purpose in a note appearing at the beginning of the first installment: “The story of ‘Amanda’ illustrates the wickedness of certain Federal and State laws and judicial decrees, and what may be the consequences of their perpetuity. If Amanda’s case should open the eyes of the people to the danger which surrounds them, it will fully answer the design of The Author.” “Amanda” features a white heroine from Ohio who insists that her South Carolina fiancé free his slaves before she and her fiancé marry. Before their marriage, however, dark-complexioned Amanda is kidnapped and sold to New Orleans as a slave. Author William H. Brisbane24 thus creates sympathy for slaves by depicting a free white woman as the victim

4 Vicki L. Martin of “certain Federal and State laws and judicial decrees.” The story ran, however, without any editorial comment by Bailey about a work of fiction that tackled the “worthy” theme of abolitionism. Nevertheless, directly after the final installment of “Amanda,” Bailey reprinted an article from a southern exchange newspaper about a girl wrongly sold into slavery. The reprinted news item, “A Remarkable Case—Conduct of a Magnanimous Planter,” tells the story of ten-year-old Emily Thompson, whose father was white and whose mother was of white and Native American descent but without “negro blood.” She, like Amanda, was kidnapped and taken to a slave market in the South, remaining in the possession of a company of slave traders until she was fourteen. She was then sold to a planter, who, when he learned of her “true condition . . . sent her to Ohio so that she could be emancipated according to the laws of that State.” When she returned to the plantation of the man who had originally purchased her, he asked the legislature “to declare her a free woman, so that she might not suffer harassment in the en- joyment of her rights of liberty and property.” In an editorial comment on the story, Bailey notes that “the incident on which the story of ‘Amanda’ turns is not an improbable one,” thus conceding that fiction could be truthful in its representation of slavery.25 Southworth first contributed to theE ra in August 1847, and the last of her five sketches appeared in March 1848. As she recalled in 1855 in a biographical statement she wrote for John Seely Hart’s Female Prose Writers of America, it was not until some time late in 1848 that Bailey “applied to me for another story. I promised one that should go through two papers. I called up several subjects of a profoundly moral and philosophical nature upon the very trials and sufferings of my own life had led me to reflect, and from among them selected that of moral retribution, as I understood it.”26 Despite Southworth’s recollection of proposing to Bailey to write a “profoundly moral and philosophical” work of fiction, his editorial comments prior to the publication of Retribution convey no such expectation to readers and instead suggest that he believed fiction and social comment to be separate. In his editorial column of December 14, 1848, he both announces “arrangements for contributions from Mrs. Southworth, whose sketch of a wife’s trials and triumphs, published in the Era a year ago went the round of the American press” and asserts that “it is a difficult task, in a weekly Anti-Slavery newspaper, to mingle literature with politics, so as to provide entertainment for the lovers of the former, without interfering with the thorough discussion of the latter.”27 At this point Bailey still very clearly considered literature and politics as separate entities and gave no thought to the possibility of using literature as a vehicle for political or social reform.

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 5 On the other hand, Southworth was about to mix literature and politics in her first serialized novel for the Era. In her published autobiographical statements Southworth offers no insight into her decision to makeR etribution an antislavery novel. However, by the time she wrote it, her creative imagination seems to have been fueled both by the family legends that gave rise to her sketches and by abolitionist reform discourse. In building her elaborately plotted novel about how retribution is visited on those responsible for the sin of slavery, Southworth, perhaps influenced by the discussion in theE ra advocating fiction as a means of antislavery comment and by Bailey’s seeming approval of “Amanda,” drew on the contents of the Era and other antislavery periodicals as sources. Drawing on news reporting and analysis to craft an antislavery fiction, she implicitly corrected her editor’s opinion that there was no crossover between “politics” and “literature.” Retribution appeared serially in fifteen installments from January 4, 1849, to April 12, 1849. Set in Virginia, the home state of Southworth’s father, in the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first several decades of the nineteenth century, the novel features three main characters: Hester Grey, an orphaned heiress to a large Virginia plantation and its slaves; Colonel Ernest Dent, her guardian, whom she later marries; and Juliette Summers, Hester’s best friend, whom she romanticizes after hearing how the young orphan was saved during the massacre of St. Domingo “through the efforts of a faithful slave.” Southworth introduces her three antislavery plots in the first three installments of Retribution. In the first installment, she implicitly alludes to the true story of Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the slaves’ revolt against the French on the island of Saint-Domingue in 1791 but refused to join the revolt until he had helped his owner and family escape to Baltimore. The following details of Juliette’s early life evoke details of L’Ouverture’s story:

A few weeks after the horrible massacre of St. Domingo, a vessel put in at the port of Alexandria, having on board as a passenger a fugitive from that island, an Italian lady of singular beauty, whose husband and children, with the exception of one babe, had perished by the hands of the insurgents. She and her infant had been saved, and conveyed on board an American ship, through the efforts of a faithful slave.28

The story of the 1791 revolution on Saint-Domingue and of L’Ouverture was popular in both anti-abolitionist and abolitionist publications, including the Era, which had published an unsigned article on the topic the previous year.29 The

6 Vicki L. Martin article’s stated purpose was to “present a record of well authenticated facts in relation to the ‘horrors of St. Domingo’” in order to dispel anti-abolitionist claims that “universal emancipation” in St. Domingo caused the massacre of nearly every white man, woman, and child. From historical articles such as this as well as fictionalized treatments of the well-known L’Ouverture story, Southworth created a history for Juliette Summers.30 The ents’D experimental farm plan, introduced in the second installment,31 shows Southworth’s engagement with yet another strand of abolitionist argument. Hester’s letters to Juliette describe the Dents, father and son, and their interest in the abolition of slavery. The male Dents served together in the Revolu- tionary War with Hester Grey’s father, who dies in the war. Even though they are from Virginia, they are antislavery. The war leaves the Dents “[f]ired with the love of liberty, glowing with gratitude to God, who had so lately delivered them from a foreign yolk, wishing to prove their gratitude by giving as freely as they had received.” Thus their first act upon returning home was “the manumission of all their slaves, and then they bent their thoughts to the emancipation of their race.” The father and son take these thoughts to the legislature, and at first, “no topic was so welcome then as that of the Emancipation of the Nations—the freedom of the whole human race.” However, it wasn’t long before “the enthusiasm in the cause of general emancipation raised by their recent glorious victories in the causes of Liberty, had subsided. . . . [southern veterans] had become false to their first love, recreant to their faith, lukewarm in the cause of universal liberty. And projects for the emancipation of mankind were fast giving way before selfish (miscalled patriotic) plans of national glory and emolument.” Southworth is historically accurate in her description of the changing attitudes toward slavery of southern veterans of the Revolutionary War, who first felt great empathy for slaves, having been “enslaved” themselves by the British, but became increasingly self-interested and less devoted to universal liberty.32 When the Dents become guardians to an “infant heiress [Hester Grey] with three hundred negroes, and a large landed estate, charged with the sole control, and responsible for the direction,” they use the opportunity to initiate their plan for gradual abolition and develop an experimental farm which they manage themselves for one year. The first year of the experiment, the profits from the farm are one-third higher than before the experimental projects began. The next year they hand pick “half a dozen of the most industrious and faithful” slaves. Then they “[set] aside the fact of their bondage,” hire them at a fair wage for a year, and “[tell] them that if this plan [worked] well, it would be continued, and

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 7 would probably result in their entire manumission; further, that this privilege should be extended to all the adults on the plantation, as they should show themselves fit subjects of it.” Hester is in total agreement with the Dents concerning the management of the slaves and the experimental farm. On their way home from their honeymoon, Colonel Dent and his bride even stop by Monticello, where the colonel has “a most interesting conversation with Mr. Jefferson, upon a subject that then occupied the thoughts of both—the gradual abolition of slavery” and “in order to solicit Mr. Jefferson, when he should pass through their part of the country, to come and see the operation of the experimental farm.” This visit to Jefferson is part of the final objective of the plan—to impress others with the results so that they may see that a theoretical plan for gradual abolition can be successful in practice. As Hester puts it, “[I]n making this farm the very best and most beautiful in the State” they will impress their neighbors, “who have seen every stage of this improvement, and then others, may perceive its benefits, and be induced to adopt it—thus paving the way to an emancipation that shall be agreeable and profitable to all parties.” To create the Dents’ experimental farm plan, Southworth drew on two subjects frequently discussed in news stories and in editorials in the Era—gradual abolition and a popular economic argument for abolition.33 Those who espoused the economic argument asserted that slaves would be more motivated to work and thus would contribute more to the value of the plantation if they were free and paid to work. The Dents’ plan in Retribution illustrates Southworth’s ability to use ideas and discourses circulating in the Era and other abolitionist media to create an engaging fiction promoting the abolition of slavery. Although Southworth breaks down the boundary between the “political” and “literary” sides of the paper in her serial novel, Bailey evidently failed to understand the significance of what she was doing. Indeed, he was remarkably obtuse about one antislavery element of the novel, the Minny Dozier story, which Southworth introduces in installment three.34 The paternalistic Colonel Dent, who purports to be antislavery, comes home with Minny Dozier, whom he has purchased, along with a pony, in order to save her “from the hands of a Southern slave dealer, from the shame of an exposure and sale in some Southern mart, and from the horrors of a fate worse than slavery, and which her extreme personal beauty would seem to invite.” In installment four, when Hester suffers from blindness after her daughter’s birth, she gains solace from Minny, who is a talented singer and musician. Southworth describes Minny’s voice as she plays and sings to soothe Hester:

8 Vicki L. Martin [Her] voice rose, low and sweet, and clear, and filling with volume soared, like a bird that flutters out of its nest, floats away upon the atmosphere, quivering, pauses, and broods an instant in mid air, then soars to Heaven. . . . The notes did not seem to issue from any place, but every particle of the atmosphere seemed to give out melody, as if the air had suddenly become sentient and vocal. I was entranced, spellbound, even after the last notes had floated away.35

It seems that soon after this interchange in Southworth’s original manuscript, Minny shares much of her tragic life story with her mistress. However, we must consult the text of the novel as it appeared in book form to read all of the details of Minny’s life (in chapter 7, “Erminie Dozier’s Story”) because Bailey cut her story from the serial publication.36 Minny’s story culminates a number of years later, when her husband appears with their daughter. In chapter 18 of the book, the reader learns the rest of Minny’s story (89–92). Again, however, her story does not appear in the serialized version, except in a rather terse summary included in installment thirteen, which covers both the omitted account of Minny’s earlier history and gestures at her dramatic reunion with her husband and child:

I spare you the story of Minny Dozier, or Erminie Dozierè, the beautiful quadroon, who turned out to have been the only daughter and the slave of a wealthy West India planter, and the bride of a young French musician; and how the old man, her father, was taken off in a fit of apoplexy, without having made his will, at the time that the young bridegroom, his son-in-law, was playing in Paris; how his relations and heirs, with unnatural spite against his natural daughter, had her trundled off to auction and sold, with the rest of his goods and chattels; how she had been purchased by the Rev. Rutland Reeves, who was then staying at Havana for his health; how upon the decease of the Rev. Rutland Reeves at Richmond, she had fallen into the hands of Ernest Dent; and what finally became of her, &c.37

With this story of Minny Dozier, Southworth did not invent the popular literary type of the “tragic mulatta.” Lydia Child deployed the type in two short tales that appeared in the abolitionist gift book the Liberty Bell in 1842 and 1843,38 and Joseph Holt Ingraham featured the type in his 1841 novel The Quadroone; or, St. Michael’s Day.39 Nevertheless, Southworth’s deployment of the tragic mulatta

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 9 in Retribution suggests that she was familiar with earlier antislavery fiction. It is not clear whether Southworth herself wrote the inadequate summary of Minny’s tragic tale as a response to Bailey’s earlier cut or whether Bailey himself wrote the summary to patch over changes made without consulting the author. Which- ever is the case, Bailey was clearly responsible for the original excision. He thus denied his readers access to one of the novel’s most powerful antislavery plots, and by excising the tragic mulatta, the same character type that Stowe would use so effectively in Cassie’s story in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he demonstrated his continuing inability to recognize the potential power of fiction to deliver an antislavery message. Along with the excised Minny Dozier sections, other entire sections of the novel appear in the book publication and not the serial, including “Extracts from Hester’s Letters [to Juliette],” in which Hester describes her romantic view of her guardian and the daily life at the Vale (18–20); a long digression titled “The Legend of Leeelo-A-Durkaro; or, the Squaw’s Curse” (20–22); and a long section describing Juliette and Ernest’s “First Quarrel” (76–85). Together these excisions from Southworth’s manuscript attest to what Southworth later described as Bailey’s rejection of “whole pages of that manuscript which was written amid grief, and pain, and toil that he knew nothing of.”40 Southworth also recalled restoring these rejected passages for book publication, a recollection supported by Bailey’s comment in the Era during the serialization that “[Southworth] will revise the story and add to it many parts” when it appears as a book, including parts of the original manuscripts “omitted in the course of its publication in the Era, for want of room.”41 The fourteenth installment of the Era serialization returns to the L’Ouverture allusion in Juliette’s life story. Juliette, who seduces Colonel Dent and marries him after Hester’s death, is going crazy from her evil life and her use of drugs to relieve her conscience. Living in Europe, she confides to a young officer in the German Hussars her memories of her escape from St. Domingo:

Listen! The island of St. Domingo, near the seacoast. Deep, dark, night—storm, thunder, and lightning—and the dashing of the wild sea against the coast—and the roar of the cataracts, and the howling of the wind. A burning homestead, smoke, flames, falling roofs, glowing beams, and blazing rafters hurled through the air before the furious blast, and hundreds of dark demons leaping, capering, and exulting in frantic orgies through the scene. These were the sights. The reverbera- tion of the thunder—the roaring of the sea—the noise of the cata-

10 Vicki L. Martin racts—the howls and shrieks of the wind—the groans of the wounded and dying—the screams of women and children, and the triumphant shouts of the blacks. These were the sounds. . . . [B]orne in a pair of strong, rugged arms, rested against a coarse, rough chest, through this scene of night and temper, of flame and massacre, of shouts and groans, was I hurried, whirled.42

Jan Bakker points out that Southworth’s narration of an actual slave revolt is the earliest in “antebellum Southern romance.” Encountering Southworth’s “depiction of racial terror on Santo Domingo,” Bakker argues, “the reader of Retribution is led to see the grimmest alternative to racial injustice in America.”43 Bakker, however, ignores the last words of Juliette’s memory: “a pair of strong, rugged arms” and “a coarse, rough chest.” Of course they refer to the faithful slave who saves Juliette’s life. This important detail in Retribution creates a powerful antislavery story, based on the life story of an actual Haitian revolutionary, which ends with “retribution” for Juliette. For all of her sins, her greatest is forgetting that she owes her life to a slave, and instead of repaying her debt to the slave who saved her life by working to abolish slavery, she becomes responsible for perpetuating slavery. By seducing Dent, Juliette is responsible for his giving up the model farm and his working against Hester’s manumission of her slaves, including Minny. Also, when she suspects Dent of having an affair with Minny, she demonstrates the jealousy typical of the wives of slave owners and demands that Minny be sent to the fields.44 As Paul Christian Jones argues, although it might be tempting to read Southworth’s title as identifying Juliette’s gruesome death as retribution for her immoral actions toward Hester, the “novel’s title, Retribution, holds the key to Southworth’s message about the dangers of slavery to slave hold- ers.” The sin of “enslavement of one race by another,” Jones argues, “brings great retribution, especially if one struggles desperately to retain the privileged and dominant position.”45 Readers of the Era soon responded to Retribution, Southworth’s first novel- length fiction, and one used it as a point of reference in the continuing debate over the appropriateness of using fiction as a vehicle for political and social reform. In a letter published several weeks after the final installment of Retribution, “S. La Port, Indiana” compliments Southworth for her “peculiar power of delineating character” and goes on to say that “[s]he is destined to stand in the first rank of popular writers.” However, he feels compelled to point out her “erroneous” view of retribution and then ends with a question suggesting he believed that novels are dangerous vehicles for political critique: “Ask yourselves what is the character

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 11 of the literature necessary to impart to those on whom the duty will soon rest, strength, wisdom, and skill, to conduct the Ship of State over the tempestuous sea she is destined to encounter? Surely, it is not fiction” (emphasis added).46 In June, Bailey’s friend William Elder (writing under the pseudonym “Senior”)47 characterized S’s criticism of Southworth’s novel as “erroneous,”48 and in July, he contributed two essays on the uses and abuses of fiction. In the first essay, Senior cites as authority Sir Robert Walpole, who wrote that history “is true in names and dates, and false in everything else, while legitimate fiction is only false in names and dates, but true in everything else.”49 In his second essay, Senior again focuses on “legitimate” fiction and argues that “works produced by and addressed to the imagination are not to be condemned merely because they are fictitious in narrative, but should be approved or condemned by their intrinsic qualities and legitimate tendency and effects.”50 Senior’s analysis does not reference Retribution or its antislavery message, and Bailey continued to ignore the novel’s antislavery message as well. However, Bailey’s contributing editor, Whittier, in his review of the book publication of the novel, acknowledges the power of Southworth’s fiction to transform readers’ hearts and minds and to influence them toward ethical action:

[The book] cannot fail to be widely read, and we doubt not its success will warrant its author in the entire devotion of her extraordinary powers to a department of literature which, under the influences of a well-principled mind, a generous heart, and healthful sympathies, may be made the medium of teaching lessons of virtue and honor, the Christian duty of self-denial, and the heroic devotion to the right and the true, but which impure fancies, stimulants to already over-excited passions, enervating the body and poisoning the soul, have been sent forth on their errands of evil. J. G. W.51

Even though he fails to mention abolition as an element of “the right and the true” promoted by her novel, Whittier nevertheless endorses fiction as a force for good if in the right hands, like those of Mrs. Southworth. Although Bailey continued to ignore the antislavery comment of Southworth’s novel, his views on fiction as an important vehicle for social and political causes begin to soften in late 1849. In an editorial comment, he makes a concession framed as a response to those who wanted fiction excluded from his antislavery paper:

12 Vicki L. Martin A word to those of our readers who do not like fiction: They must recollect that Christ taught in parables, and that fictitious narrative has come to be a favorite mode of inculcating truth, even in the religious world; that the great majority of our readers are fond of this kind of writing, and that it is but fair to devote a limited portion of our paper to the gratification of what we believe a very natural taste. Meanwhile, we do not ask them to give up their peculiar opinions; we shall take good care to supply them with a larger amount of substantial reading than they can easily obtain in any other Weekly.52

As Southworth’s serial fiction drew increasing attention and readers continue to debate the merits of fiction, Bailey began to realize that serialized fiction could be a marketing tool to increase circulation (a technique he later honed during the serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). In his editor’s column several months after Ret- ribution concluded its run, he reminds his readers that a new Southworth work is coming and that they should renew their subscriptions or subscribe for the first time if they want to read the entire story: “The Admirers of Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth will be pleased to learn that our next number will contain the beginning of a story from her pen, entitled ‘Pride, or a Story of the Island Estate.’” He immediately links Southworth’s popularity to Era subscriptions, asserting,

During the publication of “Retribution,” by the same author, we ever found it very difficult to supply the demand for back numbers, so general was the desire to obtain the story complete. We hope the difficulty may be avoided this time, by the timely renewal of subscriptions about to expire, and the prompt subscription of those who are anxious to read her new story.53

A week before publication, Bailey announces that the “story, so long promised by Mrs. Southworth, will be commenced next week, and continued . . . till completed. We make this timely announcement, that new subscribers, desirous of having this story complete, may lose no time in sending in their subscriptions.”54 When the serial finally begins, Bailey notes the event and again makes his pitch to would-be-subscribers: “In the Era of 22d November is commenced an original story by Mrs. Southworth, under the foregoing title, which will run through several

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 13 successive numbers of the paper, till completed. An edition of this number is printed, so as to furnish back numbers to new subscribers who may send in their subscriptions promptly.”55 In this serial novel Bailey trumpeted to readers for months, The Mother-in- Law: A Story of the Island Estate, Southworth imaginatively combines family legends and nonfiction from the pages of the Era.56 As with Retribution, Southworth sets the story in her father’s home state, Virginia, and depicts the evil effects of slavery on families, both white and black. Occurring a little later than Retribution (in the 1820s), The Mother-in-Law is over twice as long as its predecessor, running for thirty-three installments, and features a much larger cast of characters. Southworth introduces each group of characters in the context of their homes. General Stuart Gordon and his son Louis, introduced in the first installment,57 live on “the island estate” of the title, also known as the “Isle of Rays.” Install- ment two58 introduces Hortense Armstrong, the mother-in-law of the title, her daughter Louise, and Britannia O’Riley, Louise’s governess, who live to the south of the Stuart-Gordon estate at Mont Crystal. Britannia lives at the Isle of Rays when she becomes the second wife of General Stuart-Gordon. To the north at the Crags are Major Somerville and his granddaughter, Susan, along with a slave family consisting of George and Harriet and their daughter Anna, also introduced in installment two. In installment six,59 Southworth introduces the elderly schoolmaster Gabriel Dove and his foundling daughter Zoe, living at Dovecote, visible from the front window of the Isle of Rays. In installment seven,60 Southworth rounds out the cast with the Lions—Brutus and his sister Gertrude (Ger- Falcon)—whose home is known as “the Lair.” Just as Juliette is the lynchpin of the antislavery message of Retribution, the mother-in-law’s actions and her pride (which Southworth identifies as the “parent of the sin” of slavery) wreak havoc across multiple families, demonstrating the evils of slavery. Mrs. Armstrong is a proud, haughty woman who is cold, manipulative, and controlling. She wants to control Louise, her daughter, and Brighty, Louise’s governess, who accuses her of dictating a rigid system of education that will make Louise an “an idiot slave.”61 Because of her “enslavement,” Louise both fears and loves “her [mother] with a devotion amounting to super- stitious idolatry; for it is ever thus, that most austere and severe parents have the most gentle and affectionate children, even as harshest, sternest husbands have the most tender and submissive wives . . . formed so as to draw from their self-devotion their largest happiness.”62 Mrs. Armstrong wants to strengthen her control over Louise by marrying her off to Louis Stuart-Gordon, thus uniting the Armstrong family with one of the first families of Virginia. Mrs. Armstrong

14 Vicki L. Martin believes that when her daughter is the mistress of the great Stuart-Gordon family, she, as the Stuart-Gordon mother-in-law, will have all of the power to which she believes she is entitled. She also thinks that she can manipulate Louis’s father, General Stuart-Gordon, into marrying her, thus assuming “an extra degree of authority over Louise, Louis, the negroes, the mansion, and the estate.”63 In installment sixteen,64 after the marriage of Louis and Louise, the General reveals his intention to marry the Irish Britannia O’Riley. That the General chooses a governess as his wife outrages Mrs. Armstrong, who threatens to take Louise back to Mont Crystal with her. General Stuart-Gordon is determined to fight for his son’s wife, but Louis does not agree with his father. Instead, he speaks out against treating wives as though they are slaves:

My honored father! And my esteemed mother-in-law! You do battle over my wife as though she were a slave in whom both of you possessed a property—in whom both of you laid a claim! This must cease! “Shall” and “shall not” are terms that must not be applied to my wife. Com- mands and threats are things that she must not suffer. Louise is free! Free! as God made all creatures; and she must not be deprived of her divine birthright! Of her own God-given freedom! She shall direct her own life, control her own destiny. No one shall compel her choice—no one shall even so much as unduly influences her will.

Beginning in installment two, Southworth intertwines this metaphorical antislavery plot with a literal one, the story of Anna’s enslavement.65 Southworth takes her readers to the Crags, where she introduces them to Major Somerville’s slaves, George and Harriet and their daughter Anna, in a way that humanizes them, just as Stowe later humanizes “the man that was a thing,” the pre-publication subtitle of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The ajor’sM slaves conduct the Major’s domestic affairs, George as the stew- ard, gardener, coachman, and groom, and Harriet as cook, housemaid, nurse, and seamstress. Deep into debt and land poor because he fails to use modern farming methods, Major Somerville gives George only half as much money as necessary to conduct the family’s financial affairs and support the family. Thus on their own time, George and Harriet make and sell baskets, contributing half of their earnings to the support of the family and saving the other half in order to buy the freedom of their daughter Anna. Believing that the Era’s northern readers

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 15 would have a difficult time understanding the loyalty that his slaves had for Major Somerville and Susan, Southworth offers the following observation:

This faithful couple loved their decaying old master as though he had been their own father; and, coupled with this love, was a veneration inexplicable as matchless to those who, never having lived in the South, have never had an opportunity of witnessing the superstition, the self-immolating devotion of some slaves to their master and their master’s families—a consecration of self that is paralleled in ardor, and earnestness, only by a woman’s devotion to a tyrannical husband, or a Pagan’s devotion to his idol, and that is paralleled in disinterestedness by—nothing!

With this analogy, which echoes the one Southworth uses to explain Louise’s feelings for her “enslaving” mother, Southworth explains that George, Harriet, and Anna, actual chattel slaves, love their enslaver in the same way that an abused wife loves her husband to whom she is “enslaved.” The elationshipr between Anna, a slave, and Susan, the Major’s granddaughter of the same age, is key to Southworth’s individualizing and humanizing her slave characters. She portrays Anna as brighter and more intellectual than Susan— sitting at Susan’s feet in the schoolroom, she learns far more than her master’s granddaughter. Susan explains Anna’s talent for reading to Louis,66 and Louis is much impressed. When Susan calls her “poor Anna,” he asks, “And why poor Anna? Is she not very happy in your gentle service?” Susan answers, “She is a slave,” and continues, “You would say, Louis, that you were already aware of that fact; that this was nothing new or extraordinary in her position; that, in a word, you know that she is a slave; but do you also know, Louis, all that means to her?” When Louis does not reply, Susan answers her own question:

No; you, like other excellent men I know, look on slavery with indifference. It is the nonchalance of custom. But this girl! I tell you Louis, that were you or myself now reduced to slavery—were we to change positions with one of our slaves—become his property—subject to his orders—a thing to be chained, imprisoned, beaten, bought, sold, at his whim—neither you nor I could have a more poignant sense of degradation than she suffers; for, Louis, she had naturally a sensitive heart and

16 Vicki L. Martin a lofty intellect, and, even in her condition and circumstances, both have been too highly cultivated for her peace.

Although Louis is moved by her appeal, Susan’s grandfather refuses her appeals to emancipate Anna and her parents, and so nothing can be done for them until the Major’s death, which may come too late. Southworth also uses the story of the schoolmaster’s foundling daughter, Zoe, to promote antislavery views. Zoe’s foster father tells her in installment seven that she cannot become Brutus Lion’s wife because she is a foundling,67 and in installment twenty, he reveals that Zoe and Brutus cannot marry because she is a slave. He believes that she a slave because Mrs. Armstrong has told him that Zoe is the second daughter of George and Harriet and that when Major Somerville dies, all of his property, that is, his slaves, including Zoe, will be sold to satisfy the Major’s debts to her. The schoolmaster believes that unless he can come up with the money to buy Zoe and free her himself, she will be sold into slavery.68 After twenty installments, Era readers have become involved in the lives of three young women—Louise, Anna, and Zoe—all “enslaved,” either literally or figuratively, by the actions of the mother-in-law. Southworth has created a novel that humanizes slaves and thus makes the institution of slavery a tragedy. In a note prefacing installment twenty one, Bailey finally concedes that a novel can have a social and political purpose, and he urges even those who have resisted reading the Era’s fiction to join him in reading Southworth’s novel:

As those of our readers who dislike Fiction have probably paid little attention to Mrs. Southworth’s story, we earnestly request them to read the chapter this week, on the first page. It is a powerful and painful exhibition of one part of a subject in which they are deeply interested.69

That subject is slavery and its tragic effects on families, both slave and free. The twenty-first installment begins with the aftermath of Major Somerville’s death. Be- fore Susan can do anything to free his slaves, the sheriff takes George and Harriet away to be sold for the Major’s debts, planning to return for Anna. Knowing that she is destined to be sold, Anna experiences “a divine peace [let down] from Heaven into the depths of her spirit, and her heart [being flooded] with patience and love, still dilating into a strange joy,” stops beating. The installment ends with the doctor’s pronouncement that Anna has died “from some organic disease of the heart. . . .[But] the coroner’s jury came nearer the truth in their verdict—

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 17 ‘a visitation of god.’” God has indeed effected Anna’s emancipation. In the twenty-ninth installment,70 when Anna’s parents, George and Harriet (who have been purchased and freed by Louis), hear of her death, they accept it as God’s will and bear it better than they bore the uncertainty of her life as a slave, as she could have been sold from them at any time. In short, freedom in death is better than a life of slavery. When the bailiff comes to attach”“ Zoe to pay the Major’s debts to Mrs. Armstrong in the twenty-third installment, Gertrude runs him off and then takes Zoe to a safe and inaccessible place.71 Zoe thus becomes a fugitive slave, a member of that class whose fate was debated in the pages of the Era for the entire run of The Mother-in-Law (although the Fugitive Slave Act did not pass until September 18, 1850, several months after the novel concluded its serial run, the proposed law was debated in Congress—and the Era—for many months before its passage). In the last of the novel’s thirty-three installments, Mrs. Armstrong has engi- neered the divorce of her daughter from Louis and is about to marry Louise off to Lord Frobisher when Gertrude rushes in to stop the wedding, claim Frobisher for herself, and denounce Mrs. Armstrong as the murderer of her husband’s first wife, Genevieve. Genevieve was Susan’s aunt and Zoe’s real mother (that is, Zoe is not a slave but the real heir to the Armstrong estate). On hearing that her treachery has been discovered, Mrs. Armstrong dies of apoplexy, freeing Louise and Zoe from their “slavery” and allowing them to choose their husbands freely (Louis and Brutus, respectively).72 As evidenced by Bailey’s plea to all readers of the Era to read The Mother- in-Law, his views on the value of fiction as an instrument for advancing the abolitionist cause had changed. Several months after the last installment of The Mother-in-Law, he effectively concluded the debate about the value of fiction in fiction’s favor. After listing the negative uses of fiction, he asserts:

But there is another class of fictitious writings, which paint Life as it is, kindles without exhausting imagination and sensibility, affords healthful and pleasing relaxation after severe bodily or mental toil, is imbued with a respect for all that is good, and a dislike of all that is evil, glows with generous sentiments; or inculcates impressively high moral lessons, or great principles in ethics, political, or social science. Fiction dedicated to these uses, is a blessing to the world. Such Fiction is Truth

18 Vicki L. Martin itself, lifting the Soul of man to companionship with the ideal forms of Beauty and Goodness; and we would ever welcome it to our columns.73

Southworth’s absorption of the news stories and editorials of the Era and her creative use of nonfiction as a basis for the plots of her antislavery novels in her Era helped steer Bailey away from an editorial policy that separated nonfiction and fiction toward an acceptance of fiction as a means to “paint life as it is,” convey “Truth itself,” and “inculcate impressively high moral lessons, or great principles in ethics, political or social.” He thus had come to accept the genre of fiction as a social and political vehicle for the cause of abolition. In her analysis of the serialization of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Na- tional Era, Susan Belasco Smith points out that in the Era, “imaginative literature and aesthetic and political materials inhabit the same space.” TheE ra’s positioning of the installments of Stowe’s serialized novel in that space “points up the extent to which Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one part of a strong program undertaken in the National Era to expose the scandal of slavery in American society in a variety of ways.”74 Bailey learned to accept fiction as a part of the Era’s abolitionist program through his experience with publishing Southworth’s serial antislavery novels, Retribution and The other-in-M Law. Thus the appearance of Southworth’s novels in the Era set the stage for the unprecedented success of the great antislavery novel written by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Notes Thanks to Melissa J. Homestead, in whose class I researched and began this chapter, for seeing the potential in my work. I appreciate her encouragement and guidance through her multiple readings, thoughtful comments, and helpful editing. Thanks to my advisor, Susan Belasco, for reading my first Southworth novel with me and for introducing me to the Era, serialized novels, and Toussaint L’Ouverture.

1. All content from the National Era was accessed through ProQuest American Peri- odical Series Online.

2. Stowe, who had been publishing sketches and essays in periodicals such as the New York Evangelist and Godey’s Lady’s Book since the 1830s, did not publish in the Era until August 1, 1850, when her antislavery parable “The Freeman’s Dream” appeared. She wrote three other works of short fiction for the Era, all of which resemble her Godey’s sketches.

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 19 3. Barbara Hochman, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era: An Essay in Generic Norms and the Contexts of Reading,” Book History 7 (2004): 145. In a footnote (164n12), Hochman acknowledges that slavery is mentioned in Retribution but dismisses Southworth’s antislavery politics by quoting Lyde Cullen Sizer’s judgment that “Retribution only mar- ginally concerned slaves.” The Political Work ofN orthern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850–1872 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000), 52. Elaine Showalter similarly cites Sizer. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (New York: Knopf, 2009), 101.

4. See, for example, Jane Grey Swisshelm, who, referring to a time after both Retribu- tion and The Mother-in-Law had appeared in the Era, writes, “TheE ra had a large circulation, and high literary standing, but Dr. Bailey was troubled about the difficulty or impossibility of procuring antislavery tales. Mrs. Southworth was writing serials for it, and he had hoped that she, a Southern woman with Northern principles, could weave into her stories pictures of slavery which would call damaging attention to it, but in this she had failed.” Half a Century (1880; reprint, New York: Source Book Press, 1970), 126. See also John R. Adams’s assertion that “Southworth’s serials . . . were not abolitionist.” He bases this faulty conclusion on his correct observation that “it was Bailey’s policy to provide original sketches and tales for home reading along with his political agitation,” ignoring the possibility that Southworth changed Bailey’s policy. Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston: Twayne, 1989), 37. Finally, Frank Luther Mott claims that in Southworth’s early novels, which would include Retribution and The Mother-in-Law, she “used [slaves] for comic relief” and they “are happy and satisfied with their lot.”Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 138. According to Mott, Southworth’s first antislavery novel was India, serialized in the Era as Mark Sutherland in 1853, and he claims Southworth rushed to write an antislavery novel only because of the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin the previous year.

5. As editor of the Era, Bailey likely was responsible for unsigned editorial comments. I attribute comments to Bailey only when they appeared during periods of time he was known to be on duty at his editorial desk (dates of his vacations and returns to his post are noted in the pages of the Era).

6. Lewis Tappan, “Account of a Meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, May 27, 1852, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, ed. Stephen Railton, http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/africam/afar03lt.html/.

7. Christopher Looby, “Southworth and Seriality: The Hidden Hand in the New York Ledger,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 59, no. 2 (Sept. 2004): 183.

20 Vicki L. Martin 8. [Gamaliel Bailey], “Introductory,” Era, Jan. 7, 1847, 2. (Bailey’s name is abbrevi- ated in subsequent notes as GB.)

9. On exchange reprinting, see Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors and Property, 1822–1869 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 155.

10. Patty Lee, “Recollections of Country Life,” Era, Aug. 12, 1847, 4.

11. Both Carey’s poetry, which she signed with her real name, and her fiction, which she signed “Patty Lee,” appeared in the Era, sometimes in the same issue. She published eight poems in the Era before her first piece of fiction ran two columns from her ninth poem titled “The Old Homestead.” Some of her poetry contains antislavery messages, while her fiction does not.

12. Her name appeared on page one as Susan D. E. Southworth, but Bailey corrected it to Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth on page two in his announcement that her story would conclude in the August 26, 1847, issue and that the author promised a sequel. The two-part “The Wife’s Mistake. A Sequel to ‘The Better Way’” appeared the following month (Sept. 16, 1847, 4; and Sept. 23, 1847, 1). For the chronology of her subsequent tales and sketches appearing in the Era before Retribution, see Homestead and Martin in this volume.

13. EDENS, “The Better Way, or the Wife’s Victory: A Tale of Domestic Trials,” Era, Aug. 19, 1847, 4; Aug. 26, 1847, 4.

14. [GB], untitled, Era, Sept. 9, 1847, 2.

15. EDENS, TheH aunted Homestead: And Other Nouvellettes; With an Autobiography of the Author (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1860), 34–35, accessed via Wright American Fiction (1851–1875), http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/.

16. The story appeared in four installments in theS aturday Visiter, a Baltimore weekly edited by J. E. Snodgrass (Mar. 13, 20, 27, and Apr. 3, 1847, 1). For more information on the Visiter and Southworth’s transition to the Era, see Homestead and Martin in this volume.

17. EDENS, “Neighbors’ Prescriptions. Inscribed to the Medical Faculty,” Era, Mar. 2, 1848, 33.

18. Southworth later described “Temptation” as a tale that “grew to the size of a novelette, thus forming the connecting link between the author’s short stories and her novels.” Haunted Homestead, 39.

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 21 19. Ibid., 29.

20. Review of Cinq-Mars and Fortescue, Era, Mar. 18, 1847, 2.

21. The article was signed by I. J. of Linn County, Iowa; however, the author is clearly Julian, whose full name and home county and state appear in the signature that accom- panies his poems published in the Era, both before and after his statement on fiction.

22. [I. H. Julian], “Literary Aims and Themes,” Era, Aug. 31, 1848, 140.

23. [William H. Brisbane], “Amanda: A Tale for the Times,” Era, Mar. 23, 1848, 48; Mar. 30, 1848, 52; Apr. 6, 1848, 56.

24. Thomas William Herringshaw, ed.,H erringshaw’s Library of American Biography (Chicago: American Publishers’ Association, 1909), 1:430. Brisbane, a Baptist clergyman and abolitionist from South Carolina, inherited a large number of slaves whom he took to Ohio, where he freed them and then helped them become established. That Brisbane is the author was confirmed when he published “Amanda” in pamphlet form under his own name.

25. [GB], “A Remarkable Case—Conduct of a Magnanimous Planter,” Era, Apr. 6, 1848, 56.

26. John Seely Hart, The Female Prose Writers of America (Philadelphia: Butler, 1870), 213–14. Southworth expanded this autobiographical statement into a third-person biography signed “T. H. Y” in Haunted Homestead, 39–40.

27. [GB], “Our New Volume—Important Arrangements,” Era, Dec. 14, 1848, 198.

28. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Jan. 4, 1849, 4.

29. “St. Domingo,” Era, Apr. 13, 1848, 58.

30. Fictionalized treatments of L’Ouverture’s life story include two early antislavery novels. Harriet Martineau’s The Hour and the Man was published in London in 1841 and republished in New York the same year. Lydia M. Child also excerpted it in the National Antislavery Standard in January and February 1841. Toussaint: An Historical Romance by Theodore Mügge was translated from the German and serialized in the Standard from July 1846 through September 1847. See Susan Belasco, “Harriet Martineau’s Black Hero and the American Antislavery Movement,” Nineteenth Century Literature 55, no. 2 (Sept. 2000): 157–94; and Donald Edward Liedel, “The Antislavery Novel, 1836–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1961), 45–46.

31. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Jan. 11. 1849, 8.

22 Vicki L. Martin 32. See Jan Lewis, The Pursuit ofH appiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’sV irginia (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), 209–30.

33. See Era, Apr. 29, 1847, 4; June 2, 1847, 2; Aug. 5, 1847, 3; Dec. 9, 1847, 4; and Mar. 2, 1848, 34.

34. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Jan. 18, 1849, 9.

35. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Jan. 25, 1849, 16.

36. See EDENS, Retribution; or, TheV ale of Shadows. A Tale of Passion (New York: Harper, 1849), 36–41 (hereinafter cited in the text).

37. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Mar. 29, 1849, 49.

38. Lydia Maria Child, “The Quadroons,”L iberty Bell, Jan. 1, 1842, 115–41, and “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes: A Faithful Sketch,” Liberty Bell, Jan. 1, 1843, 147–60.

39. Liedel, “Antislavery Novel,” 40–41.

40. Hart, Female Prose Writers, 214.

41. [GB], “Retribution,” Era, Apr. 12, 1849, 58.

42. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Apr. 5, 1849, 56.

43. Jan Bakker, “Twists of Sentiment in Antebellum Southern Romance,” Southern Literature Journal 26, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 11–12.

44. EDENS, “Retribution,” Era, Mar. 22, 1849, 48.

45. Paul Christian Jones, “‘This Dainty Woman’s Hand . . . Red with Blood’: E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand as Abolitionist Narrative,” ATQ 15, no. 1 (Mar. 2001): 66–67.

46. S., “Retribution—Popular Literature—the Era—Its Character and Work,” Era, May 24, 1849, 84.

47. Stanley Harrold, Gamaliel Bailey and Antislavery Union (Kent, OH: Kent State Univ. Press, 1986), 90.

48. [William Elder], “Retribution,” Era, June 21, 1849, 97.

49. [William Elder], “Fiction,” Era, July 5, 1849, 105.

50. [William Elder], “Fiction—Its Abuses,” Era, July 26, 1849, 117.

51. [John Greenleaf Whittier], “Retribution; or, the Vale of Shadows: A Tale of Pas- sion,” Era, Sept. 20, 1849, 150.

Vehicles for the Cause of Abolition 23 52. [GB], “Divorce; or the Island Estate,” Era, Nov. 15, 1849, 182.

53. [GB], “A Story by Mrs. Southworth,” Era, Aug. 16, 1849, 130.

54. [GB], “Divorce,” Era, Nov. 15, 1849, 182.

55. [GB], “The Mother-in-Law. A Story of the Island Estate,”E ra, Nov. 22, 1849, 186.

56. In the first installment, Southworth asserts that the story is “modified by the soften veil of fiction” but based on real events that occurred in her grandmother’s native England, and that her mother often recounted the story. Among other possible factual an- alogues to events and character in The Mother-in-Law, see Era, Sept. 23, 1847, 1; Apr. 20, 1848, 61; and Aug. 2, 1849, 121.

57. EDENS, “The Mother-in-Law, the Story of the Island Estate,”E ra, Nov. 22, 1849, 185.

58. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Nov. 29, 1849, 189.

59. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Dec. 27, 1849, 208.

60. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Jan. 3, 1850, 1.

61. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Dec. 13, 1849, 197.

62. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Nov. 29, 1849, 189.

63. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Mar. 14, 1850, 44.

64. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Mar. 21, 1850, 45.

65. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Nov. 29, 1849, 189.

66. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Dec. 6, 1849, 193.

67. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Jan. 3, 1850, 1.

68. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, Apr. 18, 1850, 61.

69. [GB], “Mrs. Southworth’s Story,” Era, Apr. 25, 1850, 66.

70. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, June 20, 1850, 97.

71. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, May 9, 1850, 73.

72. EDENS, “Mother-in-Law,” Era, July 18, 1850, 113.

73. [GB], “Editorial Matters,” Era, Nov. 14, 1850, 182.

74. Susan Belasco Smith, “Serialization and the Nature of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in Peri- odical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1995), 79.

24 Vicki L. Martin An Exclusive Engagement: The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia Kenneth Salzer

On December 26, 1869, Emma D. E. N. Southworth wrote a gushing thank-you letter for a Christmas present she received from a gentleman friend. The generous gift prompted her to recall her initial encounter with him: “The first day that you entered my little cottage was a day, blessed beyond all the other days of my life.”1 Ex- hausted from illness and deprivation, Southworth had given up hope until “you came to me, and saved my life; and from that time to this, nearly fifteen years, you have made my life prosperous and happy.” Eager to prove her “gratitude and fidelity,” Southworth closed by offering her love to the wife and children of her letter’s recipient: the publisher Robert Bonner, who had been serializing her novels in his weekly family newspaper, the New York Ledger, since 1857. Given this business relationship, many readers might find Southworth’s passionate language more suited for the desperate heroine from one of her many romantic best sellers. However, her close professional association with Bonner did not preclude her from making such emotional gestures in their private correspondence. When Bonner first met with Southworth to discuss signing her to theL edger, she wrote in that 1869 letter, “I was dying from the combined effect of over work and under pay”; in addition, “my pen was the prey of whoever chose to seize it.” These dark remarks probably refer to her time as a contributor to theS aturday Evening Post under the oppressive editorial thumb of Henry Peterson. Beginning in 1849, Peterson ran pieces praising the quality and popularity of her novels, which he claimed were “exclusive” to the Post. Over time, however, he grew more condescending and critical, both publicly and privately; he regularly took issue with her storylines, often “seizing her pen” to suit his whims. One month after the final installment of Vivia; or, The Secret of Power, which ran from January to Sep- tember 1856, Bonner began “courting” Southworth with his generous charm and checkbook. Putting off her next promised novel to Peterson, whose demanding demeanor had taken a physical and mental toll, Southworth decided to sign with the more gentlemanly Bonner. Her subsequent move from the Post to the Ledger in 1857 created a literary firestorm: Peterson and Southworth traded accusatory letters, which were published in both papers, while Bonner bombarded readers with advertisements promoting Southworth as “exclusive” to his periodical. Some reviewers deemed Vivia one of her lesser works when it was released in book form, shortly after Southworth joined the Ledger; not surprisingly, the Post (still stinging from her recent defection) faulted the “impossibility” and “unreal- ity” of its characters.2 However, the novel’s focus on artistic expression and courtship negotiations makes it a fascinating lens through which to read Southworth’s concurrent desire to find a better editorial “suitor.” The saintly title character, Genevieve (Vivia) Laglorieuse, rejects the initial proposal of Wakefield Brunton, a best-selling author nurtured by rich patrons, because he wants to live through her rather than for God. Once he regains his male selfhood and sacrifices his work for the greater good, however, the two can finally (in the words of Karen Tracey) “contract an ideal marriage.”3 Like her good friend Vivia, Theodora Shelley (a struggling artist) at first shuns the marital advances of Austin Malmaison, whose dissolute lifestyle of political gamesmanship and drinking has caused his spiritual downfall. While painting his portrait, though, Theodora inspires Austin to become her glorified image of him—thereby transforming him into a worthy husband, like Wakefield, who denounces earthly diversions for more lofty goals. The respectful relationship each of these two couples ultimately achieve is the kind Southworth wanted to establish with the men publishing her work; we can read Vivia, then, as a text that conveys her discontent with her then current editor and her vision of the ideal editor (who happened to be just around the corner). Peterson’s discourteous attitude toward Southworth, which worsened after the novel’s serialization, finds its parallel in Austin’s and Wakefield’s initially brazen behavior. In contrast, their conversion into dutiful beaus anticipates the gracious conduct that Bonner readily displayed in his first correspondence with Southworth and maintained for decades. Even though the editorial tug-of-war over Southworth occurred after Vivia completed its run, the novel (and the letters which surfaced in its wake) provides us with compelling evidence of a professional woman writer who had no problem leaving a bad “engagement” for a more equitable one. When Southworth began her literary career ten years before Vivia, however, she was in no position to negotiate. In 1840, at the age of twenty, Emma married Frederick Southworth, who soon moved with her to the Territory of Wisconsin; four years later, she was back home in Washington, D.C., with two young children and no husband—abandoned. Norma Basch has written about the relative

26 Kenneth Salzer ease with which nineteenth-century American men like Frederick deserted their wives, a “widespread” practice that “created de facto divorces.”4 In 1847, while supporting herself on a meager schoolteacher’s salary, Southworth began sending short pieces to the National Era, a local abolitionist paper edited by Gamaliel Bailey. Her writing soon took a back seat to more pressing matters such as de- pleted funds and personal depression; however, in response to his readers’ appeals, Bailey visited Southworth one stormy night in 1848 to pay her for her earlier contributions to his paper and to solicit more.5 This new tale, The Temptation, ran for seven issues (rather than the one issue she initially anticipated) and earned her ten dollars a column. Southworth expressed concerns that Bailey would require her to make significant cuts to the novelette, thereby reducing her income; after another personal interview, though, “they came to the conclusion she could finish the way she wished.”6 This mutually beneficial arrangement, which set the stage for her lengthy tales to come, hit a snag with her next story and first novel:R etribution, serialized in the Era from January to April 1849 (the subject of Vicki L. Martin’s chapter in this volume). Southworth composed this work under great pressure to fulfill domestic and professional duties—a situation that, as she wrote five years later, inevitably created conflict:

I did my best by my house, my school, my sick child, and my publisher. Yet neither child, nor school, nor publisher received justice. The child suffered and complained—the patrons of the school grew dissatisfied, annoying and sometimes insulting me—and as for the publisher, he would reject whole pages of that manuscript which was written amid grief, and pain, and toil that he knew nothing of (pages, by the way, that were restored in the republication).7

Significantly, as this passage indicates, it was Bailey her “publisher”—not her son or school—who became the prime focus of her energy and concern. Even at this early stage, then, Southworth was territorial about her writing, perceiving it as the product of personal tribulations that should prevent anyone from “seizing her pen.” With the great popularity of Retribution, Southworth soon caught the attention of Henry Peterson at the Saturday Evening Post. Newly installed as its chief editor, Peterson wanted to turn the Post into America’s leading family newspaper; adding Southworth’s name to its list of featured authors would increase his periodical’s circulation and prestige. Shortly after Retribution concluded in the Era, Peterson signed Southworth to the Post and began touting his latest acquisition

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 27 in his paper. Prior to the serialization of The Deserted Wife, her first novel for the Post and one whose subject she knew firsthand, Southworth was promoted as “a lady who we think is destined to take a high place among the female authors of America”; her upcoming book was expected to cause such a stir that readers were asked to subscribe immediately to avoid missing any installments.8 In September 1849, four weeks into Deserted ’s run, another advertisement claimed that the novel “is making, as we predicted, a great sensation. . . . The reflections inter- spersed in the story, are most justly conceived and eloquently worded.”9 On the same page, a glowing review of Retribution (newly published in book form, with Southworth’s “restored” pages) highlighted the novel’s “warmth and luxuriance of imagination. . . . No one can read it, we think, without being impressed with the necessity of resisting the first advances of sin.”10 These strategic tributes to Southworth’s literary and moral excellence certainly helped to increase her profile, as well as the Post’s; however, unbeknown to her avid readers, Peterson was beginning to systematically undermine his newest star contributor. In Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America, Mary Kelley argues that, because periodicals and serialized novels became more economically significant in the 1850s, “editors could attempt to exercise dictatorial power in questions of content, length, number of installments, and deadlines.”11 Gamaliel Bailey made such demands of Southworth during the serialization of Retribution, much to her displeasure; however, it would seem his personal touch was smooth enough (or her need for added income strong enough) to convince her to continue submitting novels to the Era while also writing for the Post. In contrast, Peterson exhibited less tact in his private dealings with Southworth, as evidenced by a letter he sent her on September 10, 1849—a week after those two flattering advertisements appeared in his paper. After assuring her he would find a publishing house to release The Deserted Wife “exactly as you wish it,”12 Peterson focuses his attention on a recent chapter that he refuses to publish in his paper. According to Peterson, Southworth’s depiction of an older male character forcing a much younger girl into marriage “seemed a capital literary error” that “completely spoiled the story up to that point.” If he had allowed this chapter to remain, readers “would have thrown down the tale in disgust”—a response that would damage the Post’s reputation as a respectable family newspaper. After acknowledging some good passages in Deserted, Peterson tells Southworth that she would “do well to keep up with the press” by submitting her installments weeks in advance. That a newspaper editor would set deadlines is not surprising; however, the overall tone of Peterson’s letter, while polite, is also patronizing. Southworth’s letter in response does not survive, but consider-

28 Kenneth Salzer ing Southworth’s later accounts of her conflicts with editors, it seems likely that Southworth argued for her work’s integrity, both in terms of its completeness and artistic value. The Deserted Wife also marked the beginning of her struggle with Peterson over the length of her works in the Post. Apparently, Gamaliel Bailey and Southworth came to a mutually satisfactory understanding about this issue; Peterson, however, made public his frustration with her drawn-out storylines, using editorial notices in the Post as open letters to Southworth. On November 17, 1849, in a short blurb announcing that “we have engaged Mrs. Southworth as a regular contributor,” the Post hoped that Deserted would be ending soon: “Its length has greatly exceeded our own and the author’s expectations”; however, due to reader interest and the intricate plot, “we could not find it in our heart to advise her to cut it short.”13 This supposed generosity, though, is contradicted by Peterson’s earlier letter to Southworth explaining his rationale for “cutting” a chapter from her serial novel. As time went on, Peterson’s editorial comments in the Post— comments he did not make about other contributors—became more regular and pointed. A notice printed during the serialization of Shannondale (1850) apolo- gized that the story “has run much longer than the author at first intended, or we desired”; similarly, a promotional advertisement for The Curse of Clifton (1852) promised that it would “be scarcely as long as the average of Mrs. Southworth’s novelets [sic]; but many of its readers (ourselves included) will like it better on this account.”14 Even though Peterson trumpeted Southworth as writing “exclusively for the post” (while noting the “exception” of the Era),15 his well-placed complaints about the length of her tales seem designed to undercut whatever fame she had achieved. By publicly relating his editorial concerns to readers, whose approval was vital to Southworth, Peterson apparently sought to force her into following the orders he had expressed privately. While Peterson was busy exerting his editorial control over Southworth, she was trying to remove herself from her husband’s marital control. In March 1850, she wrote to Henry A. Wise, recently returned to the United States after serving as its minister to Brazil, about his dealings there with Frederick Southworth. Emma was planning to petition Congress for a divorce (the only means by which someone living in the nation’s capital could obtain a divorce), so she asked Wise to supply proof of her husband’s desertion—specifically “the fact of Southworth’s residence in Rio de Janeiro and his expressed determination to remain there, without sending for his family.”16 In addition to Wise, Emma intended to use other powerful friends and their political connections to sway delegates in her favor—influence which most deserted women could not access. “Often no legal

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 29 action was taken against them,” says Marylynn Salmon of men who abandoned their wives, “and women lived out their lives in the awkward position of femes coverts without husbands.”17 As a feme covert, Emma was still “covered” by Frederick, who could claim her property even while in Brazil; a divorce, though, would make her a feme sole, free to sign her own contracts and manage her own finances. Ultimately Southworth did not file her petition, for reasons which remain as obscure as her reason for waiting until six years after her husband deserted her to consider obtaining a divorce. However, Melissa J. Homestead argues persuasively that Southworth pursued this divorce in 1850 because she was now “[e]mboldened by her success” with Retribution and her serialized novels in the Era and Post.18 Indeed, in an attempt to ensure Wise’s assistance, Southworth included a copy of Retribution in her letter to him. Perhaps more important, though, is what this episode tells us about Southworth’s personal philosophy of when to honor or dissolve contracts (marital or otherwise). Apparently Frederick’s conduct was disgraceful enough to compel Emma to seek a legal divorce in response to his de facto one. Similarly, as evidenced by her termination of her arrangement with the Post seven years later, Henry Peterson’s professional relationship with her deteriorated enough over time to justify her “divorce” from him. The tensions with etersonP involving censorship, rapidity of publication, and length of work culminated with Vivia, which Southworth began formulating in 1854 while writing Miriam the Avenger for the Post. In an October 20 letter, Peterson offered his advice about a better title for her next serial novel: “[I]f Vivia is to be the principal character, why not call it simply Vivia, or Vivia; A Tale of —, filling out the blank with some quiet phrase.”19 He noted that the author Ann Stephens also felt Southworth’s titles needed improvement, although she highly praised the novels themselves: “[S]he spoke of your recent works in a way that I do not feel free to repeat—your bumps of approbativeness and self esteem being already sufficiently large.” This swipe at Southworth’s ego allowed Peterson to maintain an emotional distance from his premier female contributor. Indeed, even though he felt his “eyes moisten” while reading the newest installment of Miriam, “it would not do for a man to acknowledge more.” On Christmas Eve 1854, however, Peterson wrote Southworth a harsh letter that highlights the increasingly rocky relationship between author and editor. He opened with a demand for “great alterations” to her most recent chapter of Miriam, which “would have ruined both you and the Post.”20 Marian, one of the novel’s four heroines, is secretly married to an impulsive rogue, and Peterson protests that she came across as “a weak and foolish woman”—hardly the noble, Christian role model he wanted for his readers. In addition, he complained “that the story has been

30 Kenneth Salzer spun out too much,” arguing that the “extreme length” of her works invariably decreased their value to his paper.21 The letter closes with Peterson stressing his expertise while protecting Southworth from her own poor judgment: “Whatever you may think about these matters, I know that I am correct. I stand between you and literary perdition.” Once again, Southworth’s letter in response, which would reveal how she replied to this crude attempt at professional chivalry, does not survive; however, I would argue that Vivia—with its depiction of women forming more perfect unions with reformed men—is her pointed response to Peterson’s patriarchal condescension. Since 1847, Southworth had strived to handle the rigors of serial publication; however, with the creation of Vivia, Peterson’s unyielding stance and need for new product apparently took its toll. Miriam’s final installment in March 1855 closed with a third-person “Note to the Reader,” in which “the writer” expresses regret “for the exceeding length of this story—a length not only unintentional, but under the circumstances, quite unavoidable.”22 These “circumstances” remain vague, but the upcoming work (Vivia) is described as “an untraveled road” that Southworth must survey alone so that her readers’ later journey will be smoother and quicker. “To leave metaphor,” the note concludes, “the writer purposes to complete her next story so as to be able to condense it with advantage, before putting it in the hands of the printer.” Were these Southworth’s own sentiments, or Peterson’s wishful thinking? Regardless, Vivia failed to appear in the Post’s pages for the rest of the year—a postponement that Southworth felt compelled to explain publicly. In a fascinating letter published in the Post on Nov- ember 3, 1855, Southworth reminds her devoted readers that for the past six years she fulfilled her literary “obligations” to them, despite the pressures of being a working mother with no support from her husband; recently, however, a series of devastating “trials” threatened to undo her completely.23 Even with these hardships, though, “my work went on through all, for you saw that the literary contributions to the Post were uninterrupted”—a tribute to both Southworth’s and her audience’s commitment to her writing. Miriam, however, proved to be the final straw: “The last chapter was written, and a certain ‘promissory note’ appended—and then—heart and brain, so long and so cruelly overtasked—gave way—utterly gave way—beneath the burthen.” Mentally exhausted, Southworth had to spend several months of “enforced idleness” before she could finally begin work on Vivia and resume her authorial duties. This revealing correspondence may seem rather personal to modern audiences, even exaggerated; however, as Regis Louise Boyle notes, Southworth often composed such open letters in order to establish a “friendly association [that] drew her public to her side and fostered

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 31 her popularity”—a connection that few of her fellow writers enjoyed.24 I would also argue that this intimate report of mental collapse (whether accurate or not) was strategically designed to neutralize Peterson’s negative editorials about her work by appealing to readers who might sympathize with a weary, self-sacrificing mother like herself. As her November 1855 letter indicates, Southworth was remarkably forthcoming about the breakdown she supposedly experienced while preparing her next novel; indeed, her recent struggles at the Post likely directly informed Vivia’s depiction of the creative impulse. Perhaps as a retort to Peterson’s constant complaints, Vivia became the longest novel Southworth wrote up to that time, covering thirty-nine issues from January to September 1856; as could be expected, then, the requisite editorial apology for her novel’s length appeared a week before its conclusion. After chiding the author for reneging on her “promise” to finish in a timely manner, the Post pledged to “adhere inflexibly to our rule of commenc- ing no story until the whole of the manuscript is in our possession.”25 Peterson could not apply this understandably strict standard to Southworth’s next novel, however, because Vivia proved to be her last one for his paper. Critics have debated whether she would have left the Post if Robert Bonner had not offered her an escape route to his New York Ledger a month after Vivia completed its run.26 Given the efforts of Vivia and Theodora to establish harmonious ties with their potential beaus in the novel, though, one can discern a sustained parallel to Southworth’s desire as a woman writer to find that ideal male editor with whom she could arrange a mutually agreeable contract. During the initial stages of their romantic pursuits, Wakefield and Austin display qualities that Southworth found unbearable in Peterson, such as impatience and discourteousness. Thanks to the encouragement of their female counterparts, though, the men eventually transform into the kind of gracious, responsible suitors that Southworth imagined would produce the optimal marriage—much like the satisfying relationship she would later forge personally and professionally with Bonner. In addition, the novel’s emphasis on artistic creativity and originality reflects Southworth’s own writerly principles, which Bonner championed—another reason she chose him over Peterson. As the book’s title character, Vivia’s primary role is to inspire others with her steadfast faith and make them realize their true potential. Despite being orphaned and shuttled between convents, Vivia exhibits what Helen Waite Papashvily calls “a kind of militant optimism.”27 Wandering through the Maryland countryside, Vivia encounters Wakefield Brunton, a poor boy with a burning desire to achieve literacy and wealth. His mother, however, believes that these earthly goals are in-

32 Kenneth Salzer ferior to the eternal goals of truth and virtue: “Riches is a good thing, Wake, and learning is a better; but righteousness is best of all, Wake, for it will save us both in this world and the next!”28 Vivia echoes Mrs. Brunton’s concerns, as she arranges for Wakefield’s education at the convent. Eager to see him succeed on his own, Vivia impresses upon him the importance of independence and hard work; she even offers cautionary tales of male geniuses whose reliance on affluent bene- factors led them into ruinous temptations like politics and alcohol. Vivia’s great faith in self-reliance reflects Southworth’s own philosophy, especially during this time when she was chafing under the restrictive supervision of Peterson and looking to break free. Unlike female authors whose dependence on men’s generosity was deemed socially acceptable, however, Wakefield risks being “made effeminate by patronage” (201). In this early stage of Wakefield’s literary education, then, Vivia acts as a spiritual guide to keep him on the proper path to successful manhood; as time goes on, though, he transforms her into his muse and relies on her (rather than God) for inspiration. Besides Wakefield, Vivia has another protégé to instruct: Theodora Shelley, an introverted girl whose family history is similarly troubled. Orphaned after her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths, Theodora becomes the ward of her uncle Doctor Thogmorton, whose wife Maria is more concerned about maintaining her ostentatious lifestyle than supervising her young niece. Living in the garret of the Thogmortons’ imposing mansion, Mount Storm, Theodora finds relief through her artwork. Vivia, while considering the sublime grandeur of the mansion’s mountain scenery, encourages this talent:

“Why, with all those inspiring influences around you, you will become an artist, Theodora.” “Oh! if I could draw well! If I could draw your dear, dear face, Vivia!” “You will paint my portrait some time!” “Oh! do you think so, Genevieve? how happy that would make me if I could believe it!” (167)

Such rapturous exclamations from Theodora (which occur throughout the book) make her sound like a sentimental dilettante, but as Deborah Barker argues, “Southworth’s variation on the masculine sublime allows Theodora to be dominated by the religious sublime and to gain empowerment at the same time” through her art.29 Indeed, in many respects, it is Theodora who emerges as the book’s true protagonist—perhaps due to her striking similarity to Southworth.

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 33 Like her creator, Theodora is so “singularly abstemious” (192) that she often works her pencils and body to exhaustion while attempting to achieve her artistic ideal. Vivia, as she does with Wakefield, encourages Theodora to work hard and be patient: “You will yet paint pictures—glorious pictures, that shall inspire all who behold and understand them” (204). Vivia even enhances Theodora’s vision by adding her own pencil strokes to some early sketches, which Theodora feels are not realistic enough. In Vivia’s eyes, though, Theodora’s tendency to idealize her subjects does not detract from her art’s truth. Rather than depict an exact likeness, Theodora creates an exalted image that her sitter wants to make true— just as Southworth created the virtuous Vivia as an inspirational model for her readers. Theodora’s blossoming talent soon hits an obstacle, however. Helen Wildman, an unruly tomboy (as her surname suggests), grows resentful when the wealthy and dashing Austin Malmaison starts courting Theodora instead of her. In an attempt to eliminate her rival, Helen takes Theodora hunting in the mountains, where the delicate artist slips and severely injures her leg. Recuperating at Mount Storm, Theodora bemoans her disability and isolation, but the ever-cheerful Vivia claims these hardships will only enhance her friend’s skills. With the inspiration of nature and “the absence of masters to instruct you,” she explains to Theodora, “your pictures will not be imitations but living originals” (254– 55). Here again we see Vivia, in her promotion of artistic self-determination and uniqueness, acting as the mouthpiece of Southworth—an author who relied on her willpower and exceptional talents to overcome the adversity from which she publicly claimed to suffer. Theodora absorbs Vivia’s perspective to the point where, instead of accepting a marriage proposal from Helen’s unrefined brother Basil, she decides to support herself by painting in the city. Rather than allow her niece to engage in such an “indelicate, indecent” (290) profession (a sentiment often directed at women writers like Southworth), Maria conspires with Helen to drug Theodora and make her marry Basil. After recovering from this treachery, Theodora receives a written proposal from Austin—too late for her to accept. Rather than divorce the devoted Basil (who was unaware of Helen’s deception), Theodora resigns herself to being a farmer’s wife. However, the daily strain com- pounds her illness and strips her of “the will or the power to paint” (403)— much as Southworth experienced a period of “enforced idleness” before writing Vivia. Basil’s death during a flash flood makes Theodora the primary caretaker of his farm and relatives, which requires forsaking her pencils. Vivia, saddened by Theodora’s “immolation” through domestic drudgery, invites her to New York City: “[Y]ou must open a studio there, and devote yourself to your beloved art”

34 Kenneth Salzer (467). Again, Vivia is Southworth’s mouthpiece, advocating that women should not allow their art to suffer because of household duties. Now in a room (or rather cottage) of her own, Theodora produces an impressive painting, The Fall of Lucifer, but refuses to set a price for it: “I am not a tradeswoman, and cannot meddle with such matters without a declension of power” (523). Southworth’s connection to the literary marketplace was sometimes similarly passive, as she relied on editorial intermediaries to establish her monetary worth; any direct involvement on her part, she implied, would cheapen her moral worth. Theodora’s integrity remains intact, as her painting fetches five hundred dollars—a generous amount that enables her to live self-sufficiently. Coming from a writer whose first major sale had a similar impact, and whose fiction (as Joyce W. Warren notes) often underscored “the importance of economic independence,”30 this moment of Theodora’s artistic success has added resonance. While Theodora (like her creator) humbly accepts public acclaim, Wakefield actively pursues the literary limelight. He moves to New York with Vivia and Theodora to find a publisher for his travel volume, composed during a tour of Europe and Asia. In great anticipation of his book’s release, Wakefield personally corrects the proofs and creates the first bound copy—a far cry from Theodora’s distaste for marketing her own work. Failing to heed Vivia’s earlier warnings, Wakefield falls prey to the debilitating allure of fame when his book becomes a huge success. The once-illiterate pauper is now the toast of New York’s high society; however, as Southworth remarks in a narrative aside, “[s]uch lionization is of course essentially vulgar” and temporary (481)—a revealing comment from a best-selling writer who sought to convince her readers and herself that the judgment of elite critics did not matter. Having already been rejected twice by Vivia, Wakefield now has the worldly distinction that he believes will finally make her accept his love. In a scene that reads more like an indictment than a proposal, Wakefield dramatically asks Vivia why she encourages his aspirations only to refuse his affections: “I have laid my honors at your feet, but you scorn alike the offering and the votary” (489). Vivia, though, takes offense at the “irreverence” and “exaggeration” of Wakefield’s speech, which he delivers with “lofty disdain” (487)—the same kind of condescending tone that Peterson used with Southworth, much to her discontent. Vivia accuses Wakefield of relying too much on her (rather than God) for inspiration and identity, thereby establishing an “inverted relation” (491) between them. According to Karen Tracey, Vivia’s renunciation of Wakefield implies her preference for “the patriarchal model [of marriage] in which the husband, as head of the wife, takes responsibility for her.”31 However, Vivia expresses a desire for both sexes to fulfill their own unique (not necessarily

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 35 equivalent) duties. Certainly Southworth wanted to avoid an “inverted relation” with her ideal male editor, who would not control her work (as Peterson did) but protect it. Years later, when Bonner came to Southworth’s aid during some trouble with her book publisher T. B. Peterson (Henry’s cousin), she praised his efforts: “If all men were as prompt and spirited in defending the women dependent on them, as you are, then we should not hear so much fuss about women’s rights.”32 For Southworth, such a “fuss” arose only when men neglected their proper obligations toward women, whether the negligent men were discourteous (like Peterson) or dependent (like Wakefield). In an effort “to purify his soul” and restore his masculine selfhood, Wakefield composes books of “outraged truth” that inspire “free thought” (512). This high- toned and shocking work, though, ruins his popularity with critics and readers alike; as a result, Wakefield falls into a life of poverty (doing manual labor and staying in a rundown lodging house) while trying to complete his various manuscripts.33 Upon learning of Wakefield’s misfortune, Theodora feels guilty because she has achieved success with her painting; however, as Vivia explains, the artist and the author necessarily serve different functions: “You are a creator of beauty—Wakefield a destroyer of falsehood. Therefore, you will be loved and honored, while he will be persecuted or neglected” (525). Again, Vivia’s comment reflects Southworth’s own struggles with Peterson over the moral message of her stories. Just as Theodora’s art ultimately benefits from her various hardships, Wakefield’s privation has burned through the earthly ambition that stunted his literary growth. Having sacrificed his reputation and wealth on the altar of God’s truth, Wakefield is now a self-reliant man, no longer made “effeminate by patronage.” Vivia is so moved by his recommitment to faith that she proposes to him: “Wakefield, look at me; I am your wife, if you will take me” (528). At first blush, Vivia’s unorthodox offer seems to perpetuate the “inverted relation” she found so objectionable before; however, she is quick to confess that “a thousand womanly shynesses, unknown before, troubled me” about proposing (529). Just as Wakefield has achieved the proper male perspective, so too has Vivia tapped into a new feminine outlook. As a result, the couple can finally form a mutually beneficial and respectful union anticipating the one Southworth and Bonner enjoyed. Relieved by Wakefield’s transformation but worried that he cannot afford the wedding, Theodora uses the revenue from her recent art sale to purchase anonymously the copyright of his unreleased manuscripts.34 As she explains to Wakefield’s publisher, “I want them for myself. I wish to read them and to illustrate them with my pencil. You need not publish them” (533). This scene offers a fascinating twist on the usual depiction of women’s literary property and

36 Kenneth Salzer economic independence. Here a poor man’s writing is bought by a self-sufficient woman for his monetary gain and her private use—a fitting way for one artist to enhance the life and work of another. Wakefield is not the novel’s only man to be converted by an inspirational woman. On the rebound from Theodora, who could not accept his earlier proposal, Austin instead marries the manipulative Helen. After she abandons him and dies in disgrace, Austin distracts himself by freely indulging in alcohol and nativist politics—a moral descent that parallels Wakefield’s. In a speech reminiscent of Peterson’s I-know-better-than-you letters to Southworth, Austin faults Wakefield for naïvely speaking the “outraged truth” that led to his recent des- titution: “Society is not prepared to receive his views, and he should have seen it” (518–19). Such indifference does not sit well with Theodora, who “recoil[s]” from her former beau; his dissolute lifestyle has taken its toll on his body and soul, which is now “world-warped” and “sense-sodden” (517). Theodora is so upset by Austin’s damaged reputation that, as she tells Vivia, “I cannot paint! inspiration, life, purpose—all are gone—are gone!” (535). In a friendly gesture that mirrors Theodora’s purchase of Wakefield’s copyright, Vivia has Austin commission Theodora to paint his portrait for her; on his part, Austin makes a si- lent pledge to curb his intemperance. Over the course of eight sittings, the fast- living political operative starts to resemble Theodora’s idealized portrait of him: “Austin’s countenance began gradually to lose those marks of excess that had so marred his grace” (537–38). Through Austin’s metamorphosis, Southworth speaks to the impulse of women artists like Theodora to focus on their male subjects’ divine natures. “To show a man what he ought to be,” Vivia tells Theodora as the picture nears completion, “is to show him what he may be” (538). Indeed, when Austin sees the finished product, he exclaims, “It is what I aspired to be! ” and proposes again to Theodora (539). No longer plagued by earthly diversions, Austin is, as Deborah Barker notes, motivated by his portrait to aim for more lofty goals: “Theodora’s art has enormous power to reform the men around her morally.”35 However, Theodora is also transformed by her work of art, to the extent that she can finally accept Austin’s hand in marriage. The reenergized young painter now realizes the full extent of her artistic ability, which was forged by suffering but produces spiritual redemption. Similarly, Southworth found a way to reconstruct her personal tragedies into edifying and rewarding entertainments. Unlike Austin, however, Henry Peterson did not aspire to emulate the idealized image of manhood she portrayed in Vivia—Bonner, however, conveyed just such an image of himself when he began corresponding with Southworth after the novel’s serialization in the Post concluded.

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 37 Robert Bonner is an exemplary “Gentleman Publisher” (to use Susan Coultrap- McQuin’s term) of the mid-nineteenth century: a moral guardian who established mutual and lucrative relationships with women writers.36 Starting in 1851, Bonner transformed the stodgy New York Merchant’s Ledger into the New York Ledger, a flourishing story paper in direct competition with the Post. After signing the poet Lydia Sigourney in 1854, Bonner pursued Fanny Fern, fresh from the triumph of her first novel, Ruth Hall (1855). Fern, like Southworth, was the sole financial support of her children, and she negotiated a spectacular contract of one hundred dollars per column for her novella “Fanny Ford,” an expense that Bonner highlighted in a deluge of advertising before her June 1855 debut.37 One year later, reaping the benefits of Fern’s popularity as a weekly columnist, Bonner set his sights on Southworth to increase his magazine’s profile and profits. After the exhausting process of completing Vivia, Southworth repeatedly postponed her next tale for the Post, which repeatedly announced “the promise of a short and condensed novelet [sic]” from her.38 It was during this anxious time that Bonner, on October 10, 1856, sent Southworth a confidential letter asking if he could publish one of her works in the Ledger. Turning on the charm (a tactic Peterson rarely used), Bonner declared that he and his wife were avid readers of her novels: “[N]o female author . . . can write so excellent a story.”39 To sweeten the deal, Bonner assured Southworth, “I can afford to pay you your own terms,” even twice as much as her best sale—an honest acknowledgment of her bar- gaining power and his cash flow. The Ledger’s high circulation numbers and “exclusive” talent roster (including Fern) were also cited as proof of his paper’s economic and literary standing. His enticing offer could not proceed, however, until Bonner knew whether Southworth had any current publishing commit- ments, which he did not want to disrupt—a well-played subterfuge designed to make himself look less shrewd. The previous year in theL edger, Bonner publicly expressed his willingness to “pay the lady liberally for an original tale for our columns . . . but we understand she is engaged exclusively for the Saturday Evening Post.”40 Obviously Bonner had made inquiries into acquiring Southworth as a contributor well before writing this letter. Its deferential tone and generosity, though, is worlds away from Peterson’s usually dismissive one—an improvement which must have appealed to Southworth’s sensibilities. Thequestion of Southworth’s “exclusive engagement” with the Post was an important one for Bonner, because he wanted to be seen as an honorable editor who respected existing contracts. One important “meaning of the promise of contract,” Brook Thomas explains, “involves the sanctity of promising itself,” which “gives a contractual society a moral foundation”41 that would be threat-

38 Kenneth Salzer ened if such promises were broken. Of course, in nineteenth-century America, business contracts (which involved just two parties) were easier to cancel than marital ones (which also involved a third party: the state). However, as Michael Grossberg observes in relation to post-Revolutionary marital courtship, “the breach-of-promise suit shared the commercial orientation of contract law.”42 This common legal history helps to explain why “engagement” could be used to describe the promise to marry and the promise to fulfill literary obligations. The consent of both parties was essential to maintaining any contract, however; without this mutuality, the pact ceased to fulfill its primary purpose and could be dissolved. “Insofar as marriage was contractual,” Nancy Cott notes in her history of American marriage, “one partner’s outrageous affront to the contract provided good reason to leave.”43 In Vivia, Theodora decides not to divorce Basil (even after receiving Austin’s proposal) because he always treats her kindly and was not responsible for tricking her into marriage. Southworth, though, felt that the bad behavior of her husband Frederick, starting with his desertion of her, justified her efforts secure a legal separation. Similarly Southworth, when presented with a better publishing offer, did not view her contract with Peterson as inviolable, because by then he had ruined its spirit with his excessive demands and insensitive manner. Her response to Bonner’s letter has been lost, but she apparently claimed to have no exclusive or permanent publishing agreement with anyone—a statement that not only contradicted the Post’s marketing of her but also indicated her willingness to “divorce” the newspaper. Having received this news about Southworth’s free agency, Bonner (in a follow- up letter) promptly repeated his appeal from twelve days earlier: “I would like to have all that you write hereafter that is not now absolutely promised to others, at your own terms.”44 Not only did Bonner again stress his regard for any outstanding “promises,” but he also impressed upon Southworth the deepness of his pock- ets and her ability to draw from them (an impression he literally underscored at the letter’s end). This financial card was certainly an effective one to play with Southworth; however, she was probably more impressed with Bonner’s personal touch and professional respect—two qualities that Southworth, as a woman writer, ideally expected from a male editor. Evidently, Henry Peterson never visited his contributor or expressed a desired to do so; given his efforts to maintain emotional distance in his letters, he might have felt such direct contact would be unnecessary or unseemly. Bonner, however, made it a point to suggest a face-to- face meeting: “[A]s I have never been in Washington, I will go there and call on you, if you have no objections, and then we can talk over the matter in detail.” Bonner’s desire to discuss his offer in a less formal setting signaled to Southworth

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 39 that they shared the same philosophy of male-female business relations. Although Southworth’s reply is not extant, in November 1856, Bonner placed seven ads in Gamaliel Bailey’s National Era announcing her “exclusive” engagement with the Ledger.45 Just as each reformed male protagonist of Vivia went out of his way to prove himself worthy of his beloved, Bonner used every weapon in his editorial arsenal to ensure that his professional courtship of Southworth resulted in (as he wrote in the Ledger) “a brilliant accession.”46 Seemingly oblivious to these behind-the-scenes negotiations, Henry Peterson kept running ads for months touting Southworth’s forthcoming story, which she strategically kept failing to deliver. However, he received a rude awakening when he saw a blurb promoting Southworth’s new novel for the Ledger, along with a stern warning: “She will not write a single line for any other paper, and no other paper has any authority to announce her name as a contributor!” Astonished by Southworth’s defection and Bonner’s nerve, Peterson sent her a short yet stinging letter on March 31, 1857 (with the Ledger blurb attached), demanding “to know whether you positively refuse to comply with your engagements to us, and through us to a large portion of the public.”47 By playing on Southworth’s devotion to her audience, Peterson hoped that he could compel her to take responsibility for “the impudence and the falsehood of the Ledger.” Apparently this letter triggered a brief response from Southworth, who confirmed Bonner’s claim. On April 11, in what seems a retaliatory effort to taint her as a writer and a woman, Peterson ran an announcement in the Post notifying his readers about Southworth’s inability to “fulfill her promise”48—a phrase (repeated later on) that reinforces the broken-marriage analogy, with Southworth ironically cast as the deserting spouse. According to Peterson, a “large portion of our readers were growing very dissatisfied with her productions,” yet he generously gave her a second chance after Vivia by agreeing to accept a shorter story; abruptly cutting all ties with Southworth (as she had done to him) would have been unethical. Refusing to accept any blame for Southworth’s departure, Peterson ended by dismissing the woman whose writing he promoted aggressively for eight years: “[W]e think our readers will admit . . . that they have lost nothing in the way of interest or amusement by this withdrawal.” If Southworth hoped that Peterson would aspire to her idealized portraits of respectful manhood in Vivia, then these two written statements proved that he remained unredeemed. Coultrap-McQuin asserts that Southworth, up until this point, reacted to Peterson’s demands “[l]ike a character in one of her novels”: avoiding direct confrontation that would damage her womanly reputation.49 Indeed, Southworth’s strategy reminds me of how Vivia initially declines to respond to Wakefield’s

40 Kenneth Salzer allegation that she had misled him, but then firmly defends her actions when Wakefield’s language becomes nearly blasphemous. Similarly, I would argue, Peterson’s increasingly harsh attacks on Southworth’s female honor finally compelled her to take a strong stand. Rather than reply privately to this intimida- tion, Southworth decided to publicize her case, so that others could witness the exchange and see Peterson’s undignified conduct firsthand. On May 2, 1857, the Ledger printed Southworth’s letter “To All Interested,” which strongly denies Peterson’s accusations while “showing,” in Coultrap-McQuin’s words, “how closely linked in her mind were her authorship and her womanhood.”50 Affirm- ing her “final withdrawal from all connection” with the Post, Southworth states that she had only “given a verbal and conditional promise”51 to submit a new story—a clear indication that there was no binding contract. According to a letter she sent to Peterson on January 29 (copied by Southworth and quoted in her Ledger letter as evidence), poor health prevented her from completing her literary task; in addition, her “written contract” with the Ledger, set to begin on February 1, “preclude[d] the possibility of my writing a novelette for any other paper.” A week later, Southworth says, she received from Peterson a “rude reply” (again, included verbatim) which confirmed that the Post, unlike the Ledger, had no written agreement with Southworth, “but we had supposed that the word of a lady was as good as her bond.” Thus calling her genteel femininity into question, Peterson demanded that Southworth fulfill her promise for morality’s sake— a bullying tactic that she inevitably ignored. She similarly dismisses Peterson’s March 31 letter (which she also cites in full) by calling it “unmanly,” thereby undercutting his gender performance; she then shows her Ledger readers what she briefly wrote to Peterson on April 1: “I have broken no faith with you; if a conditional promise has failed of effect the fault lies in the imposed conditions.” Again Southworth stresses the provisional nature of her promise, which she chose not to fulfill because of Peterson’s editorial restrictions rather than an authorial whim, and that her provisional promise never bound her to a contract with Peterson. Having now displayed the full series of letters for the public to compare, Southworth closes by complaining that Peterson had “cunningly and covertly assailed my truthfulness as a woman and my reputation as a writer.” Such an indictment, intended to resonate with her devoted readers, cast Southworth in the role of the suffering female artist—much like Theodora—who readily accepted the proposal of a more enlightened male suitor. The fallout from Southworth’s open letter offers more evidence of why she “divorced” the controlling editor and “married” the supportive one. On the same page in the Ledger, Bonner directed his readers’ attention to Southworth’s “calm,

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 41 dignified, and convincing statement,” which he fully approved: “[W]hen a lady deems it expedient to expose the misrepresentations of men who, so long as they could get her to write for them, extolled her productions, but now, seeing she is engaged to write only for the Ledger, assail her, we cheerfully yield her the use of our columns to set the matter right.”52 This declaration, which builds on the gender dynamics exploited by Southworth in her letter, perfectly indicates the kind of moral male protector that Bonner strove to be and Southworth had finally found. Over at the Post, however, Peterson made a final public effort to stain Southworth’s character. In a scathing article, which included a copy of a letter Southworth wrote on August 20, 1856, verifying her commitment to the Post, Peterson called her “ruthless” for breaking a promise that he claimed was “strictly unconditional.”53 Twelve days later, as if to crush Peterson’s criticism once and for all, Bonner ran fourteen ads on one page in the National Era announcing the Ledger’s publication of her new story (The Island Princess), adding, “She has withdrawn from all other papers.”54 At this point, the editorial battle over E. D. E. N. Southworth was officially over; The Island Princess was the first novel of dozens published by Bonner until he transferred the ownership of the Ledger to his sons at the end of 1887. While Vivia did not enjoy the same popular and critical reception as Southworth’s earlier works, such as Retribution or later works such as The Hidden Hand, the novel served as an illuminating bridge between two publishing worlds and phases of her life. Its depiction of creative artists (male and female) striving for full expression—rather than critical approval or public celebrity—rings true to Southworth’s own experiences leading up to and following its publication. By presenting Vivia and Theodora as women who negotiate for mutually beneficial relationships with the men in their lives, Southworth established a template that enabled her to exchange a debilitating literary “engagement” with Peterson for one with Bonner that proved more personally and professionally fulfilling.

Notes 1. EDENS to RB, Dec. 26, 1869, DU.

2. Review of Vivia, SEP, May 28, 1857, 3. Despite its likely genesis in professional resentment, this negative critique confirms Linda Naranjo-Huebl’s finding that most contemporaneous reviews of Southworth’s fiction “were not as positive or magnanimous as has been reported.” Citing critics who faulted Southworth for her extravagance and impropriety, Naranjo-Huebl argues that “their reviews read as attempts to control what they considered her excessive power, much like the attempts of her early editor, Henry

42 Kenneth Salzer Peterson, to control the content of her stories.” “The Road to Perdition: E. D. E. N. Southworth and the Critics,” American Periodicals 16, no. 2 (2006): 123, 124. Indeed, as I demonstrate later, Peterson’s language in his public and private censure of Southworth closely mirrors that of reviewers.

3. Karen Tracey, Plots and Proposals: American Women’s Fiction, 1850–90 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2000), 128.

4. Norma Basch, Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Victorians (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1999), 107. Westward migration to places like Wisconsin probably contributed to this high rate of marital separation; see Hendrik Hartog, Man and Wife in America: A History (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000), 20–23.

5. “Biographical Sketch of the Author,” in TheH aunted Homestead: and Other Nouvel- lettes, by EDENS (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1860), 39. The dramatic backdrop to Bailey’s timely visit (wild wintry weather mixed with dire economic prospects) feels stretched, as does the idea that Bailey had not already paid Southworth. This “biographical sketch” (labeled an autobiography on the book’s title page) reads like one of Southworth’s romantic fictions—which could have been the point. I make this observation not to doubt the veracity of every first- or secondhand report of Southworth’s life but to emphasize her conscious effort to present a certain image of herself.

6. Regis Louise Boyle, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novelist (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1939), 8. Boyle’s source is her 1936 interview with Southworth’s friend Charles E. Fairman.

7. Quoted in John S. Hart, The Female Prose Writers of America, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Butler, 1855), 214.

8. “The Deserted Wife. An Original Novelette,” SEP, Aug. 4, 1849, 2. While this and other notices I cite from the Post are anonymous, Peterson probably wrote them himself or was responsible for their message, given his strict editorial control of the paper.

9. “Deserted Wife,” SEP, Sept. 1, 1849, 2.

10. Review of Retribution, SEP, Sept. 1, 1849, 2.

11. Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth- Century America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984), 20.

12. HP to EDENS, Sept. 10, 1849, DU.

13. “Deserted Wife,” SEP, Nov. 17, 1849, 2.

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 43 14. “Shannondale,” SEP, Nov. 16, 1850: 2; “The Curse of Clifton,”SE P, July 3, 1852, 2.

15. Advertisement, SEP, Nov. 23, 1850, 2.

16. EDENS to Henry A. Wise, March 1850, E. D. E. N. Southworth Collection, Haverford College Library, Haverford, PA.

17. Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1989), 59.

18. Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822–1869 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 45. Although Emma did not divorce Frederick either in 1850 or in 1860 (when Congress passed a divorce statute for the District of Columbia), Homestead stresses that she “did her best through other means to actively repulse her husband’s attempts to appropriate her literary properties and profits.”

19. HP to EDENS, Oct. 20, 1854, DU. Promotional advertisements for Vivia (with the subtitle A Story of Life’s Mystery) began appearing in the Post three weeks after Peterson wrote this letter to Southworth. If she heeded his advice, she only did so briefly, since the novel appeared with TheS ecret of Power as its subtitle.

20. HP to EDENS, Dec. 24, 1854, DU.

21. This claim is unpersuasive, as expanding a tale could also increase audience attention and subscriptions. Indeed, at the end of Miriam’s seven-month run, an editorial note in the Post suggested that most readers “will grant that it has been a deeply interesting story—the interest scarcely flagging in any one [issue] number since the beginning.” Even Southworth’s intensity and creativity received praise: “When she concludes . . . it seems to her to be more of an effort to stop, than to go on.” “Miriam,” SEP, Mar. 31, 1855, 2.

22. “Note to the Reader,” SEP, Mar. 31, 1855, 2.

23. “Postponement of ‘Vivia,’” SEP, Nov. 3, 1855, 2.

24. Boyle, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, 12.

25. “Vivia,” SEP, Sept. 20, 1856, 2.

26. As Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin’s bibliography in this volume reveals, there was no neat transfer of Southworth as “exclusive” contributor from the Post to the Ledger. The failure of all parties to acknowledge her contributions to other periodicals in 1856 and 1867 (at least in the surviving correspondence) attests to the performative nature of these conflicts—facts are less important than creating public identities as author and publishers.

44 Kenneth Salzer 27. Helen Waite Papashvily, All the Happy Endings: A Study of the Domestic Novel in America, the Women Who Wrote It, the Women Who Read It, in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harper, 1956), 120.

28. EDENS, Vivia; or, The Secret of Power (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1857), 142 (hereinafter cited in the text).

29. Deborah Barker, Aesthetics and Gender in American Literature: Portraits of the Woman Artist (Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Press, 2000), 54.

30. Joyce W. Warren, Women, Money, and the Law: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gen- der, and the Courts (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2005), 92.

31. Tracey, Plots and Proposals, 128.

32. EDENS to RB, Monday morning, DU.

33. This plot development may remind readers of Herman Melville’s Pierre (1852), whose title character confines himself to an old church in New York to write the ultimate philosophical treatise. Pierre even names the autobiographical “author-hero” of his treatise Vivia (gendered male), who is “in pursuit of the highest health of virtue and truth.” Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (New York: Penguin, 1996), 301, 302. It is tempting to infer that Vivia parodies Pierre, especially if, as some argue, Melville’s novel is a parody of Southworth’s earlier fiction. See William Charvat, The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800–1870: The Papers of William Charvat, ed. Matthew Bruccoli (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1968), 276; and Ann Douglas, TheF eminization of American Culture (New York: Avon, 1977), 377. See also Ken Egan, who argues that Melville did not parody Southworth, but that both authors “parodize similar literary conventions, doubling each other’s subversive tactics.” TheR iven Home: Narrative Rivalry in the American Renaissance (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna Univ. Press, 1997), 137.

34. In an eerie reversal of this fictional scenario, in 1860 Southworth’s estranged husband tried to assert ownership of her copyrights by filing registrations for over a dozen of her novels (including Vivia). As Homestead observes, Frederick’s registrations were superfluous because he (still Emma’s husband) already had legal claim to her property. American Women Authors, 46–49.

35. Barker, Aesthetics and Gender, 58.

36. Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990), 28–48.

37. Joyce W. Warren, “Uncommon Discourse: Fanny Fern and the New York Led- ger,” in Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Kenneth M. Price and

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 45 Susan Belasco Smith (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1995), 55. Southworth and Fern had very different marital histories. Fern’s first husband died in 1846, leaving her to support their two daughters. She remarried, but she left her second husband in 1851 (he divorced her in absentia in 1853). Fern was happily married to her third husband, James Parton, from 1856 until her death in 1872. For a short period (from January to April 1854), both Fern and Southworth were regular Post contributors; however, Fern left the Post to write Ruth Hall. Joyce W. Warren, Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1994), 120. Rather than wait for Southworth to leave the Post, as he did with Fern, Bonner struck while she was still “engaged.”

38. “Prospectus for 1857,” SEP, Nov. 8, 1856, 2.

39. RB to EDENS, Oct.10, 1856, DU.

40. Quoted in Mary Noel, Villains Galore: TheH eyday of the Popular Story Weekly (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 63.

41. Brook Thomas, American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1999), 3.

42. Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth- Century America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 34.

43. Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2002), 38.

44. RB to EDENS, Oct. 22, 1856, DU.

45. Advertisement, Era, Nov. 20, 1856, 187. Of course, when Southworth started at the Post, Peterson used the same promotional tactic as Bonner; however, his claim of her “exclusive” status had less legitimacy because he shared her with the Era.

46. “A Brilliant Accession,” NYL, Dec. 20, 1856, 4. This and other comments in the Ledger are anonymous; however, they were most likely written or supervised by Bonner, the paper’s editor and proprietor.

47. HP to EDENS, Mar. 31, 1857, DU.

48. “Mrs. Southworth’s Story,” SEP, Apr. 11, 1857, 2.

49. Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business, 68.

50. Ibid.

51. EDENS, “To All Interested,” SEP, May 2, 1857, 4. Southworth wrote this letter on April 10 and sent it to multiple recipients (as its title suggests). Besides Bonner, who

46 Kenneth Salzer had good reason to print it in the Ledger as proof of her exclusivity, Peterson also got a copy—as evidenced by his rebuttal in the Post (see next paragraph).

52. “Mrs. Southworth’s Statement,” NYL, May 2, 1857, 4.

53. “Mrs. Southworth Again,” SEP, May 2, 1857, 2. This article appeared on the same day as Southworth’s and Bonner’s pieces in the Ledger, suggesting that Peterson anticipated their publication and sought to neutralize it.

54. Advertisement, Era, May 14, 1857, 79. As with her time at the Post, however, Southworth did not really “withdraw from all other papers.” With Bonner’s full knowledge, she arranged for the London Journal to publish many of her works from 1857 to 1868—more proof that she did not want to have an “exclusive” relationship with only one editor.

The Personal and Professional Negotiations of Vivia 47

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand: Periodical Publication and the Literary Marketplace in Late- Nineteenth-Century America Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas

During her lifetime, E. D. E. N. Southworth was one of the most famous Ameri- can authors in the world. Between 1846, when her first story appeared in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, and her death in 1899, Southworth wrote more novels than Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain combined, with Harriet Beecher Stowe added for good measure. In her seventy-fifth year, she remarked to a newspaper columnist, “Among all the people I have met, and they have been very many, and among all the thousands that have written to me, I have never found one who has not read some of my books, and I have never heard of one, have you?”1 Whether she described individual pieces within her oeuvre as stories, novels, or books, almost all of the fiction that Southworth published during her long and fruitful career was published in serial installments in literary papers in advance of their publication in book form. Many of her most significant stories were published in the New York Ledger, the most popular literary paper in the United States during the nineteenth century, whose cadre of nationally known writers she joined in 1857: Novels she wrote after 1859 were serialized in its pages, including TheH idden Hand, which appeared within its pages three times before it finally appeared in book form. Over the course of the twentieth century, this history was largely forgotten or, if remembered, dismissed as unimportant. However, when we examine the circumstances and context of the serializations of The Hidden Hand, we find compelling evidence that different modes of professional authorship, publication, and literary value were at work in the second half of the nineteenth century than those which are now accepted as the natural history of the American novel. We also find that Southworth herself, though indisputably and unusually famous, is best understood as a representative figure, embedded in a dense field of literary activity, for which the typology of book publication—as primary artifact and conveyor of literary significance—is inadequate. Southworth and Robert Bonner, the editor and owner of the New York Led- ger, both recognized that the marketplace for fiction in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century was not unitary but diversified, with many different audiences, venues, functions, and purposes. Bonner deliberately produced the Ledger for a large and growing market for recreational reading, issued in inexpensive newspapers and magazines, rather than struggling for part of the much smaller luxury market for books. Southworth worked with him, using her literary gifts to create stories that appealed to as many readers as possible, and managed her literary properties in close association with Bonner. The Hidden Hand is one of the great results of their collaboration. At the same time, the work they did together for the Ledger represents a little known facet of the richly complex endeavors of nineteenth-century American literature, authorship, and publishing. It was a vibrant, active world of letters in which the status of “the book” as a revered cultural artifact was strenuously contested. TheNew York Ledger was the brainchild of Robert Bonner (1824–1899). Bonner’s young manhood was spent learning all aspects of newspaper publishing, from typesetting and reporting to finance and advertising. In 1851, he purchased a mediocre business journal, the Merchant Ledger; by 1855, he had renamed it and was turning it “into a journal of current literature and popular fiction,” on its way to becoming one of the United States’ most popular literary papers. At its peak, the New York Ledger boasted that its circulation exceeded four hundred thousand copies weekly.2 While his innovative advertising schemes—filling eight pages of the New York Herald with an advertisement for a contribution by Fanny Fern, publishing tantalizing first installments of serial stories in rival literary papers—earned him the occasional epithet of “the Barnum of publishers,” he set standards for compensation for his “Ledger authors” that are even today seldom matched.3 Bonner firstasked Southworth to write for the Ledger in October 1856, when she was already a successful, nationally known author. His approach set a tone of respect, admiration, and generosity for a professional relationship that lasted for more than three decades. “I would be glad to make an arrangement with you for every line that you write,” he wrote. “I am satisfied that we could make an arrangement that would be mutually advantageous.”4 After several months’ correspondence, Southworth became a “Ledger author” in February 1857 (although her outstanding obligations to publish stories in Henry Peterson’s Peterson’s Mag- azine through 1858 meant that she did not become an “exclusive” Ledger author

50 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas until 1859). Bonner paid her a salary of forty dollars per week, which he soon increased to fifty dollars.5 Over the next three decades, Southworth published thirty novels in the Ledger in weekly installments; by the time of her death, it was common knowledge that her income from the Ledger had grown to more than ten thousand dollars a year.6 The Hidden Hand was the third serial Southworth wrote for the New York Ledger, preceded by The Island Princess (May 30–September 19, 1857) and The Bride of an Evening (January 2–March 23, 1858).7 The first installment appeared on page one of the February 5, 1859, issue; a small paragraph also appeared on page four: “In the present number of the Ledger will be found the first chapters of a new story by Mrs. Southworth. We think we could afford to give pretty valuable presents to all the persons among a million of readers who can commence this story and not go through with it.”8 The Hidden Hand was serialized in the Ledger a second time, nine years after its first appearance, from September 5, 1868 to February 15, 1869.9 Bonner announced the story’s impending second appearance in a single paragraph, carrying the headline “Mrs. Southworth’s Great Story, ‘The Hidden Hand.’ See Next Week’s Ledger”:

We have had many applications for the back numbers of the Ledger, containing Mrs. Southworth’s great story, entitled, the hidden hand, which we had published nearly ten years ago. As we cannot, however, furnish the numbers, we have concluded to republish this great story. We shall begin it in our next number. It is the best story that Mrs. Southworth ever wrote. The tens of thousands who are anxious to read it, will find the first part of it in next week’sL edger.10

TheH idden Hand appeared as a serial in the New York Ledger for the third and last time—twenty-four years since its first appearance, fourteen years since its second—in 1883, just as the Ledger was entering its fourth decade of publication. On July 21 of that year, Bonner boasted that publication of The Hidden Hand would begin again in the following week: “The renowned story, by Mrs. Southworth, is the most popular story ever published in the Ledger. We have been requested over and over again, for many years, to republish it, by subscribers who read it when it first came out, and who want to read it again, and have their children read it also.”11

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 51 The third serialization concluded on January 5, 1884. In the years since its first serialization in 1859, hundreds of thousands of copies of each installment had circulated (if Bonner’s boasts can be believed) and at least forty different dramatizations had been performed by dozens of repertoire companies throughout the United States.12 The Hidden Hand was not published as a monograph until 1888.13 While it was in press, Publishers’ Weekly trumpeted the extraordinary news: “Probably the largest advance order ever given for a new novel has just been received by G. W. Dillingham. It is a single order for one concern for 10,000 copies of ‘The Hidden Hand,’ the New York Ledger story by Mrs. Southworth.”14 Readers who saw this “puff” that week may have marveled at the astonishing number, but most would have known something of the history behind the adjective “new.” For twenty- first-century scholars, and probably for booksellers more than a century ago, the easy explanation for the usage is that TheH idden Hand was “a new novel” in 1888 because it was available for the first time in the format that was and remains typically understood as the most appropriate for the publication, distribution, and reading of novels. TheH idden Hand was “a new novel” after thirty years and three serializations because it was newly a book. However, dismissing the significance of serializations neither honors the true course of Southworth’s career nor reveals the degree to which Robert Bonner, in collaboration with Southworth, sought to subvert the economic and cultural primacy of the book as the best—indeed, the only true—vehicle for long fiction. As Robert Bonner transformed the Merchant Ledger into the New York Led- ger, he was well aware of the prevailing tendency to denigrate the content and character of inexpensive, “cheap” literary papers, though he never shied from using the word “cheap” approvingly. He aimed for respectability, as well as profit, and meticulously attended to the Ledger’s physical appearance.15 He hired a designer to develop the Ledger’s masthead, running titles, and page ornaments (and he thanked and named the engraver, pressman, and masthead designer for their efforts).16 He added illustrations beginning with the November 3, 1855, issue, most notably a prominent illustration on every first page, depicting a scene from the leading serialized story. And in a move running counter to contemporary practice, Bonner dropped advertisements from the paper beginning March 15, 1856.17 Bonner strove to make his paper’s contents as attractive—and respectably popular—as its appearance, and to make the Ledger a venue for literature of all kinds, appealing to readers of both genders and a wide range of interests. He gathered a diverse group of noted popular writers into a coterie writing exclu-

52 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas sively for the Ledger while also procuring frequent contributions by other renowned authors, including Henry Ward Beecher, William Cullen Bryant, N. P. Willis, Alice Cary, and Charles Dickens, which were written specifically for the Ledger. Thus one of the Ledger’s primary claims upon its readers’ money and attention was that it did not rely upon material reprinted from other sources for any of its contents. Bonner offered all of this to readers for a subscription price of four cents a copy or two dollars for a year’s subscription, a penny or two less per copy than was charged by competing literary papers. However, he refused to accept direct subscriptions from individuals who lived in “cities, large villages, or other places where news-offices are permanently established,” thereby maintaining good relations with local periodical vendors, upon whom he necessarily depended to forward orders for current and back issues.18 Bonner’s ability to recruit popular, well-established authors for the Ledger provided fundamentally important support for the paper’s financial success, and with few exceptions, the “Ledger authors” he recruited in the first few years remained part of the Ledger’s cadre of contributors for the rest of their careers. One of his earliest triumphs came in 1854, when he engaged “the sweet singer of Hartford” to contribute her poetry to the Ledger. He then advertised this literary coup extensively and often in other newspapers and periodicals (including direct competitors), using the reiterated line, “Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney writes exclusively for the New York Ledger.”19 Fanny Fern (1811–1872), who had garnered a national readership through her contributions to the Boston literary papers True Flag and Olive Branch, the New York paper Musical World and Times, and the Philadelphia-based Saturday Evening Post, was the next to join the ranks of exclusive Ledger authors.20 Bonner widely publicized the fact that he would pay her the hitherto unheard-of sum of one hundred dollars per column, a promotional strategy by which the munificent payments he made to authors functioned as compelling evidence of the value of association with the Ledger for writers and as a measure—and celebration—of the paper’s success. This phenomenal sum, which made Fern the most highly paid newspaper writer of her day, was, however, limited to the duration of the serial story “Fanny Ford.” When Fern entered into an “ordinary” contract with Bonner as a regular contributor of essays, her rate of pay was only was twenty-five dollars per week, but Bonner was, of course, happy to let the public continue to believe in his puffery.21 The third major addition to the cadre of Ledger authors was Sylvanus Cobb Jr. (1823–1887), whom Bonner hired away from the Boston-based literary paper Flag of Our Union.22 Bonner offered Cobb a renewable five-year contract at fifty

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 53 dollars per week; the contracts were renewed throughout Cobb’s lifetime at increasing weekly rates, eventually mounting to seven thousand dollars per year. The arrangements that igourney,S Fern, and Cobb each made with Bonner for the terms of their engagements as Ledger authors were significantly different, yet in each case, they were assured significant reward for their work and access to national audiences. Bonner also derived significant benefit from his arrangements with Ledger authors because he had a steady supply of new yet predictably popular material for each week’s issue and could, at the same time, rationalize and predict his acquisition costs. As Bonner continued to acquire prominent writers as Ledger authors, he am- plified his promotional efforts, emphasizing the availability and desirability of the Ledger. Bonner was promoting the Ledger’s policy of exclusive publication (with variations) as early as 1855, crowing that Ellen Ross and TheF our Carmen (“It was written for the Ledger alone”) would never appear in book form.23 The Ledger’s first big hit, Sylvanus Cobb’s eight-part serial The Gun Maker of Moscow is a leading example of his efforts to promote the exclusivity of popular authors.24 On May 10, 1856, as The Gun was in its fourth installment, Bonner assured the week’s readers that “back numbers, containing Mr. Cobb’s new Story complete, as far as published, can be obtained at our office; or they can be ordered through any news dealer.”25 Two weeks later, Bonner added a cautionary tone to his remarks “To One Hundred Correspondents”: “In reply to nearly one hundred correspondents, we would state that Cobb’s novellette, The Gunmaker of Moscow, will never be published in book form. We have copyrighted it, and it can only be obtained in the Ledger.”26 One week after Cobb’s story concluded, Bonner proudly announced, “Our paper is electrotyped this week for the first time; so that we can supply back numbers after this date, without fail.”27 Cobb’s third serial, The Mystic Bride, began on August 2, 1856. Bonner took the opportunity to brag about the Ledger’s desirability as a vehicle for new reading material and as a repository of material worth saving: “This new novellette, the publication of which we commence in this number of the Ledger, is decidedly the best Tale that Mr. Cobb has yet written. . . . It will never be published in book form, so you must be careful and get all the numbers of the Ledger containing it.”28 Maintaining control over content was a persistent concern for Bonner. Po- ems, essays, short stories, and serials represented a significant expense, but they were also centrally important to the Ledger’s ability to generate profit through the acquisition and retention of readers, whether purchases were made by subscription or through news dealers. Announcements to readers of the steps he took

54 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas to protect the Ledger’s contents served notice to pirates, certainly, but he also warned readers that the Ledger would remain their sole periodical source for the longer works of fiction byL edger authors:

Every number of our paper is copyrighted. The principal object, however, in copyrighting it is to prevent the piratical publication of our stories, sketches, &c. in book form, and not to prohibit editors of country papers from copying the short sketches or short articles of any kind; on the contrary, they are at liberty to do so, provided they give the customary credit.29

This is not to say, however, that Bonner or theL edger was rigidly “anti-book” or anti-reprinting. Indeed, he could not hope to maintain absolute control over rights to different literary properties that first appeared in the pages of the Led- ger. Some contributors were granted the freedom to publish their Ledger stories, essays, and poems in book form when and where they chose. Take, as a single instance, Henry Ward Beecher’s serial, Norwood; or, Village Life in New England, which was published as a book almost as soon as its last installment appeared in the Ledger in late November 1867, just in time for the Christmas trade.30 As well, a few of Bonner’s “exclusive contributors,” John G. Saxe, Fanny Fern, Lydia Sigourney, and Southworth among them, had the freedom (by contract or courtesy) to publish books containing, or consisting of, all or some of their writings after the lapse of some agreed-upon time since their first appearances in the Ledger.31 The pattern of outhworth’sS book publications during her years at the Ledger indicates that her agreement with Bonner allowed her to publish her serials as books after a two- or three-year waiting period, as had been the usual, though not invariable, pattern with the stories she had published in the National Era and the Saturday Evening Post.32 There can be little doubt that Bonner would have preferred to have her stories remain exclusive to the Ledger. Nonetheless, he went so far as to provide page proofs for the use of her book publisher’s typesetters, which suggests how much the first appearances of her fiction as serials meant to the Ledger. T. B. Peterson began issuing Southworth’s serial fiction in book form in 1854 and went on to publish many of her novels—forty-three by his count (including

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 55 those first published in theL edger before 1873).33 However, Southworth consistently refused to let him have TheH idden Hand, despite numerous, repeated requests. In an undated letter to Bonner, Southworth wrote,

I know that my “Hidden Hand” is constantly called for in the book stores, and I think that circumstance has tempted the Boston House to bring out a spurious book under that popular title. Of course, it will very much injure my copyright. You see T. B. Peterson wants to bring mine out immediately, but I don’t wish him to do it. I wanted it tried again in the Ledger, a year or two hence, if you please to try it.34

An October 1866 letter confirmed her position:

He [T. B. Peterson] wrote to me again for the Hidden Hand, but I told him I could not dispose of that yet awhile and so he asks me for some other. I feel persuaded by the letters that are written to me, as well as to Peterson about the Hidden Hand that there is a good deal of curiosity to read it among children now grown up, and that after a little while it would do better in the Ledger than most new stories would do. If ever you should republish it you need not put it on the first page you know. Any how I shall save it for you.35

On September 25, 1867, in the midst of negotiations for the second renewal of her five-year contract with Bonner, Southworth again wrote to Bonner about TheH idden Hand:

In regard to the novel “Hidden Hand,” I must say that ever since our conversation on the subject some time since, I have considered the copyright pledged to you for as long as you might wish it, either for a limited or an unlimited time. . . . T. B. Peterson has applied for it about twice a year ever since it first appeared in the Ledger. At first I told him I was not ready to publish it in book form. After the conversation between you and myself on the subject I told him I was not yet at liberty to dispose of the copyright. And I repeated the answer upon every application.36

56 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas Just two days later, Southworth acknowledged receipt of one thousand dollars in payment for “the copyright of my novel entitled The Hidden Hand,” and the following day, Robert Bonner signed Southworth’s third five-year contract.37 There is ample evidence that Bonner was a remarkably generous man, but he was also a shrewd businessman and no fool. To pay Southworth for the copyright of a work that she had written while receiving a regular salary from him and which had already appeared in the Ledger powerfully suggests that he believed The Hid- den Hand to be a continuingly valuable property for the Ledger, as a serial. Put another way, by paying her one thousand dollars for the copyright of TheH idden Hand, Bonner made clear his legal prerogative to maintain the story’s status as a serial novel, exclusive to the Ledger, and to determine when, if ever, it would appear in book format. By 1868, Southworth was a senior Ledger author; the second serialization of TheH idden Hand reinforced her status as a vital contributor to the Ledger, even as new writers, including other novelists, were added to the Ledger’s pages. In its first appearance, The Hidden Hand had appeared as one of two fiction serials in each weekly issue; in the next nine years, the Ledger significantly expanded its serial offerings. The second time around, The Hidden Hand appeared as one of three, or even four, fiction serials running concurrently, written by longstanding and new Ledger authors. The new authors whose work appeared during the second serialization of TheH idden Hand had, like Sylvanus Cobb, deferred or abandoned the prospect of book publication to become exclusive Ledger authors. William Henry Peck (1830–1892), the “Old Contributor,” published twenty-seven serials in the Ledger, and only one of them has ever been issued in book form.38 Mary Kyle Dallas (1830–1897), who joined the Ledger in 1866, published six serials in the Ledger; none has been issued in book form. Harriet Lewis (1841–1878), who began publishing in the Ledger in 1869, published twenty-one serials during her association with the Ledger; none of these stories was published in book form during her lifetime.39 In the years between the first and second serializations of TheH idden Hand, only two other works were reserialized in the Ledger: Cobb’s Orion, the Gold Beater in 1865 (nine years after its first appearance) and Charles Dickens’s Hunted Down—which had been written specially for the Ledger—in 1867 (eight years after its first appearance). Between the second and third serializations of TheH idden Hand, Bonner had republished only three novels: Southworth’s Self-Made, Sylvanus Cobb’s Gun Maker of Moscow (making its third appearance), and Harriet Lewis’s The DoubleL ife. The second appearance of Lewis’s novel came thirteen years after its first—long enough for older readers to want to reread it, yet still

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 57 fresh enough to attract new readers. Cobb’s Gun Maker of Moscow set a new precedent: It was the first story to be published three times in theL edger. Only one other author—Southworth—had a work of fiction appear as many times. Bonner’s sparing use of reserializations in the first fifteen years of theL edger’s run would have kept readers from feeling as though they were buying too much used or recycled literature; instead, they were offered the opportunity to reread desirable, tried-and-true stories by authors whose new works were also prominently featured within the Ledger’s pages. By promoting reserializations, Bonner constructed an interpretive frame for the Ledger that taught readers to value serialization as the best form for these stories and to appreciate the literary newspaper as the most appropriate forum for finding and enjoying such fiction. It appears, therefore, that in this period of the Ledger’s history, after the publication of a decade’s worth of new and exciting stories by Southworth, the second appearance of The Hidden Hand emerged from Bonner’s successful efforts to maintain an equilibrium between the new and unfamiliar and the familiar and reliable. On July 21, 1883, Bonner announced the third reserialization of TheH idden Hand:

The renowned story, by Mrs. Southworth, is the most popular story ever published in the Ledger. We have been requested over and over again, for many years, to republish it, by subscribers who read it when it first came out, and who want to read it again, and have their children read it also.40

A persistent question that this announcement raises is how we are to understand the popularity of individual texts that are only available as part of larger aggrega- tions of texts. To put it another way, how can we understand TheH idden Hand to be a “best seller” in the years prior to its availability for sale as a book? There must have been a variety of indicators Bonner took into account as he considered reserializing some stories but not others. It is clear, however, that for promotional purposes, appeals from “subscribers” or “correspondents” would always be understood as powerfully persuasive, since they demonstrated that the Ledger’s readers served as the arbiters of popular success. (As with most advertising, the logic applies whether or not there really were sacks of mail asking for reserializations.) Persistent inquiries from eager readers aside, at least one other external measure of The Hidden Hand ’s popularity was available to Bonner and to Southworth:

58 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas In the years since Southworth had accepted one thousand dollars from Bonner for the copyright, T. B. Peterson kept asking to publish the story in book form. Peterson began his campaign in the first flush of TheH idden Hand ’s success and continued to press his case through the 1860s, 1870s, and beyond, approaching both Southworth and Bonner. To Bonner, Peterson offered increasingly generous terms, particularly after the story’s second serialization. In addition to copyright fees, he offered to include full-page advertisements for theL edger in the nationally distributed Peterson’s Magazine or in every copy of Southworth’s books that he published41 and to allow the Ledger the right to publish serially a dozen of Southworth’s works to which he held the copyright in exchange for permission to issue just one title, TheH idden Hand.42 He also suggested to Bonner that The Hidden Hand would probably “never again run . . . through the ‘Leger’ [sic],” so Bonner’s economic interest would not be served by continued refusals.43 Peterson’s pleas and proposals were of no avail, however, nor was his covert threat to sell serial rights to “his” Southworth novels to papers other than the Ledger.44 To the contrary, it seems more likely that Peterson’s persistence reinforced Bonner’s conviction of the value of TheH idden Hand to the New York Ledger. Southworth also repeatedly rejected Peterson’s proposals. Her refusals were most influenced, we believe, by her sense of commitment to Bonner and the Ledger. It seems possible that they were also the result of a less-than-noble desire to frustrate Peterson, since her professional relationship with him was far from trouble free. Peterson, who was certainly as shrewd a businessman as Bonner, had a less generous spirit and pocket. He never lost an opportunity to complain to Southworth of hard times in the publishing business as a way of keeping remu- neration in line with profit margins.45 His argument that he wanted the right to issue The Hidden Hand merely for the sake of completeness seems likely to have annoyed her.46 At one point, Southworth was driven to refer to Peterson as “a brute.”47 Thwarting Peterson may well have been part of Southworth’s decision to keep TheH idden Hand from appearing between covers any sooner than it did. In any case, however, Peterson pressed his case at least until February 1883, shortly before Southworth renewed her contract with Bonner for the sixth time and more than a decade after Bonner and Southworth last permitted him to publish any of her newly written Ledger serials as books (beginning in the early 1870s, Southworth’s new novels were genuinely “written exclusively for the Ledger,” with no editions under T. B. Peterson’s imprint appearing after a two- or three-year time lag).48 To every request from Peterson, her answer was no. A few months after Peterson’s last known request, and as part of Southworth’s correspondence with Bonner regarding contract renewal terms in May, 1883,

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 59 she raised the general question of reserialization: “And now let me see what I can do to serve you aside from writing stories. I can revise and improve any old one you may care to re-publish—gratis. I sent you yesterday a list of your copyrights—the stories range in length from 24 to 60 (!) numbers.”49 And on July 21, 1883, Bonner announced the joyful news: “With a view to its [The Hid- den Hand ’s] publication, its gifted author has revised and improved it expressly for our columns, and we shall give the first installment of it in the next number of the Ledger.”50 Theserevisions were not intended to update or refresh a story that was approaching three decades in age. They were, instead, intended to improve the experience of readers of the serial as a serial.51 As Southworth told Bonner:

It is not “difficult to improve the Hidden Hand.” It is easy and pleasant work. Very little to do in the first 9 numbers. More to do in the next 5, and then very little to do as to the rest. The chief care is to bring Cap into every number. She was out of two in the first & second edition. That would make three weeks waiting for Cap’s re-appearance, which would be too long, since she is the attraction of the story. “Nuff sed.”52

Southworth’s long relationship with the Ledger came to an end in 1887, and it was the end of this association that led, finally, to the publication of The Hidden Hand in book form. In 1884, the last installment of the third serialization of The Hidden Hand appeared in the same issue with the first installment ofF or Woman’s Love, one of the last three new stories that Southworth wrote for the Ledger.53 Southworth’s continuing status as a prominent Ledger author was plainly noted in the paper’s prospectus for 1886: “We shall begin the new year with a new story by our great American authoress, Mrs. Southworth, who is generally con- ceded to be the most popular authoress in this country.”54 The prospectus for 1887, too, proudly told readers that the Ledger would publish “stories by our old and renowned contributors, Mrs. Southworth, Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., Major Alfred Rochefort, Captain Frederick Whittaker, Miss Sarah Parr, and many others among our old contributors, besides several new ones whose names we shall announce hereafter.”55 However, the status of Southworth and the other “old and renowned contributors” changed dramatically at the end of 1887. During the preceding decade, Robert Bonner had gradually withdrawn from full-time involvement in the

60 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas management of the Ledger, finally retiring in December 1887. His three sons, Allen, Robert Edwin, and Frederick, then took over,56 and, as is not unusual, the sons took their father’s business in new directions.57 TheLedger ’s prospectus for 1888, which ran in the column immediately preceding Bonner’s retirement letter, described the paper and its new editors’ plans for the coming year in familiar terms: “The Ledger for the year 1888 will continue to be the Great Family Paper, full of good and interesting reading, and it offers at once one of the cheapest, greatest, and most lasting of pleasures.”58 Conspicu- ously absent from this prospectus, however, are the names of any contributors. It appears that one of the first editorial decisions that the Bonner sons made was to end their father’s practice of signing authors to long-term contracts. Southworth’s contract came up for renewal at the end of 1887. Except for the reserialization of older stories, Southworth was gone from the pages of Ledger after 1887. Nor was Southworth alone. Over the three-year period, 1888–91, the well- known cadre of Ledger authors was dismantled. To indicate the dimensions of this change, it is worth emphasizing that several Ledger authors had been, for more than thirty years, consistently present in the paper’s pages. Stories by Sylvanus Cobb Jr. accompanied The Hidden Hand in all three of its serial appearances. For that matter, between April 19, 1856, Cobb’s first appearance in the Ledger, and August 31, 1889, his last, there were only thirty-one weeks in nearly thirty-five years in which a serial by Cobb, Southworth, Harriet Lewis, or Eliza A. Dupuy did not appear in the Ledger; in many, many instances, two, three, or all four had stories appearing simultaneously. But soon all were gone. Even Laura Jean Libbey, who only began writing for the Ledger in December 1886, no longer appeared in its pages after December 1890. At the same time, however, there was also a marked increase in the reserialization of older stories. Robert Bonner’s 1887 retirement was followed in 1888 by the reissue of five novels by four different Ledger authors: two by Eliza Dupuy (originally published in 1864 and 1867), one by Leon Lewis (first published in 1869), one by Jane Fuller (first serialized from 1869–1870), and one by Harriet Lewis (first appearance in 1870). Thereafter, the pace of reserializing stories slowed to an average of one reappearance per year. During the twenty-eight years that Robert Bonner ran the Ledger, twelve reserialized stories appeared; in the first five years of Bonner’s sons’ leadership, ten stories were reserialized.59 Two related explanations for this striking change seem persuasive: It gave the Bonner sons time to settle themselves in office as they planned for the future and it saved money (or increased profit margins) by reducing acquisition expenses. None of the reserializations after 1888 were advertised as such, and several were

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 61 retitled, making them appear to new or unwary readers as if they were new works. In this period of the Ledger’s history, the use of reserializations seems to have been a temporizing, cost-cutting measure rather than a means of bolstering the status of the Ledger’s authors and of the Ledger as an exclusive venue for trusted and valued authors’ works. One year after they assumed control of the Ledger, the Bonner sons under- took a wholesale redesign of the paper. On December 15, 1888, a number of changes in the Ledger’s material appearance were made: The masthead font and subtitle were changed, more illustrations appeared, and the number of serial stories present in any single issue lowered to three or fewer. The serials decreased in length, and many of the Ledger’s new contributions were essays and short stories, by Marion Harland and Julian Hawthorne, among others. As an editorial notice explained, “As our readers will see, this number of the Ledger appears in a new form. The age is progressive, and a glance at our announcement for the new year will show that the Ledger keeps pace with the times.”60 Letters from readers in the “Correspondence” column suggest puzzlement by the many changes and curiosity about what had happened to hitherto regular contributors. In 1888 and 1889, a number of readers wrote to request the reserialization of favorite works, many by Southworth. For example, “Old Reader,” from Pierpont, Ohio, wrote, “With the exception of a few numbers, I have read the Ledger since 1865. About 1865 there was a story published in the Ledger titled ‘Britomarte the Man Hater’ by Mrs. Southworth. Would it be asking too much to have it reprinted?”61 Other readers inquired about purchasing back issues containing favorite stories, such as L. J. B. of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, who wrote, “I would like to know if the story entitled ‘The Widows of Widowville’ is still in print? If it is, how many numbers does it go through? and what will it cost?”62 Two months later, another reader asked the same question and was told that the story was “out of print,” as requests from readers for back issues had exhausted available copies.63 Such letters indicate that many Ledger readers, especially longtime readers, still wanted to read the works of the Ledger authors whom the Bonner sons had dropped from the paper. Poignant letters convey a sense of confusion and distress. “Constant (Norfolk, VA)” inquired, “1) In what year was the New York Ledger first issued? 2) Is Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth dead? If so, could you not republish some of her stories?”64 Although reader requests did not lead to the reinstatement of Southworth or other Ledger authors, the Bonner sons recognized that there was continuing interest in their works. Therefore Robert Bonner’s Sons began to move into book publication in 1888, announcing “the Ledger Library,” a book series to be composed of stories originally published as serials. This project would have been

62 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas unimaginable without their ability to draw upon material in the Ledger’s rich back file. To promote their books to Ledger readers, Bonner’s sons reversed some of their father’s more prominent strategies. Robert Bonner was famous for buying columns in other literary papers to run initial chapters of a new serial (including TheH idden Hand); his sons ran an installment of each reprinted story as a supplement to the Ledger as the corresponding volume in the Ledger Library was issued. Supplements concluded with a notice explaining that readers’ demands for the story had led them to issue it in book form, followed by instructions for purchasing copies.65 Robert Bonner used readers’ queries as an opportunity to publicize the availability of back issues and encourage subscriptions; after Bonner’s sons began book publication, they were used to promote the sale of volumes in the Ledger Library.66 Such changes could well have left a bad taste in long-term Ledger readers’ mouths, because the implicit terms of their subscriptions had changed without warning. Under the sons’ new terms, instead of paying their money and getting everything they wanted to read, including repeats of old favorites, they were asked to pay the full subscription price and then pay even more to procure favorites for rereading. Unfortunately, there is little information in surviving records concerning details surrounding the book publication of TheH idden Hand. However, in June 1887, a few months before Bonner retired, Southworth’s anxiety for her brainchild appears to have been aroused when she was informed that publisher “George Munro had given Emma Garrison Jones an order to get a copy of the H. H. and write a new story from it.”67 Months later, finally retired from her long status as a Ledger contributor and already anxious as a result of this earlier threat of usurpation, Southworth may have finally been ready to see TheH idden Hand appear in book form. Although the Dillingham edition of The Hidden Hand includes a note on both the copyright page and in the publisher’s preface stating that the novel was being issued in book form “by an arrangement with Robert Bonner’s Sons,” that arrangement does not appear to have been a very happy one. Almost as soon the Dillingham edition was published, Bonner’s sons began advertising an edition of The Hidden Hand that would appear as part of the Ledger Library. The Bonner’s sons’ advertising for their edition suggests that that there may have been uncertainty, not to say controversy, about who controlled the rights to TheH idden Hand, but the precise circumstances have proved impossible to unearth.68 In any case, it should come as no surprise that TheH idden Hand was not published by T. B. Peterson. However, Peterson was still aggressively promoting his editions of Southworth’s books, running a full-page ad in Publisher’s Weekly on

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 63 July 7, 1888, for her “complete” works, in forty-three volumes (a set that failed to include not only TheH idden Hand but also all of Southworth’s many novels serialized in the Ledger since 1873).69 At the same time, Peterson also began issuing twenty-five-cent paper editions of some of Southworth’s novels, “having arranged with the author to do so,” advertising them along with his cheap editions of “Zola’s Nana! Nana’s Daughter! La Terre! L’Assommoir!”70 As Southworth’s career came to its end, the venue that had enabled it also declined. On November 9, 1889, the Ledger’s physical appearance dramatically changed: The number of pages increased, page dimensions decreased, and fully one-quarter of each issue’s contents were filled by advertising. In 1895, the Ledger ceased weekly publication and moved to monthly publication. Both Southworth and Bonner died in 1899, within days of each other, while the New York Ledger struggled on until 1903, when it ceased publication entirely. In the century that has passed since the deaths of Bonner, Southworth, and the Ledger, we have forgotten that the forum of “the popular newspaper” was an immeasurably important venue for the publication and distribution of Ameri- can letters. This forum was a highly contested space—or, phrased differently, contemporary opinion about the literary value of the material published by the weekly literary press was profoundly mixed. Bonner’s pronouncements praising newspapers for their quality and their popularity, themselves embedded within the pages of a popular newspaper, were defensive strikes in an ongoing and escalating dispute. The sheer—or mere—popularity of the weekly press represented a major challenge to critical cultural values, even for those who might otherwise have lauded the power of a free, democratic, and inexpensive press. Further, Robert Bonner’s emphasis on periodical publication, financially successful as it was for him and for Southworth, kept TheH idden Hand, and any number of other serial stories, out of the cultural mainstream of book publication. Nineteenth-century economics and readers were with Bonner. TheN ew York Ledger could be inexpensively mass-produced, easily and widely distributed, and, to a large degree, financed through subscriptions. This, in itself, was a significant advantage over the situation of book publishers. Bonner received much of his income in advance of production, whereas book publishers, who had to pay all their production and distribution costs in advance of sales, might have to wait weeks, months, or even years before receiving payment. On the other hand, periodicals published in large newspaper formats are notoriously difficult to collect and preserve, whether in private or institutional hands.71 Thousands upon thousands of copies of theN ew York Ledger were published, yet it is now almost impossible to locate a complete set. Microfilm reels rep-

64 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas licate the inadequate print files of the Ledger, and the Ledger has yet to be included in any digitization initiatives preserving and making many other nineteenth- century newspapers available for study, in part because digital projects have often relied on existing microforms. After its first appearance between covers in 1888, The Hidden Hand remained in print, in numerous inexpensive editions issued by a variety of reprint publishers based in Chicago, Boston, and New York, until shortly after World War I.72 As Robert Bonner understood when he remade the Ledger in 1854–55, “cheap” is all too easily conflated with “trash,” and as the nineteenth century ended, Southworth’s stories were increasingly (mis)understood as “trashy novels,” not simply disposable, but nearly despicable.73 After about 1920, The Hidden Hand went out of print for nearly seventy years. It returned to public attention, or at least to academic attention, when Rutgers University Press issued it—in book form—in 1988, edited by Joanne Dobson. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this influential edition was based on the book edition the centenary of which its publication marked, not the original or subsequent serializations. Since then, the story has been published by the Oxford University Press, in its Oxford Popular Fiction series, by a California publisher in an edition for the use of high school students (evidence that it has gained a particular kind of modern respectability) and an array of “print-on-demand” editions and e-book versions emerging from the vast storehouse of public-domain volumes engulfed by the Google Books project.74 TheH idden Hand, whatever the vicissitudes of its physical instantiations, was by any measure an unusually successful novel. However, the evidence that we have adduced indicates that neither TheH idden Hand nor Southworth were unique. Southworth was deeply embedded in a dense field of cultural activity, populated by many other authors, whose careers were shaped in fundamentally important ways by and through the pages of periodical publications.75 Their stories, essays, poems, and other literary work may have had their only material presence in newspapers and magazines that have long since vanished, but that makes them no less important to their readers or to those who would understand them and their reading.

Notes 1. Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1894, 17.

2. “Bonner, Robert,” in TheN ational Cyclopedia of American Biography: Being the His- tory of the United States (New York: White, 1892–1947); “Bonner, Rob’t,” in Irish Celts: A

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 65 Cyclopedia of Race History, Containing Biographical Sketches of More than Fifteen Hundred Distinguished Irish Celts, with a Chronological Index, by James O’Brien (Detroit: Kilroy, 1884); Nina Baym, “Introduction,” in The Hidden Hand, by E. D. E. N. Southworth (Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), [ix].

3. “New York Ledger (1855–1903),” in The Oxford Companion to American Literature, ed. James D. Hart (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), accessed via Oxford Reference On- line, http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t123. e3413; and “Bonner, Robert (28 Apr. 1824–6 July 1899),” in American National Biogra- phy Online, http://www.anb.org/.

4. RB to EDENS, Oct. 10, 1856, DU.

5. EDENS to RB, n.d., and EDENS to RB, Feb. 18, 1861, DU. When measured by the American consumer price index, $50 in 1857 was the near-equivalent of $1,272 in 2008 (see MeasuringWorth, http://www.measuringworth.com/index.html/, for other ways to calculate the comparison). As was Bonner’s practice for thirty years, the term of their agreement ran for five years, and at the expiration of each term, the contract was renewed at increasingly favorable terms for Southworth.

6. “Our Women in Fiction,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 3, 1889, 28.

7. See Christopher Looby, “Southworth and Seriality: TheH idden Hand in the New York Ledger,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 59, no. 2 (Sept. 2004): 179–211, for a thoughtful and insightful reading of the first appearance of The Hidden Hand and “the ways in which Southworth exploited seriality” (185). However, he cavalierly dismisses the possibility that subsequent serializations might also be worth study and assumes the texts of all three serializations were identical.

8. NYL, Feb. 5, 1859. See Carol Sinclair Cameron Lauhon, “Capitola!; or, Our Amer- ican Dream: TheH idden Hand in American Culture, 1859–1929” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Iowa, 2005), for an analysis of the many incarnations, reincarnations, dramatizations, commodifications, and reinventions of The Hidden Hand. Lauhon’s study is an exemplary cultural history that thoroughly reviews the ways in which the popularity of the novel was made manifest.

9. The first installment of this second serialization appeared simultaneously with the last installment of another Southworth serial, The Malediction; or, The Widows of Wid- owville. While a number of Southworth’s serials end and begin in back-to-back issues (usually those appearing in 1869–81), the remainder appeared with gaps of weeks or even months between them. In an instance of what we believe to be purely editorial interven- tion, the second serialization of TheH idden Hand ran to twenty-four installments rather

66 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas than twenty-three, as in the first. There is no evidence of any revisions to the text in this appearance, beyond the differences in the points at which individual installments begin and end.

10. NYL, Aug. 9, 1868.

11. NYL, July 21, 1883.

12. Michelle Ann Abate, Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2008), 2. One of John Wilkes Booth’s early dramatic triumphs was in the role of “Black Donald,” the novel’s—and the melodrama’s—charismatic villain. The Hidden Hand also appeared in an unauthorized serialization in the London Journal (which moved the action to Wales) and was published as a book in England in 1859, decades before it was issued in book form in the United States. Thanks to Melissa Homestead for drawing these English editions to our attention.

13. Lyle Henry Wright, American Fiction, 1876–1900: A Contribution toward a Bibli- ography (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1966), entry 5090. Only thirteen libraries in the United States report holding copies of this volume (see WorldCat, accessions #23876537 and #10334921) (accessed June 27, 2009). In the same year, 1888, G. W. Dillingham also published books by Allan Pinkerton, Ernest Renan, José M. Aguirre, and Mary Jane Holmes.

14. “Literary and Trade Notes,” Publishers’ Weekly, Aug. 11, 1888, 189.

15. Despite Bonner’s many efforts to present theL edger as an elevated, and elevat- ing, publication, many of his contemporaries viewed it as “cheaper”—and therefore less respectable—than, for instance, the Saturday Evening Post, for whom Southworth was writing when Bonner first approached her. Indeed, by at least one measure, it seems clear Southworth’s cultural status as an author declined after she became associated with the Ledger: No reviews of her book publications appeared in any major American literary periodicals after 1859. Linda Naranjo-Huebl suggests that this was the result of book reviewers’ reluctance to review books which had been serialized multiple times over a number of years. “The Road to Perdition: E. D. E. N. Southworth and the Critics,” American Periodicals 16: 2 (2006): 143n6. Since this particular set of conditions applied to just three of Southworth’s Ledger novels, and none of her Ledger novels were reviewed in the literary press when they appeared in book form, this explanation is not fully persuasive.

16. NYL, Sept. 1, 1855, and Sept. 8, 1855.

17. “The whole space of our columns being devoted to the entertainment, instruc- tion, and amusement of our readers, making by far the handsomest, cheapest, and most interesting family paper in the Union.” NYL, Mar. 8, 1856.

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 67 18. “Prospectus of the New York Ledger,” NYL, Dec. 17,1859.

19. “Bonner, Robert,” American National Biography Online.

20. See Joyce W. Warren, Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman (New Brunswick: Rut- gers Univ. Press, 1992), chaps. 6–9.

21. See ibid., 146.

22. See Stanwood Cobb, The Magnificent Partnership (New York: Vantage Press, 1956), 7n. The editor of Flag of Our Nation, Hosea Ballou, deeply resented what he regarded as Bonner’s poaching.

23. NYL, Oct. 20, 1855, and Dec. 29, 1855.

24. The Gun Maker of Moscow; or,V aldimir [sic] the Monk: A Tale of the Empire under Peter the Great, appeared from April 19 to June 7, 1856. Details of the publication of serials (with the exception of TheH idden Hand) derive from Edward T. LeBlanc, “New York Ledger: Chronological Listing.” Many thanks to Lydia Schurman for passing this extremely useful—and regrettably unpublished—document along to us. Bonner’s extraordinary advertising efforts—he reportedly spent twenty thousand dollars in one week promoting Cobb’s story and arranged a rally in City Hall Park featuring a one-hundred- gun salute—were not the least notable aspects of the story’s success.

25. NYL, May 10, 1856.

26. NYL, May 24, 1856.

27. NYL, June 14, 1856. Bonner went a step further early the following year: “Our readers will observe that the Ledger appears in new type this week. Hereafter, by using three sets of electrotype plates, at great expense, of course, we will be enabled to give new type every week, so that the Ledger will present a clear and uniform appearance throughout the year. The quality of the paper that we now use is also greatly improved. In short, everything about the Ledger is of the first quality. We spare no expense to make it worthy of its immense and unparalleled patronage.” NYL, Feb. 28, 1857.

28. NYL, Aug. 2, 1856. The Mystic Bride has never appeared in book form. Further- more, The Gun Maker of Moscow was not published as a book until after Cobb’s death in 1887. The circumstances of its appearance in 1888 seem very similar to those of The Hidden Hand.

29. NYL, Sept. 20, 1856.

30. Norwood ran in the Ledger from May 11 to November 23, 1867, and Bonner paid the astonishing sum of $30,000 for the privilege (generous terms even today for a first

68 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas novel, the near-equivalent of $450,000 in 2008). Simultaneous book editions were issued by Charles Scribner & Company in New York and Sampson Low, Son, and Marston in London.

31. To (over)generalize, “exclusive Ledger authors” were those whose works appeared only in the Ledger; “exclusive-for-a-time Ledger authors” (a descriptive term never used by Bonner) were those whose contractual arrangements called for all of their works to first appear in the pages of the Ledger but which could appear in book form—collections, anthologies, monographs, and so on—after some period of time (weeks, months, or years) had passed; and “Ledger authors” were those authors over whose one-time or sporadic appearances Bonner held limited rights. For promotional purposes, it was, of course, in Bonner’s interest to imply that everything appearing in the Ledger was supplied by “exclusive Ledger authors.” Before 1873, with the single exception of TheH idden Hand, all of Southworth’s stories for the Ledger fell into the second category. We regret that this essay was finalized before “Staff Bonds: Bonner’s New York Ledger,” in David Dowling, The Business of Literary Circles in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 61-88, was published and that we cannot address the many points that merit further discussion and correction.

32. Southworth’s first two serials for the Ledger set the pattern for the stories she published there: Peterson published “The Island Princess” (May 30–Sept. 19, 1857) as The Lady of the Isle: A Romance from Real Life in 1859 and “The Bride of an Evening” (Jan. 2–Mar. 23, 1858) as The Gipsy’s Prophecy: A Tale of Real Life in 1861. Some of Southworth’s pre-Ledger serials, including The Discarded Daughterand The Deserted Wife, appeared in book form more quickly. See Melissa J. Homestead, “From Periodical to Book in Her Early Career: E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Letters to Abraham Hart,” Legacy 29, no. 1 (2012), 115–47.

33. Peterson gives this figure in his letter, TBP to RB, July 30, 1877, DU. For details, see Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin, “A Chronological Bibliography of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Works Privileging Periodical Publication,” in this volume.

34. EDENS to RB, [c. 1867], DU. It is possible that Southworth’s characterization of the urgency of Peterson’s request would place this letter in late 1868 or early 1869; that is, perhaps Southworth was indicating that Peterson wished to issue the story in book form immediately after the second serialization was completed in February 1869.

35. EDENS to RB, Oct. 24, 1866, DU.

36. EDENS to RB, Sept. 25, 1867, DU.

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 69 37. EDENS, Sept. 27, 1867, DU. Regis Louise Boyle states that Bonner made his formal application for copyright on August 13, 1868. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novel- ist (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of American Press, 1939), 66.

38. William Henry Peck, The Executioner of Venice (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1892).

39. Robert Bonner’s Sons and Street & Smith issued Her Double Life in separate editions dated 1888, and F. M. Lupton, a reprint house, issued an undated edition (probably 1890 or later); Street & Smith also issued TheS unshine of Love: A Sequel to Her Double Life in 1888. We have not examined these publications, but chances are extremely good that Street & Smith simply repackaged this novel, splitting it in half and calling the second half the sequel to the first. The same thing happened to many of Southworth’s novels in reprinters’ hands.

40. NYL, July 21, 1883. This language is, of course, reminiscent of Southworth’s words in her letter to Bonner of October 1866; see above.

41. TBP to RB, Mar. 8, 1876, DU.

42. TBP to EDENS, Sept. 12, 1877, DU.

43. TBP to RB, July 6, 1874, DU.

44. TBP to RB, July 30, 1877, DU.

45. See, for instance, TBP to EDENS, Jan. 20, 1858, DU: “How soon will you have Love’s Labor Won ready. We will give you $500.—for it, and there has never been such hard times in the Book business before since I have been in business.”

46. TBP to EDENS, Sept. 12. 1877, DU.

47. EDENS to RB, n.d. (filed with correspondence dated 1871–1901), DU.

48. TBP to RB, Aug. 12, 1878; TBP to RB, Feb. 20, 1883, DU.

49. EDENS to RB, May 18, 1883. The range of numbers of installments that Southworth mentions suggests that Bonner did not own the copyright of six of the first seven serials that she published in the Ledger—The Island Princess, The Bride of an Even- ing, The Doom of Deville, Rose Elmer, Eudora, and Astrea—the exception being The Hid- den Hand.

50. NYL, July 21, 1883.

51. Her revisions, important as they may have been to the experience of reading The Hidden Hand, did not significantly change the story, or its length.

70 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas 52. EDENS to RB, [1883], DU. It is worth noting here that Southworth is reasonably consistent in referring to successive serializations as different editions.

53. Why Did He Wed Her? and A Deed Without a Name followed each other in 1884– 85 and 1886.

54. NYL, Jan. 2, 1886.

55. NYL, Dec. 4, 1886.

56. NYL, Dec. 10, 1887.

57. Bonner sons’ managerial philosophy mirrors that of the other major magazine publishers of the same time period. See Christopher Wilson, “The Rhetoric of Consump- tion: Mass-Market Magazines and the Demise of the Gentle Reader, 1880–1920,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 41–64. Southworth’s different relationships with Robert Bonner and the Bonner sons parallels Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s experience with the changing editors at Houghton, Mifflin; see Susan Coultrap- McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990), 167–92.

58. NYL, Dec. 10, 1887.

59. According to LeBlanc’s chronology, nineteen works by seven different authors were reserialized in the Ledger. Harriet Lewis was the leader in terms of numbers: Seven of her stories were each serialized twice. Southworth came second, as she had four stories reserialized; and Sylvanus Cobb Jr. had three stories republished. Eliza Dupuy had two stories reserialized. Charles Dickens, Leon Lewis (husband of Harriet Lewis), and Jane G. Fuller each had one story published twice. Three stories—The Hidden Hand, Only a Girl’s Heart (also by Southworth), and The Gun Maker of Moscow by Cobb—each appeared three times. It is worth noting that every story that was reserialized made its initial appearance in print in, or before, 1874. Five stories made their second appearances by 1883: The Gun Maker of Moscow; Orion, the Gold Beater; The Hidden Hand; Hunted Down; and Self- Made. The average time between the first and second appearances of these stories is eight years; the shortest period was three years (The Gun Maker of Moscow), the longest, eleven (Self-Made). Fourteen stories first published before 1874 made their second appearances after 1883: For these stories, the average time between first and second appearance is nineteen and a half years; the shortest period was thirteen years (The Double Life), and the longest was twenty nine (Karmel, the Scout). The only reserialized work to appear in book form before its second serialization in the Ledger was Dickens’s Hunted Down.

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 71 60. NYL, Dec. 15, 1888.

61. NYL, Mar. 23, 1889. “Britomarte the Man-Hater” was serialized from October 14, 1865, to September 15, 1866; it was published in two volumes by T. B. Peterson as Fair Play; or, The Test of the Lone Isle (1868) and How He Won Her (1869).

62. “Answer: ‘The Widows of Widowville’ runs through twenty-nine numbers of the Ledger, which cost six cents a piece. They can be obtained at this office, or ordered through a newsdealer.” NYL, Dec. 17. 1888. “The Malediction; or, The Widows of Widowville” was originally serialized from January 4 to September 5, 1868, and again, under the title, “The Widows of Widowville,” from June 30, 1894 to January 12, 1895.

63. NYL, Feb. 23, 1889.

64. NYL, Apr. 6, 1889.

65. These teaser installments began appearing regularly in the Ledger on March 30, 1889. The sons also broke from their father’s longstanding policy of eschewing advertising within the Ledger: The first advertisement ran on March 19, 1889, a full-page display touting Pears Soap.

66. The first reader’s letter used to promote theL edger Library ran in the February 2, 1889, issue, preceding the first advertisement for the library.

67. EDENS to RB, June 13, 1887, DU. When TheH idden Hand did finally appear in book form in 1888, G. W. Dillingham registered the copyright as proprietor. How the firm became proprietor is a mystery, since Robert Bonner had renewed the copyright registration for the novel in 1883, when it was serialized for the third time in the Ledger. However, the copyright notice in the Dillingham edition also lists Bonner’s previous registrations, suggesting that any previously claimed rights had been transferred to Dillingham.

68. No copies of any Bonner’s Sons edition of TheH idden Hand, including any designated as part of the Ledger Library, are currently available in libraries. However, copies of other Southworth novels subsequently published by Bonner’s Sons list TheH idden Hand as available from the firm.

69. By the September 8, 1888, issue of Publishers’ Weekly, the size of the set had increased by ten volumes to fifty-three.

70. “Notes in Season,” Publishers’ Weekly, June 30, 1888, 979; and T. B. Peterson, Advertisement, Publisher’s Weekly, Aug. 4, 1888, 173.

72 Alison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas 71. See Nicholson Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (New York: Random House, 2001), for an impassioned explication of many of the issues involved in the long-term preservation of newspapers.

72. When reprinted, The Hidden Hand was often split into two volumes, each with a new title, as were many of Southworth’s other stories; this has caused much confusion among bibliographers and considerable uncertainty as to how many stories she actually wrote.

73. Southworth’s novels, along with those of three other “sensational” women authors, were withdrawn from the shelves of the Enoch Pratt public libraries of Baltimore in 1897; the same year, the librarian of the Carnegie Free Library in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, gave the explanation for the absence of the Southworth’s and others’ novels that they “were not so much excluded as refused renewal when read to tatters.” The report went on to say that “[s]ome were still on the shelves, but solely for the reason that they were made of ‘a little better paper’; as soon as they are worn out they, too, will be excluded.” See “Mrs. Southworth’s Novels: Under the Ban of the Enoch Pratt Library of Baltimore,” Washington Post, Aug. 28, 1897, 7; and “Poisoned and Weakened Minds,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 6, 1897, 6.

74. Print editions: New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997; Temecula, CA: Reprint Ser- vices, [1990s]; Gloucester, UK: Dodo Press, 2008. Kindle edition: Amazon Digital Ser- vices, [2008?]. Audio book edition: LibriVox, 2009.

75. Notably, the standard bibliographic tools documenting the history of American fiction, from Jacob Blanck’s Bibliography of American Literature and Lyle Henry Wright’s American Fiction to the Dictionary of Literary Biography, routinely exclude periodical appearances from their definitive lists of authors’ publications.

The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand 73

Illustrating Southworth: Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess Kathryn Conner Bennett

It will be useless for parties to write us insisting on our taking large clubs at lower rates. An elegant family paper like the ledger, (containing no advertisements and beautifully illustrated,) cannot be afforded at less than these terms. —Robert Bonner, “Our Only Terms”

Who can describe the first interview, indeed for many reasons inde- scribable? But who can not picture to themselves, the first tumultu- ous emotion; the strange, dreamy joy. —E. D. E. N. Southworth, TheI sland Princess

While E. D. E. N. Southworth is not precisely canonical, she no longer “hardly exist[s],” as critic Alfred Habegger wrote in 1981.1 Contemporary scholars have considered the racial and gender politics of her work and her status as a lady novelist.2 One aspect that has been largely ignored is the visual material that accompanied her periodical writing, which may have shaped how contemporary readers would have understood and responded to her novels.3 In this chapter, I argue that Southworth’s letters reveal an author particularly concerned with the visual. As the novel that introduced her to Ledger readers, The Island Princess, A Romance of the Old and New World,4 is unsurprisingly Ledger-esque: it appeals to a wide, nongendered readership and communicates (bounded) benevolence and middle class morality to achieve commercial appeal. A character like Barbara Brande—charismatic, gender bending, and genre straddling—must also be blandly beautiful, feminine, and motherly (i.e., sentimental). Southworth understood that her words and the Ledger-commissioned illustrations worked together to convey meaning. She could, then, rely on the combination of text and image to blunt her more daring representations of gender and race, to promote political and social conventionalism, and to make her novel elude generic expectations. While Southworth may feign titillation, flirt with progressivism, and experiment with hybridity, TheI sland Princess is conservative. Mixing rhetorical modes allows Southworth to create political ambiguity at best and a radical moral detachment at worst (the treatment of race and slavery in the text exemplifies the latter). Insofar as emotional thrills made Southworth’s fiction appealing to readers, her sentimentality was always sensational. However, the sentimental’s moral conventionality also limits the sensational in TheI sland Princess, keeping erotic expression, unruly women, and African Americans safely within bounds.

Illustration and the New York Ledger’s Business Model As Allison M. Scott and Amy M. Thomas’s chapter in this volume documents at more length, Robert Bonner sought to distinguish the New York Ledger from its competitors by publishing only original material written for the Ledger and by compensating his authors unusually well. These facts do not go unacknowledged in the pages of the paper. In November 1857, a Ledger editorial brags, “We pay more money for contributions by popular and eminent writers, in order to make a great and good paper, than is paid by any ten other weekly papers in the country; and, as a legitimate result, our circulation is larger than the circulation of any ten others.”5 Bonner is explicit with his readers about his business model and how it relates to the paper’s circulation.6 Not only did Bonner publish only original essays, poetry, and fiction, he added wood engravings to the Ledger in 1855.7 While each issue initially featured a single engraving, the illustrations quickly increased. By 1857, there were generally three large illustrations (on pages 1, 5, and 8), along with occasional smaller illustrations on page 4. While the engravings primarily dramatized scenes from the Ledger’s serialized or short fiction, illustrations also occasionally accompanied editorials and columns about true stories, such as great disasters or fashion trends. It is hardly surprising that Bonner allowed his writers to suggest which scenes they would like to have illustrated. While the extant Southworth-Bonner correspondence from the winter and spring of 1857 does not include any mention of the writing or illustrating of TheI sland Princess, in later correspondence, Southworth regularly mentions which scenes she would like illustrated. For ex-

78 Kathryn Conner Bennett ample, in 1862 she writes, “The number I send you this week is good. I also enclose illustration for next week” or “I now enclose [for] you the first chapter for next week . . . please, send it to the artist to choose his own subject for illustration, instead of using mine.”8 These references indicate that Ledger writers as a matter of course selected what scenes should be illustrated. There is some evidence that Southworth dictated the subject of the illustrations for some of her serial fiction prior to her relationship with Bonner,9 so the interplay between text and illustration may have been particularly strong in her case. In correspondence referring to Self-Made; or, Out of the Depths in 1863, Southworth’s comments about illustration are tied to her sense of the value of her novel:

I wish the artist would illustrate the scene where Ishmael successfully withstands the mutinied steerage passengers in their attempts to seize the life boats;—or else, the scene where the crowed life boats are leaving the wreck and Ishmael is alone on its deck with the faithful professor. Both scenes are fine.10

She may be communicating to Bonner that he may choose between the two scenes she describes (both scenes are equally suitable for illustration). However, she may instead be praising the artistic merit of both scenes (“fine” suggesting high quality). In the latter case, Southworth values scenes in her own novel based on their visual promise. In another letter on the illustrations for Astrea; or, The Bridal Day, she says to Bonner, “The part that I particularly desire the artist to illustrate is the awful death of Rumford. . . . I hope the artist can oblige us by waiting one day longer for a good subject.”11 Again, literary worth and visual potential are interrelated. Illustration is an important aspect of storytelling and the reader’s satisfaction. In one final, suggestive letter, Southworth refers to an illustration as potential evidence of another Ledger author plagiarizing from her work. She writes to Bonner that her son

just called my attention to the picture in the first number of the “Sleep Walker” in this week’s Ledger. I was very much struck by it, for it seemed to illustrate a strange scene in my own Ledger story published

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 79 last winter without illustration. This led me to read the number and I was amazed to find a re-production of one of the threads of my own three piece [sic] “yarn,” with its person, incidents, and situations. This may be an accidental incidence, but if so, it is one of the most wonderful I ever heard of.12

In this letter, Southworth explains she, as a reader, navigated the illustrated pages of the Ledger, helping us imagine how ordinary readers might have done the same.13 In this case, an image drew Southworth into the text, prompting her to read what she might have otherwise skipped. Her seeming annoyance that her (unidentified) story appeared the previous year without illustrations suggests that she viewed her work as incomplete without images. Scholars should take a cue from the Southworth, using illustrations to make sense of the Ledger. All of the references to illustration in the Southworth-Bonner correspondence indicate that she imagined potential engravings while writing and claimed the visual as an important aspect of her creative vision. Illustration is therefore important to her sense of the reception of her own work. Her letters also invoke other aspects of the editing and printing the Ledger, an involved process that took more than a week. As Joshua Brown writes of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, a competitor of the Ledger:

[T]he engraved jointed block was then sent to the composing room, where it was locked into place with handset type[.] . . . Each page was electrotyped, a process that involved making a beeswax mold of the entire page and then immersing it in an electrocharged bath containing cooper particles. The final cardboard-thin cooper plate took between thirty and forty-eight hours to produce[.]14

This process closely resembles that which Bonner outlined to Southworth shortly after she signed her first contract in 1857: “Our ‘forms’ go to the Foundry to be electrotyped on Tuesday. On Wednesday we get the electrotype plates, and on Thursday we commence printing. It takes us an entire week to print an edition.”15 While these details might appear merely technical, Southworth’s letters reveal a remarkable awareness of the intricacies of the business and production practices of illustrated story papers and their implications for her fiction. For example, Southworth writes to Bonner in 1862, “Upon the whole I am not satisfied with

80 Kathryn Conner Bennett that first number. . . . I will have it back and write it all over again, so as to get the ‘thrilling incident’ into the first number. Because you see I am willing to do anything to perfect my work and to give entire satisfaction.”16 Any Ledger writer who wanted to succeed in producing works for the paper would need to think carefully about the length, quantity, and plotting of installments and the selec- tion of scenes to be illustrated. These questions, and the reaction and satisfaction of the reader, are at the core of Ledger fiction. For his part, Bonner also saw illustration as part of the Ledger’s appeal. He would advertise the images in addition to the author or content of stories, as in this 1856 item: “A New Story by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. Written expressly for the ledger, and splendidly illustrated from drawings by thwaites, the great artist.”17 Initially, all of the illustrations bore the tag “engraved expressly for the Ledger,” but eventually Bonner declared that “we never have published, nor do we intend hereafter to publish, a ‘cut’ not expressly engraved for our paper.”18 Here, Bonner is contrasting his business practices against those of his competitors, who would often use engravings from previously existing art to illustrate their fiction in an awkward pairing of text and image. TheL edger, in contrast, uses “beautiful illustrat[ion]” to compliment and augment its stories. Image is an important part of the storytelling and constitutive to Bonner’s long-term vision for the Ledger. The engravings in theL edger in the mid-1850s period bear two signatures, either A. Bobbett (sometimes Bobbett-Hooper) or the intertwined initials “TW.” These refer to Alfred Bobbett, a British engraver,19 and William H. Thwaites, an artist and engraver,20 respectively. In the Ledger, Bonner says of his illustrators,

The engravings in the ledger have elicited universal commendation. Our artist, Mr. thwaites, is acknowledged to be the best in his line in the country; and we have secured his services regularly—he will not illustrate a Tale for any other weekly. Our engravers, too, Messrs. bobbett & hoopers, understand their business to perfection.21

The images in the Ledger have a nostalgic look reminiscent of the British illustra- tive tradition, an effect heightened by Bobbett’s status as a British immigrant. Bonner’s decision to hire these particular artists gives the Ledger illustrations a middle-class aesthetic and veneer of respectability. Indeed, many of Bonner’s business decisions seem determined to make the Ledger a self-consciously decent, family-oriented, overtly middle-class paper. At

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 81 the end of the nineteenth century, Bonner reminisced, “When I first bought the Ledger, I pictured myself an old lady in Westchester with three daughters . . . the mother takes up the Ledger and reads aloud to the girls. . . . [T]here has never been one line which the old lady in Westchester County would not like to read to her daughters.”22 This extraordinary passage makes clear Bonner’s sense that his role as a publisher carried with it a peculiar moral responsibility. He contrasts his own agenda against his more sensational predecessors and competitors. While the elderly Bonner might, in order to shape his legacy, have downplayed the more commercial or shocking content that he had published, his decisions in the 1850s confirm that Bonner intended to make the Ledger solidly bourgeois entertainment. His use of the verb “picturing” suggests the degree to which Bonner understood the Ledger in visual terms. He imagines the paper as an object entering a domestic space and the impact that it could have on its readers. His sense of the ideal consumer—the imaginary Westchester mother—touches on issues of morality, but also of genre. What kinds of stories will entertain her and her daughters? What would offend them?

Sentimental and Sensational Discourses In using illustrations to capture readers while making assurances about the paper’s moral content, Bonner situated the Ledger in the middle of the dichotomy contemporary scholars identify as sentimental-sensational.23 Sentimental indicates both a narrative structure and a set of stylistic and thematic elements. As Joanne Dobson explains in “Reclaiming Sentimental Literature,” sentimental discourse “envisions the self-in-relation”; it is a “valorization of affectional connection and commitment” that dramatizes and then heals a variety of social rents and breaches.24 By focusing on scenes that are “conventional and familiar,” Dobson argues that sentimental writing “render[s] its objects affectively available to a wide readership.”25 The recurring situations in sentimental narratives, such as or- phanhood, abandonment, and death, “represent an essential reality and must be treated with heightened feeling.”26 The so-called emotional excesses of sentimental narratives are, in this formation, perfectly reasonable reactions to the most grievous and intimate of human pains, thus generating compassion in the reader. As Lori Merish argues in her analysis of commodity culture and gender, the human connection that the sentimental encourages often manifests as identification “across a status divide . . . sympathy of the empowered for the disempow- ered.”27 Susan Ryan extends this insight further by pairing sentimentality with the concept of “benevolence . . . [which] provided Americans with ways of un-

82 Kathryn Conner Bennett derstanding, describing, and constructing their racial and national identities.”28 For Ryan, benevolence is action that arises from sentimental identification—“the sentimental bond that creates the desire to give” (19)—even as both sentimental and antisentimental discourse can include moments of “suspicion” (20) about the object of affectional identification. Southworth’s engagement with the sentimental in her fiction bears out scholars’ analyses of sentimentality’s restrictions. For Southworth and the Ledger more broadly, there are limits to emotional identification and to the actions deemed necessary to ameliorate the suffering and alienation to which the sentimental draws our attention. By confusing sympathy with political progressivism or empathy, the sentimental subject may believe her positive feelings alone have nullified social inequity, while, in actuality, her condescension merely entrenches hierarchical power structures. In other words, the sentimental can create a mirage of inclusion predicated on exclusion and privilege. False sentimental identification can promote the continuation of the status quo (i.e., conventionalism). Or, as sentimentality often functions in the Ledger, it can simultaneously disrupt and promote conventionalism. Stylistically, sentimental literature features heightened emotional language, and thematically, it may depict idealized domestic spaces because the unified, happy family is the core unit of the sentimental social structure. However, we should be careful not to conflate the sentimental with the domestic. As June Howard stresses, to do so “is to become unable to examine the complex historical process that weaves them together.”29 Critics, then, should not reduce the sentimental to mere aesthetic convention, nor should they reduce it to emotion, the home, or any other content. The sentimental is a narrative structure of alienation, identification, and redemption. Although sometimes politically problematic, the sentimental also could create a structure for enacting justice and extending “the discourse of the feminine heart . . . [to issues of] national import.”30 The sentimental runs through the Ledger’s illustrations. Figure 4 appeared alongside an essay by Fanny Fern about how mothers should have legal rights to their children in cases of divorce. In this image, a well-dressed mother nuzzles her child, who is large and distinctly drawn. There is a clear relationship between the two figures, who are pictured in a comfortably appointed domestic space. By depicting this relationship, a literal fusion of mother and child and their natural emotional bond, the engraving encouraged readers to let their emotions shape their understanding of public policy. It also called forth the sentimental generic mode before readers encountered the words (or even if they skipped them). This image also suggests the importance of domestic space to the sentimental.

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 83 Figure 4. “Has a Mother a Right to Her Children?” illustration for Fanny Fern’s “Fresh Fern Leaves” column, New York Ledger, April 4, 1857. Courtesy American Anti- quarian Society. The metaphorical boundaries of emotional identification, the relationships that defined sentimental society, find visual expression in certain domestic (and do- mesticated) spaces, such as the home. Contrast this with figure 5, an image of a starving mother and child which illustrates an unsigned editorial about how readers should treat the poor. The article, which ran three weeks after Fern’s essay, tells readers that giving money to beggars is wasteful and ineffectual because often they spend it on alcohol rather than on improving their situation. The image supports the political point by depicting the woman on the street rather than in domestic space. Her eyes are vacant, staring despondently at nothing in particular. Her dress and person are ragged and messy. The baby she holds is small, indistinct, and undifferentiated. By picturing the seedy underbelly of society, figure 5 sets a visual limit for sentimental identification. Only certain people should be given charity; according to this illustration, you can tell the deserving merely by looking. Sentimental discourse had a fixed understanding, grounded in the middle-class family, of what

Figure 5. “The ‘Starving’ Mother and Child,” illustration for an editorial, New York Ledger, April 25, 1857. Courtesy American Anti- quarian Society.

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 85 constituted society or civilization. The Ledger’s benevolence had firm margins. The policy suggested yb figure 5 and accompanying text stresses the limits of sentimental identification and action. For Southworth, romantic love is an important boundary between the sentimental and its dark opposite. In her reading of Harriet Prescott Spofford’s sentimental short story “The Strathsays” (1863), Jennifer Putzi argues that romantic love “encouraged men and women to identify with each other and bridge the gender gap.”31 However, romantic love raises disturbing possibilities of the subversion of parental authority, unlicensed expressions of sexuality, sexual violence, and other threats to social order. As we will see in TheI sland Princess, Southworth exploits the disturbing and subversive possibilities of romantic love, using it to toggle between the sentimental and the sensational. When she draws back from horror and violence to glorify family bonds and stage triumphant marriages (between white, upper class men and women), she finally rejects the anti- authoritarianism of sensation and returns her readers the safe ground of sentimental identification. Both sentimental and sensational texts can feature dark content, but there are crucial distinctions between the two modes. In a classic essay, Patrick Brantlinger defines the sensational narrative as presenting the “apparent disintegration of narrative authority, caused by the introduction of secular mystery . . . [and] psychological properties.”32 For Brantlinger, the sensational novel “stands midway between romanticism and realism, Gothic ‘mysteries’ and modern mysteries, and popular and high culture forms” (3). Karen Halttunen argues that sensational fiction is marked by a “commercial tendency to pander to public excitement in the face of particularly terrible or shocking events[.]”33 She directly contrasts the sentimental and the sensational, saying that the latter (in her analysis, gruesome tales of murders in the home) subverts the former: “The popular literature of domestic murder reveals a pervasive if unspoken resistance to the new values and practices of sentimental domesticity.”34 Brantlinger, Halttunen, and other critics suggest that the sentimental and the sensational are opposing forces in nineteenth-century popular culture and that they cannot coexist in a single work. Ledger fiction complicates this opposition, conjoining sentimentality with Gothic elements, mysteries, and speculation about the darker sides of human nature and the world.35 Sentimental images often represent the indoors (or tamed outdoor spaces like gardens) and figures engaged in relationships that require or invoke emotions; at times, the images also seek to elicit a philanthropic or policy response from the reader. Sensational images sometimes feature exterior settings, and while

86 Kathryn Conner Bennett they solicit emotions (i.e., horror or fear), the emotion is both the end and the means—there is no gap to be bridged between the reader and the sensational subject matter. For example, Sylvanus Cobb’s novel Bion, which ran concurrently with The Island Princess, includes an illustration of a scene in which a ghost visits several characters in a ship’s rigging. The spectral apparitions in this scene, which are mysterious and evoke fear, are an extreme example of the sensational (in contrast, Southworth presents apparent mysteries in her fiction but later provides prosaic explanations). Sensational fiction also often depicts appalling acts of violence.36 Cobb’s fiction in the Ledger is again apposite. Under the nom de plume Colonel Walter Dunlap, he wrote a series of hyperviolent “Forest Sketches,” which were lavishly illustrated with engravings of safari hunts for exotic jungle animals, and so on. An illustration for S. P. Bronson’s The Widow of Toledo, which also ran concurrently with TheI sland Princess, ups the shock value of violence by depicting a woman as perpetrator. A striking illustration (fig. 6) features a crossing-dressing, sword- wielding waiting-woman confronted by her gun-toting mistress in a domestic setting. Incongruously placing women warriors in a domestic interior and invoking historical violence (swords), exoticism (the Spanish setting), and the mystery of concealed identities, this image epitomizes the Ledger’s brand of sensationalism. Southworth uses violence, titillation, and incongruity to elicit reader emotion throughout TheI sland Princess. However, in nearly every instance, including the three I consider at length below, the sensational elements prove as insubstan- tial as the ghosts in Southworth’s fiction that turn out not to be real ghosts at all; they provoke readers but finally reinforce sentimental boundaries. Southworth relishes the sensational as a diversion, but TheI sland Princess as an illustrated Ledger serial was designed to palliate Bonner’s sentimental Westchester widow.

Illustrating The Island Princess Having considered illustration in Southworth’s writing process and in the Led- ger, and the question of genre, I now turn to Southworth’s first novel for Robert Bonner, TheI sland Princess. It tells the complicated story of a British aristocrat, Estelle Morelle, who, immediately after her marriage to Lord Montressor, is revealed to have had a previous secret marriage to a crafty French man she believed to be dead. Put on trial for bigamy and acquitted but subsequently disowned by her parents, she flees to the United States. The devoted Montressor follows but cannot find her. Years later, the story resumes: Estelle has taken up an ascetic life of charity work in the New York City slums, and Montressor is British ambassador

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 87 Figure 6. “The ‘Last Resort’ for the Settlement of the Difficulty between the Widow and Her Waiting- Woman,” illustration for S. P. Bronson’s The Widow of Toledo,N ew York Ledger, June 27, 1857. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. to the United States and has taken the name Lord Eagle Tower,37 but he continues to search for Estelle. Meanwhile, Estelle’s daughter Etoile (also presumed dead) has been raised as a princess by her mad paternal uncle on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. The uncle dies, leaving the adolescent girl vulnerable prey for her unscrupulous guardian, Julius Luxmore. A shipwrecked naval officer and his heroic ship captain sister save Etoile from Luxmore, and Estelle, Montressor, and Etoile are reunited at the novel’s close. TheI sland Princess sounds like popular fantasy, completely disengaged from its cultural milieu, but the novel engages intertextually with several works of British literature. Estelle’s marital status(es) and her immigration to the United States rework the plot of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847; American edition, 1848). In this telling, Southworth gives Estelle both Rochester and Jane’s narrative trajectories. She, albeit briefly and unintentionally, has two spouses, but she also must fly from the man she loves in order to protect her reputation. Etoile’s upbringing away from civilization and her love affair with the shipwrecked Willful Brande recall the plot of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610–11). In Southworth’s telling, Etoile is a more resourceful and active character than her antecedent, Miranda. Southworth also engages with the nascent American feminist tradition, specifically the essays of Judith Sargent Murray and Margaret

88 Kathryn Conner Bennett Fuller. Southworth’s female ship captain, Barbara Brande, resolves the narrative and explodes readers’ expectations. Southworth thus skillfully and playfully revises these plots and rhetorics into a sensational-sentimental hybrid intended for the Ledger’s mass readership. Atypically, the first installment of the novel consists of a single, though very lengthy, first chapter. Estelle and Montressor woo and become engaged; she presents to him and then resolves the mystery of her first marriage; and, just as the minister pronounces them married, Estelle discovers that her first husband is alive. The illustration of this strange scene depicts their confrontation. The image captures the heroine—white, upper class, young, and beautiful—being transferred from one set of guardians, her parents, to another, her new husband. However, her villainous first husband and a police officer confront Estelle, Montressor, her parents, and the wedding guests outside of the church just after the ceremony. The narrator presents state authority in the form of the police officer as coming between husband and wife and thus disrupting the “natural” order at this moment: “His lordship then bowed to his friends, and was about to hand his lady into the carriage, when a policeman, pressing through the crowd, placed himself between the carriage door and the bridal pair, intercepting their further passage.”38 The artist’s choices reflect the narrator’s characterization of this moment. Estelle, dressed in white, cowers at the center, while the policeman’s court order and his shadow darken the white folds of her skirt. The villain and the law rupture the formation of a new domestic arrangement and introduce sensational elements (i.e., mystery, violence, and carnality), which must be resolved before the sentimental can heal. The illustration for the second installment, which shows the conversation between Montressor and Sir Parke Morelle in a beautifully decorated room, emphasizes domestic space and the sentimental.39 Compared to the first illustration, this image seems oddly anticlimactic: there is no apparent action, drama, or mystery in two English gentlemen speaking in a parlor. If Southworth requested that this scene be illustrated, however, she may have sought to balance the sentimental and the sensational in the novel’s opening chapters. Significantly, the illustration represents the parental home from which Estelle has been expelled. Her absence from this space and her father’s presence in it are as important as the dramatic scene after her bigamous wedding: without a male guardian, Estelle is vulnerable to exploitation and danger. Montressor conveys this message to Estelle’s father in words, but the illustration visually reinforces her absence. The marriage plot is central to The Island Princess, as it is to nineteenth- century novels in general. As I argued earlier, romantic love that adhered to culturally

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 89 Figure 7. “Willful Brande and Etoile on Their Way to Embark from the Island,” illustration for The Island Princess, New York Ledger, September 12, 1857. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. approved narratives and was sufficiently chaste before marriage was sentimental. However, the seduction, rape, lust, and other forms of sexuality-gone-wild often present in nineteenth-century popular culture make it clear that romance could also feature in sensational narratives. On the one hand, the love between Estelle’s long-lost daughter, Etoile, and her suitor, Willful Brande, is virtuous to the point of absurdity. Figure 7 presents romantic sentimentality in pictorial form. The young lovers stroll arm-in-arm, suggesting conventional romance leading inevitably to marriage. Notably, either Southworth or her publisher selected this illustration as a frontispiece for the first book edition of the novel, foregrounding the marriage plot for readers of the novel in that form. In the text, however, Southworth raises the dizzying specter of erotic possibilities in the scene, which are echoed in the illustration—even sentimental courtship plot can be fraught with sensational overtones. Just by placing the characters outside and without a chaperone, Southworth makes the scene mildly “thrilling.” When Etoile is nursing Willful back to health, they spend a great deal of time alone together:

She introduced him to her birds, to her exotics, to all her best books,— she rambled with him over the Island, showing him all her favorite

90 Kathryn Conner Bennett haunts; she sailed with him around the shore, and challenged him, as soon as his arm should get well, to a gallop around the race-course. . . . Day by day, when walking by her side; glancing stealthily at her beautiful face; listening her to her sweet voice; feeling the fascination of her gentle manners—Willful Brande felt his honorable resolution of silence giving way. Still, as yet, he steadfastly restrained himself. . . . Willful Brande was the very soul of honor.40

The repetition of his name—Southworth does not assign subtle names to her characters, and Willful is particularly auspicious—is also a red herring. He is not a willful seducer. Instead, Southworth quickly assures readers that Willful and Etoile both have honorable dispositions, leading readers to presume that a new safe domestic space will be created by their union. The visual representation of Willful and Etoile echoes Southworth’s characterization of them. Their hats, combined with the shading of the foliage behind them, suggest halos. Once again, Southworth’s text and the illustrations push the envelope but then pull the narrative back to respectability. Etoile’s story could have ended sensationally. She might have become a rape victim or a seduced and abandoned woman, or she might have been seduced and

Figure 8. “Julius Luxmore’s First Glimpse of the Princess of the Isle,” illustration for TheI sland Princess, New York Ledger, August 1, 1857. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 91 lived willingly as a man’s mistress without the benefit of marriage. The illustrations emphasize this potentiality. When Julius first sees her, she is bathing (fig. 8). Although she is clothed, her arms are bare in this sexually charged scene. This illustration is the first of several the subject of which is Etoile being watched.41 Taken together, these illustrations demonstrate how completely Julius manipulates the titular island princess and how vulnerable she is to his machinations. They invoke the erotics of the gaze and the sensational potential in romantic (or, in this case, immoral or lustful) plots. Southworth uses the vulnerable Etoile to toy with readers’ expectations; she establishes a sensational framework and inti- mates something truly shocking, but she then trumps the sensational with the sentimental marriage plot. The visual is an important aspect of that tease. Notably, some of the novel’s illustrations are solely sensational, such as “Lord Montressor Attempting to Rescue the Stranger on the Wreck of the Mercury.” This theatrical scene, featuring two men bobbing in a stormy sea with a sharply pitched vessel behind them, emphasizes the violence in Southworth’s story and mirrors nonfictional images from the Ledger.42 While shipwrecks do figure into some sentimental narratives, notably Maria Susanna Cummin’s TheL amplighter (1854), Southworth’s frequent reliance on such plot devices—the pictured shipwreck is the second of three in TheI sland Princess, and other Southworth novels, such as Self-Made, also feature them—exemplifies the excess her detractors criticized.43 Her plots extend beyond the scope of “woman’s fiction” as described by Nina Baym: “The thrust of this fiction has to do . . . with how the heroine perceives herself. . . . By the novel’s end she has developed a strong conviction of her own worth.”44 While this definition applies to Etoile’s trajectory, her plot is only one part of Southworth’s narrative whole. Southworth needs several artistic modes to create her own brand of fiction about women’s lives, even as these modes simultaneously create the potential for hybridity while limiting one another.

The Curious Case of Barbara Brande Barbara Brande, as depicted in both text and illustration, perfectly exemplifies both the generic hybridity of Southworth’s Ledger fiction and the ways sentimentality limits both her political progressivism and her sensationalism. From a plot perspective, Barbara plays a minor role as confidante both to Estelle, who briefly rents Barbara’s Chesapeake Bay home after her initial flight from London, and to Montressor, whom she transports back to England. However, as an active and transgressive character, she also paves the way for Capitola Black, the famous

92 Kathryn Conner Bennett heroine of The Hidden Hand. After the deaths of her parents, Barbara chooses to support her siblings and herself by becoming a ship’s captain, embodying Margaret Fuller’s statement in Woman in the Nineteenth Century: “But if you ask me what offices they [women] may fill; I reply—any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will.”45 In fact, Southworth uses this line as an epigraph for a chapter in TheI sland Princess.46 Barbara is repeatedly described as a lioness, and Southworth clearly enjoys writing the confident, mesmerizing “girl captain” who exerts significant influence over the narrative. Barbara is represented four times in the novel’s seventeen illustrations, only one less appearance than either Estelle or Etoile. Still, Barbara is a potentially risky character, so both text and image repeatedly hedge, emphasizing her morality, femininity, and conventional beauty and blunting her feminist politics. Barbara first appears in the text of and illustrations for installment seven. In these chapters, Barbara ages from thirteen to twenty-two. Southworth describes her as “a buxom brunette, with a finely developed form, hair like the purple-black sheen of the falcon’s wings, and eyes like his glance when flying toward his prey. A splendid creature was this wild sea-coast maiden[.]”47 Barbara is both feisty and conventionally beautiful, even before she takes up her profession. A few paragraphs later, she loses her father and (she believes) her fiancé in the shipwreck discussed above. At first thunderstruck by grief, she soon realizes that as a single woman without male support, she can purchase and captain a merchant ship, just as her father did. Because this is an unconventional turn of events, the narrator dramatizes Barbara’s thought process and takes several paragraphs to unpack and justify her thinking to the reader:

[Barbara] was fitted for the position by nature, constitution, and dis- position, for she was a girl of great personal strength, courage, and activity, with a profound personal attraction to sea life. She was prepared for it by education and habit; for in the dozen voyages she had made with her father, the old skipper had thoroughly instructed her in the theory and practice of the science of navigation, and the art of seamanship. Finally, she was compelled by circumstances. She had not only to support her young brothers but to put them in a way of supporting themselves. Their hereditary attractions, like her own, were to the sea;

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 93 and no life offered such facilities to her and to them, as the life of the merchant-service. Last and not least, her negro sailors, like their mistress and her brothers, loved the ocean, and knew how to do nothing else so well as to work a ship. Thus being fitted for a sea lifey b nature; being prepared for it by education; and driven to it by circumstances, we cannot do better reader, can we? Than permit her to be a sea-captain, if she wishes it—especially as our most vehement objections would be unavailing to stop her.48

The narrator’s defense of Barbara resonates with the language of writings from the nascent U.S. feminist movement, such as Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Judith Sargent Murray’s “Observations on Female Abili- ties” (1788–91).49 Barbara also defends herself against the suspicions and doubts of several of the novel’s characters, and her self-defense buttresses the narrator’s lengthy defense addressed to readers. In TheI sland Princess, Southworth thus clearly engages contemporaneous debates about the nature and role of women, using language and rhetoric that echoes serious philosophical analyses of the same subject.

Figure 9. “Interview between Estelle and Barbara Brande,” illustration for TheI sland Princess, New York Ledger, July 11, 1857. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

94 Kathryn Conner Bennett Soon after the narrator’s defense of Barbara’s unconventional profession, Barbara and Estelle first meet (fig. 9). The illustration of their meeting presents a clearly demarcated hierarchy: The wealthy Estelle sits at the center, while Barbara stands to the side, her posture suggesting supplication. As primary heroine, Estelle is almost always represented supine or seated. When illustrations represent her standing, she is almost always being accosted or threatened. In her meeting with Barbara, she and her maid (on the right) are both better dressed than Barbara (at the left). We glimpse only a few details in Estelle’s hotel room, just enough to convey the rich setting Southworth describes in the text.50 Barbara’s dress and physicality convey respectability, dignity, and femininity, counterbalancing her nontraditional status; her bodily presence as a woman in a man’s world is disruptive enough. Although readers know from the text that Barbara is thrillingly unconventional, the illustration represents her visually as a conventional, mainstream woman. Barbara’s sensationalism was not entirely lost on the illustrators, however. They depict her in her role as the “girl captain” twice, first in figure 3. This image shows Barbara in all of her captain-ness, on her ship, her hair loose and flowing, and her short skirts provocatively exposing her feet and ankles. Figures 3 and 9 also use a motif repeated across Island Princess illustrations: characters meeting one another. Six of the seventeen illustrations depict such scenes of welcomes or introductions. Such images orient the characters in relation to one another and emphasize the carefully stratified culture of the text, which features many characters subordinated by class and gender hierarchies. This meeting motif also aids reader as they navigate seventeen installments featuring a dozen named characters and a decades-long timeframe. Illustrations remind readers of the salient characteristics of each character, even if a character has been absent for an installment. In figure 3, in which Barbara first meets Montressor, he seems surprised but respectful, while she is dignified but romantic. The presence of her brother Willful, pictured between them, makes clear that Barbara is not without a domestic, conventionally feminine, and even quasi-maternal side (she does not meet a strange gentleman without her brother as chaperone).51 While Barbara may cross certain boundaries, she conforms to others. She is always femininely dressed, despite her slightly immodest hemline, and attractive. These moments of conformity in the illustrations indicate the limits of Southworth’s sensational vision and the ascen- dancy of the sentimental. The illustrationsrepeatedly amplify Barbara’s hypermorality: Her innate propriety makes even her most outlandish behavior safe and acceptable. For example, while many of the other characters cannot understand Estelle’s unwillingness

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 95 to see Montressor, Barbara understands and supports her course of action. After Estelle relates her story to Barbara, the “girl captain” responds,

I begin to see now that in one respect you are right . . . for as long as there exists the slightest question of the perfect legality of that ceremony that passed between yourself and his lordship, you can as a Christian do no otherwise than reserve yourself. . . . Upon this subject, a pure-hearted woman’s instinct is worth all the legal opinions and theological dogmas in the world.52

Barbara claims authority for the intuitive and emotional knowledge of women, including herself. She understands that Estelle needs to conduct herself with hyperpropriety given the lack of male guardianship. A nontraditional woman, Barbara is also a spokeswoman for the traditional family. This is not a contradiction; instead, it articulates the boundaries of Southworth’s sensationalism and the moral vision at the core of her fiction. Barbara can be a ship’s captain, romantic, and (occasionally) immodest if she is motivated by a desire to provide for her family and functions as the most stringent arbiter of moral standards (she is even

Figure 10. “Willful Brande and Old Timon Planning the Escape of Etoile,” illustration for The Island Princess, New York Ledger, September 19, 1857. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

96 Kathryn Conner Bennett more moral than Montressor). By picturing her twice in relation to sentimental characters (Estelle, Willful) and twice as “girl captain,” the illustrations, like the text, raise subversive possibilities only to retreat to conventionality.

Race and Convention While nineteenth-century readers likely perceived Barbara Brande as the most transgressive character in The Island Princess, modern readers may find visual and textual representations of African Americans the most unsettling. The final illustration for the novel’s serialization (fig. 10) shows Willful Brande planning Etoile’s escape from the island with the aid of Timon, an elderly slave. Willful’s plan fails, and Etoile instead flees, relying on both her own ingenuity and Barbara’s assistance. What arrests a modern reader’s attention in this illustration is that Willful is directing Timon to aid someone else’s escape while Timon’s own captive status goes unacknowledged: Etoile will escape the island, but Timon will remain a slave. TheI sland Princess asks readers to sympathize with Etoile as she flees from her guardian, but it does not solicit sympathy for the enslaved Timon. The serial novel represents slaves both textually and visually, making comparisons of the captivities of Etoile, Timon, and others possible. However, neither the text nor the illustrations explicitly invite these comparisons. In the Etoile sections of The Island Princess, Southworth vacillates between progressive statements about race and apologies for slavery. For example, Etoile’s uncle, the apparently mad Henri L’Orient, treats his slaves kindly. The narrator explains that his slaves are “dressed in white trousers and pink shirts, and were remarkable for their healthful and joyous appearance.”53 Furthermore, a slave named Louis serves as Henri’s confidante and advisor, Henri gives his slaves Sunday off to rest and attend mass, they are referred to as “servants” rather than slaves, and so on. Henri L’Orient’s island is a utopian community of sorts, but an ambiguous utopia at best. Is the novel advocating for the human rights of African Americans or defending slavery if practiced more humanely? Or, more likely, does the novel avoid taking any position at all on slavery? Christopher Looby’s convincing analysis of the politics of TheH idden Hand as a Ledger serial also applies to the Island Princess as well: When Southworth wrote for the Ledger, she followed the paper’s carefully cultivated and maintained policy of “apolitical neu- trality.”54 Nevertheless, as in the case of Barbara Brande’s gender transgressions, Southworth qualifies seemingly revisionist statements about African Americans and slavery with neutral, conservative, or pro–status quo ones. In other words, she defers to convention.

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 97 Southworth also does not hesitate to present reassuring racial condescension. For example, when a hurricane strikes the titular island, the quick-thinking, teen-aged Etoile saves the panicked slaves: “‘Silence . . .’ exclaimed the young heroine[.] . . . But so benumbed were their faculties by fright, and so confused their senses . . . that they seemed to have lost the power of motion. ‘To the attic! to the attic, for your lives! Snatch up the children and fly!’”55 The scene represents slaves so patronizingly that readers might wonder whether they are the same people who earlier helped create an ideal alternative community. Note also Etoile’s use of the impersonal article “the” rather than the possessive pronoun “your” in reference to the children. Southworth’s use of racist conventions like these undermines her more complicated or progressive representations of race or slavery (if, indeed, she meant her other representation of the island’s slaves to be progressive). Both Southworth’s original readers might have been and today’s scholarly ones may be frustrated that the dramatic scene in which Barbara Brande saves Etoile from Julius is not illustrated. The lack of illustration of the hurricane Southworth so richly describes in the text is equally frustrating. While four illustrations include black men, none include black women or children, who figure prominently in the hurricane scene. Perhaps representing slavery as impacting families was too controversial for a Ledger serial, particularly in a discursive framework that could encourage identification with slaves. Both text and illustrations direct readers to identify with the vulnerable Etoile, but sentimental identification does not extend to vulnerable slave women. Comparing the serial and book is instructive: With only a frontispiece picturing Etoile and Willful and no other illustrations to prompt readerly identification, the unillustrated book paradoxically leaves black women and children more available for such identification. The four illustrations that include black men picture black and white characters together, and the images’ representation of racial difference is highly conventional. Figure 11 depicts “old Neptune” frightening Estelle and her maid, who have come to take possession of Barbara Brande’s house. Neptune is stereotypi- cally grotesque, with ragged clothes and exaggerated, racialized features, including preposterously large lips.56 Insofar as Neptune presents as a potential threat to the white women, the image is sensational. Figure 11 and the text are in tension, however. Estelle’s maid screams at the sight of Neptune and declares, “We shall be murdered by this savage.”57 The narrator corrects this perception:

It was the gentle-hearted old negro, Neptune, who now emerged. . . . And if the terrible sea-god himself had risen from the waters, scepter

98 Kathryn Conner Bennett Figure 11. “The Apparition of Old Neptune,” illustration for The Island Princess, New York Ledger, July 25, 1857. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

in hand, he could not have stricken greater terror to the heart of the simple English maiden! . . . He found nothing to do say or do, but only stood bowing and bowing. Lady Montressor repeated her directions. . . . Lady Montressor glanced hopelessly around toward Susan . . . whose fears had disappeared before the gentle, deprecating manners of the black. “Why, what an old jelly brain!” she exclaimed impatiently, coming forward and confronting the old man. “Yes, honey, jes’ so,” replied the latter, bowing to her, and in no degree disturbed by the rudeness of her words.58

The narrator quickly contradicts Susan’s assessment and condemns her rudeness; nevertheless, both text and image raise the specter of black male violence, even if they quickly dismisses it by making the supposed “assailant” comically incapable. They assuage the fears of white readers even as they reinforce racial stereotypes of black savagery and childlike ineptitude. In figure 10, Timon is less grotesque than Neptune, but he is subservient, helpful, and docile. Clearly, he is less of a threat than the evil (white) Julian, who

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 99 watches Timon and Willful’s conference from behind a tree. The failure of Willful and Timon’s plan, however, reveals that Timon is powerless. Nothing in the illustration encourages the viewer to sympathize with Timon or to connect his internment with Etoile’s. Strangely, the final illustration for The Island Princess features the illustration of the unsuccessful hatching of an escape plan rather than the dramatic moment when Barbara saves the day. A final image of the heroic Barbara might have made the novel as a whole seem feminist or transgressive, placing it more firmly in the sensational column. The final illustration also might have represented one of the numerous reunions (e.g., the reunion of Estelle and Etoile, the reunion of Estelle and her parents, the reunion and remarriage of Estelle and Montressor, etc.), emphasizing the novel’s sentimental trajectory. Instead, the final illustration for The Island Princess is equivocal. Whether Southworth or Bonner deliberately chose the subject of the final illustration, or its subject was accidental, its lack of commitment to either the sensational or sentimental is fitting for a novel that is both politically conventional and generically hybrid. Generally, and in TheI sland Princess, Southworth as an author is specifically concerned with and engaged by the visual. Her novels seem to demand a visual supplement, whether provided by the Ledger’s engravers or called up by a reader’s imagination. Scholars should let visual analysis feed their sense of Southworth as a writer operating between or above genre divisions. Her plots are not merely “something for everyone” affairs or grab bags of independently functioning parts. Instead, Southworth was insistently hybrid, crafting her fiction with the tools of both sensationalism and sentimentality, just as she drew on a broad range of intertextual references, from the “high” literary tradition (Shakespeare, Brontë, Fuller) to the “low.” Despite this hybridity, however, Southworth’s moral vision has clear boundaries. She may praise Barbara Brande, the subversive female ship’s captain, and titillate readers with the possibility that Etoile will be “ruined,” but she turns readers away from sentimental identification with slaves. In each of these cases— with the possible exception of Barbara’s rejection of marriage—Southworth and her illustrators make the conventional choice: Etoile escapes ruin and marries, Barbara retains her womanly beauty even when captaining her ship, and slave women and children are virtually invisible. Bowing to the Westchester widow’s sense of propriety, sentiment moderates sensationalism. As a Ledger serial, The Island Princess is thus conventional. Southworth’s text and the accompanying images consistently approach and then step back from the border to, at its most

100 Kathryn Conner Bennett limited, conventionalism or, at its least, ambiguity. The “beautiful illustrat[ions]” both draw readers in and limit their imaginations.

Notes 1. Alfred Habegger, “A Well Hidden Hand,” Novel 14, no. 3 (1981): 198.

2. Notable Southworth scholarship includes Habegger, Regis Louise Boyle, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novelist (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. Press, 1939); Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984); Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990); Christopher Looby, “Southworth and Seriality: The Hidden Hand in the New York Ledger,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 59, no. 2 (2004): 179–211; Linda Naranjo- Huebl, “The Road to Perdition: E. D. E. N. Southworth and the Critics,” American Peri- odicals 16, no. 2 (2006): 123–49.

3. In “Southworth and Seriality,” Looby mentions the importance of illustration without analyzing it (182).

4. TheI sland Princess ran in seventeen weekly installments between May 30, 1857, and September 19, 1857. T. B. Peterson’s edition appeared in 1859 as The Lady of the Isle: A Romance from Real Life.

5. “Regular Contributors,” NYL, Nov. 14, 1857, 4.

6. According to Joyce Warren, the readers of the Ledger “cut across boundaries and differences in gender, age, and education. . . . [B]ecause of the variety of the material, [it] was read by both men and women, unusual in an age of gender-specific journalism.” “Uncommon Discourse: Fanny Fern and the New-York Ledger,” in Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (Charlottes- ville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1995), 59. Mary Noel states that the paper “contained letters from apprentices and farmers, from young ladies and gentlemen. . . . The Ledger answered serious questions from lawyers and bookkeepers, from machinists and backwoodsmen, and one from a Bible-belt Tennessean.” Villains Galore: TheH eyday of the Popular Story Weekly (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 290. The illustrations forL edger novels communi- cated they were intended for a wide readership encompassing both men and women, in that some illustrations are the “frivolous ornaments” and “pictorial embellishments” that Isabelle Lehuu associates with women readers, while other illustrations portray the action, violence, and drama ostensibly more appealing to men. Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000), 103–4.

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 101 7. For more information on wood engraving, see W. M. Ivins, How Prints Look: Pho- tographs with a Commentary (Boston: Beacon Press, 1943); and Bamber Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Ink Jet (Toledo, Spain: Thames and Hudson, 1986).

8. EDENS to RB, c. 1862 (two letters), DU. Rather than sending actual sketches, Southworth seems to have sent descriptions or notes about scenes that she wished the artists to illustrate.

9. The editor of a short-lived weekly called theN ation, to which Southworth contributed, assures her, “The engraving of the illustration for your [unintelligible] sketch has been commanded—it will be finished by the last of the present week in time for the 6th numbers. . . . If you possibly can, will you write it so it can extend through three numbers—thus giving the like number of illustrations. As soon as possible please send the descriptions of the scenes to be engraved—that I may forward them to Dallas, our principle designer, so that there will be no delay.” S. M. Bigelow to EDENS, Dec. 3, 1856, DU. Southworth, then, worked for illustrated publications before the Ledger and displayed a previous interest in the visual.

10. EDENS to RB, Nov. 23, 1863, DU. For Self-Made and its publishing history, see Kenneth Salzer, “Call her Ishmael: E. D. E. N. Southworth, Robert Bonner, and the ‘Ex- periment’ of Self-Made,” in Popular Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace, ed. Earl Yarington and Mary De Jong (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007), 215–35.

11. EDENS to RB, c. 1863, DU.

12. EDENS to RB, c. 1878, DU.

13. In “Southworth and Seriality,” Looby speculates in relation to her composition of TheH idden Hand, “Southworth was doubtless herself a regular Ledger reader, and it appears that as her plot developed she was taking certain cues from Bonner’s editorials and from other contents of the Ledger” (187). This seems particularly relevant when considering The Island Princess, as it was her first novel for Bonner. At this moment, then, she would have tried to modulate her style to fit in with the tone of Bonner’s paper and to write Ledger-esque fiction.

14. Joshua Brown, Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002), 39.

15. RB to EDENS, Apr. 16, 1857, DU.

16. EDENS to RB, May 26, 1862, DU.

102 Kathryn Conner Bennett 17. “A New Story,” NYL, Apr. 12, 1856, 4.

18. “As nearly all,” NYL, Mar. 15, 1856, 4.

19. Frank Weitenkampf, American Graphic Art (New York: Holt, 1912), 146. In addition to the Ledger, Bobbett-Hooper illustrated the American editions of several of Charles Dickens’s novels. I have not been able to identify Hooper.

20. According to Peter Palmquist and Thomas Kailbourn, Thwaites painted land- scapes in addition to commercial illustration and perhaps photography. Pioneer Photogra- phers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840–1865 (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000), 547.

21. “Ourselves,” NYL, Apr. 19, 1856, 4.

22. Quoted in Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business, 73.

23. Although the meanings of “sentimental” and “sensational” have shifted over time, it is worth noting that contemporaneous discussions of Southworth’s work used these terms—they are not anachronistic. But nineteenth-century reviewers are less convinced than contemporary critics that these discursive modes were antithetical. As we shall see, Southworth needed the tools of both to tell stories like TheI sland Princess.

24. Joanne Dobson, “Reclaiming Sentimental Literature,” American Literature 69, no. 2 (June 1997): 267.

25. Ibid., 272.

26. Ibid., 273.

27. Lori Merish, Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth- Century American Literature (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000), 3.

28. Susan Ryan, The Grammar of Good Intentions: Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2003), 5.

29. June Howard, “What Is Sentimentality?” American Literary History 11, no. 1 (1999): 73.

30. Merish, Sentimental Materialism, 311.

31. Jennifer Putzi, Identifying Marks: Race, Gender, and the Marked Body in Nineteenth- Century America (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2006), 71.

32. Patrick Brantlinger, “What Is ‘Sensational’ about the ‘Sensation Novel’?,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 37, no. 1 (June 1982): 2–3.

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 103 33. Karen Halttunen, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American GothicI magination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000), 67.

34. Ibid., 161.

35. Not every critic has read Southworth as exclusively sentimental. In “The Gothic Meets Sensation: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allen Poe, George Lippard, and E. D. E. N. Southworth,” Dana Luciano makes an argument about Southworth’s fiction similar to Haltunnen’s argument about the domestic murder fiction, namely that it demonstrates how terrifying the nuclear family can be. In A Companion to American Fiction, 1780–1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 314–29. In “‘What did you mean?’: Marriage in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Novels,” a version of which appears in this volume, Cindy A. Weinstein argues that Southworth has a “vexed relation to” the marriage requirement in sentimental fiction. Legacy 27, no. 1 (2010): 46. Ultimately, Weinstein sees Southworth as existing in a generic space that is both sentimental and sensational.

36. Violence can, of course, occur in sentimental narratives. The most famous sentimental novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Or, Life Among the Lowly (1852), uses violence to increase identification and invoke benevolence (e.g., the political movement abolition), notably in the titular character’s death scene. Sensational novels are not urging any reaction to the violence, however. The horror exists only to shock and to thrill. For a more detailed discussion of representations of violence in sentimental literature, see Elizabeth Barnes, Love’s Whipping Boy: Violence and Sentimentality in the American Imagination (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2011).

37. Montressor’s Ur-American name seems to allow him to achieve reunion with Estelle. Despite this shift in identity, they leave the United States for residence in an unnamed land while retaining their American name, at the end of the text.

38. EDENS, “An Interrupted Wedding,” Island Princess, NYL, May 30, 1857, 2.

39. EDENS, “The Interview between Lord Montressor and Sir Parke Morelle” Island Princess, NYL, June 6, 1857, 1.

40. EDENS, “Love,” Island Princess, NYL, Sept. 12, 1857, 5.

41. EDENS, “Etoile Seeking to Discover the Returning Barque of her Betrothed,” Island Princess, NYL, Sept. 5, 1857, 5; and “The Wedding Gifts from Paris Exhibited to Etoile,” Island Princess, NYL, Aug. 29, 1857, 5.

42. For example, a piece on recent disasters featured an illustration of the steamship the Northern Indiana, which was destroyed in a fire while sailing on Lake Erie. “The

104 Kathryn Conner Bennett Great Disasters,” NYL, Aug. 2, 1856, 8. Interestingly, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran a nearly identical illustration in its issue of the same date. While the illustration for Southworth’s novel is more dramatic, its emotional power is predicated on the terror inspired by real events, such as the Northern Indiana disaster.

43. As Naranjo-Huebl summarizes, “The reviews reveal the opinion that literature written by women should adhere to a more restricted code of propriety than other fiction and should target a more limited audience. . . . [T]heir reviews read as attempts to control her excessive power.” “The Road to Literary Perdition,” 124. While some of the criticism leveled at Southworth would have applied to all sensational fiction, there is also sexism in this complaint.

44. Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–70, 2nd ed. (Urbana, IL: Illini Books, 1993), 19. Baym characterizes Southworth’s novels as “a glorification of the cult of domesticity . . . [but also] a severe criticism, because they show that the defective male nature makes the ideal . . . generally unrealizable” (116) and suggests that we should understand the “melodramatic devices” (118), such as shipwrecks, as reflective of the period’s fiction. I appreciate Baym’s flexible definition as it seems to reflect the Ledger’s unconcern with genre divisions, but Southworth’s plots do extend far beyond Baym’s own definition of woman’s fiction.

45. Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in TheE ssential Margaret Fuller, ed. Jeffrey Steele (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1992), 345.

46. EDENS, “The Girl Captain,” Island Princess, NYL, July 18, 1857, 5. Fuller was by this point well known. Bonner favorably reviewed Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1855; see Warren, “Uncommon Discourse,” 64.

47. EDENS, “The Island Princess,” Island Princess, NYL, July 11, 1857, 5.

48. EDENS, “Barbara Brande,” Island Princess, NYL, July 11, 1857, 6.

49. Judith Sargent Murray, “Observations on Female Abilities,” in Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray, ed. Sharon Harris (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), 15–43. Murray presents her argument as a trial. She responds to the charge—the innate inequal- ity of women—in list form, calling up as witnesses great women from history and then referring to their biographies and accomplishments. Southworth’s structure and language are similar. Overlapping diction between the two includes words such as “constitution” (17), “nature” (17), “education” (17), “habit” (17), “circumstance” (22), and “active” (40).

50. The narrator tells us Barbara “was at once shown up into a superbly furnished private parlor, at the door of which she was received by a rosy-cheeked waiting maid,

Genre, Conventionality, and The Island Princess 105 who civilly enquired her name and business.” EDENS, “Barbara Brande,” Island Princess, NYL, July 11, 1857, 6. Both text and image emphasize class, economic status, and cultural capital.

51. One illustration seems to exist only to reassure the reader that her duties in relation to her brothers are well in hand: “Barbara Brande and Her Brother Willful Discuss- ing the Latter’s Future Career” (Aug. 22, 1857). This, the only one of her four appearances that represents Barbara as seated, perhaps assures Ledger readers that she is able to fulfill this role as well as her role as ship’s captain.

52. EDENS, “The Last Struggle,” Island Princess, NYL, Aug. 1, 1857, 5. Other examples of this trait include her kindness to subordinates, including her family’s long-term servants, her frequently professed and unswerving faith, her refusal to board freight on the Sabbath, her ability to keep other’s secrets, and her refusal to marry. This last is perhaps the most interesting. By refusing Lord Dazzleright’s proposal, it seems that Barbara is just too fascinating to be trapped by the marriage plot.

53. EDENS, “His Majesty the King of the Isles,” Island Princess, NYL, July 4. 1857, 5.

54. Looby, “Southworth and Seriality,” 181.

55. EDENS, “The Waiting Bride,” Island Princess, NYL, Sept. 5, 1857, 6.

56. For a discussion of race and visual culture in the nineteenth century, see Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography of the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture (Durham: Duke Univ., Press, 2004), esp. chap. 3; and Cedric J. Robinson, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film before World War II (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2007), esp. chap. 1.

57. EDENS, “The Recluse,” Island Princess, NYL, July 25, 1857, 5.

58. Ibid.

106 Kathryn Conner Bennett Maniac Brides: Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations Beth L. Lueck

In Hickory Hall: Or the Outcast (1850; later The Prince of Darkness, 1869), when Regina Fairchild learns that her new husband not only has black blood but is also a slave, she recoils in horror from him. Her brother, who is narrating the story, calls his beloved sister, whom he had once likened to a queen, a “maniac bride.”1 Before his eyes—and ours, as readers—she is transformed from a woman of unsurpassed beauty into something monstrous. This metamorphosis is not only physical but mental; the woman’s reason deserts her the instant she discovers her husband’s racial character. Southworth sensationalizes this moment of revelation and transformation. With Regina uttering “a frenzied cry of anguish and despair,” she begins “foaming at the mouth” and goes “into the most violent paroxysm of madness” (130). Elsewhere in Southworth’s fiction, revelations about a character’s race and status as free or enslaved can bring about derangement, as in Retribu- tion (1849), her first novel, published the year beforeH ickory Hall. That both novels appeared serially in the National Era, the abolitionist newspaper edited by Gamaliel Bailey Jr., underscores the significance of these ideas. In the paper’s prospectus, the editors stated, “The great aim of the paper will be a complete discussion of the Question of Slavery, and an exhibition of the Duties of the Citizen in relation to it”; Southworth’s early novels, appearing on the front page of that newspaper, played an important role in these discussions.2 In addition, the novelist explores the psychology of racial stereotyping, fears of miscegenation, and the uneasy tension between master (or mistress) and slave. When secret mixed-race identities are exposed, the fear of miscegenation causes the mental states of some characters to become precarious, while others descend into outright insanity. The convoluted plots and counterplots of melodrama and sensational fiction offer plentiful opportunities for the characters’ shifting racial, mental, and physical status, enabling Southworth to explore what it means to be black or white, free or enslaved, and rational or insane. A brief discussion of sensational fiction, which was becoming popular in the United States just at the time Southworth began her writing career, illuminates her use of the genre. A discussion of the Gothic mode in her early novels appears later in this chapter, where it is most relevant. Sensational fiction first evolved in the 1830s and 1840s in the United States, just as Southworth was beginning her writing career. An international genre, it developed almost two decades later in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe, where it reflected different cultural concerns. According to Shelley Streeby, in the United States sensational fiction grew out of revolutions in printing and transportation that enabled publishers to print more quickly and cheaply, and to ship printed material more rapidly across the expanding nation. Sensational literature began in the pamphlet novels of the 1830s and 1840s and the story papers of the forties and fifties, with the eight- page weeklies offering serialized stories whose plot twists and suspense devices engaged readers and encouraged them to buy the next installment. With editorials, news items, and letters to the editor printed side by side with serialized stories,3 these papers sometimes took part in ongoing debates about current issues, such as slavery and abolition, as in the National Era, or refrained from taking a stand on issues of national concern, as in the New York Ledger. The Era, where Southworth got her start writing serialized fiction, demonstrated its editor’s strong antislavery position, and the novelist’s work reflected that editorial concern. As Streeby further observes, sensational fiction, like melodrama, “emphasizes temporal coincidences, stages moments of truth that expose villains and recognize virtue, and tries to move its audiences to experience intense feelings, such as thrill, shock, and horror.”4 Like its British counterpart of the 1860s, Streeby explains, the American genre contained “manipulative, visceral, and voyeuris- tic” elements that titillated readers and demanded an emotional and almost physical response. From its generic cousin, theatrical melodrama, sensational fiction—and E. D. E. N. Southworth—took “cross-dressing and other scenes of bodily masquerade and transformation,” producing a literature that became “a rich repository of changing ideas about sexuality, gender, class, and race.”5 While Streeby’s analysis of this literature focuses on American imperialism and urban culture, Southworth’s sensational fiction also foregrounds issues of race, slavery, and abolition. With her work appearing in both an abolitionist paper and more general story papers, Southworth’s serialized novellas and novels reflect her participation in the growing national conversation in the antebellum period about race and slavery. Indeed, the plots and crimes of sensational fiction, some of them inherited from melodrama, provide crucial machinery for Southworth to develop her ideas about race and slavery in her first works of fiction.

108 Beth L. Lueck Drawing on the plot devices of sensational fiction, bothR etribution and Hickory Hall feature spoiled young women whose families dote on them, their status ensured by a loving father, husband, or brother. Erminie (Minny) Dozier, in Southworth’s first novel, offers the most dramatic shifts in character and status, even for sensational fiction: She goes from being mistress of her father’s large mansion to the lowliest servant in it; from free to enslaved; from daughter, wife, and mother to orphan and grieving widow who has lost her child—and back again to free woman, wife, and mother by the end of the novel. Juliette Summers, who serves as a foil for both Erminie and Hester Dent, Minny’s mistress, suffers similar extremes, going from cosseted infancy in a wealthy family on St. Do- mingo to the terror of a slave uprising, in the aftermath of which she becomes an orphan; from adoption into two Virginia families to destroying both of them through her scheming; and finally, to a dissolute life as mistress of titled Euro- peans. The convoluted plots of the sensational novel suit the transformations of these characters and the meanings of their stories suggested through these changes; Gothic elements in Juliette’s story, which I will take up later, suggest the horrors of her experience and, later, the monster she becomes. When the reader first encounters Minny, Colonel Edward Dent has just purchased her in order to save her “from the shame of an exposure and sale in some southern mart, and from the horrors of a fate worse than slavery.”6 Minny tells her story to her mistress, Hester, who embeds a transcription of the young slave’s narrative in a long letter to her friend Juliette, who is still at school. Minny’s early life reads like a fairytale. Although her quadroon mother died when she was young, her father, a French West Indian who owns a sugar plantation near Havana, adored his daughter and spoiled her. As the beloved mistress of her father’s estate, she met and married the son of a French musician traveling through Cuba and bore his child. The setting for her story—the circum-Atlantic world of the Caribbean and the southern United States—reflects the sensational writer’s interest in locations featured in subgenres such as pirate tales, and it allows Southworth to conveniently kill off Minny’s husband in a shipwreck and then reanimate him to reward her later in the novel. During her husband’s absence, though, Minny’s father unexpectedly dies, with a catastrophic effect on his natural daughter, who has just given birth to her own child. Erminie recalls, “For days, . . . I raved in high delirium—for weeks I lay in a death-like trance.” Before her illness Minny remembers living “in my own luxurious apartment,” but when she recovered, “I found myself and babe in a wretched negro quarter.” She tells her new mistress, “I have a confused memory of what occurred about this time, like one’s recollection of a nightmare dream. I

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 109 remember I had a vague fear of being seen in the house where four weeks before I had ruled as its mistress—the very spoiled child of a devoted father, the beloved wife of an adored husband” (106). In a conversation with a slave during her recovery from childbirth, Minny learns the truth. Because her father had neglected to manumit her before he died, “You ’longed to old massa jes’ as much as any of us”; because her mother was a slave, she too is a slave. Even her husband, when he returns, won’t be able to save her: “Property is property,” states the old slave, “and you anoder man’s property” (107). This situation in which a master dies unexpectedly, leaving the slaves he vowed to free still enslaved, recurs elsewhere in Southworth’s fiction, including in Retribution itself. Hester Dent, Minny’s mistress, has promised to free all her slaves at the first legal opportunity (when she reaches her twenty-first birthday), but because she dies a few hours short of her birthday, her slaves lose their chance at freedom; not until her daughter, Julie, grows up and inherits the slaves are they freed. Southworth explores slavery’s debasement of white slave owners as well as its degradation of black slaves, for slavery corrupts the best of slave owners and undermines their good intentions. Paul Christian Jones argues that the retribution referred to in the novel’s title involves precisely this “degradation of all participants in slavery.”7 On her deathbed Hester herself is aware that her failure to emancipate her slaves will mean that some may die before they are freed or that legal complications may prevent their emancipation. She comments regret- fully, “My poor people and their children, to remote generations, [may] remain in slavery” (180). Southworth suggests that even a benevolent slave owner with good intentions can cause unintentional suffering to slaves: Hester Dent’s slaves, promised their freedom, wait almost two decades before her daughter can free them and suffer in the meantime from Juliette’s spite. In Southworth’s fiction, as Jones also argues, the color line is not fixed, with black on one side and white on the other; rather, the author depicts “race as an unstable or unfixed idea.” In the slave system of the antebellum South, however, status is linked to race, where “‘black’ almost always means ‘slave,’ and ‘white’ consequently means ‘not slave’ and often ‘master.’”8 This racial instability illuminates Erminie’s situation in Retribution. How can she be respected by her father’s household as white and a mistress one day and then scorned the next as black and a slave? In her early life, Minny is treated as white (even though she is, in a sense, unknowingly “passing” as white) because her status as her father’s daughter and mistress of his house gives her power. After he dies without freeing her, she is treated as a black slave (which, legally speaking, she always was) because she lost her power upon his death. In her narrative recalling her past experiences to

110 Beth L. Lueck Hester, her new mistress, Minny explains that when she and her French husband married, she was not aware that her mother was a quadroon and a slave, or that she herself was a slave: “I did not know it myself,” she admits (105). Whether or not her husband knew is unclear, but perhaps his French birth allowed him to overlook her color and status (in the French West Indies, interracial unions were common). Erminie transforms overnight from white to black, from free to slave, although it might be more accurate to say her true race and status are revealed. In Minny’s life history, elements typical of melodrama and sensational fiction—a shipwrecked husband, a father’s sudden death, the disappearance of a child—are not outrageous plot contrivances but the harsh realities of slavery. The sudden loss of the man who is both her master and her father leads to separation from her baby and their subsequent sale to strangers. Minny’s skin color does not determine her status; her power (granted by her father during his lifetime) determines her status. Perhaps Southworth is suggesting the capriciousness, even the absurdity, of such a caste system. Where race appears to be so fluid, how can it have meaning? Even though Erminie spends her childhood in the West Indies (Cuba) rather than in the American South, Southworth still uses her story to critique American slavery. Southworth may have chosen a different background for Erminie precisely so that her white readers, particularly southerners, could sympathize with her story without its horrors coming too close to home.9 This reasoning might also apply to Juliette Summers’s origins. Her Italian mother might have accounted, in part, for her stereotypical wickedness and passion, while allowing American—and specifically southern—readers to distance themselves from her hateful treatment of slaves.10 The story of Juliette Summers (born Giulletta Nozzalina) in Retribution provides a sharp contrast to that of Erminie. Indeed, as much as the young octoroon is passive and weak and seems to accept her fate once she is sold as a slave, Juliette is strong-minded, scheming, and determined to get what she wants in life, whether another woman’s husband or so much jewelry that she bankrupts him after she marries him. Once again the elements of sensational fiction—here including a slave uprising but also narrow escapes, madness, and a scheming villainess—provide Southworth with the tools she needs to explore Juliette’s machinations and her eventual downfall. She also uses Gothic elements to add color to Juliette’s life story and to suggest how her early experience of a slave revolt shapes her attitude toward race and slavery. Southworth emphasizes the importance of this personal history by including two different narratives of Juliette’s presence during the slave uprising in St. Domingo. In chapter 1, Mrs. Nichols, a sympathetic teacher at Hester’s boarding school, offers the first version. The

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 111 slave uprising was a “horrible massacre,” she says, from which Juliette’s mother, “an Italian lady of singular beauty,” fled with her daughter; the other members of their family “had perished by the hands of the insurgents.” According to Mrs. Nichols, the mother and infant “had been saved, and conveyed on board an American ship, through the efforts of a faithful slave.” The teacher emphasizes the mother’s helplessness and her extreme reaction to “the horrors of the past”; with both she and the baby “entirely helpless,” Guillietta Nozzalina “had sunk into melancholy madness.” She took dependency to an extreme and became “perfectly inert,” a woman wholly without agency (27). She was so helpless (and perhaps depressed) that she could not even dress herself and would not let anyone else assist her—she didn’t change clothes once on the voyage to Virginia, and at the Summers’ house she would not get dressed or fix her hair. In her narrative, the teacher repeatedly describes Giuletta not only as “helpless” but even as “useless,” not only unable to help herself but also unable to help her daughter. The ship’s owner, Mr. Summers, is the only American willing to take in this helpless foreign woman and her child (27–28). In this first version of the narrative, Juliette’s mother is described as pale; except for her rich black hair, she is white and, the teacher’s language suggests, devoid of life; she wears a white wrapper made for her by the young ladies of the household, her smile is as cold as “beams of moonlight on snow,” and her “taper fingers” are “pale” (29). The mother’s whiteness signifies her weakness, and she doesn’t survive even a year. The infant Juliette, however, is not described at all. Juliette first appears in Retribution in the teacher’s account of events that occurred during her infancy, suggesting that she, too, may lack agency. She becomes active only after she is taken out of her St. Domingo birthplace and later is sent away from her adoptive home in Alexandria, Virginia, where she lived with the Summers family. When she is an infant in the arms of the “faithful slave” who rescues her from the slave uprising, she is, of course, helpless. In some ways her early fate is similar to that of Erminie, who loses her status and power when her father dies and she becomes a slave. Juliette, too, loses her family (here, in a massacre), and like a slave, she loses her name: Presumably named Guillietta Nozzalini after her mother, her adoptive father renames her Juliette Summers. If anything, Juliette’s helplessness as an infant and child only makes the young woman more determined to manipulate those around her—first the Summers family, and then Hester and Hester’s husband, Ernest Dent—in order to gain riches and power. Near the end of the novel, when Juliette tells her own version of the slave uprising to her Italian cousin, Ippolyto di Nozzalina, her basic narrative resembles Mrs. Nichols’s version. Juliette, however, underscores even more strongly the hor-

112 Beth L. Lueck ror of the uprising and suggests that she was born of violence. In Juliette’s version, she takes center stage as the teller of her own tale. From an already sensational story of a slave insurrection, she creates a Gothic tale of terror, complete with demonic slaves and a dramatic flight in the night. Reading Juliette’s story as a Gothic tale requires an excursion into the history of the American Gothic. American authors of Gothic fiction drew on eighteenth- century British sources, such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Ann Radcliffe’s five Gothic romances, but the American genre also evolved and changed in American hands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The particular circumstances of the founding of the United States created paradoxes in both the nation and its literary culture. On the one hand, the Dec- laration of Independence and the Constitution celebrated liberty and rationality, but on the other hand, the nation denied humanity and freedom to its enslaved African population. The Gothic mode in early American culture and literature derives its power and significance from this contradiction. While writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville have long been read in the context of the Gothic, recent criticism, inspired in part by Toni Morrison, has sought to further our understanding of the place of the “Africanist presence” in the American literary imagination. In reconsidering Melville’s “power of blackness” in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Morrison asserts that white American philosophers and writers used African Americans for their “meditations on terror.” Paradoxically, the “conveniently bound and violently silenced black bodies” of slaves became a dark canvas for white writers to deliberate on questions of human freedom and dignity.11 Marianne Noble suggests that the American Gothic—frequently inscribed on the bodies of African Americans—“crystallizes fears particular to its cultural moment . . . [and] enables us to understand what a society fears.” In the United States, she argues, these fears center on race: Questions about personal identity on the part of the dominant population (whites) involve repression or denial of the racial Other (African Americans).12 Edgar Allan Poe’s tales about demonic black cats and murderous orangutans register this suppressed recognition of the racial Other. Critics such as Leland S. Person now read Poe’s stories as reflecting the horrors of race and slavery in America.13 Like these other writers, Southworth uses Gothic conventions to expresses cultural concerns about race, making southern plantations the locus for her meditations. In fact, reading American Gothic in its historical and cultural contexts, Teresa A. Goddu argues that it should be recognized as a regional form: “Identi- fied with gothic doom and gloom, the American South serves as the nation’s

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 113 ‘other,’ becoming the repository for everything from which the nation wants to disassociate itself.”14 Writers in the United States worked American variations on the European Gothic: The elaborate architecture of medieval castles was sup- planted by caverns with subterranean passageways, ghostly figures became black slaves, and the torture machinery of dungeons became the chains and manacles used to control and discipline slaves. Southworth draws on this Americanized tradition of the literary Gothic to explore the psychology of racism and its roots in slavery. In the case of Juliette Summers, the story of her rescue from a slave uprising on St. Domingo relies on Gothic elements to translate her fears into language her audience can readily understand—not just the Italian cousin to whom she tells her story but also the novel’s American readers, both northern and southern. Addressing Ippolyto, Juliette recalls, “My infancy—what an infancy, Ippolyto! Did I ever tell you from what a scene of terror my memory takes its first date; its utmost bound, behind which all is blank?” The memory of the slave uprising is Juliette’s first moment of conscious awareness; her life begins in this moment of terror and flight. Her language and imagery are drawn from stock Gothic elements: The “scene of terror” in a “deep, dark night,” a storm, and the “wild sea” all create a night of Gothic horror. The details that follow contribute to this effect. Juliette recalls “a burning homestead, smoke, flames, falling roofs, glowing beams, and blazing rafters hurled through the air before the furious blast”—images that suggest the terrors of the natural world as well as the horrors of the violation of the home (“a burning homestead”). Unsurprisingly, Juliette as white narrator demonizes the black slaves rising up against their masters. She remembers “hundreds of dark demons leaping, capering, and exulting in frantic orgies” (276–77). When the reader considers that Juliette, who was a baby at the time of the revolt, could not possibly remember these details, her seemingly superfluous retelling of the events of the slave revolt both makes the revolt itself more significant in the novel and raises questions about the truthfulness of her account. Clearly her description of the scene is a kind of fiction. At best, it is not truly her memory but a story assembled from others’ recollections, whether those of her mother (and since her mother died long before Juliette could understand such a story, her mother’s memories would have come to her third hand) or of other witnesses. Perhaps she even culled her “memories” from one of the many periodicals or books relating the history of the Haitian revolution published in the early-nineteenth-century United States, through which the phrase the “horrors of St. Domingo” became a kind of shorthand for the 1791 slave revolt in Haiti and the ensuing thirteen years of violent conflict between the races.15

114 Beth L. Lueck Whereas Mrs. Nichols modulates her telling of the story for the tender ears of her audience (a young Hester), Juliette heightens the darkness and violence. The teacher’s “faithful slave” who rescued the baby becomes, in Juliette’s telling, a disembodied “pair of strong, rugged arms” carrying her and holding her close to “a coarse, rough chest,” a change that makes the rescue more dramatic but also more frightening, conveying the mindless fear of a child suffering all of the terror of the experience without any comprehension of its meaning. For all she knows she is being rushed away to some worse horror, not to her waiting mother. The infant is “hurried” and “whirled” through a chaotic, Gothic-inspired setting: “this scene of night and tempest, of flame and massacre, of shouts and groans.” Perhaps the strangest addition to the rescue narrative is Juliette’s interpretation of the story as an adult: “The scene lives before me now,” she tells her cousin, “not as a retrospect, but as a vision—not as a memory, but as a prophecy” (277). Juliette’s early experience in a slave revolt, ostensibly “remembered” but imaginatively fictionalized, becomes part of her life story as she tells it to her cousin to explain and justify her actions in the past, but the slave revolt also speaks to her fears for the future (it is not just a “memory” but a “prophecy”). Southworth may have included this childhood experience of the slave uprising in Haiti for Juliette, along with Juliette’s interpretation of it as a grown woman, to explain her cruel treatment of slaves in Virginia when she is an adult; perhaps her cruelty is grounded in her fear of a future slave uprising in the American South. Such fears would not have seemed irrational to white Virginians at this period. Although Southworth does not provide precise dates for the events in Retribu- tion, its serial publication in 1849 was less than two decades after Nat Turner’s 1831 slave insurrection in Virginia, in which fifty white people were killed. In its aftermath, many more blacks were killed, including Turner himself, and fearful whites throughout the South instituted repressive measures against African Americans to prevent further slave revolts. In spite of Ippolyto’s attempts to reassure her, Juliette insists on calling the scene from her infancy in St. Domingo prophetic; just as she was born in violence and terror, she fears she will die violently, too. In a structural sense, the novel bears this out. Mrs. Nichols’s narrative of the slave revolt and Juliette’s rescue appears in chapter 1, while Juliette’s retelling appears in the penultimate chapter. The revolt and rescue thus bracket both the novel and Juliette’s life (she dies at the novel’s end). Furthermore, in telling her “memory” of the voyage to safety, instead of emphasizing the reassurance of a reunion with her mother, she foregrounds the tempestuousness of the voyage and highlights her “maniac mother, with dark brow, fierce eye, and streaming hair, whose very caresses were

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 115 a terror.” The very memories that should provide reassurance and stability for a child—memories of babyhood, perhaps, and a childhood in the heart of a loving family—terrify Juliette. She closes her narrative with a cryptic comment on the girlhood that followed her frightening infancy: “that early, horrible initiation into all—” (277). As in the rest of her narrative, the short, almost jerky, sentences, punctuated by dashes and exclamation points, express the intensity of the narrator’s emotion as well as the incoherence of her memories. Even though the events happened three decades earlier, Juliette speaks as if she still sees the flames and fears to be consumed by them. Her concluding with some nameless horror—an initiation into . . . what?—intensifies the terror, allowing the reader to imagine what might be worse than the horrific scene just described. Perhaps she was being initiated into the terrors of a slave-owning society and the violence it produces: As a young woman, she ends up on the Dent plantation in Virginia, where she is mistress of the many slaves her friend Hester once owned (and tried to free) and is married to her deceased friend’s husband. Both the language and imagery of the scene following Juliette’s nightmare narrative suggest that, ironically, she remains imprisoned by the memories of her birth into violence. After the Italian cousin to whom she tells her story has gone to court, her husband appears just in time to hear his wife castigate him and wish him dead. “Oh! that I were free; I would be free,” she cries, “I would myself strike the fetters from these wrists” (279). She calls her husband “this ox, this beast, this old rhinoceros of an Ernest Dent!” Again the imagery has Gothic overtones; her husband is a Caliban, a “grizzly old horror,” who seems to her only half-human. When her husband’s “hand of iron” clamps down on her shoulders, Juliette is metaphorically fettered by him, but she is really enchained by her own uncon- trollable passions and by her allegiance to the very devil to which she compared the violent slaves of her earliest memories (279). Ernest Dent enacts the role of master to Juliette’s slave; he catches her wrists, and when she struggles to free her hands from his, “he held them with the gripe [sic] of a vice,” restraining her as surely as any manacles might hold a slave (281). While the reader is probably sympathetic to the infant threatened by violence, the scene between husband and wife near the end of the novel hardly elicits sympathy for her. Juliette has gone from a manipulative, scheming young woman to a “daughter of Satan” who abides by no law, moral or otherwise (293). Southworth uses color imagery to reinforce Juliette’s descent into evil. Al- though earlier in the novel Juliette’s color is unremarkable except for the “richness of complexion” she inherited from her Italian mother, later on, after she begins to degenerate, she starts to darken visibly (31). When Ippolyto says he is leaving

116 Beth L. Lueck her in ten days to attend the grand duke, Juliette’s face contorts with emotion: an “expression of intense anguish and hellish malignity . . . tortured that horribly beautiful countenance.” Like a wild beast, she is torn by unrestrained passions, inarticulate in her fury. At last, words seem to tear “her dark bosom” and “burst from her lips”; animal-like, her teeth gnash and snap like a “tiger’s jaws.” Surely, here is another maniac bride! Close to the end, before Juliette’s severed head is placed on a spike outside the gates of an unnamed German city after her execution, her skin darkens as evil consumes her. Like Satan, whom she calls a “dark, resplendent spirit” and “prince of the power of the air,” Juliette darkens physically as well as morally. Her “rich, dark, bright, glorious countenance” continues to fascinate powerful men, who are enslaved by a glance from her black eyes, and her fingers are “dark and jeweled” (287–88, 291). Just as blackness is traditionally associated with evil—Poe’s raven and black cat, for instance—Southworth makes the color of her protagonist’s skin seem to darken as she degenerates into pure evil.16 Leaving her husband, revenging herself upon her cousin by getting him executed, and running off with a married man, Juliette becomes an emblem of unrestrained passions and evil incarnate. Southworth refuses to fill in the “loathsome and horrible details” of the last days of “this daughter of Satan” (293). After quoting a contemporary minister on the retribution that awaits sinners, she returns to Ernest Dent and his daughter, Julie, to complete her story. Erminie’s suffering and passivity, though not as extreme as Marah Rocke’s submission to fate in The Hidden Hand, may have seemed admirable to some of Southworth’s readers, but Juliette is clearly far too scheming to be a moral exemplar. Instead, the manipulative and heartless Juliette provides a foil for the passive Erminie and the weak Hester. By the end of the novel, Juliette has the look of a “depraved woman,” about as extreme a character description as a reader will find in a Southworth novel (290). Given her antecedents, including a “maniac mother” (Juliette’s own words), is it possible that Juliette too has become insane—another of Southworth’s maniac brides? Born into an unstable family and borne out of a violent slave insurrection, Juliette betrays everyone close to her—Hester; then General Dent, the husband she steals from Hester; and even her cousin, Ippolyto—and descends into madness. Surely Juliette is the monster in this novel, not the rioting “demons” of the slave insurrection in St. Domingo or Erminie, the tragic octoroon sold on the slave market. As Teresa Goddu argues in Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation, white people, rather than the black slave, may become the source of horror in Af- rican American writing. In Goddu’s example, Harriet Jacobs situates “the gothic’s evil blackness” in Dr. Flint. In doing so, she argues, “Jacobs both emphasizes her

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 117 persecution and reverses the gothic’s usual demonization: the master, not the black slave, is the source of horror and dread.”17 What is unusual in Southworth’s fiction, as Paul Christian Jones points out, is that it is a white, not a black, author making this point.18 Juliette demonizes blacks in her description of the slave uprising on St. Domingo and avoids granting full humanity to the slave whose “rugged arms” carried her to safety. However, the slave character readers encounter the most closely in Retribution, Erminie Dozier, is fully realized and sympathetic. Southworth portrays the slave Minny as a loving wife and mother. After she loses her husband and baby, she pours her maternal affection into the baby of her white mistress, though she frequently sobs over the loss of her own child. Minny briefly descends into a kind of madness following the loss of her father and her position as mistress of his household, but her strength of character enables her to survive her experiences as a slave. As she is sold and sold again, she continues to tell her story and try to regain her daughter. Rather than projecting evil onto the black bodies of her slave characters, the more typical pattern in American literature, Southworth locates the real horror in the white mistress, Juliette, who by the end of the novel is truly a “daughter of Satan” (293). Similarly, in Southworth’s novella Hickory Hall; Or, the Outcast a white woman, rather than the tragic African American characters, becomes the source of Gothic horror, although the white woman is not as evil as Juliette Summers. Originally published in the National Era in 1850, a year after Retribution was serialized there, the novella views characters with black blood sympathetically while looking more critically at Regina Fairfield, a white woman whose ideas about racial purity destroy her. The plot and the structure ofH ickory Hall are even more convoluted that the average Southworth novel. In the first-person frame narrative, an unnamed white woman (whom readers might suppose to be Southworth herself) is traveling through the countryside, and her friend, Mary Fairfield, meets the narrator and her party to take them to the Fairfield home, Cedar Cliffs. Most of the novella, however, consists of an embedded episto- lary narrative, a long letter Ferdinand Fairfield sent to Mary shortly before they became engaged to be married. Mary gives this letter to the frame narrator to explain mysterious events transpiring that night related to their neighbors, the Wallraven family. In this letter, Ferdinand, a schoolmate of Wolfgang Wallraven, tells the story from his earliest encounter with Wolfgang through his friend’s marriage to his sister, Regina Fairfield, when calamity ensues. Like TheH idden Hand and part of Retribution, Hickory Hall is set in Virginia, and Southworth makes the ancestral halls where much of the action transpires thoroughly Gothic. In the first chapter, the frame narrator spins out theory after

118 Beth L. Lueck theory about the Wallraven plantation, which Mary repeatedly but obscurely rejects while hinting at the family’s Gothic secrets. Twice Mary refers to Hickory Hall as a “murdered home,” and she calls the history of the Wallraven family “a domestic tragedy,” suggesting that the sacred space of a family home has been rudely violated (29). Readers learn in TheH idden Hand that Hurricane Hall was founded on the betrayal of the original owners of the land (an Indian tribe) and built by the sweat and blood of slaves. Similarly, Hickory Hall harbors a dark secret. As Paul Christian Jones has argued, the Gothic descriptions of both houses and their surroundings suggest not the usual story of the sunny South but one in which the plantation is the scene of Gothic horror.19 And Gothic darkness in form and meaning follow in Hickory Hall, the darkest of secrets in a white southern family: black blood darkening the whiteness of their line. Although my interest is in Regina Fairfield’s marriage to Wolfgang Wallraven and its catastrophic result for her, her husband’s background is crucial to her trajectory. Nicknamed by his boarding school classmates the “Prince of Dark- ness,” the title under which T. B. Peterson issued the novella in 1869, Wolfgang Wallraven is a loner when Ferdinand Fairfield first meets him at school and feels “a mysterious and irresistible sympathy” for him. Wallraven’s nickname may link him to Satan, but he never approaches the evil of his namesake. In his descriptions of Wallraven, Ferdinand emphasizes his contradictory nature: “Two natures met, but did not mix or blend in him—two natures as opposite and antagonistical as were his fierce light-grey Saxon eyes and the sweeping jet-black lashes, brow and hair” (35, 39). Dark hints abound as to the source of his contradictory nature. Wolfgang himself says he is “an embodied war,” in which, Ferdinand comments, “the most stupendous metamorphoses of character” continually take place, as he is haughty one moment and “slavish” the next (43, 40). Amid much speculation about his friend’s “secret sorrow,” Ferdinand introduces him to his sister, Regina Fairfield. Regina’s “womanly perfection” results in numerous nicknames: “Queen of beauty,” “an enchanted princess,” and “Queen Blanche,” and of course her name itself means “queen.” In coloring she is as fair as Wolfgang Wallraven is dark (44, 48–49). In the days when Wolfgang and Regina come to know each other, his “gloom deepened,” while her “delicate color faded,” underscoring the contrast in their coloring (61). Later, when they announce their engagement, Regina’s “fair, frosty brow” and “calm, cold manner” contrast with Wolfgang’s expression and demeanor: He “looked black as the muzzle of a loaded cannon” (99). The characters’ surnames also reflect this opposition of light and dark: Regina Fairfield’s name suggests her fairness, while Wallraven’s suggests both the darkness in his character (and family) and the madness (raven/raving) that infects them.

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 119 Associating whiteness and purity with Regina reinforces the racial and ancestral pride she exhibits, setting up her extreme reaction to the sensational revelation about her new husband’s own family and underscoring the novella’s racial theme. On their first meeting, Regina tries to make social conversation with Wolfgang by commenting on “the early history, antiquities, and traditions of the Old Dominion, for which,” her brother comments, “she has a great veneration.” During their discussion, her brother criticizes her attitude as “a prejudice—an anti-republican thing, contrary to the spirit of the nineteenth century.” Regina’s language links her ideas about family bloodlines to midcentury racial theories of the superiority of the white race, reflected in her observations about “the very flower of the old English aristocracy” and “noble scions of noble houses.” Think- ing she is flattering her guest, Regina describes the Wallravens as descending from “so old and pure a stock,” not realizing, of course, that the blood of the family whose racial purity she admires has mixed with the African blood of slaves, much less that Wolfgang, the seeming heir to the family estate, is himself passing as white (51–52). Her preoccupation with bloodlines and race foregrounds the fears of miscegenation first raised during Ferdinand’s first visit to Hickory Hall and climaxes during the siblings’ stay there after Regina marries Wolfgang. When Ferdinand Fairfield first visits Wallraven at Hickory Hall during their school days and, later, when he visits after his sister’s marriage, a specter visits both him and his sister. This specter embodies all the Gothic horror represented, the reader later discovers, by Regina’s marriage to Wolfgang—the mixing of the races, white and black. First Ferdinand dreams of “a perfect spectre” and wakens to find an actual physical woman struggling with Wolfgang. She is “livid! malignant! gibbering!”—the latter adjective linking the woman with animals, specifically apes (77–78). Later, Ferdinand wonders if what he saw was all a dream. When he and his sister stay at Hickory Hall after her marriage to Wolfgang Wallraven, however, Regina herself is awakened by “the most diabolical-looking old hag that ever nightmare created”; with “eyes of demoniac hatred” she was “the most loathsome specimen of humanity I had ever seen.” Both Regina and her brother demon- ize the woman: she is “diabolical-looking” and wears a “demon grin” (124–25). Moreover, their descriptive language dehumanizes her—Old Nell has a “talon hand” and her voice is described as “gibbering” (“Hik—hik—hik!”), like an ape, an implied, coded reference to her African blood. Although she talks to Regina with a monomaniacal emphasis on their kinship, Old Nell’s gibbering sounds make her seem subhuman. Gathered together in the drawing room, Ferdinand and his sister both stare at the hag in horror; the object of their gaze, the old hag, leers at the pair in turn, repaying their “extreme of disgust” with “the extreme of

120 Beth L. Lueck hatred” (125–26).20 Ferdinand calls the old woman both a “lunatic” and “mad,” and certainly she has been locked up elsewhere on the estate, suggesting that the Wallraven family also considers her mad and possibly dangerous. Imprison- ing “the terrible night-haunter,” the Wallravens try unsuccessfully to contain this living manifestation of their family’s history (124). The dialogue that follows elucidates the horror she represents. This madwoman“ in the attic” represents a Gothic embodiment of the horror of miscegenation in the South. When Ferdinand asks, “Who are you?” the old woman replies, “Nell! Old Nell! Yellow Nell! Slave Nell! Hugh Wallraven’s sister-in-law! Wolfgang Wallraven’s aunt—his mother’s sister! Regina Wallraven’s near relative! Yes! fair lady! proud as fair! you are my niece!” (126–27). Although Wallraven later disputes that there is any shared blood between him and Old Nell, her progressive naming of herself reads like a racial inscription that leads the reader to understand both her color and her relationship to the new bride. Old Nell is “Yellow Nell” (that is, she’s the result of the intermingling of black and white blood, “yellow” being a common word to describe a light-skinned mulatto); she is also “Slave Nell” because her race and parentage make her a slave; and she is Hugh Wallraven’s sister-in-law. (He claims she is only a stepsister to his mother, but Old Nell’s point is still clear, that Hugh Wallraven’s wife— Wolfgang’s mother—was black and a slave.) In the original serial publication in the National Era, Old Nell’s speech makes Regina’s position and her new husband’s status even clearer. In the 1850 serialization, Southworth has Old Nell further explain the implications of her startling revelation: “You are the wife of a mulatto—and a slave!!”21 With the omission of this final sentence in 1861, Southworth forced readers to pay close attention to the genealogy and to solve the mystery of the family’s racial history themselves. With or without the final explicit claim about Wolfgang’s racial and slave status, Regina reacts with what Paul Christian Jones calls “racial panic.”22 Since she has been married to Wolfgang for almost a week, her white blood has already mixed with his, metaphorically speaking, in the marriage bed. No wonder the bride, who prides herself on the racial purity of her family line and what she assumed was the purity of his, descends into madness at this realization. As Ferdinand looks on, she becomes, as he describes her, “a body petrified, as it were, to stone!” In his beloved sister he sees that “the light of reason had fled instantly and forever!” (127). Regina Fairfield’s fear of miscegenation corresponds to the racial ideology underpinning the law in Virginia. Since 1785 Virginia law had “defined a Negro as a person with a black parent or grandparent.”23 In Virginia, then, Wallraven’s black blood—inherited from his mother, a quadroon slave—would render his

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 121 children black by definition and vulnerable to being taken into slavery (although their free white mother would make them free at birth). In order to put a male octoroon in the position of an ostensibly white slave master, Southworth constructs a convoluted backstory, which Hugh Wallraven reveals to Ferdinand after the tragic ending to Regina and Wolfgang’s marriage and which Ferdinand records at the end of his long letter to Mary. Wolfgang Wallraven’s white grandmother sought vengeance on her son, Hugh Wallraven, for marrying one of her female slaves, Constance. Not only does Hugh’s mother refuse to free his quadroon wife (whom she, not her son or her husband, owns), but she also wills Constance and her octoroon children (including Wolfgang and his fraternal twin siblings, Constant and Constantia) to Hugh Wallraven on the condition that they remain slaves; if he tries to free them, they will “become the property of a distant relative” (132). That is, the only way Hugh Wallraven can keep his wife and children with him on his plantation is as slaves. Wolfgang Wallraven’s own position is thus peculiarly anomalous: While he is legally a black man and a slave, he is socially a white man, brought up and educated in the North as such. His father’s wealth, however, cannot change the legal reality of his race and status. From Virginia’s earliest days, its white inhabitants held complicated views concerning miscegenation. Thomas Jefferson expressed “a great aversion” to the mixing of the black and white races, calling miscegenation “the horror of horrors.”24 Yet it is believed that Jefferson carried on a decades-long sexual relationship with a slave woman, Sally Hemings, leading in the late twentieth century to DNA testing of those believed to be descended from Jefferson and Hemings. The “massive personal contradictions,” in the words of commentators on the DNA study, between Jefferson’s words and his actions suggest the deep ambivalence he and other white Virginians felt toward miscegenation and the mixed-race children that resulted from these unions, whether they were born free or enslaved.25 In Wallraven’s family, however, the mixed-race children are not living in the slave quarters but are instead living in the big house and passing as white, a very different and more dangerous situation for precisely the reason the events in the novella dramatize: It ensnares an unsuspecting white woman like Regina Fairfield into an interracial union. Like Jefferson and the fictional Wallravens, E. D. E. N. Southworth was from the upper South—her mother was originally from Maryland, her father from Virginia, and the couple moved to Washington, D.C., after their marriage. In an autobiographical sketch written in the third person, the author recalls her family’s “long visits . . . among the old homesteads and old scenes, haunts of ‘the old ancestral spirits,’ from whom the destined novelist received her earliest inspi-

122 Beth L. Lueck rations.” Speaking of her own childhood, Southworth writes, “She grew to love with enthusiasm the history, traditions, and scenery of her forefathers’ district— the great forests of Maryland, the blue peaks of Virginia, and above all . . . the glorious river and bay that roll between them.”26 With most of her novels located in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Chesapeake Bay area, including both Retribu- tion and Hickory Hall (the subtitle of which is A Romance of the Blue Ridge), Southworth was deeply attached to this geographic area, though not necessarily to the institution of slavery and its inheritance of racism. There is little in the author’s account of herself to tell modern readers more directly of her feelings. In the autobiographical sketch she comments on the pleasure she took as a young girl in “consorting with pigeons, cats, or with the old negroes in the kitchen— listening, with open ears and mind, to ghost-stories, old legends, and tales of the times” (34), a statement that suggests an emotional attachment to slaves but also seems to put “old negroes” in the same class with animals. Although we do not know Southworth’s views on miscegenation, we might learn something from the way she presents the Fairfields’ response to the Wallraven family secret. Certainly the Fairfield siblings’ horrified reaction to Old Nell suggests their abhorrence of the mixing of white and black blood, not to mention their shock at her addressing them as equals. Furthermore, thinking she has married a free white slave owner, Regina finds herself in the repugnant position of being involved in a sexual relationship with a black slave, who is not, legally speaking, her husband, since as a slave he could not marry. Both Fairfield siblings struggle to avoid the touch of Old Nell; Ferdinand says he will “contaminate” himself by touching her. In the end it is the touch of Wolfgang Wallraven’s hand that brings on her final paroxysm of madness and his embrace that drives her to kill him. Southworth’s point of view here is ambiguous; all of the events are, after all, presented from Frederick Fairfield’s perspective. By depicting Old Nell as continually escaping her imprisonment, however, Southworth suggests that the Wallraven family cannot escape its racial legacy or, to some extent, the tragedy that ensues from this inheritance. In his explanation to Ferdinand, Hugh Wallraven describes Old Nell as the “step-daughter of Constance’s father.” Hugh does not specify the race or status of Constance’s father, but presumably, he was a white man, which makes “step- daughter” sound like code for Nell being his daughter by a slave woman other than the one who bore Constance (134). White men of the master class, Southworth is suggesting, bring on the moral ruin of southern plantation families themselves by their unchecked rape of slave women. This interpretation is supported by the comment Erminie makes about her quadroon mother in Retribution,

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 123 whom she describes as “not his wife, not his willing mistress, but his slave,” suggesting her mother’s resistance to his sexual depredations. Erminie offers this sad observation: “I am sure he never understood that he was killing my poor mother” (98–99). Erminie’s sympathetic description of her mother’s suffering as a result of her master’s “love” for her implicitly criticizes her father’s actions and motives. Southworth’s attention to the psychology of abuse evident in the master-slave relationship suggests a deep compassion on her part for slave women who were sexually persecuted by their white masters. Thus in both Retribution and Hick- ory Hall (and elsewhere), Southworth implicitly argues that slavery corrupts the white masters, even as it degrades the African Americans they own. Perhaps Old Nell’s madness is a sign that miscegenation also corrupts the children produced by the white master’s rape of slave women. Although we are not told why Old Nell is a lunatic, her hatred of the Wallraven family is fierce. Their ineffective attempts to control her suggest that their efforts to control the blackness intermingling with their white blood are also unsuccessful. When Wolfgang sees Regina and Old Nell together in the novel’s climactic scene, for example, his response echoes his “aunt’s” earlier actions: “With the bound of an unchained demon he sprang upon the hag.” Wolfgang almost strangles her before Frederick Fairfield can intervene, suggesting that Wolfgang is as demonic as Old Nell was earlier (128). (His quadroon mother, however, apparently escapes this kind of demonization. Hugh Wallraven clearly remembers her with affection, and the twin children who bear variants of her name escape Wolfgang’s fate). Hugh Wallraven attempts to control the black blood that has entered his family line by making his children pledge to avoid romantic entangle- ments and never to marry—a pledge that Wolfgang Wallraven, of course, has broken. Perhaps this is one reason Regina instantly goes mad when she realizes whom she has married; she is only speeding up the madness that infected her when she married a Wallraven. Regina’s status as a new bride in one of the first families of Virginia is compromised, then, by her marital and sexual union with a black man and by the incipient madness that lurks in his blood and infects her. Indeed, as a new bride, Regina could already be pregnant, and surely the horror of bearing a mixed-race—and perhaps insane—child also lies behind her own madness. Southworth herself, however, does not seem to believe that miscegenation leads to madness since she contrasts Wolfgang’s and Regina’s wild behavior to both the appearance and intelligence of Wolfgang’s twin siblings, who are well- educated, extremely good looking, compassionate, and moral. Regina’s sister-in- law, Constantia, cares for her until she dies. In the original serial publication of Hickory Hall, moreover, the author includes a report that, when Hugh Wallraven

124 Beth L. Lueck took Constant and Constantia to Europe after Wolfgang’s death, Constant distinguished himself in the French Revolution for his “political genius, purity of purpose, moderation, and courage.”27 This is high praise indeed for one who was the product of miscegenation, arguing for the southern writer’s belief that the mixing of the races need not lead to madness but might instead result in genius and courage. In both Retribution and Hickory Hall—two of her earliest longer works of fiction—E. D. E. N. Southworth tackles difficult issues involving race. The characters and plot devices of sensational fiction—fathers who suddenly die, fairytale romances, shipwrecks, lost children, madwomen, secrets—suit the author’s purpose of setting up situations to challenge her characters physically and morally. The challenges female characters face revolve around race. Erminie Dozier’s apparent metamorphosis overnight from white to black, and free to slave, demonstrates that race is an unstable concept. Without the power and protection of her father’s wealth, Minny cannot protect her baby or herself from separation and sale. For Juliette Summers, the loss of family and fortune in a slave uprising leaves her uncertain about her economic stability and social position, even in the adoptive families that follow: first her adoption by Mr. Summers and later her more informal adoption as a sister by Hester Dent. Throughout her life Juliette remains “haunted by race”;28 the demons of her past are racialized, embodied by the slaves who destroyed her family in the slave insurrection on St. Domingo. Determined to claw her way back up the social and economic ladder, Juliette connives and manipulates to regain what she has lost. But instead, her head ends up on a pike in the heart of the Germanic Confederation. Her fate is the fitting moral retribution awaiting someone who so thoroughly violates the social and moral order. Erminie Dozier, in contrast, is rewarded for her patience and strength by being reunited with her husband and their baby. In Hickory Hall race plays a more complex role, with the author’s sympathy for the Wallravens much in evidence. Again, the Gothic is racialized—the dark secret of African blood mixing in the white family line, the madwoman in the attic whose mixed blood may contribute to her madness. In this novella, Regina Fairfield has based her identity as a white woman on the negation of blacks; her superiority, purity, and whiteness require that blacks be inferior and degraded. When her husband’s race and status as a slave are revealed, therefore, her self- identity cannot survive. She goes insane because this new way of seeing things— that blacks are fully human and equal to whites intellectually—destroys the illusion upon which her identity and world were built. Southworth uses the traditional devices of sensational fiction to criticize sharply Regina Fairfield’s attitude

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 125 about racial purity: She goes made mad upon learning of her husband’s deception about his racial identity and she dies after a long period of confinement in the Wallraven family home. That Regina herself replaces Old Nell as the resi- dent lunatic—confined and shielded from public view—adds an ironic twist to Southworth’s use of this Gothic motif. Regina’s brother, Ferdinand, according to his wife, is heartbroken, presumably by the death of his school friend, Wolfgang Wallraven, as well as by the madness of his beloved sister. These early Southworth fictions, as Teresa Goddu suggests of American literature of the period, are “in- filtrated by the popular, the disturbing, and the hauntings of history” (8). Like the mid-nineteenth-century American culture in which she wrote, like the South where her stories are often located, and like the northern and southern readers who avidly devoured her work, Southworth’s early fiction is truly haunted by race. Its ghosts and spirits continue to intrigue and beckon the reader seeking to understand the place of race in the antebellum United States.

Notes I want to thank Geneva Cobb Moore for her helpful suggestions on questions involving race in Southworth’s novels and Melissa Homestead for her editorial acuity.

1. EDENS, Hickory Hall; or, the Outcast. A Romance of the Blue Ridge (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1861), 130, accessed via Wright American Fiction (1851–1875), http://www. letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/ (hereinafter cited in the text).

2. Quoted in “About the Archives: African American Newspapers,” Accessible Archives, 2007, http://www.accessible.com/accessible/about/aboutAA.jsp/.

3. Shelley Streeby, “Sensational Fiction,” in Companion to American Fiction, 1780– 1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 180–81. See also Colin T. Ramsey and Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, “Dime Novels,” in Companion to Amer- ican Fiction, 1780–1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 263.

4. Streeby, “Sensational Fiction,” 180.

5. Ibid.

6. EDENS, Retribution: A Tale of Passion (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1856), 78, accessed via Google Books, http://books.google.com/ (hereinafter cited in the text).

7. Paul Christian Jones, Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2005), 165.

126 Beth L. Lueck 8. Ibid., 173–74. Southworth tries a different approach to this in a later novel, The Fortune Seeker (1866), in which Astrea de Glacie, a white woman, is kidnapped on her wedding night. While she is unconscious, her fair skin is darkened and her blonde hair is dyed black so she can be sold as a slave. Questions about identity and insanity arise in this novel, too. This transformation suggests that Southworth was exploring “the psychology of role-reversals” in some of her novels, according to Geneva Cobb Moore, in which whites could experience “what it was like to be the Other” (Moore to author, email, July 20, 2011).

9. According to Stanley C. Harrold Jr., in its early years the readership of the Era encompassed both northern and southern readers. “The Southern Strategy of the Liberty Party,” in History of the American Abolitionist Movement, vol. 3, Abolitionism and American Politics and Government, ed. John R. McKivigan (New York: Garland, 1999), 45–46.

10. Nina Baym writes that Juliette’s Italian mother “explains her propensity for intrigue.” Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), 118.

11. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1993), 37–38.

12. Marianne Noble, “The American Gothic,” inCompanion to American Fiction, 1780–1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 170–71.

13. Leland S. Person, “Poe’s Philosophy of Amalgamation: Reading Racism in the Tales,” in Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race, ed. J. Gerald Kennedy and Liliane Weissberg (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 212–19.

14. Teresa A. Goddu, Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation (New York: Co- lumbia Univ. Press, 1997), 3–4.

15. Matt Clavin explores “the Gothicization of the Haitian Revolution,” arguing that writers used “this real event [as] a source of imaginative fancy and personal entertainment, in addition to a pedagogical device” for historians and others who wrote about the revolution and its aftermath. “Race, Rebellion, and the Gothic: Inventing the Haitian Revolution,” Early American Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 2, 4–5.

16. See Jones on Juliette’s “gradual transformation from beauty to fiend,” brought on, in part, by her ownership of slaves. Unwelcome Voices, 163, 168.

17. Goddu, Gothic America, 147.

Southworth’s Sensational and Gothic Transformations 127 18. Paul Christian Jones, “Marrying the Prince of Darkness: Gothic Conventions and Racial Panic in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Hickory Hall” (paper presented at conference of Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, PA, Nov. 8–11, 2006).

19. Jones, Unwelcome Voices, 171.

20. The description of Old Nell in the original serialization is far more detailed and horrific, emphasizing her animal nature: “She was very tall, though half bent—her giant form of skeleton-like leanness—her haggard and ghastly face, dark, spotted, and begrimed with dirt—her garments, so scant, ragged, and excessively filthy, as to defy description, reached in torn and fringe-like shreds only a little below her knees, exposing bare legs and feet, deformed, scarred, and begrimed—while from the whole abhorred heap came the most offensive effluvia. There she stood, chuckling with a fiendish leer at the very loathing she excited—repaying the extreme of disgust with the extreme of hatred. Regina was no longer terrified; but had walked off to the far end of the saloon, to escape the sight and smell of the leprous-like creature.” EDENS, Hickory Hall: Or the Outcast. A Romance of the Blue Ridge, Era, Jan. 2, 1851, 1.

21. Ibid.

22. Jones, “Marrying the Prince of Darkness.”

23. Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1980), 13.

24. Quoted in Justin D. Edwards, Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2003), [vii], 4.

25. Eric S. Lander and Joseph J. Ellis, “Founding Father,” Nature 396 (Nov. 5, 1998): 13–14.

26. EDENS, “Biographical Sketch of the Author,” in Haunted Homestead; And Other Nouvellettes, by EDENS (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1860), 35–36.

27. EDENS, Hickory Hall, Era, Jan. 9, 1851, 1.

28. Goddu, Gothic America, 7.

128 Beth L. Lueck Change of a Dress: Britomarte, the Man-Hater and Other Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War Annie Merrill Ingram

I wish I were a man, I wish I was with the army. —Letter from E. D. E. N. Southworth to Robert Bonner, August 31, 1862

In the letter to New York Ledger publisher Bonner quoted in this chapter’s epigraph, Southworth describes the events leading up to and including the battle of Manassas. From her “excellent” vantage point on the porch of Prospect Cottage, her Georgetown home, Southworth could see to the opposite side of the Potomac River, where “the whole shore was alive with men and the earth grew soldiers instead of trees.” Southworth patriotically and passionately supported the Union, and she recorded both the “awful” truth of “neighbors living side by side and standing there [who] glared at each other with undying hatred” as well as her own thoroughly partisan response:

Two she-rebels were on my hill, outside of my fence however—parad- ing the secession colors and openly proclaiming their sentiments. I felt my human nature rising above my education and had to come in least [sic] I should forget myself and fall upon them. But if they appear there again I will take our water hose and douche them. There is nothing on earth I hate with a hatred so intense as I do a she-rebel—and there are thousands and thousands of them in the district of Columbia.1

After six paragraphs dense with details about the battle and its observers, Southworth closes with her wish to be a man, a pronouncement all the more weighty for its placement at the end of the letter. In all likelihood, Southworth was well aware that she was not the only woman—in real life or in fiction—to express this desire. As DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook explain in TheyF ought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, “[F]rom 1861 to 1865, because of letters home from soldiers surprised by a woman found in their midst and newspaper articles written about women discovered in the ranks, the home front public became well aware that men were not alone in taking up arms against the enemy.”2 Cross-dressing women soldiers appeared not just in private media such as letters and diaries or public media such as newspapers and contemporary histories of the war but also in popular fiction published during and just after the war. Southworth herself created a heroine who fulfilled her author’s wish to appear as a man and serve her country as a soldier: the title character in her serial novel Britomarte, the Man-Hater. In this chapter I argue that Southworth’s Britomarte and other narratives of Civil War cross-dressing are evidence of larger cultural shifts for both gender and genre. Women’s involvement in the war—as nurses, spies, and soldiers on the battlefield, and as sole caretakers, property managers, and single parents at home—effected a change in gender roles and norms that would further develop later in the nineteenth century with the rise of the New Woman, an icon of independence and physical health who spoke her mind and had a lively existence outside the home. As historian Lyde Cullen Sizer notes, “the war opened up [a space] for both men and women to reimagine gender.”3 Transvestite soldier heroines are one example of such a reimagining, and the texts that feature them simultaneously participate in a curious phenomenon of textual transvestism, in which fictional narratives often pass as fact and other forms of textual deception draw attention to multiple sites of cultural dislocation—and to the shifting parameters of the novel itself. Literary scholars have identified the Civil War as a dividing line for American literary history: a war that ended the nation’s faith in Romanticism and ushered in a preference for the realism that was already flourishing in Europe.4 Southworth was in England from 1859 to early 1862 to improve her health and to try to secure profits from the English publication and sale of her novels. Although she was out of the country when the war began, she closely followed the news, noting in another letter to Bonner from September 1861 that “I heard all the details of our disaster at Bull’s Run—which excited and distressed me so much that I was unable to go on with my novel.”5 Upon her return to the United States, Southworth demonstrated her avid support of the cause by hous- ing Union dignitaries (including Lincoln), nursing the Union wounded at Semi-

130 Annie Merrill Ingram nary Hospital in Georgetown, and offering her home as a reserve hospital and later as a way station for Union soldiers returning home after the war. Southworth continued writing her trademark sensation fiction during the war years, but it was not until after the war that she used it as a significant plot line. From October 14, 1865, to September 15, 1866, the New York Ledger ran South- worth’s serial Britomarte, the Man-Hater. The serial was later published in book form by T. B. Peterson, in two volumes retitled Fair Play and How He Won Her (published 1868 and 1869, respectively). Britomarte is a richly plotted work, running over eleven hundred pages in the two Peterson volumes, that details the lives of four young women from the time of their graduation from school in 1860 until the end of the Civil War. The title character, Britomarte Conyers, is a beautiful “amazon” whose high-minded principles against marriage earn her the “man-hater” sobriquet. An orphan with a mysterious past, Britomarte, like the typical heroine of nineteenth-century American woman’s fiction, must make her own way in the world. Her closest friend, Erminie Rosenthal, is the motherless daughter of a Lu- theran pastor who represents the ideal of the pious, obedient True Woman.6 Elfie Fielding, also motherless, is the daughter of a prosperous Virginia farmer; her mis- chievous ways recall Southworth’s phenomenally popular heroine Capitola of The Hidden Hand. Alberta Goldsborough, the heiress to a large Virginia plantation, rounds out the quartet. These brief character descriptions, relying as they do on identified stereotypes, belie the many ways in which each of these characters also acts against type. While the action of most of Britomarte, the Man-Hater concerns the title character, the other three women’s lives provide counterpoint plots that often intersect with one another and with that of Britomarte. Unlike in other (and generally much shorter) Civil War–era fictional treatments of cross-dressing women soldiers, Britomarte does not don her disguise until over half way through the narrative, in the volume titled How He Won Her. Southworth does provide plenty of foreshadowing for her heroine’s protean abilities, however. During a postgraduation house party at the Goldsborough estate, Britomarte performs dramatic readings in which she “transforms herself with great ease” to whatever character she portrays, so convincingly that Erminie declares, “I often think Britomarte might be the Joan of Arc in some future heroic war!” (F P, 109). Southworth establishes Britomarte’s courage early and often through a lengthy plot line in which she is shipwrecked on a deserted island. The island interlude also serves to solidify the romantic relationship that will eventually lead her to enlist in the army. When she first meets Justin Rosenthal, Erminie’s older brother, Britomarte falls immediately and passionately in love. She cannot reveal her feelings toward

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 131 him, however, because doing so would violate the antimarriage stance that she articulates at the very beginning of the novel:

God created woman, a living soul, worthy to stand in His presence and worship him! and if it were only from the reverence she owes him, she should never degrade herself to be any man’s slave! God endowed woman with individual life—with power, will and understanding brain, heart and hands to do His work; and if it were only in gratitude to him, she should never commit the moral suicide of becoming the nonentity of which man’s law makes a wife! (FP, 27)

Like her namesake from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Southworth’s Britomarte guards her chastity out of strictly held principles.7 As an updated nineteenth-century version of the woman warrior, Britomarte connects her principles to more contemporary issues: slavery and women’s lack of legal rights. Britomarte’s independence and feminism are frequently tested in her interactions with Justin, from the time that she discovers that he, too, has shipped as a missionary aboard a vessel bound for Cambodia. When the ship wrecks somewhere in the Indian Ocean, the only apparent survivors are Britomarte, Justin, and Judith Riordan, a young Irish woman who conveniently becomes both chaperone and servant. More than two years of hard work but also Edenic domestic bliss ensue before the three are rescued. Fair Play ends with the castaways’ return to a country torn apart by the Civil War. At the beginning of How He Won Her, Justin enlists in the Union army, and Britomarte—unbeknown to Justin or any of her friends—disguises herself as a young recruit and enlists as well. Her friends suspect why she has suddenly departed: Elfie insists that “she has gone into the army. You know what her sentiments are! You know what her spirit, courage, and independence are! You know that she is not responsible to any human being in the world for her actions! And you also know what a consummate actress she is, and how perfectly she would enact the part of a soldier.”8 In addition to providing textual evidence of how well Britomarte is able to effect her transformation, Elfie’s remarks suggest that this gender-bending is only a “part” to be enacted, not a more permanent change. Several layers of narrative deception are at work in Britomarte’s gender reversal. First, Southworth never directly identifies the soldier “Wing” as Britomarte until near the novel’s end (although the reader figures it out immediately, from the many hints and clues Southworth provides); second, Justin recognizes her/

132 Annie Merrill Ingram him from the beginning but does not reveal to “Wing” that he knows who she/ he is; and third, Britomarte does not reveal her true identity to Justin until he is in mortal danger, and she cannot bear the thought of his dying without knowing how she really feels about him. These deceptions provide delayed narrative gratification about Justin and Britomarte’s developing love affair; they also focus attention less on this romantic relationship and more on their heroic actions during the war. The narrative subterfuge emphasizes the unconventionality of Britomarte’s cross-gendered activity, and the fluidity of gender markers such as names and pronouns allows for a homoerotic reading, as discussed below. Mas- querade, including but not limited to cross-dressing, is an important plot device in other Southworth novels, where it often indicates a point of unresolved tension.9 Even as Britomarte unmasks the unnecessary restriction on women’s participation in dangerous combat situations, she continues to mask her own self-contradictory desire to be in the company of her man. Britomarte is not the only female character wanting to enlist, however. Elfie practices drilling with her father’s rifle and “stud[ies] Casey’s Tactics all day long” (HHWH, 50). She gets her wish and is drafted as the result of one of her practical jokes. The official draft summons is delivered to “Sydney” Fielding, which Elfie explains is her middle name—and thus a legitimate call to duty. By carefully avoiding any gendered pronouns to refer to Sydney, she never explicitly lies to the enrolling officers who end up listing “him” as fit for service. In a comic example of textual (and gender) deception, Elfie insists on reporting for duty, giving this compelling argument in favor of her ability to serve:

I don’t come under any one of the heads of exemption. . . . I am not an alien, nor an invalid, nor an idiot. I am not under eighteen or over forty-five. I am neither the only son of my grandmother, nor am I the father of fourteen small motherless children, and one at the breast. In short, I cannot put in even the smallest of the numerous pleas by which cowards cry off from serving their country. I am a native born citizen of the United States, aged twenty years, sound in mind and body, wind and limb, single, and with no one but my country depending on me for support. (HHWH, 61)

Elfie is ultimately rejected by the provost marshal’s office because of her sex. Her humorous and impassioned speeches in favor of women’s conscription accomplish two important narrative functions, however: They provide convincing

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 133 reasons for women’s ability to fight and, in turn, prepare the reader for Britomarte’s secret enlistment. While disguised as “Wing,” Britomarte performs a number of heroic feats. When other soldiers hesitate to join a dangerous mission, Wing is the first to volunteer. She infiltrates the rebel guerrilla camp under yet another assumed identity (the rebel soldier Gill) and manages to deceive even her close friend Alberta, whose page she becomes while held hostage by the rebels. Having succeeded in this double masquerade, she escapes and reports vital information to Colonel Rosenthal, who promises that she/he “shall have a lieutenant’s commission” for this daring and successful mission. However, Wing will only accept “if the new commission is not to remove [her] from [Justin’s] side” (HHWH, 197).10 As Rosenthal’s adjutant, Wing saves his life several times. When Wing fears that Justin is mortally wounded, she/he refuses to leave him despite the threat of being captured by the enemy. Wing hears Justin’s dying messages, which are directed only to his sister Erminie, and finally weeps “convulsively” because he never mentions Britomarte. Only at this point does he finally acknowledge her:

“Britomarte—now in this supreme hour—now, with my life- blood oozing slowly but surely away . . . may I venture to recognize you and call you by name?” “Justin! Justin! my beloved! my beloved!” exclaimed Britomarte, whom we shall no longer call by her assumed name of Wing. (HHWH, 438)

With this long-delayed narrative gratification finally fulfilled, one would expect the novel to end shortly thereafter. In another example of thwarted narrative expectations, however, there are another five chapters (and seventy-five pages) remaining, in which Britomarte is captured and imprisoned, Justin survives, Richmond falls and Lee surrenders, “Wing” is reported killed in action, Lincoln is assassinated, and the details of Britomarte’s mysterious past are finally revealed. The novel concludes with the betrothal of Britomarte and Justin, but the tensions apparent throughout this work—with Britomarte as a politically feminist, Amazonian protagonist on the one hand and as a conventional heroine, deeply in love, on the other—are not fully resolved at the novel’s close. Southworth gives Britomarte several eloquent, strongly worded, and convincing speeches in favor of women’s rights and against marriage as an inequitable social institu-

134 Annie Merrill Ingram tion, and she positively portrays her as heroic, fearless, coolly and unemotionally courageous, even daring and adroit enough to pass as a frequently promoted Union soldier. However, Southworth also creates a conventional romantic plotline, initially sending her heroine halfway around the world to avoid her suitor but then having her enlist in the army for the sole reason that she can be with him. Southworth seems unable to reconcile Britomarte’s desire to marry with her commitment to those feminist ideals. While the novel opens with Britomarte’s determined refusal to be “any man’s slave,” it closes with a more qualified statement: “While I live . . . I will advocate the rights of woman—in general. But for my individual self, the only right I plead for is woman’s dearest right—to be loved to my heart’s content all the days of my life!” (HHWH, 512). Although at the novel’s opening the narrator calls Britomarte’s impassioned opening speech “heterodoxy” (FP, 27), Britomarte repeats her feminist stance often enough that, by sheer force of repetition, these ideas remain significant in the narrative. Perhaps Southworth, in an effort to please her reading public, felt she needed to balance the more outrageous aspects of her novel—the heroine’s feminist heterodoxy, her outright renunciation of marriage, her transvestism and enlistment in the army—with the equally overt but more familiar fictional conventions of domesticity and romance that accompany Britomarte’s developing love relationship.11 Whatever Southworth’s motivation, these contradictions remain a point of tension and indicate a level of uncertainty about, or at least the mutability of, the social conventions the novel simultaneously criticizes and conserves. The novel’s many instances of narrative subterfuge and textual instability not only underscore the “heterodoxy” of Britomarte’s position but also reveal that textual borders are just as variable as the boundaries of gender identity. When the first half of the serial was published in book format asF air Play, it included a preface by Southworth in which she answers a charge of plagiarizing Charles Reade’s Foul Play, which also featured a plot line about a deserted island.12 Not only did she not plagiarize Foul Play, but, as she explains,

[t]his work was first published in the New York Ledger, and copied in the London Journal, in 1865 and 1866. “Foul Play” is first published in 1868, and with so much resemblance to this work, as might lead any reader of both stories to suspect a plagiarism on the one hand or the other. This esemblancer may be found in that which has been called “the most beautiful and original part” of each story, and which describes the

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 135 strange situation of the ship-wrecked lovers on the solitary island—a situation, I thought, quite unique in literature. Now, while I utterly disclaim all intention to charge the distinguished authors of the last published of these works with any real “foul play,” I feel compelled to state the order in which the two stories first appeared, to secure for myself and my own work, fair play. (FP, 21–22)

As this paratext shows, what constitutes “unique,” “real,” and “fair” is often relative, depending on who makes these claims. One need only look to Shakespeare’s The Tempest to find a story of shipwrecked lovers on an island—and to the epigraph to chapter 12 of the first volume for a quotation from the same. Southworth acknowledges another literary debt in titling chapter 20 in the first volume “Lady Robinson Crusoe.” Southworth is well aware of her literary antecedents, including (perhaps especially) those with similarly deceptive intersections of story and history: At one early point on the island, Justin exclaims, “[H]ow much happier we are than was poor solitary Robinson Crusoe, or his prototype, old Alexander Selkirk!” (F P, 344). From the first pages of its preface to its overt references to other works, the novel raises issues of both textual deception and intertextual play, a combination that parallels the use of gender disguise for both serious and entertainment purposes. Other examples of textual instability in the form of frequent references to other media appear once Britomarte has disguised herself as Wing. For example, shortly before she is captured by rebel guerrillas, Elfie recognizes their leader, “the savage Mutchison”: “I know him by his picture in the illustrated papers” (HHWH, 131). Later on, the narrator describes the guerrillas in the rebel camp in engaged in various everyday activities: “some cooking their rations; some eat- ing their suppers; some drinking whisky, smoking pipes, and playing cards, and some lying flat upon their stomachs, with their limbs extended, their elbows rest- ing on the ground, and their heads bowed upon their hands, while, by the light of the blazing pine-knots, they studied the pictorial papers” (HHWH, 220). The protracted description of those reading the pictorial papers suggests not only a self-referential textual awareness on the part of Southworth but also the importance of story papers to soldiers during the war and to folks at home after the war, as they were reading the nearly year-long serial of Britomarte, the Man-Hater in the Ledger. Blanton and Cook give ample evidence of “the public delight in tales of female cross-dressers”; as they note, and as this next section will detail, “wartime fiction in the form of novelettes, serialized stories, and ballads also publicly promoted the concept of women going to war in the guise of men.”13

136 Annie Merrill Ingram Such texts were published both during and after the war, raising the question of their purpose and effect. In narratives published during the war, overtly political speeches by characters and statements by narrators suggest their function as support of women’s contributions to the war effort (mostly, but not exclusively, in support of the Union), even when those contributions were as radical as killing enemy soldiers while dressed as men. In narratives published after the war, positive portrayals of transvestite women soldiers seem to solidify this behavior as laudable—or at least forgivable, given the circumstances. In all of them, the prev- alence of both cross-dressing and textual deceptions links them implicitly, if not explicitly, to Britomarte, the Man-Hater. Most of these other texts, however, are much shorter and thus far less complexly plotted than Southworth’s novel, raising in turn questions about the further cultural work of the multiple narratives she creates, such as pro-Union Erminie’s rejection of a Confederate suitor, Alberta’s reckless devotion to her Italian lover and the Rebel cause, and Elfie’s vocifer- ous defense of the Union, despite her geographical origins as a Virginian. While Britomarte, the Man-Hater may seem in some ways anomalous in Southworth’s oeuvre, as it engages current events far more directly than her other works, con- textualizing it among other Civil War–era transvestite narratives reveals a typical Southworth strategy: adapting fictional formulas for the purpose of social critique. In their narrative transvestism, these other texts indicate the tensions of a larger literary phenomenon of the later nineteenth century, in which fiction— long decried for being less than fact, especially in an American context—finally comes into its own as a respected genre of belles lettres. Before it can achieve such respectability, however, it must first push some textual boundaries.

* * * * *

“The reader may rely upon this narrative as being strictly authentic.”

Near the bottom of the title page to TheL ady Lieutenant, after twelve lines of subtitles in nine different typefaces, stands the assertion above. Published in 1862, TheL ady Lieutenant purports to be a true story of the “Perilous Adventures and Hair-Breadth Escapes” of “Miss Madeline Moore” and “her lover.” The first- person narrator, Madeline, cuts her hair short, pastes on whiskers and mous- tache, dons “a complete suit of male attire,” and enlists in a Kentucky battalion as “Albert Harville” in order to be with her beloved, Frank Ashton. At the narrative’s end, Madeline reveals her “true” identity to Frank and they marry. She closes with this postscript: “Reader, the foregoing narrative may be relied on as strictly

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 137 authentic. I have changed nothing but our names—these, of course, are fictitious. Hoping that you may be happy as the hero and heroine of this humble story, is the sincere prayer of her who now addresses you for the first and last time.”14 One might accept these assertions at face value, but the lady lieutenant seems to protest too much; there is ample evidence to contradict the text’s apparent authenticity. The language and format of the title page reflect the sensationalism of popular pamphlet novels, highlighting “adventures” twice, describing the narrative as “wonderful, startling and thrilling,” and promising a series of “graphi- cally delineated” events. Forty pages later, the postscript echoes the language of melodramatic romance, with its heavy-handed alliteration of “hoping that you may be happy as the hero and heroine of this humble story,” and coyly confesses that “nothing but our names . . . are fictitious.” From the opening signs of sensation fiction to the closing remarks about the hero and heroine of this “story,” The Lady Lieutenant participates in acts of literary transvestism. Not only does the narrative content focus on a woman cross-dressing as a man, but the form of the narrative passes from one genre to another, between fact and fiction. Identity markers such as names and clothing are readily exchanged, and even the title page assertions of authenticity are costumed, in various fonts and borders. Theenduring fascination with the United States’ only internal conflict, the ongoing efforts of feminist scholars to recover the identities of women who participated in the war effort, and the rich possibilities of cross-dressing for analyzing gender construction all contribute to the renewed historical and critical interest in narratives by or about women who passed as men during the Civil War. The texts discussed here, published between 1862 and 1867, have cross-dressing women as their title heroines and also present textual transvestism: TheL ady Lieutenant, by “Miss Madeline Moore” (1862); Pauline of the Potomac, or, General McClellan’s Spy (1862) and its sequel, Maud of the Mississippi (1863), by “Wesley Bradshaw,” pseudonym of Charles Wesley Alexander; Miriam Rivers, the Lady Soldier; or, General Grant’s Spy (1865), by “M. C. P.”; Southworth’s Britomarte, the Man-Hater (serialized 1865–1866); and Virginia Graham, the Spy of the Grand Army (1867), by “Justin Jones,” pseudonym of Harry Hazel (a name that itself sounds like a pseudonym). Thenumber of women who actually participated in the Civil War while disguised as men is generally estimated to be anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand.15 Although most of these women have remained obscure, a few published their stories and thus continue to intrigue scholars. Two well-known memoirs of cross-dressing Civil War women, Sarah Emma Seelye Edmonds’s Nurse and Spy in the Union Army (1865) and Loreta Janeta Velazquez’s The Woman in Battle

138 Annie Merrill Ingram (1876), also display a kind of narrative transvestism: Both pass as authentic, with frequent but often inaccurate claims to their veracity. Elizabeth Young notes that “critical discussions of [The Woman in Battle] have long stalled on the question of its historical accuracy. When we treat this work as a picaresque nineteenth- century novel rather than as an evidentiary account of the Civil War, however, The Woman in Battle becomes a productive site for an extended inquiry into the meanings of cross-dressing.”16 Young’s analysis of Velazquez’s text provides many useful insights, but most pertinent to this discussion is the ease with which Young transforms the narrative’s genre: To get at a more “productive” investigation of The Woman in Battle, why not “treat this work as a picaresque nineteenth-century novel” instead? The cross-dressing protagonists find it easy enough to change gender identities, and the texts that represent them prove just as fluid in their genre identities. Laura Laffrado, in discussing Edmonds’s narrative, argues that her analysis of this text “recasts the usual oppositional categories of historical veracity and fictionalization, considering instead the resonance of these historical/fictive cross-gender scripts in nineteenth-century U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction culture.”17 As the following examples from other texts will show, these “historical/ fictive cross-gender scripts” also resonate with then-contemporary issues regarding not only gender but also political and erotic attachments. The generic lines between fictional and factual narratives have a genealogy of blurred boundaries; the history of the “novel” as “news,” along with its evolution from exploration and adventure narratives—not to mention the romance18— situates transvestite Civil War narratives within a tradition of implicit (and sometimes explicit) genre passing. In Narrative Transvestism, a study of the eighteenth- century English novel, Madeleine Kahn explores this concept through the “use by a male author of a first-person female narrator . . . to investigate how the eighteenth-century discourse about gender participates in the development of the narrative consciousness that became the distinguishing characteristic of the modern novel.”19 Civil War–era transvestite narratives similarly contribute to the development of American textual (self-) consciousness. Moreover, their insistence on factual foundations underscores the importance of their content during and after the war, as their positive portrayal of female soldiers in combat helped to liberate women from the restrictions placed on the True Woman. The publisher of The Lady Lieutenant, E. E. Barclay of Philadelphia, “special- ized in thrillers—‘true’ stories of suffering, adventure, crime, and passion that were often exaggerations of contemporary news stories.”20 Given its publication early in the Civil War, the narrative’s insistence upon strict authenticity can be seen as patriotic support of the Union—and thus also guilt-free diversion from

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 139 war’s more pressing concerns. When Frank Ashton reveals his decision to join a secret Kentucky regiment “because [his] country calls,” he tells Madeline, “do not urge me to desert my companions in this cause, or to refuse my humble aid to our country when most she needs the brave hearts and strong arms of her children to crush in its infancy this hydra-headed rebellion.”21 Similar outpourings of patriotic fervor appear in two other transvestite narratives published by Barclay, Pauline of the Potomac and Miriam Rivers, which also make various claims to authenticity even as they assume the trappings of sensational thrillers. In these texts, as in The Lady Lieutenant and Southworth’s Fair Play, the most immediately apparent markers of textual indeterminacy can be found in their paratextual apparatus—title pages, prefaces, notes from publishers, epilogues, and postscripts. Gérard Genette defines the paratext as “a threshold, . . . an ‘undefined zone’ between the inside and the outside, a zone without any hard and fast boundary . . . a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a pragmatics and a strategy . . . at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it.”22 As markers of textual liminality, paratexts parallel the gender indeterminacy effected by cross-dressing and can be seen as a similar kind of costume, the site (and sight) of first encounter, leading the reader to assumptions that may or may not be accurate to the text as a whole—or to the character’s full identity. The title page toPauline of the Potomac identifies it as “an authentic and thrilling narrative . . . compiled from reliable sources, including the diary of the lovely heroine herself.” Other prefatory material to Pauline includes a statement, presumably from the publisher, identifying the narrative as “an authentic history of the life of Pauline D’Estraye, and also a thrilling account of her startling adventures and narrow escapes.” No author appears on the title page; instead, the narrative has been “compiled from reliable sources, including the diary of the lovely heroine herself,” by “the Compiler, Wesley Bradshaw.” In this simulacrum of identity passing, even the writer’s name, “Wesley Bradshaw,” is a pseudonym; the actual author, Charles Wesley Alexander, never served as “National Historian of the present war,” except perhaps in his own imagination. He did, however, write a sequel to Pauline, titled Maud of the Mississippi. The letter from “Wesley Bradshaw” prefacing Pauline describes the narrative as the “biography of this patriotic and accomplished young lady . . . obtained, partly from a journal of her own, and partly from those few persons whose important public positions have made them intimately acquainted with her.” Biography, personal journal, and the testimony of important public figures all contribute to the narrative; like the many disguises Pauline will use, each narrative form has its function in the

140 Annie Merrill Ingram story overall. Footnotes in both Pauline and Maud further reinforce the narratives as “fact,” “authenticate” the heroine’s adventures, and emphasize the narratives’ function as pro-Union propaganda. Some of the notes in Pauline emphasize historical accuracy (“this is proved by a reference to Brigadier General McDowell’s Official Report of the Bull Run Battle”), while others allow for more partisan commentary (“the war is in full progress that will hurl the conspirators from their wicked pinnacle”).23 The pamphlet-lengthMiriam Rivers would appear to be more fiction than fact, since the title page offers no claims to authenticity. The postscript, however, directly addresses the reader and makes explicit reference to women’s service during the war: “If I have succeeded in explaining and interesting you in the feelings which have prompted noble women in all ages to do heroic acts, I am amply repaid. Who can tell how many joans of arc our great republic contains? We know that many of our women have laid their lives upon the altar of our country as well on the battle-field as in the hospitals.” Such valorizations of women’s battlefield experiences appear less frequently in Civil War–era publications than commendations of women’s hospital work, yet throughout Miriam Rivers, the narrator supports women’s participation in the war effort. Early on, Miriam raises a company of nurses, but when they are prohibited from joining their hometown regiment—“no women about camps”—Miriam rails against the proscription. She again attempts conventional avenues of involvement, trying to convince herself that “[w]oman’s work is to stay at home and pray,” but ultimately, she realizes that she is strong, capable, and healthy and therefore must disguise herself as a man in order to serve her country. Just before Miriam becomes “Marion Somerville,” the narrator justifies her radical act by remarking, “Ah, how many of our now gay young ladies, could they be permitted to join in some real work for their country, would be changed beings! Had the government controlled and used the willing patriotism of our women as it should, many a soldier-boy might now be living who died from ‘lack of woman’s nursing, and dearth of woman’s tears.’” The emphasis on “real ” reinforces authenticity issues and links them to women’s participation in the war effort; “changed beings” indicates the transformations that occur when women, denied authentic and useful participation in the war as nurses, must resort to transvestism in order to prove their patriotism. Although the portrayal of Miriam’s heroism is generally enthusiastic, the suggestion that the government could have “controlled” women’s patriotism signals that their resulting inappropriate behavior (cross-dressing) should have been contained. Not content to remain useless at home, however, Miriam cuts her hair, changes her clothes, and feels that she is “almost stepping into real life now.”24

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 141 In Virginia Graham, frequent name changes and shifts in narrative voice parallel the title character’s multiple levels of disguise and highlight the flexibility of gender as well as race, class, and sectional identities. Published in 1867, this text seems to capitalize on the popularity of its transvestite narrative predecessors, but even in its playful treatment of masquerade, it shows that the political tensions of sectional and social divisions were far from fully resolved. Virginia Graham begins in the first-person narrative voice of Julian Manly, a captain in the Illinois regiment in which Virginia first enlists as “Oscar Shelby.” Her true sex is quickly discovered, but she is allowed to remain in service as a vivandière. Her ardent patriotism leads her to volunteer for a dangerous spying mission behind enemy lines, her next transvestite adventure. Soon after this success, she tells Manly that her real name is not Virginia Graham and she would prefer to keep her true identity a secret. She then becomes the first-person narrator of an extended embedded narrative that comprises most of the text. Like Madeline Moore’s first-person narrative and Miriam River’s first-person letters home, the shift to Virginia’s own voice legitimizes women’s transvestite activity. In the remainder of Virginia Graham, she becomes “Marietta Marland,” a Mississippi plantation heiress, a “country girl,” a “colored girl,” a rebel soldier, and “George Temple,” clerk to the Confederate headquarters. While posing as Temple and spying for the Union, “his” Confederate commander asks him to infiltrate the Union lines, in “a female disguise! ” As “Stella Clarke,” she/he successfully reaches General Grant (having changed into a blue uniform along the way), gives him information useful to the Union, and manages to uncover a Rebel spy in their ranks: a young man passing as a laundress. When she recounts her exploits as double-spy, she explains that she “transform[ed] [her] outer self from a counterfeit officer of the confederate service to a genuine woman, supposed to be a man in disguise”—although at this point in the narrative what constitutes “counterfeit” and “genuine” is not at all clear.25 Given the publication of Virginia Graham a year after Britomarte, the Man-Hater finished running serially in the Ledger, Virginia’s multiple disguises might have been inspired by Britomarte’s double disguise as the rebel “Gill.” The names of the main characters likewise echo those of Southworth’s narrative: “Virginia” reminds us of the chaste Britomarte, and “Julian” is very similar to Justin. The several instances of men cross-dressing as women recall the infamous episode of Jefferson Davis escaping Union troops in “petticoats” (actually, under his wife’s cloak), further reinforcing the power dynamics of a victorious North over a defeated South.26 Paralleling the intersection of fact and fiction is a gender/genre conflation in which these transvestite narratives play with the forms of “adventure” and “ro-

142 Annie Merrill Ingram mance.” In some American popular literatures of the nineteenth century, fictional genres were often gendered in terms of author, characters, audience, or some combination of these. Adventure stories written by and about men valorized risk, exploration, and conquest. Women wrote sentimental works that focused on domesticity and the romantic involvements of their female protagonists. The male/ adventure, female/domesticity dichotomy is an obvious oversimplification, especially when these formulas overlap with sensationalism and melodrama, two other popular types of nineteenth-century American fiction.27 Nevertheless, the gendered formulas of adventure and sentimental romance gain particular currency in transvestite narratives. For example, Frank Moore, who lauds women’s contributions in the nonfictional Women of the War (1866), gives several reasons why women would risk their lives (and often their reputations) to join the army on the front lines of combat: “Some meant to avoid separation from those who were dearer to them than ease, or life itself; others, from a pure love of romance and adventure.”28 Sarah Emma Edmonds justifies her cross-dressing escapades in Nurse and Spy by asserting that she was “naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious and a good deal romantic.”29 At the beginning of The Lady Lieuten- ant, the first-person narrator introduces herself as “young, ardent, and rather romantic”; she also describes her “plot” to enlist as a cross-dressed soldier as “my adventure.”30 The term “romance” is especially slippery here, as it can refer to both romantic love and the exploits one might expect from a chivalric romance (a genre that involved adventure along with love and/or sexual relationships). Like the cross-dressing heroines they feature, these transvestite narratives subvert and challenge the fixed forms of genre as well as of gender. Civil War transvestite narratives did more than just capture a wide popular audience through their emphasis on adventurous exploits and romantic relationships. The inclusion of a love story between the cross-dressed heroine and a fellow soldier suggests the homoerotic possibilities of both war and sensation stories.31 In Miriam Rivers, Captain Sutherland “wondered why he was so tenderly attached to this boy [Marion/Miriam] he had known but a few months, and tried to analyze the feelings he felt for him. It must be because he was so young and interesting—so gentle and yet so brave. He had never before felt such love for one of his own sex, and he gave up the task of exploring his heart for the cause of that love, satisfied that the love was there.” Such explicit language simultaneously vali- dates and negates the potentially homoerotic attraction Sutherland feels. On the one hand, the use of two male pronouns indisputably evinces same-sex love; on the other hand, a conservative reader could justifiably reject any homoerotic overtones, knowing that Sutherland’s love object is “really” Miriam. The text contains

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 143 a number of similar examples, as in this eroticized and deliberately gender- marked instance of the two weeping together: “It is by no means so strange for a man to weep that it might be characterized as unmanly, and those two friends mingled their tears together in the solitude of their tent.”32 Such scenes of men weeping are a recurrent trope of Civil War poetry and fiction, in which tears are literally and figuratively seminal to the male-male bond. In Britomarte, the narrator explicitly details the same-sex attraction between Britomarte and Erminie, and once Britomarte meets Erminie’s brother Justin, permutations of triangulated eroticism proliferate. When the characters are first introduced, we learn that “at present Erminie’s only love, out of her own family circle, was Britomarte, whom she worshipped with a devotion approaching idolatry. And it was probable [sic] the masculine element in the character of the beautiful young amazon that so powerfully magnetized the maiden” (F P, 30). The mutual devotion of Erminie and Britomarte occasions one of the few times that Britomarte departs from her antimarriage stance. In one exchange, Britomarte says that Erminie talks to her “as a girl talks to her accepted lover” and Erminie replies, “I will be as constant to you as ever woman was to man!” Then Britomarte nearly proposes: “[I]f I were a man I could do but one thing . . . marry you immediately”—to which Erminie “eagerly exclaim[s],” “Oh, would you?” (F P, 46). The irony here is that Britomarte does, in fact, become a “man,” but the “one thing” she does not do while cross-dressed is marry Erminie, or even approach her erotically or affectionately. The attraction of Britomarte and Erminie is triangulated through Justin on a number of occasions, as when Erminie wants to give Britomarte the ring that Justin has given his sister as a graduation present (F P, 57). While shipwrecked on the island, Britomarte insists that Justin act not as a lover but as “my brother” (F P, 328), a role that implicitly draws her that much nearer to Erminie. Maud of the Mississippi and Miriam Rivers also include erotic attractions between women, though again occurring only when one of the women is cross- dressed. In all of these examples, any possibility of relationships that are not heteronormative is prevented by the narrative’s end. The wartime sacrifices of the cross-dressing heroines are rewarded with marriage to an appropriate lover; family ties are revealed and restored; sectional divisions are healed; and gender roles return to “normal.” The final containment of all this subversion, however, does not obviate the very real emotions and erotic attraction that women have for women and men have for men. Ultimately, these narratives challenge assumptions about what is “real”—a person’s gender? a text’s authenticity? a genre’s limits? a nation’s borders? the very

144 Annie Merrill Ingram concept of a nation? In their indeterminacy and transgressions of form, these narratives show that textual boundaries, like political allegiances and gender distinctions, are far less rigid and impermeable than their societies might insist upon. In Britomarte Southworth highlights these indeterminacies not only in the plot line involving Britomarte’s transvestism, but also in those of the other protagonists. Erminie’s love for Eastworth is so deep that she never suspects him of political duplicity until he finally (and proudly) confesses to her that he is “a secessionist!” (F P, 450). In response, she breaks their engagement and passionately defends her own political allegiance: “I have loved this Union so much! I have thought of her as the Promised Land, the New Jerusalem! the refuge of all the oppressed! the hope of the world! And would you aim a death-blow at her?” (F P, 452). For- tunately for Erminie, Eastworth redeems himself not only by saving her father’s life but also by renouncing his commitment to the Confederacy. By the end of the novel, “there is not a man in the country who mourns with a deeper sorrow over the fatal madness of the secession than does General Eastworth” (HHWH, 490). They marry and move to “his home in Virginia,” where they devote themselves to a different cause: “to restore order and industry in their own section of country, and to promote peace and good-will between the North and the South” (HHWH, 511). An example of what historian Nina Silber calls “the romance of reconciliation,” the Eastworths’ union is “but the forerunner of a deeper and broader reconciliation yet to come” (HHWH, 496), a prediction Southworth makes at the close of her serial in 1866, a year before Congress would pass the first of the Reconstruction acts. Such reconciliation is not an option for Alberta Goldsborough, the plantation heiress who secretly marries Vittorio Corsoni, formerly the music master at her school and now the infamous “Free Sword,” a Rebel guerrilla known as much for his fearlessness during battle as for his passionate love of his wife, who fights by his side—without disguising herself as a man. Alberta dies on the battlefield, having “received in her heart the shot that was intended for [Corsoni’s] bosom” (HHWH, 284). When Corsoni realizes that he is mortally wounded by the same shot, he “bitterly” tells a fellow soldier, “What do you suppose I really cared for the Confederacy? I am a foreigner. What are your civil wars to me? It was for her I drew my sword” (HHWH, 285). With their misdirected Rebel sympathies ultimately punished in the narrative by their deaths, Alberta and Corsoni fought not only for the wrong side but also for the wrong reason: more for love of each other than for love of country. Southworth’s own love of country is readily apparent, from her fervent support of the Union in her letters to Robert Bonner during the early years of the

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 145 war to the inspiring characters she creates in the serial she writes soon after the war. In this narrative about patriotism and feminism, about moral duty and women’s rights, what emerges is the power of transformation, in the ability of a cross-dressed woman to perform courageously as a soldier or for an avowed Confederate to see the error of his ways. Whether temporary or permanent, such transformations provide new possibilities for gender roles and national healing. Although all the transvestite women in the narratives discussed here (and most of those who did so in reality) eventually return to their original gender, the lessons they learn while masquerading as men pave the way for more permanent changes. This description of the New Woman could well be based on Britomarte: “[E]schewing marriage, she fought for professional visibility [and] espoused innovative, often radical economic and social reforms. . . . Her quintessentially American identity . . . permitted her to defy proprieties, pioneer new roles, and still insist upon a rightful place within the genteel world.”33 As these transvestite narratives challenge appropriate behavior for nineteenth- century American women, they also extend the parameters of nineteenth-century American fiction. Short narratives published pseudonymously in pamphlet or paperbound forms comprise the majority of the texts discussed here, but the publication of Southworth’s much longer novel in standard clothbound volumes, under her own well-known name, suggests that the Civil War transvestite narrative had reached a level of middlebrow acceptability soon after the war’s end. Whether immediately visible in their paratexts or encoded in their characters or plots, all of these narratives display elements of the sensational popular culture that Shelley Streeby identifies with the mid-nineteenth century, which “combined thrills and terror; frequently showcased visual tableaux and action scenes rather than emphasizing domestic scenes and the interior, psychological development of rounded characters; aimed to provoke extreme embodied responses in readers; and often lingered on the grotesque and horrible.”34 Because the realities of war are inherently grotesque and horrible, any accurate description of them will seem sensationalized. For example, in a fight aboard the ship that rescues Britomarte from the island, a shot “took off the head of the brave old salt, spin- ning it round and round until it struck the deck, while the headless body sank quivering down upon the very spot where but a moment before the form of the coward had rolled” (FP, 598–99). Later, a battle scene reveals a soldier whose “whole face was blown off, and nothing but a gory, crimson, quivering mass of flesh remained where it had been” (HHWH, 466). Such instances of graphic gore are admittedly infrequent in Southworth’s novel, but they do present convincing evidence of reality of war. Southworth’s

146 Annie Merrill Ingram exposure of other realities—the limitations of woman’s sphere, the burden of filial obedience, the conflict between private and public selves—locates this work within a chronology of the emergence of literary realism that is only recently being revised. For example, Joyce Warren argues that “the gendered construction of realism artificially set the date for the beginning of realism in the United States as the late nineteenth century, neatly excluding mid-nineteenth-century women writers. If we examine the works of antebellum women writers, however, it becomes clear that American literary realism began much earlier.”35 I would similarly argue that Civil War transvestite narratives, with their multiple boundaries in flux, provide particularly fascinating evidence of another point in the evolution of American realism. Southworth’s Britomarte, as the most complex of these narratives, both addresses and enacts various liminalities. It portrays women negotiating the necessary shift from obedient True Woman to a more independent New Woman. The disruptions of war enable a carnivalesque suspension of the usual, with the masquerade of cross-dressing as one of the primary means by which women can test their mettle—and try on a less confining existence. By analogy, such texts might assume the garb of revolution or don a cloak of respectability, but whatever form they take, they reveal that the change of a dress ultimately leads to more complex and farther-reaching transformations.

Notes 1. EDENS to RB, Aug. 31, 1862, DU.

2. DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2002), 145.

3. Lyde Cullen Sizer, The Political Work ofN orthern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850–1872 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000), 179. The New Woman “was a revolutionary social ideal at the turn of the century that defined women as independent, physically adept, and mentally acute, able to work, study, and socialize on a par with men.” Lois Rudnick, “The New Woman,” in The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writ- ing in the United States, ed. Cathy N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), 630–31.

4. A recent textbook gives this pithy overview of the shift: “The disillusionment and skepticism generated by the bloody conflict and its aftermath helped spur the development of a literary movement known as ‘realism.’ With its emphasis on representing things as they actually are, realism may be understood as a reaction against idealism, the

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 147 representation of things as they should be, and romanticism, both in the common sense of that term and in the narrower literary sense of writings that emphasize emotion, imagination, intuition, and the primacy of the individual.” Susan Belasco and Linck Johnson, eds., Bedford Anthology of American Literature, vol. 2 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 31–32. While most literary histories associate the rise of realism with William Dean Howells, citing his and other male authors’ fiction of the 1880s, Sharon M. Harris “challenge[s] traditional assumptions about the rise of realism that exclude women’s contributions.” Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism (Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn- sylvania Press, 1991), 2.

5. EDENS to RB, Sept. 17, 1861, Papers of Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, 1852–1894, Clifton Waller Barrett Collection, University of Virginia Li- brary, Charlottesville.

6. Nina Baym explains the character type of “woman’s fiction” thus: “[T]he heroine begins as a poor and friendless child. Most frequently an orphan . . . the heroine develops the capacity to survive and surmount her troubles.” Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), 35. For background on the True Woman, see Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151–74. Southworth explicitly identifies Erminie as “a true woman.” EDENS, Fair Play; or, The Test of theL one Isle (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1868), 30 (hereinafter cited as FP). Although I treat Britomarte as one novel (as Southworth originally conceived it as a serial), I cite the two separately titled volumes.

7. Although Southworth never refers directly to TheF aerie Queene, either in the text or in epigraphs, a few details in Fair Play suggest a connection between her Britomarte and Spenser’s. On the island, for example, Britomarte’s first home is called a “rude bower” (330) (evoking the Bower of Bliss in The Faerie Queene) and “a fairy queen’s palace” (526).

8. EDENS, How He Won Her. A Sequel to Fair Play (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1869), 109 (hereinafter cited as HHWH).

9. Many Southworth heroines, not just Capitola in TheH idden Hand, masquerade as men. For example, in The Deserted Wife (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1875), Hagar, who enjoys “exhilarating woodland sports,” “cut[s] off her hair, and dresses like a man!” as one of her many forms of rebellion against propriety and social expectations (480). In Miriam, the Avenger (Philadelphia: 1874), which is set during the war of 1812, Jacquelina, androgynously nicknamed “Jacko,” competes in a mock tournament disguised as “Prince Ariel, from the Court of Fairy” and later plays a ghost by dressing up in an old soldier’s uniform; this ploy succeeds in getting her released from a convent, with its stultifying restrictions on young women’s behavior (217, 235–36). In TheF atal Marriage (Philadel- phia: Peterson, 1863), Lionne disguises herself as a young man in order to enter the state

148 Annie Merrill Ingram assembly, where she hands her villainous husband Deville the proof of his crime: two marriage certificates and a copy of the law that cites bigamy as a felony (405).

10. Blanton and Cook note that this practice was as common among women as men during the Civil War, citing a newspaper article from 1864: “[O]ver seventy of these martial demoiselles, when their sex was discovered, were acting as officers’ servants.” They Fought Like Demons, 145.

11. Sizer notes that “Northern women’s war novels that appeared between 1865 and 1868 . . . uniformly challenged the dichotomies of society. . . . [M]any novels offered both traditional and nontraditional heroines, suggesting both the continuity with past domestic heroines and the beginnings of newer conceptions of womanhood.” Political Work of Northern Women, 216.

12. “A reviewer for The Nation suggests an opportunistic justification for the title change, arguing that the novel’s title was changed from ‘“Britomarte, the Man-Hater” . . . or something equally felicitous and suggestive’ to Fair Play to capitalize on the popularity and superior reputation (among the critical elite) of the novelist Charles Reade.” Karen Tracey, Plots and Proposals: American Women’s Fiction, 1850–90 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2000), 147.

13. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 156.

14. Madeline Moore, The Lady Lieutenant (Philadelphia: Barclay, 1862), 17, 19, 40.

15. Blanton and Cook note that “the answer most often given is about four hundred. This statistic was supplied by Sanitary Commission agent Mary Livermore in her 1888 memoirs.” TheyF ought Like Demons, 6. Livermore’s “about four hundred” has proven remarkably persistent and is the number most often cited (although many scholars cite other historians, rather than Livermore, for this statistic). Blanton and Cook’s research “produced evidence of about 250 women soldiers in the ranks of the Union and Confed- erate armies. There were, undoubtedly, many more.” They Fought Like Demons, 7. Richard Hall claims a much larger number: “The results of continuing research have led me to believe that there were at least a thousand, possibly several thousand, women who served as soldiers in the American Civil War.” Women on the Civil War Battlefront (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2006), 11.

16. Elizabeth Young, “Confederate Counterfeit: The Case of the Cross-Dressed Civil War Soldier,” in Passing and the Fictions of Identity, ed. Elaine K. Ginsberg (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1996), 185.

17. Laura Laffrado, “‘I Am Other than My Appearance Indicates’: Sex-Gender Rep- resentation in Women’s Nineteenth-Century Civil War Reminiscences,” Over Here: A European Journal of American Studies 17 (1997): 162.

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 149 18. See, for example, Michael McKeon, TheO rigins of the English Novel,1600–1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987), who identifies one origin of the novel as the romance and articulates at length the “destabilization of generic categories,” including that “seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century writers often use the terms ‘romance,’ ‘history,’ and ‘novel’ with an evident interchangeability” (25). Mikhail Bakhtin discusses the development of the novel parallel to contact with the New World; he further notes “the novel’s special relationship with extra literary genres, with the genres of everyday life and with ideological genres. . . . And in later stages of its development the novel makes wide and substantial use of letters, diaries, confessions. . . . [T]he novel often crosses the boundary of what we strictly call fictional literature.” The DialogicI magination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981), 33. Lennard Davis explores what he terms “the undifferentiated matrix” of “news/ novel discourse.” Factual Fictions: TheO rigins of the English Novel (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1983).

19. Madeleine Kahn, Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth- Century English Novel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), 2.

20. Theodora Mills, “E. E. Barclay and Company,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 49, American Literary Publishing Houses, 1638–1899, ed. Peter Dzwonkoski (Detroit: Gale Research, 1986), 39.

21. Moore, Lady Lieutenant, 15.

22. Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cam- bridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 2.

23. Wesley Bradshaw [Charles Wesley Alexander], Pauline of the Potomac Pauline, or, General McClellan’s Spy (Philadelphia: Alexander, 1862), 13, 35, 31.

24. M. C. P., Miriam Rivers, the Lady Soldier; General Grant’s Spy (Philadelphia: Bar- clay, 1865), 116, 44, 45, 44, 46 (emphasis added).

25. Justin Jones [Harry Hazel], Virginia Graham, the Spy of the Grand Army (Boston: Loring, 1867), 100, 103.

26. For a discussion of this power dynamic and the Jefferson Davis episode, see Nina Silber, TheR omance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993). See also Elizabeth Young, Disarming the Nation: Women’s Writing and the American Civil War (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999).

27. For foundational discussions of the female audience for nineteenth-century domestic-sentimental fiction, see Baym, Woman’s Fiction, and Mary Kelley, Private

150 Annie Merrill Ingram Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Ox- ford Univ. Press, 1984). On nineteenth-century American sensation fiction, see David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: TheS ubversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), and Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002). On the popularity of melodrama in nineteenth-century Amer- ican theater, see David Grimstead, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture, 1800–1850 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1987), and on melodrama in nineteenth- century fiction, see Peter Brooks,The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1995).

28. Frank Moore, Women of the War; TheirH eroism and Self-Sacrifice (Hartford, CT: Scranton, 1866), 17.

29. S[arah] Emma E[velyn] Edmonds, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps and Battle-Fields (Hartford, CT: W. S. Williams, 1865), 120–21.

30. Moore, Lady Lieutenant, 13, 17. Blanton and Cook argue, “Pecuniary gain, desire for independence from family and home, and quest for adventure, all common motivations for many male soldiers, were far less permissible for women in a society that defined the ideal female realm as primarily home and family.” TheyF ought Like Demons, 162. This seems not to be the case with the fiction I discuss here, however, in which “adventure” is a frequently mentioned motivation and is not disparaged by either narrators or characters.

31. David S. Reynolds notes that “the eroticized language of same-sex affection, previously seen mainly in private letters or diaries, was thus part of public life during the war.” Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Vintage, 1996), 428.

32. M. C. P., Miriam Rivers, 70, 75.

33. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian Amer- ica (New York: Knopf, 1985), 245.

34. Streeby, American Sensations, 30.

35. Joyce W. Warren, “Performativity and the Repositioning of American Literary Realism,” in Challenging Boundaries: Gender and Periodization, ed. Joyce W. Warren and Margaret Dickie (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2000), 8–9.

Transvestite Narratives of the Civil War 151

E. D. E. N. Southworth: An “American George Sand”? Charlene Avallone

If the Southern Literary Messenger were the arbiter of reputation, E. D. E. N. Southworth would have been damned as the American George Sand. The magazine awarded her some part of “the doubtful honors of a Dudevant” beginning with The Deserted Wife, “a work of the very worst description of the loose-tunic and guilty-passion school” of “French sentimentalism.”1 Shannondale, too, the Messenger found “equally vicious in its tendency” as “the compositions of George Sand,” although this novel lacked “those striking qualities” that make hers “fascinating.”2 By contrast, The Mother-in-Law ranked as the “strongest” of Southworth’s “highly-colored ‘artist’ productions,” while containing no “positively immoral passages” akin to the notorious steamboat seduction scene in The Deserted Wife. Still, this novel too displayed “questionable . . . morality” and numerous formal features that betrayed Southworth’s “strong, unfeminine, thoroughly French organization” and established her as an “admiring reader of the more exception- able productions of the present French School of Romance writers.”3 Together the Messenger’s three reviews of Southworth’s novels suggest multiple parallels between her writing and Sand’s, parallels in sentiment, moral tone and tendency, the flouting of social and literary decorum, the treatment of passion (especially adulterous passion), “indelicate” plot incidents, “general moulding [sic] of character,” an insinuating or allusive mode of representation (rather than verisimilitude and directness), intense and “Frenchified” style, and self-conscious artistry.4 Yet Southworth did not become “the American Sand” as, say, James Fenimore Cooper became “the American Scott” or Catharine Sedgwick “the American Edgeworth.” No other journal took up the parallel. Writing after the Messenger’s review of Shannondale, Henry Peterson, the publisher of Southworth’s serials in the Saturday Evening Post, consoled himself in an editorial “that she is outgrow- ing” such “faults” as “a leaning in certain parts to the French school,” if not as fast as “[w]e hoped.”5 Aside from Nina Baym, the first actually to label Southworth “the American George Sand,” modern critics largely ignore the equivalence. Baym generalizes that nineteenth-century reviewers “called” Southworth “the American George Sand” because she wrote “something called ‘high-wrought fiction’” or “[n]ovels of passion”—a dramatic, popular form in an “intensified” style, what reviewers saw as “the antithesis” of the domestic novel.6 Linda Naranjo-Huebl, the only other critic who notices the linking, lays greater stress on objections to Southworth’s “moral tone”; reviewers disapproved not only of her “style” but also her “subject matter” as “excessive, extravagant, wild, . . . dangerous.”7 Both Baym and Naranjo-Huebl approach the linking of Southworth and Sand exclusively as a question of reception history, and therefore neither extends the reviews’ connection of the two writers. Thelack of critical attention to parallels between the two writers reflects the general lack of attention to intertextuality in Southworth studies. Most of the small notice that does exist positions her work against canonical men’s writing as derivative, serving to deny her originality and artistry. Frank Luther Mott offers no support for his contention that “she was a born imitator” whose work simply “echoes” that of Scott, Dickens, and Cooper.8 Still, his detraction recurs as if authoritative. Even in an entry in a feminist encyclopedia asserts Southworth “perhaps unconsciously echoes” these writers. The most extended address of literary intertextuality in her work deems Southworth less creative than Melville because she “reinscribes” sentimental ideology through “happy endings” of marriage, “[t]rue to the formula made popular by Scott and Cooper.”9 Southworth herself emphatically denied any facile imitation in her writing. Toward the end of her career, she “challenge[d] anyone to find anything in my stories that ever was published in any preceding story.”10 She was wary, however, of others trading off imitations of her fiction, counting the “Points of Identity” between her own and later novels to judge whether they added up to plagiary.11 Yet while originality appears essential to her sense of her achievement, her sense of originality appears to accommodate correspondences with earlier texts and genres. Her fiction openly acknowledges when a character develops from a Shakespearean “prototype and namesake” and registers when genre features of a “domestic tragedy” she fictionalizes concur with those of “old Greek drama.”12 Together, Southworth’s attention to literary pilfering and her fiction’s self- conscious assimilation of pretexts reveal concern about the part that another’s writing may legitimately play in the creation of a later text. Such concerns indicate that the challenge of creative imitation occupied an important place in Southworth’s composition process. An examination of Southworth’s novels in the context of Sand’s oeuvre and contemporary status can affirm the Messen- ger’s contention of parallels and show significant “Points of Identity” as well as

156 Charlene Avallone transformations of the French writer’s work. Intertextual study of the two writers’ fiction affords means to explore multiple ways that Southworth could (and likely did) find model and provocation in Sand’s work—in Sand’s serial form of storytelling and format of publication, in her unconventional or hybrid genres, in her repertoire of narrative devices, character types, and thematic interests, in her social criticism, even in her fiction’s self-conscious awareness of its relations to other texts and textual traditions. This approach also brings into relief the originality of Southworth’s hyperbolic style, as she translates aspects of Sand’s often ironic Romanticism into her own characteristic blend of idealism and parody. Opening up the question of intertextuality suggests that Southworth, for all the haste required in serial publication, worked consciously and carefully as a writer; intertextual study shows her thinking and her craft in serious dialogue with a contemporary literary artist of the caliber of Sand. Both circumstantial and textual evidence suggest that Southworth was a critical as well as “diligent and admiring reader” of contemporary French romance13 and also of French tradition more broadly. Between 1829 and 1835, Southworth studied in the school of her step-father, Joshua Henshaw, who was known as a “teacher of languages,”14 and, likely, her own career as teacher presumes some training in French. As a woman whose familiarity with the language shows in her writings, who identified with her Gallic ancestry, and who “read everything she could lay her hands on” in her youth,15 Southworth likely found her way to Sand, the French author most discussed in the United States by midcentury.16 Southworth evinces more familiarity with the French language and literature than most American women novelists who were her contemporaries. Some less-educated readers and her unsympathetic editor at the Saturday Evening Post found fault with her French phrasing as surpassing their comprehension or in- terrupting the pleasure of effortless entertainment, “so many bumps [a] reader must jolt over when his enthusiasm is highest.”17 More telling than an occasional complaint or error in her use of the language, Southworth sometimes employs a bilingual subtitle or identifies her genre with a French label (as in The Wife’s Victory and Other Nouvellettes,1854). And when it comes to the unconventional female figures who people her work or to her critique of the failures of marriage, Southworth appears to think in French, as evinced in such details in The Deserted Wife as the “esprit malin” attributed to Hagar and her epithet as “La Lionne de Chase,” as well as by the novel’s focus on “mesalliance.”18 Unlike many early American women writers, who often invoke French culture to establish their own or characters’ superior moral status, Southworth does not make French culture stand for the menacing antithesis of American domesticity.19

An “American George Sand”? 157 Her oeuvre moves from tentative defense of things French at the beginning of her career to later exuberant appreciation and parody of stereotype. If “French romances” can leave a woman’s “head . . . a little turned,” “The Married Shrew” (1847) shows they need not destroy her “principles.”20 The Hidden Hand (1859) celebrates its heroine with a French name and a rebellious spirit inherited from grandparents who “perished on the scaffold in the sacred cause of liberty” in the French revolution of 1830, and the novel’s narrator enthuses over the “Sacre! Dia- ble! and other ejaculations . . . profane to set down in French or English” with which le Docteur St. Jean curses the villain: “I rejoice in a Frenchman, for the frank abandon with which he gives himself up to his emotions!”21 Throughout her career, Southworth appears especially interested to engage French literature in a dialogue of ideas. In “The Wife’s Victory,” the narrator characterizes the protagonist by opposition to the “rule” of “that agreeable giber, Rochefoucault . . . that any woman may be safely flattered on any subject,” resisting his misogyny even as she reflects something of his irony.22 In The Mother-in-Law, the educated slave Anna Sommerville, lecturing her mistress against sentimentalism, protests the fatal broken heart to which Madame de Staël consigns her poet-heroine: “[T]his ideal Corinne was destroyed by a conflagration of passion—What then? She had a glorious brain. . . . She had no life in her affections—well, she might have had a glorious life in her intellect.”23 That Southworth does not engage Sand as openly as others in the French tradition does not surprise, given the hostility to Sand that lingered in such reactionary criticism as the Messenger’s. Yet neither should it surprise that a literary aspirant would find Sand’s work particularly engaging, for when Southworth began to publish many ranked Sand among the greatest of contemporary writers. It would hardly have been possible for any woman to treat the theme of adultery, as Southworth does repeatedly, without evoking Sand, who figured as the “Muse of Adultery” in much anglo- Atlantic criticism, in part for her fiction’s address of that motif and in part for the gossip surrounding her own private life.24 It would hardly have been possible to make a protagonist simultaneously an opera singer and domestic-moral exemplar, as Southworth does Hagar in The Deserted Wife, without conjuring up Sand’s prima donna, Consuelo. Paris was the cultural capital of the Western world in the nineteenth century (as Pascale Casanova reminds us);25 Sand, as contemporary critics observed, was “perhaps the greatest phenomenon” of the era;26 and Consuelo was the masterpiece that renovated Sand’s moral status, making it permissible for respectable women to acknowledge they approved at least some of her work. Sand’s reputation went through several incarnations, as her career passed through several phases—Romantic love stories, philosophical and

158 Charlene Avallone religious fictions, novels of democratic socialism—before culminating in the idealism of her masterpiece and romans rustic or pastoral idylls, books approved by even the conservative Sarah Hale.27 At the time Southworth commenced her career, notices of Sand’s writing were trending away from the strident moralism exhibited by the Messenger, which could have enhanced the appeal of Sand as a model for emulation. Censure of the roman feuilleton did continue to link Sand’s name with that “exaggerated” form, the serial novel that had originated in French newspapers.28 But Sand distanced her own hybrid forms from the excesses of the genre—as in her preface to La Mare au diable (1845), which states that the modern romance should not probe the sores of society but rather replace the parable of the ancients as an idealist mode of revealing truth.29 Even a conservative journal could remark a change in the genre, if remaining skeptical about it: As “the feuilletonistes” began “turning off morality and democracy, and philanthropy,” Sand, “a philosopher” with a “style . . . . better than that of any [other] modern French writer,” now had “grown. . . unblushingly moral.”30 That writing feuilletons was widely reputed to involve “little labor and much money” for Sand31 might have made the serial format appeal to Southworth, who was struggling to support two children on a teacher’s “inadequate” salary.32 Southworth would not only develop her talents as a writer and make her reputation as an author through the serial but also use the form to popularize antislavery reform with novels serialized in the National Era,33 much as Sand had built a career as noted author, reformist, and popularizer of Romantic fiction in French periodicals. The criticism that brokered Sand’s transatlantic reputation represented her chiefly as a writer of passion, a social critic, and, above all, an extraordinary literary genius. For many early critics, the emotional intensity of Sand’s repertoire of plots, topoi, and characters classed her in a French “school of over-heated romance,”34 that school to which the Messenger consigns Southworth. Sand’s “highly wrought” tales violated classical literary decorum as they flouted “the rule of the unities [and] all the laws of probability.”35 Her early fiction dealt too much in the drama of vice, crime, and horror, and, worse, in a “perpetual harping on the sexual passion” (a “topic” that some “supposed pure-minded women made . . . a stranger to their thoughts”), in “lawless” and often adulterous passion.36 Many found not only immorality and a noxious “tone”37 in such “revolutionary” Romantic literary features but also an “impatience of all restraint” and a radical ideology evolving from the 1830 July Revolution, making her fictions dangerous social criticism.38 Critics indicted the “crack-brained theorist” for challenging the “natural divisions in society” and “[g]overnment and laws, . . . and . . . [social]

An “American George Sand”? 159 institutions” while “declaim[ing] about universal liberty and equality” and “the modern doctrine respecting the rights of woman.”39 They found particularly troubling Sand’s depiction of marriage, that “special object of her satire.”40 Yet even hostile critics early on acknowledged Sand’s exceptional imagination, invention, and extraordinary powers of description, pathos, and satire.41 Her prose style, “remarkable for beauty of diction and power of expression,” was unsurpassed.42 Some notices approvingly published Sand’s own accounts of her idealist and parabolic modes of representation.43 By midcentury, when less conservative critics reassessed avant-garde traits of Sand’s work, even her fervent emotionalism and social criticism were valued as marks of the “free, bold sweep” of a “genius” who could “scale the loftiest heights of human aspiration, and sound the deepest depths of human crime and passion.”44 Sand gained premiere status variously as the best female writer, the best French writer, or, simply, “the best living prose writer,” the “greatest writer of her day.”45 Even a critic who rebuffed the growing admiration that would make “a female Shakspeare [sic] . . . of Madame Sand” proposed that Americans look to such French fictionists for “plots, and all those ingenious contrivances in which they so excel.”46 Although only the Messenger directly linked Southworth with Sand, other reviews of Southworth echoed the French writer’s reception. Southworth drew similar praise for “descriptive powers” and “great powers of the imagination, and strength and depth of feeling,” while she drew a similar mix of censure and praise for exhibiting “knowledge of the sterner and wilder passions.”47 Some noted that readers liked her “passionately sensuous style”; others objected it was “colored so highly.”48 Southworth, too, was faulted for want of “reverence for classical taste,” “the proprieties of fictitious composition,” and probability.49 Critics disapproved of her “tone,” extravagant crimes and “horrors,” and critical characterizations of men.50 Her unconventional theory of marital relations also prompted disapproval, as did her “practice of writing serials.”51 She, too, commanded extraordinary status, as “the most popular of our female novelists” and her country’s “best writer.”52 When academic criticism later fashioned paradigms that removed the best- selling women writers from the modernist canon, Southworth’s novels were admitted to exceed those paradigms in ways that again recall Sand. Southworth transcends her “usual” categorization among the popular “domestic sentimental- ists,” according to Alexander Cowie, “in her emphasis on ‘romantic’ elements,” in her “original” plotting of cross-class marriage, her “foreign settings” connected to France, and her “relatively bold . . . treatment of ‘passion.’”53 For Helen Papashvily, Southworth departs from domestic fiction with her “romantic interest in Ca- tholicism,” conscious devotion to writerly detail, and female protagonists who

160 Charlene Avallone rise above the genre’s stereotype of femininity.54 Even the prose “style” in some of Southworth’s writing surpassed domestic fiction, Cowie admits, for it “looked like literature” to readers and critics.55 In the nineteenth century, the most explicit objections to Southworth as a writer in the Sand school targeted The Deserted Wife, specifically the novel’s two scenes of adulterous seduction: John Huss Withers’s bigamous courtship of Sophie Churchill and the steamboat scene in which Raymond Withers seduces Rosalia Aguilar into accompanying him to Europe. The novel proper opens, as several of Sand’s fictions do, with a description of provincial life that resonates with social and psychological implications for the stories of infidelity that follow. Southern plantation culture has left the land “worn out by that wretched system of agriculture,” the “seaport town, withered in the germ,” and the line descending from aristocratic settlers sunken below “the very menials” in “idleness [and] dissipation” (34, 35, 32, 34). Southworth prefaces this setting with an “Introduc- tion,” which, like the notices that Sand appended to various editions of her early romances, previews the fiction’s central motif of marriage and indicts social institutions she identifies as responsible for frequent marital failure: the family, the nation’s social customs, law, and education (here moral and “physical education,” coded phrasing that includes sexual education) (29). Southworth “Frenchifies” her focus in attributing the failure of marriage through desertions to “mesalliance” [sic] (24), what Sand earlier calls “des unions mal assorties” (ill-assorted unions).56 As in Sand’s early romances, The Deserted Wife deploys sentimental and sensational devices in a mixed genre narrative that exposes marriage without mutual love and equality as an institution approximating rape or slavery. It is not surprising the Messenger protests Southworth’s “tone” and offenses against “the proprieties” and situates this novel of abuse and adultery in the “guilty-passion school” of “French Sentimentalism.”57 Sand’s Valentine (1832) mounts a similar critique in a story focused on the developing passion between the commoner Bénédict and the aristocratic title character, who weds, as public opinion demands, a man of her own class. While Valentine hides behind a locked door to avoid consummating her marriage, Bénédict protests marriages of convenience as legitimized violation: “Yes, rape! Daily, in the name of God and of society, some coward gainst the hand of some ill-fated girl, forced by her parents, her reputation or want to stifle a pure love [and marry against her inclinations]. [As] society approves, the modest, trembling woman . . . falls withered beneath the kisses of a loathed master.”58 Even as the novel passionately likens marriage to rape and slavery, Sand allows distance from Bénédict’s views and melodramatic action. She flags Bénédict as young and

An “American George Sand”? 161 exceptionally excitable, presenting him with a combination of sympathy and romantic irony that makes it difficult to establish the narrator’s own opinion. Southworth, by contrast, relies on the devices of melodrama, including an inflated style, to develop the imagery of rape to draw readers into a woman’s emotional experience of forced marriage. She dramatizes the trope of rape in the Reverend Wither’s ravishment of Sophie, making her reader witness in detail the old man’s abuse of his “pastoral privilege” to gain access to the orphaned seventeen-year-old he knows lives “quite alone” and whose “handsome property” he covets (72, 53, 72). Marriage such as he proposes to this “mere child” is clearly equivalent to rape, commonly then called “the fate worse than death”: Sophie “would rather die! ” than marry this man who presses her “fate” upon her with physical and psychological force (90). Withers “caught her hand” and “passed his arm around her waist. . . . She shrank . . . as though it had been the clammy coil of a serpent. . . . [S]he attempted to withdraw herself from the embrace of his arm, but every attempt was punished by a tighter fold” (90, 91). Over her protests that the very “idea of marrying” him terrifies her, he demands a wedding date, arguing her reputation is otherwise ruined since his nightly pastoral visits were not chaperoned (92). Withers makes plain that no such “puerile passion” as love motivates his desire (93); Southworth makes plain that a sadistic lust for power and gain does. While Sophie protests herself “a free girl; no one has a right, or will attempt, or could succeed in forcing my inclinations,” he increases his violence, warning, “Do not struggle, you will lacerate your limbs, and . . . entangle yourself the more” (193). Sophie not only struggles, but weeps, and prays aid from her “heavenly Father!”; yet her efforts “but serv[e] to rivet his arm about her waist” (94, 93). Under force, Sophie capitulates, “Oh, fate! fate! fate! thy hand is on me, and there is no resisting it!” (94). She becomes “a trembling, shrinking, suffering victim, offered in useless, objectless sacrifice” at the altar of marriage, then lives “[d]ay and night . . . exposed . . . to the danger of his violence” (130, 141). In the force wielded against her, Sophie sees the irresistible “hand” of “fate,” just as Withers encourages her to see his “embrace” as “an emblem of the surrounding of your fate” (94, 93). Southworth shows both the physical and social coercion to marry, a force tantamount to rape. The narrator later editorializes that acting upon the “true instincts . . . from the deeps of her soul” could have brought the ironically named Sophie more wisely to resist social compulsion (107). Beyond the mixture of sensational entertainment and social critique that characterizes Southworth’s plot as it does Sand’s, the generalizing here about “our” weaknesses and Sophie’s power to resist public opinion she feels to be erroneous also exhibits

162 Charlene Avallone something of the French writer’s interest in making fiction provide alternative education on marriage for female readers. Henry Peterson refused to print this scene in the Saturday Evening Post’s serialization in terms that suggest he perceived some part of the representation of marriage as rape and connected the scene to Sand. Protesting that on the same “principles” that he “could not publish” in the paper “most of George Sand’s” fiction, he “resented [Southworth’s] attempt to interest us in a character who could force a young girl into marriage.”59 Aside from his concern for the Post’s general audience, Peterson expressed personal “disgust” at being compelled “as a reader” to attend to male force and female vulnerability.60 The publishing firm of his cousin, T. B. Peterson, however, did include the scene in its 1855 edition of novel, following the precedent of the first book edition of the novel by D. Appleton and Company in 1850. The T. B. Peterson and Brothers firm apparently shared a view of literary propriety closer to that of Southworth, as well as to that of Sand and the American public who read such “popular books” as theirs, for the illustrated version of the company’s catalogue blazoned the name of both authors under an etching of its building (see fig. 12).61 The rape imagery that disgusted Peterson serves Southworth’s critique in The Deserted Wife by suggesting marriage institutes the imposition of the male will— backed by coercion, the authority of the church, propriety, and public opinion— on the free will of a woman. The novel suggests similar associations through its trope of slavery, the trope that characterizes the central marriage of Hagar and Raymond. Marriage as a form of enslavement is the trope that, as critics observed, Sand, too, foregrounds in her early criticism of the institution,62 perhaps most famously in Indiana and in Lélia. Southworth’s Hagar particularly resembles Indiana, as each recognizes the bondage of marriage law and yet asserts her moral autonomy within the institution. Indiana acknowledges to her husband that the “law of this country” makes her “the slave” and him “her master” with a “right” over her, yet she defies him: “[O]ver my will, sir, you have no power. Only God can bend it.” Even as he “crush[es] her hand,” she insists, “[Y]ou are not morally my master”; she answers only to “conscience” and her “sense of duty.”63 Southworth’s protagonist similarly experiences marriage as an institution that “invested [her husband] with life-long authority over her” (247) and leaves her “enslaved,” “little better than a bond-woman” in “chains” (287, 247, 300). Hagar, too, defies her husband’s assumption that marriage guarantees him a “right” over her spirit: “I have a will! . . . yes, and conscience! . . . and a distinct life! For which I alone am accountable, and only to God” (299). He similarly meets her defiance

An “American George Sand”? 163 with force, an embrace of “gentle, cruel strength” and a threat “to crush” her independence (307). His threatening letter suggests how readily “legal justice and legislative wisdom” can render the situation of a wife even closer to slavery, by supporting a husband’s testimony over hers, dissolving their union, or depriving her of her children (484). The Deserted Wife is even more interested in the heroine’s enslavement to own passions, showing that passion is, in its own way, as much a social construct as law. As Sand maintains of her protagonists in Indiana and in Valentine, so too, Southworth shows that her protagonist’s passions, although foreign to her intrinsic temperament, are wrought through an erroneous cultivation that makes her vulnerable. All three novels attribute destructive passion to faulty socialization rather than to innately sinful human nature or flawed individual character.I n- diana suggests romance reading can teach unrealistic notions of life. Valentine demonstrates the growth of a devouring passion from an education that cultivates only conventions of respectability and polite accomplishments while failing to tutor the emotions. The Deserted Wife shows Hagar’s “passion destined by mal- cultivation to be fostered into monstrous growth” by her foster-mother’s neglect (138–39). Neither novelist condemns the passionate woman, but rather each suggests that the ability to direct emotion, as opposed to venting or suppressing it, is necessary to a woman’s autonomy. Indeed, for Sand, with Indiana, for instance, the way a woman directs the expression of her feelings with care may show her moral superiority to the man who callously vents passion in sexual exploitation and in verbal and physical violence. As Southworth’s heroine gains skill in directing her passions, she too demonstrates “superiority” over her husband and achieves freedom. Becoming “mistress of [her]self,” Hagar gains the moral, if not legal, authority to orchestrate the terms of a new, emancipated version of marriage no longer in thrall to a man’s desire for “possession” and mastery (484, 493, 462). While these parallels in theme and tropes suggest Southworth’s engagement with Sand’s early fiction, especially its critique of marriage, when Southworth plots the climax and denouement of her novel’s central story of abusive marriage, she does not rely on the device Sand uses to extricate Valentine from legalized rape or Indiana from slavery—that is, the husband’s death. Instead Southworth turns to the device of the renovated marriage that Sand develops in other novels, notably in her masterpiece, Consuelo, and its sequel, The Countess vonR udolstadt. Sand characterizes Consuelo as “of the family of Ishmael,”64 and Southworth places her Hagar in the family of Ishmael, with her biblical name, outsider status, and peripatetic career. Multiple parallels between the ending of the Deserted Wife and the story of Consuelo strongly suggest that her story inspired Southworth’s.

164 Charlene Avallone Southworth has Hagar, like Consuelo, make her professional fortune in the opera, wander Europe, become “respected for the virtue . . . of [her] private [life],” and, through the love capable to such extraordinary “high hearts,” save an apparently insane husband and renovate their relation (501, 583). Both novelists thus show the potential for transforming marriage from the institution of male domination portrayed in Indiana and Valentine into something answering more to women’s desires and with potential for extending social reform beyond the couple. In the amalgamation of features from several Sand romances in The De- serted Wife, a pattern of creative assimilation emerges: Southworth incorporates tropes, themes, and plot elements suggested by multiple fictions into new combination in her own original tale. So, too, with Southworth’s method of characterization. Several of the characters that Southworth marshals to develop her novel’s multiple tales of “mesalliance” resemble types that distinguish Sand’s oeuvre. Hagar bears resemblance, as shown, to Sand’s restive wife who declares the independence of her will, but Hagar also resembles Sand’s type of the ingénue made vulnerable by lack of guidance. Like the ingénue in Valentine, similarly a “deserted young wife,”65 Hagar is abandoned not only by her husband but also by others. Hagar, like Valentine, is a woman “abandoned on all sides,” “not finding anywhere in society the support which she had the right to expect,”66 not from family, parent substitutes, community, or religion. Only Hagar’s principled rejection of social proprieties, backed by the exceptional friendship of Gusty May, saves her from the fatal consequences Valentine suffers from her parallel desertion. For Hagar shares with Sand’s androgynous heroines, such as Indiana and Fiamma in Simon, a love of hunting and extraordinary “horsemanship” (216), which similarly signal their refusal of the limitations of conventional femininity and represent both their ardent passion and the proficiency they learn of reining it in their own interest. Southworth’s male characters, as well, echo types developed by Sand. Southworth’s Raymond is as selfish in love—“craving only the possession of the object, regardless of her . . . happiness” (462)—as his Sandien namesake Raymon, the seducer in Indiana. Raymond is also as brutal as the husband in Indiana, who likewise mistreats his wife and her pets with physical violence, or as the more refined cruel husband in Valentine, who likewise abandons his wife to pursue an adulterous amour under cover of a diplomatic assignment abroad. Gusty, too, that model of “disinterested affection” (462), has a Sandien precursor, her type of the ideal self-sacrificing lover who protects the heroine without exacting a return, such as Ralph in Indiana and Jacques in the novel bearing his name. Southworth’s hyperbole renovates these type characters, however. Where Sand sketches a

An “American George Sand”? 165 political and class background for her type of the cruel husband that contributes to realistic historical frameworks in Indiana and Valentine, Southworth gives Raymond Withers a Gothic family history of adultery, insanity, abusiveness, and abandonment that deepens the psychological and social significance of his character. Where Sand idealizes the willingness of men to leap into a waterfall (Ralph) or a volcano (Jacques) in the ultimate self-effacing love, Southworth introduces comic exaggeration into her characterization of Gusty, equally emblematic of the ideal of “disinterested affection” (463), but who cannot stay awake in his vigil over Hagar in a fishing shack. Southworth plays with several Sandien types, but she does not develop the type of the heroic adulterer attributed to Sand. Both novelists do treat adultery as a consequence of ills traceable to deficiencies in society, to ill-assorted unions and men’s presuming on laws and customs permissive to their sex, but Southworth’s address of infidelity is far from the “imitation” the Messenger charges, “in which the hero always falls in love with somebody else’s wife.”67 Sand’s adulterers, men or women, fall into opposing types, such as she describes in chapter 4 of Indi- ana and characterizes in Valentine through the contrasting infidelities of the title character and her husband: Her adulterers are either victims of their own passions and of corrupt or inadequate social institutions (such as Raymon and Valentine) or worldly creatures (such as Valentine’s husband) who assume adultery as their social prerogative. Southworth, with little of Sand’s sympathy for passionate adultery, portrays Raymond’s passion rather as a failure to subject “extremely keen . . . senses” and “epicurean” sensibility to “self-discipline”; to some, his self- indulgence “is vice, and may be crime” (285, 363, 479, 363). Southworth links his passion to insanity and cruelty amounting to sadism in the “torture” of his wife (356). The steamboat scene, despite the Messenger’s attack on its immorality, unequivocally depicts even unconsummated adultery as unmitigated depravity. In pursuing Rosalia, Raymond confesses, he has “crushed [his wife’s] strong heart to death,” sacrificed “country, home, wife, and children; resigned integrity, pride, and ambition, and risked fair fame” (423). There is no question here of love and valiant psychological struggle against its power, as in Sand’s type of the passionate adulterer, only an evocation of repugnance that Southworth intensifies with her melodramatic threat of incest. Southworth appears less to borrow directly from Sand’s types than to take inspiration for her own art of characterization. For, like Sand, she maneuvers type characters with such originality that they come “alive,” as Nina Baym remarks, despite lacking verisimilitude.68 If less “intent” than Sand is “on load-

166 Charlene Avallone ing her characters with as much ideological, psychological, and historical weight as possible,”69 Southworth like the French writer, also develops the thought of her fiction through symbolic type characters. Her combination of biblical and Sandien type-features in Hagar enhances the compelling address in The Deserted Wife of such issues as child neglect and wife abuse. She makes the Withers family—those sensational types of the bigamist, incest-adulterer, and mad woman— interesting in terms of the psychology and sociology of insanity and uses such types as a minister’s wife, the thrice-married Emily Buncombe (“bunkum” meaning nonsense), to satirize the middle-class ideology of respectability.70 In John Withers, Southworth combines type features—from the folk type “The Evil Eye,” the Gothic madman and depraved priest, and the sensational bigamist—to tell a tale of “real danger” and “terror” for a woman, that of a man of the cloth abusing his “pastoral privilege” to appropriate her body, her property, and her caretaking (51, 57, 53, 72). Contrary to the reviewer in Messenger, Southworth and Sand attend to scenarios other than adultery. In Shannondale, multiple subplots of other passions “con- tra bonos mores,” including two elopements, an attempted seduction, an amour involving a priest, and sundry crimes, Southworth develops devices that characterize Sand’s early oeuvre. Active female desire drives much of the plotting, involving not only the villainess, Sina, but also the three beauties of its alternate title. Southworth introduces sensational subjects through these thematics of passion, in an often intense style that exceeds Sand’s in melodrama and parody. This novel transgresses social and literary decorum, as, for example, it describes Virginia’s “exceedingly rigid notions of propriety” as a factor in one elopement and takes readers to the bedside where the slave Nerve not only describes her master toss- ing his legs about in an “ondecent manner as no gemman ought for to do afore a lady”71 but also comically preaches him a serious sermon on social equality. While the Messenger’s “condemnation” of the novel’s moral tendency and “imitation of the French school” appears overstated,72 Shannondale does show parallels with Sand’s storytelling and strategies of social critique. The novel’s frame narrative about the Darling plantation, in casting the marriage of Winny Darling and her tutor Edgar Arden as a romanticized challenge to class divisions over the opposition of her planter-father, engages a signature device of Sand, the cross-class coupling as emblem of democracy, a motif even American critics judged disruptive of “natural divisions in society.”73 Like Sand, Southworth employs the device to question rigid class and gender hierarchies. Moreover, Southworth extends the device to question racial inequalities and the

An “American George Sand”? 167 plantation system, as she develops the stereotype of the planter, with his opposition to the cross-class union, to criticize more broadly the “conventions and . . . distributions of power” of the southern plantation.74 Shannondale discloses the patriarchal bias of codes governing property and their potential for abuse. Edgar explains to his young wife (and equally innocent readers) that she has no means. Even her clothing belongs to her father. Laws dictate that a minor, even a married one, can own “nothing” (170), and Squire Darling acts on the letter of the law, being willing to let his daughter starve rather than cede any property or accede to her marrying below their class. The planter, a man of “more innate vulgarity than chivalric feeling,” of rapacious appetites and petty tyrannies, becomes violent in his repudiation of his daughter’s marriage, even as he attempts to force matrimony on young women made vulnerable by lack of money and connections (163). To oppose the self-indulgence of the planter and the laws that structure patriarchy, Southworth again turns to a motif favored in Sand’s fiction, that of masculine self-sacrifice. Self-denial not only shapes one of Sand’s repeating types, which I have argued Southworth earlier appropriated, but also shapes improbable endings, as in Indiana and Jacques. Shannondale, too, engages this type and idealizes male complaisance through an incredible ending with the Squire’s eleventh-hour reform. The novel develops the motif more seriously through the character of Edgar, the androgynous hero. Given “the education both of a girl and a boy,” which makes for “the most amiable, the most consider- ate, the most gentle and sympathetic of men, where women are concerned,” he represents the man capable of putting a woman’s interests ahead of his own (187). Edgar even returns his wife to her father for her welfare. In the novel’s resolution, the old Squire accepts his daughter’s cross-class marriage while sacrificing his own marriage to a young woman that he had demanded in exchange, a closure clearly meant to be more symbolic than convincing. Where Sand’s fiction characteristically delivers social criticism through idealism and understated irony, Southworth here addresses similar themes with a mix of idealism and her typical broad humor, including exaggerated comic characterization and ethnic dialect. As Nerve sets herself up as “a ’xample to” her master of surmounting class prejudice, the slave also mocks racial hierarchy. Sharing some of his chagrin that the girl they “fotched up” brought disgrace on them both “by heavin’ of herself away on a poor white man’s son,” she soon reconciles herself to Winny’s marriage and, acknowledging a higher master, rejects a hierarchical system of status: “I never did think myself so very much ’bove the young man, as a person might s’pose. . . . Sure we are all . . . ’ekel in the sight o’ the Marster” (497–98). Nerve presents her homily on equality as “Gospel truffe,” and the

168 Charlene Avallone young priest who embodies the novel’s moral authority endorses it as “truth” as well. Southworth’s parody, ostensibly mocking the slave’s dialect, rather targets the planter’s presumptions of race and class superiority. Although the Squire attributes his final conversion to Harry Joy, one of the subtitle’s beauties, he is made to repeat Nerve’s words, not Harry’s, in accepting his daughter’s marriage; and the “trite lesson, but . . . true” that he attributes to Harry’s practice is identical to the “Gospel” Nerve first preaches: “You won’t never be no happier yourself till you tries for to make them as ’pends on you for happiness, happy” (496). The novel’s subplot involving Imogene and the young cleric who turns out to be the French Duc de Vellemonte undertakes social critique in a more serious tone as it reflects other Sandien themes and figures central in Sand’s most scandal- ous fiction,L élia. Lélia gained particular notice for its skepticism about religion and marriage, along with its innovative technique of nearly plotless psychological narrative. Southworth follows Sand in deploying Gothic elements to trace a young woman’s frustrated inability to love that entails dejection, religious skepticism, and an apparently “criminal love” involving a priest (321); but Southworth shapes these motifs through more plotting to a more positive resolution. Sand’s Lélia loses all ability to love or believe yet is pursued by a priest who loves her. Southworth’s Imogene, having lost her love for her fiancé, commits the sacrilege of loving a priest and begins to doubt her faith. Both characters relate nightmare visions of suffering that, as Lélia describes, “have an appalling character of truth,”75 dreams set in a hellish landscape and peopled by phantom figures of persons they no longer love and by bloody corpses. While Lélia understands her dreams as an “allegory” of suffering and disillusionment,76 Imogene interprets hers more specifically as a vision of “all the wars . . . in history” stripped of chivalric fantasy: “all the horror without the glory!” (318). Imogene’s nightmare reveals the American military commander-planter she is to wed as a “demon-warior [sic] and bridegroom” (318). Southworth gives her fiction political point in a footnote that links the demon-groom to the “Fact” of atrocities against “innocent” victims in the war with Mexico (318). Imogene rejects the American war hero to wed the Frenchman who, by contrast, preaches mercy and moral courage, practices a vocation for healing, and arranges the emancipation of slaves. Shannondale resolves Imogene’s spiritual crisis with the return of faith and a marriage described as heavenly. Southworth thus reimagines Sand’s heroine, who by contrast remains unable to believe in a god or love that falls short of her ideals and ends, in alternate versions of Sand’s novel, either strangled by the priest or retreating to a convent. Yet Southworth shares with Sand some skepticism toward the organized church. While Shannondale portrays Catholicism with more sympathy than most

An “American George Sand”? 169 American fiction of the time, and even makes the French priest its moral voice, the novel questions the priority of celibacy. Vellemonte discovers he has a priest’s calling for healing but not for celibate life. Imogene takes a veil, but a bridal one, Southworth puns, as a papal dispensation releases him from his vows and they wed. Imogene’s mother concludes it is no better to “lose [one’s] senses in spiritual abstraction, any more than to degrade them in excessive luxury” (482). Lélia’s anguished experience of each extreme implies a like conclusion, yet Sand’s novel, unlike Southworth’s, offers small suggestion that a balance of the sensual and spiritual might be achieved in marriage. Yet another Sandien precedent appears in the dramatic resolution of another subplot that provides a unifying thread of suspense throughout Shannondale, the inset tale of Veronica and Frank Joy that resolves the mystery of Father Burleigh’s “secret crime” and provides the novel’s narrative climax (425). The tale’s storyline resembles that of Sand’s crime story Leone Leoni in incident, characterization, thematics, mode, and structure. Sand’s plot and Southworth’s subplot both turn on an innocent young woman’s elopement with a man with extraordinary powers of fascination; she follows him into foreign exile, is alienated from family and ruined by his gambling and swindling, yet her passion for him endures, even as he commits violence against her and crimes against others. Both writers exploit melodrama for sensation, but they also deploy melodramatic conventions cre- atively to thematic and formal ends.77 Both develop their crime fictions within a complex frame of storytelling and end them with a surprising twist rather than the traditional moral. Sand has Juliette’s new lover, Aleo, repeat the confession she recites to him of Leone’s seduction and ill treatment of her, yet at the end, Sand has Juliette run off again with Leone, fully aware of his depravity. Southworth’s narrative takes the form of a deathbed confession, as Father Burleigh relates Joy’s criminal career in flashback before confessing his own crime, the murder of Joy, his brother-in-law. But in an abrupt reversal, the old priest discovers that Joy lives. Both writers stage their melodramatic confessions to explore the psychology more than the morality of crime. Southworth’s tale of the criminal Joy provides background for understanding the villainy of his daughter, Sina, and illustrates the argument Vellemonte later advances that “mal-education” rather than inherently evil character is ultimately responsible for her wrongdoing (466). Shannondale thus echoes a central motif in Leone Leoni. There Sand’s ingénue has head and heart turned by schooling in notions of romance and heroic outlawry from such fiction as Fenimore Cooper’s, making her subject to her unscrupulous lover, whose career of crime owes to his own schooling in vice by his tutor, a hypocritical priest. Sand explores the social

170 Charlene Avallone and psychological dynamics of crime and infatuation in a series of escalating incidents. She paints the offenses of the criminal—which ultimately include bloody murder, pandering his lover, and threatening her life—with a bold brush, while permitting him to escape punishment or guilt and inviting sympathy for the woman whose fidelity to him remains unshaken. Southworth’s palette of crime is less intense—Joy’s crimes stop at forgery and counterfeiting, his violence at wife battery—and her interest in exploring the criminal’s psychology less extended. She has Vellemonte counter Father Burleigh’s moralistic explication of “the history of most crime” (“Sudden, unexpected, almost irresistible temptation falls upon an unprepared soul,” a model which fits none of the book’s crimes), with a brief explanation that points up emotional motivations behind Burleigh’s assault and his concealment of it (438). But she is interested, in contrast to Sand, in imagining how the same “intensity of feeling” that could bond a woman to a criminal in “passionate attachment” might enable her to leave her abuser, as Veronica finally does (435). While the Messenger declared Shannondale shared the immorality of Sand’s fiction, the journal lodged even more objections against The Mother-in-Law despite finding it Southworth’s “strongest work.” The review warns this new novel required “careful perusal” for what is immoral and “highly indelicate” appears in “allusions and incidents,” in “the tone, the coloring, the general moulding [sic] of character and feeling.”78 The Mother-in-Law supports some part of this charge against Southworth’s “strong, unfeminine, thoroughly French organization,”79 for the novel, as several of Sand’s earlier fictions, refuses to conform to the restraints of narrative voice and genre prescribed by gender conventions. As the Messen- ger’s earlier distinction of “French sentimentalism” suggests and modern criticism affirms, Sand’s novels often distance themselves from sentimental conventions, not only through their emotional intensity, but also through their experiments with stylistic devices, such as androgynous narrators or ironic mimicry of sentimental style and topoi.80 The Mother-in-Law appears to draw generally on such precedent in Sand and occasionally on specific precedents. For example, both The Mother-in-Law and Valentine paint an antitype of the sentimental mother and stage a deathbed scene of a grandparent dying of apoplexy as a satire of sentimentalism. Southworth creates an explicit opposition between sentimental “storytellers” and the narrative voice in her “Tale of Domestic Life” (the subtitle of The Mother-in-Law when it was rereleased by T. B. Peterson in 1860) that is more direct than Sand’s opposition. Southworth’s narrator rejects the “inveter- ate propensity” of such storytellers “to describe comfortable firesides” in spite of “the chill realities” they know (40); she refuses to develop a character as the

An “American George Sand”? 171 “model of excellence” readers expect, being “determined for once, to draw characters exactly as they are” (42, 45). She paints unsentimental character types in broader strokes than Sand—melodramatic mother-villain, burlesque heroine, and female slave-intellectual, among others—and maintains a satiric narrative posture in opposition to both literary and social conventions. The noncompliant narrator, the satiric tone, and the highly colored type characters, all contribute to the novel’s thoroughgoing social criticism of plantation society. Not only does that plantation system exhaust the land, broker marriage in terms of property, and maintain the equivocal racial hierarchy that can break up slave families and threaten white girls with enslavement; but planter Virginians also support a class hierarchy so entrenched that they cannot even imagine such “a republican pro- ceeding” as a “mésalliance” between “one of their race” and a governess, “a salaried girl” (42–43). Southworth matches Sand’s satire of class and gender pretensions with derision of such distinctions: The “refined, intellectual, and accomplished . . . cared as little for [such aristocratic affectations] as you care for the pride of a South Sea prince” (43). The satiric focus on female outlawry in The Mother-in-Law contributes to the suggestiveness that prompted the Messenger critic so roundly to condemn it to the “French School of Romance.” Gertrude Lion, the comic-heroic Amazon who “live[s] by the laws of nature” and cares “not a fox’s brush for any law but the ten commandments” (189, 337), not only rejects “all the laws of delicacy proper to [her] sex” but also expresses contempt for the laws of slavery (338). In the chapter “The Two Attachments,” she puns on the bailiff’s “attachment” for Zoe Dove in a way that, as careful perusal shows, conflates his seizing a slave women as property with courtship. Gertrude declines the bailiff’s attachment as if it were a marriage proposal, “with scathing irony” that leaves him “confused”: “We think it does honor to your . . . affections!” (336). She defies his legal document with her own claim of a “prior” emotional “attachment” of Zoe, as her brother’s betrothed, despite the threat of miscegenation (337). Even as Southworth’s style expands into broad humor not found in Sand, the tone of just scorn for unjust law and conventions in this scene of the Amazon facing down the man of law, whose “name is Power” (312), recalls Sand’s early novels such as Indiana, written out of strong feelings “about the injustice and barbarism of the laws that yet govern a woman’s life.”81 Even more points of identity and objectionable “allusions” appear in connection with Gertrude’s foil in this novel, the outlaw mother-in-law who, in contrast to the Amazon’s principled resistance to unjust law, undertakes a “daring career of crime” as she plots to realize her aspirations to status and power through bartering her daughter in marriage (456).

172 Charlene Avallone Hortense Blackistone Armstrong, the unnatural mother and title character in The Mother-in-Law, stands out in nineteenth-century American women’s fiction, in which mothers tend to be missing, just as she stands out as a plot device in the romantic storyline, in which a father conventionally figures the obstructions in the path of lovers. As the rare maternal antagonist of romance, she resembles Sand’s type of the unnatural mother in Valentine, the Countess de Raimbault. Sand represents the Countess as Southworth does Mrs. Armstrong, as a woman who, past the age of trading on any nuptial prospects of her own, manipulates her daughter into marriage in order to gain position, influence, and the title of nobility through becoming a mother-in-law. Where Sand shows a mother who pushes her daughter away from her physically and emotionally, Southworth instead shows one who insists on her daughter remaining with her and demonstrating love for her alone. In both instances, however, pride rather than maternal affection and care determines these mothers’ relations with their daughters. Both writers deploy the device of the cross-class marriage to demonstrate the undemo- cratic arrogance of their mother figures, Sand in the Countess’s opposition to the cross-class coupling of her daughter with an educated commoner, Southworth in Mrs. Armstrong’s opposition to a cross-class coupling that she sees as a threat to her daughter’s status, the marriage of Louise’s father-in-law and her governess. Sand figures the Countess as a representative aspiring bourgeois woman, using description focused on historical and political detail, while she reserves her melodramatic detail (a suicide attempt, deaths by pitchfork and broken hearted remorse, and more) to tell the story of the daughter’s adulterous passion, one effect of maternal neglect. By contrast, Southworth shows the character of the mother- in-law through a series of melodramatic incidents that she pushes beyond probability into a “daring career of crime” (456). Mrs. Armstrong takes her married daughter hostage, attempts to induce her to miscarry, forces divorce proceedings on her, fakes the death of the couple’s daughter, and pretends Louise is a widow to marry her to an earl; further, Mrs. Armstrong tries to disinherit her husband’s daughter by an earlier marriage with rumors that Zoe is a slave; she may even have poisoned her husband’s first wife. Yet despite their different methods, both Sand and Southworth show similar insight in developing their mother figures as a psychological type: a woman who lacks social outlet for ambition, who, angry and envious from that frustration, becomes violent in impulse, governed only by pride, and perversely lacking in maternal affection and tenderness as she routes her aspirations through her daughter. Both writers also turn the story of their nefarious mother to illustrate the destructive consequences of the wrong education of daughters. The lives of Sand’s

An “American George Sand”? 173 Valentine and of her half-sister Louise are “ruined forever” by undisciplined passion as their mother and grandmother alternately neglect them or counsel them only on ways to maintain social appearances and class distinctions.82 Valentine laments that they tried everything from early on to harden her heart and smother her sensibility.83 Similarly, the life of Southworth’s Louise is nearly “destroy[ed]” by “a system of education” that “taught her to consider her mere instincts as so many temptations” and “enslaves” her by making filial piety into a religion and “monomania” (51, 391, 50, 49, 391). Sand makes her protagonist illustrate such inadequacies in girls’ formal education of as the shallowness, impractical- ity, and gender limitations of convent schooling. Southworth makes her governess character speak in favor of more “freedom” in female education than Mrs. Armstrong’s “system” allows, arguing for “exercise, amusement, excitement” and the society of young companions (49, 50, 51). The girl educated like Louise, under the “mistake of too great stringency,” ends with both “famished heart and head” and never becomes “fit for self-guidance” because “never . . . accustomed to self-guidance” (51, 203, 257). Louise’s own perception of her “very feeble understanding” forces even her mother to observe “the difficulty of making a rational and responsible moral agent of one, out of whom she had crushed all freedom of thought and feeling” (150). Although Southworth and Sand show mothers employing different systems of education, the final result is the same, a dependent woman-child, unable to think, feel, or act morally for herself, something neither writer approves. Other points of identity and reworkings of Sand may be discovered in Southworth’s other fiction, for the American writer did not outgrow her leaning toward the French school after all. The three novels treated here, as well as others, suggest a full range of intertextual engagement from copying to contradiction, in an ongoing dialogue that includes assimilation, appropriation, emulation, correction, and parody. Such transnational intertextual dialogue can show Southworth as a more accomplished writer than she has been made to appear in the modernist accounts of literature organized by nationalist, domestic, and sentimental paradigms. Southworth’s dialogue with Sand suggests that newer models of literary study, too, need expansion to account more for the historically central authority of French fiction and for the significance of women writers in this busy transatlantic trade if transnational studies are to do more than “reinscribe” the canonical writers from those old paradigms as “classic American literature” and remap variations of the old dynamics between the United States and Great Brit- ain as “the Transatlantic Imaginary.”84 Now that “French sentimentalism” would no longer appear to threaten the integrity of the American national ethos, it

174 Charlene Avallone seems time to examine the ways U.S. writers, such as Southworth, engaged with that “school” as it included women practitioners around the Atlantic.

Notes A huge mahalo for help accessing Southworth’s texts to Lynn A. Davis, Department of Preservation Head, University of Hawai’i Manoa Library.

1. Review of Deserted Wife, Southern Literary Messenger (hereinafter cited as SLM) (Dec. 1850): cover III.

2. Review of Shannondale, SLM (Feb. 1851): 128.

3. Review of Mother-in-Law, SLM (June 1851): 390. Unlike journals in the North, the Messenger published no serious reviews of Sand’s works but only referred to her artistry and alleged immorality (see, e.g., Jan. 1844, 38–39).

4. Review of Mother-in-Law, 390.

5. [TBP], “Mrs. Southworth,” SEP, Mar. 8, 1851, 2.

6. Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum Amer- ica (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984), 208.

7. Linda Naranjo-Huebl, “The Road to Perdition: E. D. E. N. Southworth and the Critics,” American Periodicals 16 (2006): 124.

8. Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 138.

9. Elaine K. Ginsberg, “Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth,” in American Women Writers, ed. Lina Mainiero (New York: Ungar, 1982), 4:132; Ken Egan Jr., The Riven Home: Narrative Rivalry in the American Renaissance (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna Univ. Press, 1997), 165, 140, 136, 143. Peter Rabinowitz argues the need to suspend prejudices about Southworth to perceive her art in genre parody. “End Sinister: Neat Clo- sure as Disruptive Force,” in Reading Narrative: Form, Ethics, Ideology, ed. James Phelan (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press: 1989), 120–31. On Southworth’s imagistic allusion as intertextual art, see Paul Christian Jones, Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Voices in the Antebellum South (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2005), esp. 174–75, 160, 169–77. On Southworth’s manipulation of Gothic devices, see Alfred Habegger, “A Well Hidden Hand,” Novel 14 (1981): 199; and Susan K. Harris, Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Novels: Interpretive Strategies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), 141; see also Egan, Riven Home, 157–62.

An “American George Sand”? 175 10. EDENS to RB, Wed. [c. 1878], DU.

11. Ibid.

12. EDENS, “The Wife’s Victory,” in Popular American Literature of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 415; EDENS, Bro- ken Pledges (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1891), 265–66. On Southworth and classical tragedy, see Karen Tracey’s chapter in this volume.

13. Review of Mother-in-Law, 390.

14. U.S. census, 1860, quoted in “Joshua Laurens Henshaw,” http://www.rawbw. com/~hinshaw/cgi-bin/id?9883/ (accessed Sept. 23, 2011).

15. T.H.Y., “Biographical Sketch of the Author,” in TheH aunted Homestead and other Nouvelettes, by EDENS (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1860), 35; and see 29.

16. See Frank Luther Mott, History of American Magazines, vol. 2, 1850–1865 (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1938), 162–64. Much of Sand’s fiction was also available in translation.

17. Regis Louise Boyle, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novelist (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1939), 53. Boyle identifies Southworth’s use of French as characteristic of her style, judges it a “fault” she overcame in her later work, and points up grammatical and usage errors (132, and see 50, 76, 79, 131–32, 146–47).

18. EDENS, The Deserted Wife(Philadelphia: Peterson, 1855), 285, 214, 24 (hereinafter cited in the text).

19. See, for example, Catharine Sedgwick, “Wilton Harvey,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 24 (Apr. 1842): 216, 218; Catharine Sedgwick, “Fanny McDermot” Godey’s Lady’s Book 30 (Jan. 1845): 20; and Ann S. Stephens, Fashion and Famine (New York: Bunce, 1854), 148, 292–93. Maria McIntosh presents “a lady of fashion” on the Parisian model as incompatible with the American domestic ideal. Two Lives; or, To Seem and To Be (New York: Appleton, 1853), 241.

20. EDENS, “The Married Shrew,” in Popular American Literature of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 420.

21. EDENS, The Hidden Hand, a Novel (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988), 177, 463.

22. EDENS, “Wife’s Victory,” 407.

23. EDENS, The Mother-in-Law: A Tale of Domestic Life (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1860), 308 (hereinafter cited in the text).

176 Charlene Avallone 24. “Parcel from Paris,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 64 (Nov. 1848): 568.

25. Pascale Casanova, The WorldR epublic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press), 2004.

26. Jules Janin, “Literature of the Nineteenth Century: France,” Athenaeum, June 10, 1837, 423; cf. F.D.H. [Frederick Dan Huntington], “Writings of George Sand,” Christian Examiner (hereinafter cited as CE) (Mar. 1847): 224.

27. Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman’s Record; or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women from the Creation to A.D. 1854 (New York: Harper, 1855), 642–43.

28. “Journalism in France,” reprint from the British Quarterly Review, Littel’s Liv- ing Age 10 (July 11, 1846): 82; and see Alfred M. Nettement, Études Critiques sur le Feuilleton-Roman, deuxième série (Paris: Librairie de Perrodil, 1846), 11–32.

29. See the translation of this preface in Hale, Woman’s Record, 642.

30. [John Lothrop Motley], “The Novels of Balzac,” North American Review (hereinafter cited as NAR) 65 (July 1847): 86, 93, 86.

31. “Journalism in France,” 83; and see J. C., “Journalism and Journalists in Paris,” American Whig Review (hereinafter cited as AWR) 15 (Mar. 1852): 203, and (Apr. 1852): 302, 306. The Paris correspondent for theS outhern Literary Messenger also reported on contracts and rates of pay for feuilletons; see 16 (Nov. 1850): 692–96.

32. T.H.Y., “Biographical Sketch,” 40.

33. Amy M. Thomas and Alison M. Scott, “Le pouvoir des romans-feuilletons en Amérique au XIXe siècle: Le début de carrière de E. D. E. N. Southworth, 1846–1856,” French trans. Marie-Françoise Cachin, in Au bonheur du feuilleton: Naissance et mutations d’un genre (États-Unis, Grande-Bretagne, XVIIIe–XXe siècles) ed. Marie-Françoise Cachin, et al. (Paris: Creaphis, 2007): 113, 116; and see Vicki L. Martin’s chapter in this volume.

34. [Francis Bowen], review of Oeuvres de George Sand, NAR 53 (July 1841): 130.

35. [Huntington] “Writings of George Sand,” 218; [Bowen], review of Oeuvres, 105.

36. [Huntington], “Writings of George Sand,” 217, 210; [Bowen], review of Oeuvres, 129.

37. [Bowen], review of Oeuvres, 111; and see Orestes Brownson, “Modern French Literature. Art. V. Spiridon,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (April 1842): 250; [Huntington], “Writings of George Sand,” 225; Hale, Woman’s Record, 461.

38. [Samuel Osgood], “The Satanic School in Literature,” CE 27 (Nov. 1839): 148; and see [Bowen], review of Oeuvres, 105–6; H. [George Frederick Holmes], “The

An “American George Sand”? 177 Wandering Jew,” Southern Quarterly Review (SQR) 9 (Jan. 1846): 79; E.D., “Recent French Novelists,” AWR 3 (Mar. 1846): 241–42; [Huntington], “Writings of George Sand,” 205–6, 211–12; “The Genius of George Sand,” reprinted from Bentley’s Miscellany, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 1 (June 1850): 95.

39. [Huntington], “Writings of George Sand,” 202; and see, for example, E.D., “Re- cent French Novelists,” 242.

40. [Bowen], review of Oeuvres, 111, 134; and see, for example, Brownson, “Modern French Literature,” 239–43.

41. See, for example, Janin, “Literature of the Nineteenth Century: France,” 425; review of Anna Blackwell’s translation of Jacques, LW (Feb. 6, 1847): 8; [Caroline Kirkland], “George Sand and the Journeyman Joiner,” Sartain’s Union Magazine 1 (Nov. 1847): 2231; [Huntington], “Writings of George Sand,” 223–25; E. D., “Recent French Novel- ists,” 243.

42. E. D., “Recent French Novelists,” 242; Brownson, “Modern French Literature,” 239, 250.

43. See, for example, “Modern Criticism.—George Sand,” AWR 1 (June 1845): 623– 24; Hale, Woman’s Record, 642. Huntington published Sand’s apologia for her fiction even as he challenged her sincerity; see “Writings of George Sand,” 202–3.

44. Grace Greenwood, Letter XVI, “Selections from Letters,” Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850), 367.

45. Margaret Fuller, review of Consuelo by George Sand, New-York Daily Tribune, June 24, 1846, in Margaret Fuller, Critic: Writings from the New-York Tribune, 1844–1846, ed. Judith Mattson Bean and Joel Myerson (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2000), 457; Janin, “Literature of the Nineteenth Century; France,” 426. For other examples, see Brownson, “Modern French Literature,” 239; “Devil upon two Sticks,” New Mirror 2 (Nov. 25, 1843): 118; [George Henry Lewes], review of Oeuvres Complètes, Foreign Quarterly Review, American ed. 32 (July 1844): 279; and Greenwood, Letter XVI, 367.

46. [G. W. Peck], “Shakspeare [sic] versus Sand,” AWR 5 (May 1847): 481, 480.

47. Peterson’s Magazine, Oct. 1850, 175, quoted in Naranjo-Huebl, “Road to Perdi- tion,” 129; Hale, Woman’s Record, 794; review of Curse of Clifton, SQR 8 (July 1853): 267; and see, for example, review of Retribution, AWR 10 (Oct. 1849): 376–77.

48. Review of Missing Bride; or Miriam the Avenger, SLM 21 (July 1855): 456; review of Discarded Daughter, Harper’s 5 (Oct. 1852): 713.

178 Charlene Avallone 49. Review of Discarded Daughter, Harper’s, 713; and see review of Discarded Daugh- ter, SQR 6 (Oct. 1852): 532; review of Deserted Wife, Literary World (hereinafter cited as LW), Aug. 31, 1850, 171.

50. For “tone,” see review of Virginia and Magdalene, SQR 6 (Oct. 1852): 541; “Drug Literature,” Vanity Fair, Oct. 6, 1860, 179. For “horrors”: review of Discarded Daughter, Harper’s, 713; review of Curse of Clifton, SQR, 267. On men: review of Discarded Daugh- ter, SQR, 531.

51. Review of Virginia and Magdalene, SQR, 541; and see Thomas and Scott, “Pou- voir des romans-feuilletons,” 115.

52. International Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1851, 181; Jane Swisshelm, editor of the Saturday Visiter, quoted in Boyle, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, 53.

53. Alexander Cowie, TheR ise of the American Novel (New York: American Book Company, 1948), 418–19.

54. Helen Waite Papashivily, All the Happy Endings: A Study of the Domestic Novel in America, the Women Who Wrote It, the Women Who Read it, in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harpers, 1956), 119; and see 199, 128.

55. Cowie, Rise of the American Novel, 444.

56. George Sand, Notice, Valentine, new ed. (1832; reprint, Paris: Collection des écrivains illustrés, 1936), vi.

57. Review of Deserted Wife, SLM, cover III.

58. Sand, Valentine, 138–39: “Oui le viol! . . . Chacque jour, au nom de Dieu et de la société . . . un lâche obtient la main d’une malheureuse fille, que ses parents, son hon- neur, ou la misère forcent d’étouffer dans son sein un amour pur. . . . [S]ous les yeux de la société qui approuve et ratifie, la femme pudique et tremblante . . . tombe flétrie sous les baisers d’un maître exécré!” Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine, and the original French is quoted in the notes.

59. HP to EDENS, Sept. 10, 1849, DU.

60. Ibid.

61. “Catalogue of Books Published by T. B. Peterson and Brothers, Philadelphia, PA,” back matter in Miriam, the Avenger; or, The Missing Bride (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1874), 18.

62. See, for example, “Modern Criticism,” AWR, 632.

An “American George Sand”? 179 63. George Sand, Indiana, ed. Béatrice Didier, Collection Folio Classique (1832; reprint, Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 232–33: “Je sais que je suis l’esclave. . . . La loi de ce pays vous a fait mon maître. . . . Vous avez le droit du plus fort, . . . mais sur ma volonté, mon- sieur, vous ne pouvez rien, Dieu seul peut la courber”; “en lui meurtrissant la main entre son index et son pouce”; “vous n’êtes pas moralement mon maître et . . . je ne dépends que de moi sur la terre. . . . [J]’ai réfléchi que je devais à mon devoir et à ma conscience.”

64. George Sand, Consuelo (1843), English trans. as Consuelo: A Romance of Venice (New York: Burt, n.d.), 6; and see The Countess of Rudolstadt, trans. Gretchen van Slyke (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

65. Sand, Valentine, 189: “jeune femme abandonnée.”

66. Ibid., 215, 217: “abandonnée de toutes parts”; ”ne trouvait nulle part en lui [“le monde”] l’appui qu’elle avait driot d’en attendre.”

67. Review of Shannondale, SLM, 128.

68. Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press), 115.

69. Isabelle Hoog Naginski, George Sand: Writing for Her Life (New Brunswick: Rut- gers Univ. Press, 1991), 102. Naginiski explains Sand’s use of type characters to convey ideological, psychological, and sociological significance and catalogs some of Sand’s characteristic types. Such lists, varying in content, appear from early reviews onward. Sand’s recurrent type of the powerful, liberated woman (“la femme marchant dans sa force et dans sa liberté”), for instance, troubled Nettement, Études Critiques, 21.

70. Modern criticism of The Deserted Wife observes Southworth’s artful use of the conventions of the Gothic and melodrama to treatment of the motif of respectability. See Ann M. Ingram, “Melodrama and the Moral Economy of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Deserted Wife,” ATQ 13 (1999): 280–83; and Harris, Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Novels, 140–42.

71. EDENS, The Three Beauties [alternate title of Shannondale] (Philadelphia: Peter- son, 1858), 40, 496 (hereinafter cited in the text).

72. Review of Shannondale, SLM, 128.

73. [Bowen], review of Oeuvres, 129; and see [Kirkland], “George Sand,” 221–22.

74. Betina Entzminger, Belle Gone Bad: White Southern Women Writers and the Dark Seductress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2002), 48; see also Baym, Woman’s Fiction, 121.

180 Charlene Avallone 75. George Sand, Lélia, édition illustrée, ed. Pierre Reboul, Collection Folio Classique (1833; reprint, Paris: Gallimard, 2003), 128: “Mes rêves ont un effroyable charactère de vérité.”

76. Ibid.: “une allégoire claire.”

77. The critical recuperation of melodrama is beginning to extend to Southworth. See, for example, Ingram, “Melodrama,” esp. 269–70, 273. On the recovery of melodrama “as a serious and central category of “modern cultural imagination,” see Frank Kelleter and Ruth Mayer, “The Melodramatic Mode Revisited: An Introduction,” in Melodrama! The Mode of Excess from Early America to Hollywood, ed. Frank Kelleter, Barbara Krah, and Ruth Mayer (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2007), 7.

78. Review of Mother-in-Law, SLM, 390.

79. Ibid.

80. On Sand’s ironic use of sentimental devices, see, for example, Dominique La- porte, “‘Ne m’appelez donc jamais femme auteur’: Déconstruction et refus du roman sentimental chez George Sand,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 29 (2001): 247–55; and on androgynous narrators, Naginski, George Sand, 29–34.

81. Sand, Indiana, 1842 “Préface,” 46–47: “de l’injustice et de la barbarie des lois qui régissent encore l’existence de la femme.”

82. Sand, Valentine, 223: “la vie de sa fille gâtée à tout jamais”; and see 176.

83. Ibid., 51: “on a tâché de desécher [mon coeur] de bonne heure; on a tout fait pour éteindre le germ de ma sensibilité.”

84. Paul Giles, “Transnationalism and Classic American Literature,” PMLA 118 (Jan. 2003): 72; Giles, Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2002). Giles’s project of a transnational reading of American with British texts reinforces assumptions of an anglocentric and overwhelmingly male transnational cultural field. Pascale Casanova’s attention to the centrality of France in nineteenth-century cultural exchange offers potential for new transatlantic mappings, but he excludes women and early American writers except Whitman. The paradigm of popular American sensational fiction recognizes French precedents, but definitions of the genre equate it with the urban fiction of male writers and thus either marginalize or ignore Southworth’s prodigious output; see, for example, Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002); and David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: TheS ubversive Imagina- tion in the Age of Emerson and Melville (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989).

An “American George Sand”? 181

Revising Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Lost Heiress Paul Christian Jones

Following its 1853 serialization in TheS aturday Evening Post and its 1854 publication in book form, E. D. E. N. Southworth’s TheL ost Heiress was highly lauded by critics, who predicted that it would become one of her best-known works.1 For example, the National Era proclaimed it as “the best, we think, from Mrs. Southworth’s prolific pen,” and the Trenton (N.J) State Gazette asserted that, “like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, . . . it seems destined also to have a most extensive reputation.”2 However, despite this initial acclaim, in the century and a half since its publication, the novel has generated little interest from literary critics, and the scant scholarship that exists on the novel has consistently judged it to be among the least interesting of Southworth’s novels, a striking departure—in tone and perhaps politics—from her other work of the 1840s and 1850s. For example, Ken Egan describes it as a “relatively cautious novel” and “surely one of her dull- est,” and Linda Naranjo-Huebl calls it “Southworth’s most conservative and conventional sentimental novel to date.”3 In TheR iven Home, Egan has argued that this novel and Southworth’s other 1853 serial Mark Sutherland (published in book form under the title India) represent an effort by the author to “tame” her novels, following harsh reviews of her sensationalist early books, including The Deserted Wife and The Discarded Daugh- ter, and frequent scolding from her Saturday Evening Post editor Henry Peterson about the moral nature of her writings.4 In his reading of these “tamed” texts, Egan asserts that Southworth largely sacrifices feminist gender politics, as she abandons the strategy of earlier works, which had “raised over and over again the ethical and political questions surrounding women’s lives in antebellum culture,” and as she here “raises few questions about patriarchal values” and “tone[s] down the melodramatic rant of her [earlier] female protagonists.”5 Naranjo-Huebl similarly casts TheL ost Heiress as a retreat from Southworth’s earlier feminism, arguing that it lacks “any of the assertive females who had become staples in Southworth’s early fiction” and that it, in another departure, presents its central male figure—almost always corrupt and villainous in previous works—positively, as Governor Daniel Hunter becomes her “first major depiction of a righteous man.”6 At least one critic in the 1850s, Margaret Bailey, made similar observations about the novel’s gender politics being a departure for Southworth, although Bailey saw this shift as a virtue and even suggested that it was an admirable corrective to Southworth’s earlier excesses. In her review for the National Era, Bailey, the wife of Era editor Gamaliel Bailey, “commend[s] Mrs. Southworth’s prudence in this truly conservative course” and praises her for the “truly refreshing” “picture of harmonious wedded life” in TheL ost Heiress, in which she has “for once let her married people live together like Christians.” Bailey expresses admiration both for the nobility of Daniel Hunter and for the submissiveness of his wife, Augusta, whom she finds to be a “model wife” in accordance with “the old orthodox standard of implicit obedience.” Bailey celebrates Augusta’s attitude toward her husband, which compares to “mother Eve” in Paradise Lost: “[Southworth’s] wife ejaculates, ‘What thou command’st, unargued I obey. God is thy law; thou, mine.’”7 While Bailey reads this novel’s presentation of its patriarch and his submissive wife positively and subsequent critics find it to be a serious fault, they all concur that these characteristics justify labeling the novel as “conservative.” In this chapter, I argue that these critics have misread TheL ost Heiress’s politics. I propose, instead, that this novel is a much more progressive work than critics have supposed as it continues Southworth’s arguments about patriarchy’s flaws and the need for a larger role in society for women. Additionally, we can see here the beginnings of Southworth’s more radical thinking about law, progress, and reform. Not only does the novel feature an argument against capital punishment, which it demonstrates to be fundamentally flawed as a means of justice, but it also contains the seeds of her reimagining of American society that becomes more explicit in later fiction. Elsewhere I have made the case that Southworth’s The Hidden Hand imagines, through its central character Capitola, “the justice system itself . . . becoming a sentimentalized subject . . . that, because of its strong emotional identification with the condemned, rejects capital punishment as immoral and unjust.”8 Though it is a very different novel, I believe that The Lost Heiress uses its death penalty plot to make a similar critique of the unsympathetic state and its justice system, which cannot incorporate the tender feelings of compassion and pity, and to suggest the system needs significant revision in order to become truly just. The final section of this chapter argues that Southworth implies that this systematic revision will require a greater public role for women

184 Paul Christian Jones in the political realm, a revision that is anything but conservative, conventional, or orthodox. Southworth’s novel makes many of these points, including its call for a larger political empowerment for women, by engaging in a textual conversation with Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and offering a critique of Stowe’s paradigm of women’s political participation presented in her novel’s famous chapter about Senator and Mrs. Bird.

* * * * *

The Lost Heiress has been compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin both by its earliest reviewers and by later twentieth-century critics. Ken Egan, for instance, argues that “the influence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin [upon The Lost Heiress] is unmistak- able.”9 Though he does not develop the connections between the two works at any length, I maintain that thinking about Stowe’s novel illuminates the politics of Southworth’s book. Like Stowe’s novel, TheL ost Heiress is genuinely aimed at reform, as it uses its sentimental narrative to make a compelling argument for the abolition of capital punishment. However, TheL ost Heiress, in significant ways, falls short at being the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the anti-gallows movement. While Stowe’s novel features multiple plot lines and countless references to incidents that illustrate the horrors of slavery, TheL ost Heiress features only a single plot about capital punishment, which, though influencing the subsequent action of the novel, is confined to about one hundred of its five hundred pages. However, I am less interested in reading TheL ost Heiress as a novel that aspires but fails to reach the effect of Uncle Tom’s Cabin than I am in exploring the ways it strays in- tentionally from Stowe’s precedent. Indeed, in her deviation from Stowe’s novel, we see Southworth critiquing the naïve and idealistic view of reform that Stowe posits, in which social injustice is easily corrected as long as everyone “feels right,” and asserting instead only a major transformation of the American system will make it just or fair. As TheL ost Heiress begins, William O’Leary has been sentenced to hang for murder, though he, his family, and the general public assert that he has been wrongly convicted. The execution is scheduled for the day after the inauguration of the new governor of Maryland, Daniel Hunter, and everyone assumes that Hunter will save O’Leary—by pardon or commutation of his sentence—as one of his first executive acts. The first eighty pages of the book cover the days before the scheduled execution, as multiple characters make arguments to the governor for saving the condemned man. Before O’Leary’s family—his mother Norah and his wife Nelly—make their plea to the governor, members of his own circle address him on the issue. His father, for example, encourages him to save O’Leary

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 185 as the “people expect it of [him].”10 Upon his arrival in Annapolis, the important men of the state, including the Bishop of Maryland, the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, and the Commodore of the Navy, petition him for the reprieve using a range of arguments, including the inhumanity of the death penalty, the benefits of mercy, and the danger of convicting someone on circumstantial evidence (57). These men are astonished that all of their arguments fail to move Hunter, who responds to them in terms of his duty to the law and what a pardon would do to the law’s influence. He asserts that “the law must reign” (55) and “the laws will be obeyed” (57). However, unsurprisingly given that TheL ost Heiress is essentially a sentimental novel, Southworth depicts Hunter’s wife Augusta as potentially the strongest influence upon him. During their journey to Annapolis, she is the first to raise the issue of a reprieve, asserting that it is a “privilege” that Hunter possesses to, “by the stroke of [a] pen, sav[e] a fellow creature from the scaffold” (20). Moved by her sympathetic imagining of O’Leary and his family’s suffering, she exclaims:

I do not know the poor man. . . . I only know that he lies fettered in the condemned cell, waiting to die a shameful death; and from my soul I pity him and his friends, whose misery this night stands in such hideous contrast to our own happiness. . . . It is a God-like prerogative, that of showing mercy! . . . You will consecrate your office by making your very first official act an act of grace! (20)

This passage is followed by a description of Augusta, “in the enthusiasm of her benevolence and sympathy,” looking toward him to “catch a responsive glow from his face,” only to be surprised that “there was none there.” She is devastated to discover that her husband does not intend to save O’Leary. In fact, he is un- moved by her sympathetic appeal and steadfast in his duty. While readers are privy to this private scene, O’Leary’s family and friends are not. Thus, on the night before the execution, Reverend Goodrich, a clergyman ministering to O’Leary, encourages Norah to “enlist” Augusta Hunter’s “sympathies in your favor,” arguing that wives hold great influence upon their husbands and noting that in political marriages “a lady’s word has [often] decided the destiny of empires and of individuals” (48). Goodrich explains:

I feel sure that all the influence she possesses will be used in your behalf. And remember that her influence, I may say her power, is . . .

186 Paul Christian Jones greater with his excellency than that of any other human being alive. She is the woman that can lead the lion, if any created being can. And remember, that after every other petitioner and counsellor has been dismissed, and the doors are closed, she will still have the ear of the Governor through the night. And what may not her power accomplish? I assure you, your best hope under Heaven is in her. (48)

The minister’s confidence in the wife’s private influence upon her husband is in keeping with antebellum thinking about a woman’s moral role in the domestic sphere as an influence upon her husband and family, an influence dramatized repeatedly in antebellum sentimental fiction. Perhaps the most iconic illustration of this vision of woman’s role appears in a chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin titled “In Which It Appears that a Senator Is but a Man,” wherein Mary Bird presents an emotional, moral, and religious argument to her husband, Senator John Bird, against his support for fugitive slave legislation. This much-analyzed scene between husband and wife has been used to represent the conventional antebellum relationship between the separate spheres, wherein, in the words of Amy Schrager Lang, one sphere was “public and masculine” and the other was “private, feminine, and domestic.” As Lang explains, within this dynamic, the husband works in the public sphere for his wife and it is “from her that he receives the moral and emotional sustenance that allows him to work successfully.” In another analysis of this scene, Susan Roberson argues that it illustrates the wife’s role in the private sphere, as “remind[ing]” the public man, her husband, “of his humanity.”11 Before the scene in the Birds’ home is over, the wife’s humanizing influence has guided her husband’s actions, and the lawmaker helps the runaway slave Eliza Harris and her son Harry escape to freedom. While late-twentieth-century critics frequently analyzed the workings of sympathy, sentimentality, and women’s influence in Stowe’s chapter, The Lost Heir- ess offers a very early critique of Stowe’s model, particularly in the scene wherein Norah, following Goodrich’s advice, goes to the Hunter home to plead for their help in saving her son. While the Hunters display sympathy, the governor nonetheless rejects Norah’s emotional appeals, and her son remains doomed to die on the gallows. Southworth’s revisions of the pattern of the Bird chapter—its characterization of the compassionate wife, the rational husband, and the desperate mother begging for aid—suggest that she found it fundamentally insufficient as a model of social reform. Mary Bird’s domestic role is explicitly apolitical, as she never “trouble[d] her head with what was going on in the house of the state.” However, she does voice

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 187 an objection when she hears that her husband, a state senator in Ohio, has voted for that state’s version of the Fugitive Slave Law because she possesses an “unusually gentle and sympathetic nature . . . [and] anything in the shape of cruelty . . . throw[s] her into a passion.”12 Southworth similarly characterizes Augusta Hunter; after she hears Norah’s appeal, “her countenance expressed great sympathy with the sufferer” (64) and her “eyes [are] full of pity” (65). However, Augusta laments that she has “not the power” to “save” O’Leary, because “only one thing in this affair influences Mr. Hunter—a sense of justice” (64). Her impotence is demonstrated in the next pages as she voices not her own private position but her husband’s public one as the executor of justice, telling Norah, for instance, that her defense of her son is “a weak defence” (65). Though she tells Norah, “I would give everything I possess on earth, except my husband and child, to save your son” (67), when her husband arrives minutes later, Augusta makes no attempt to persuade him to follow her feeling. Indeed, she differs greatly from Mrs. Bird, who rules her husband by “entreaty and persuasion” (68), constantly challenging his arguments (“I hate reasoning, John” [70]) and even questioning the sincerity of his positions (“You don’t believe it’s right any more than I do” [70]). Augusta is so chastened by her earlier conversation with her husband and its clear implication that sympathy has no place in governance that she leaves Norah to make her case alone. Thedynamic here deviates from Stowe’s scene, wherein the wife’s voicing of strong feelings effects a change in the political convictions of her husband. Instead, in The Lost Heiress, the stern position of Governor Hunter essentially silences his wife, indicating that her feelings have no role in the workings of justice. Hunter’s unwillingness to hear his wife’s appeals parallels Senator Bird’s explanation to his wife that because “great public interests [are] involved . . . we must put aside our private feelings” (69). Yet Stowe reveals Bird to be a man with “a particularly humane and accessible nature” (69) who is moved by his wife’s pleas and by the suffering of Eliza and Harry. As he decides to break the very law that he has just passed, his wife praises him and tells him that his “heart is better than [his] head” (75). In Stowe’s vision, private feeling easily corrects any failings in the law. While the outcome of Hunter’s judgment is starkly different, Southworth insists that his refusal to act is not caused by a lack of feeling. Instead, she emphasizes Hunter’s abundant sympathy for O’Leary’s family and the great pain he feels because of his official duty to end the man’s life. In an early chapter, as Hunter breakfasts with his parents, siblings, and wife, all of them urge him to save O’Leary as they pass around waffles and pancakes. The narrator observes,

188 Paul Christian Jones “Only mark this—that while they who so eloquently expressed their pity, and so zealously pleaded for a pardon, ate and drank with a good relish for their food; he who firmly refused to reprieve, scarcely touched a morsel, but sat grave and pale; and judge if you please, who at heart felt the most painful sympathy” (30). After this suggestion that Hunter is more sympathetic than those who utter opinions while relishing their meal, the narrator describes Hunter’s dilemma further: “[He] weighed justice and mercy in the scales of conscience. But to-morrow the most portentous trial awaits him. He must encounter the pleadings of the convict’s broken-hearted mother and grief-stricken wife. He would not sacrifice conscience for family love or popular favor, will he sacrifice it to their awful sorrow?” (30). Hunter worries about whether his principles can withstand the appeal presented by O’Leary’s loved ones. And, indeed, when that appeal is made, he is “deeply moved” by Norah’s begging for her child’s life, and, even “with all his self-control, his countenance still betrayed the greatest mental pain” (71). How- ever, true to his “conscience,” he informs her, “I have not the power to save your son, without a sacrifice of principle, and that I will not make” (73). While Governor Hunter withstands the “trial” presented by the mother’s plea, Senator Bird cannot resist the “magic of the real presence of distress” presented to him in Eliza’s appeal for her son (77). Southworth presents Hunter’s ability to resist this emotional appeal, in a fashion atypical of sentimental narrative, as a sign of his strong devotion to his executive charge. As Hunter explains to Norah, “Heaven bears me witness, how deeply I sympathize with your sufferings—how terrible to me it is to be obliged to refuse your request. But you entirely mistake my power. I am under the law of conscience, and accountable to Heaven for the use I make of the power vested in my person!” (72). He develops his definition of his executive “power” in more detail when he explains to the dignitaries that a reprieve can only be granted if “it is discovered that some injustice has been done the condemned . . . by a partial judge or corrupt jury, or when circumstances have come to light to prove his innocence, or to throw a strong doubt upon his guilt. . . . Under all other circumstances,” he asserts, “it is [the Executive’s] duty to sustain the court in its action, and to see its sentence carried into effect” (58). He distinguishes between his personal feelings and his public duties: “I may forgive my individual foe, but must not screen a felon from just punishment. . . . If that man murdered my brother, I might forgive my individual wrong, but should not interfere with the course of justice” (57). This discussion of private“ feeling” and “public duty” hearkens back to Sena- tor Bird but ultimately casts Bird in a problematic light. Though the senator describes his voting for the law and even “spurring up the legislature . . . to pass

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 189 more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and abet- tors” (76–77) as a “very painful duty” (70), Stowe makes it clear that this support is a matter of political pragmatism rather than moral conviction. As Mrs. Bird laments, “There’s a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don’t believe in it yourselves. . . . You don’t believe it’s right any more than I do” (70). Despite only days before condemning the “sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests” (77), once his own private feelings are involved, he sets about to break the law he pushed through. Stowe’s narrator argues that Bird’s assistance of Eliza goes a “fair way to expiate” his “political sin” (77). Readers should certainly question whether this one act of compassionate law breaking, which makes Bird feel better about himself, is sufficient expiation for the law he passed, a law that continues to exist, serving those “great state interests” and punishing others whose feelings turn them against the law. Because, as Amy Lang observes, “as far as we know, this act of private charity . . . has no effect on [Bird’s] public posture,” the fundamental hypocrisy of his stance marks him as a very different political figure from Southworth’s governor.13 Indeed, Hunter denies that divide between public and private applies to public officials. At least initially, the novel seems to endorse as appropriate for the public man his insistence that private feelings have no place in the workings of the state. Some of this endorsement comes from characters, such as the prison warden who responds to Norah’s calling Hunter a “tyrant” by asserting, “No! Daniel Hunter is a humane and upright man; but one who does not permit his own passions and emotions . . . to govern him” (47). Hunter himself asserts his intent to keep “his own passions” out of governance on several occasions. For example, when the advocates for the commutation suggest that if O’Leary were a member of Hunter’s family the governor would see things differently, he stri- dently disagrees. To the Commodore’s question, “[I]f the condemned were your brother?” Hunter retorts, “If guilty, he should suffer, though our mother inter- ceded for his pardon.” The men see by the expression on his face that “he would have done as he said” (57). And when Norah similarly asks, “But if he were your son?” Hunter adamantly asserts, “He should die!” (73). Unlike Stowe’s senator, Hunter, in order to uphold what he sees as his sacred duty (here it is, indeed, as Bird described, a “painful duty”), must resist the most heartfelt appeals to his emotions, which might move him personally but would cause him to fail as the state’s chief executive. While I agree, to some extent, with Nina Baym’s description of Hunter as a “good man” and with Naranjo-Huebl’s description of him as “a righteous” one,

190 Paul Christian Jones Southworth’s characterization of him is more complex.14 Indeed, Naranjo-Huebl qualifies her description of him by noting that he is “scary in the power he wields.” I would go further: He is so “scary” because of his absolute vision, his certainty that how he sees the world is the correct, perhaps the only, way. Yet even though Southworth makes clear that his certainty produces dangerous consequences, she resists overtly criticizing the governor for his dogged lawfulness. Consequently, he appears to be the ideal public servant, a noble man who truly believes in and follows the laws he executes. As she characterizes his meteoric political career, beginning with his first election to the state legislature at the age of twenty five, as a “champion of humanity and equal rights” (95), through his assuming the governorship at the very young age of thirty-two, she appears to idealize him as a political man. However, this ideal statesman ironically also embodies the true obstacle to progress, the belief in the law’s and the state’s infallibility. Making her governor differ from Stowe’s senator, the former a dogmatic believer in the rightness of the law he serves and the latter a pragmatist following popular whim, Southworth exposes a flaw in Stowe’s model for change as presented in the Birds’ marriage, and questions the effectiveness of Stowe’s optimistic model of how women may influence a man of law. When the public man holds Hunter’s strong convictions, including the conviction that emotions have no place in the workings of justice, Stowe’s model fails. The marriage in Stowe’s novel idealistically portrays the wife’s power to influence what was human in her lawmaking husband; the one in Southworth’s novel more problematically presents the limits of the wife’s power to influence her husband—illustrating the limited power of individual sympathy to influence the law and lawmakers—when his very sense of upholding the law dictates the denial of his own feelings. Southworth’s scene between Norah and the Hunters poses another critique of Stowe’s assertion of the power of sympathy, as it illustrates the limits of Augusta’s own individual sympathy for Norah in a way that departs strikingly from Stowe’s model. When Eliza confronts the Birds, she quickly finds a common bond with them, asking whether they have “ever lost a child” and, upon hearing that they have, asserting, “Then you will feel for me” (72). She then conveys her tale of suffering, which takes her only a paragraph and leads all the characters in the Bird household, male and female, white and black, adult and child, to tears and to a willingness to act on her behalf. Norah faces a more difficult challenge. Her attempts to gain sympathy are excruciating, as she first tries to find common ground on which to address Augusta Hunter and then turns to the governor, whom she desperately begs to issue the pardon. As one reads these pages, one cannot imagine that any human being could resist her entreaties. However, there

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 191 is one intriguing difference between the Birds and the Hunters in these parallel scenes. That is, as a younger couple, the Hunters have never lost a child and have only recently had their first offspring, an infant daughter, who is present in the room during the scene. Norah frequently attempts to use the baby to appeal to Augusta, noting for instance that “[m]y poor son is . . . [as] innocent of murder as that babe of yours sleeping in that crib” (63). Unfortunately, these references to the infant actually create a divide rather than sympathy between the two women. Immediately after the reference above, “Augusta shuddered strangely . . . at such an allusion to her child in such a connection” (63). As their conversation continues, Norah asks Augusta to imagine her own child in such straits and to consider her feelings if she were about to lose her only child. Southworth characterizes the complicated response of Augusta as “not only an agonizing sympathy with the suffering mother, but [also] . . . a vague unreasoning fear of her. Every time, when in the course of the interview, the dark, desperate looking woman had in any way alluded to her sleeping babe, Augusta had trembled through all of her frame” (72). Soon after, Augusta exits the room with the infant, as “an undefined, instinctive dread of some unknown danger to the babe—a dread that she could neither understand nor resist—took possession of her soul, and governed her actions” (72). This depiction offers a strong challenge to those who argued that sentimental identification, defined by Glenn Hendler as the ability to “imagine oneself, at least to some extent, in another’s position” or “conceiv[e] what we ourselves should feel in the like situation,” would prompt one to act to relieve the suffering of others.15 Instead, this dynamic fails. Norah tries to create the common ground upon which sentimental identification can be built, only to have Augusta, imagining herself suffering Norah’s pain, withdraw defensively to protect only her own child and leave Norah’s to the justice system. If Stowe’s scene demonstrates the potential of sympathy influencing decision making, Augusta’s flight from the scene of decision making suggests the limits of sympathy. The failure of sympathy in both Governor Hunter and his wife has immediate and seemingly irrevocable consequences. O’Leary’s execution occurs as scheduled, and Norah, who witnesses the horrific spectacle, is deranged by the sight: “She saw him swinging between heaven and earth, his form convulsed in the agonies of the violent death, and then hope and reason fled for ever! . . . [B]laspheming heaven, she fled the scene, a maniac and a wanderer over the wide world” (90). A reader cannot help but imagine a similar outcome for Eliza Harris if the Birds had been more law abiding, reported her to the authorities, and handed young Harry over to the slave trader. In the weeks following the hanging, Norah becomes obsessed with a “consuming desire of revenge . . . upon the head

192 Paul Christian Jones of [her son’s] destroyer,” Hunter. Her revenge takes the form of kidnapping the Hunters’ infant daughter during a family outing, leaving the family to assume that the child has drowned. This act of vengeance, “a child for a child” (150), dictates the rest of the action of the book. Nelly O’Leary takes the infant Maud, the “lost heiress,” renames her Sylvia, and raises her as her adopted daughter. While much of the remainder of the novel follows the ensuing two decades of Hunter’s political career, including positions as U.S. senator, secretary of state, and ambassador to France, the capital punishment plot returns when, eleven years after O’Leary’s execution, Hunter receives word from the Bishop of Mary- land of another man’s deathbed confession to the murder for which O’Leary was hanged. Hunter’s immediate response to “this terrible annunciation” is to exclaim, “God be merciful to human error! . . . for if the convict had been my own son, I would have done as I did” (256). While the Bishop quickly acknowledges his own certainty that Hunter would not have saved his own son “from the justly offended majesty of the law” (256), he turns to larger questions raised by this incident and asks Hunter to “look seriously into this matter . . . because you exercise a mighty influence upon the age in which we live, and consequently upon the coming destiny of the world” (256–57). As he prompts Hunter to reflect upon this travesty, the Bishop pose the questions Southworth wants her readers to consider:

Here has been a grevious, a tremendous wrong done. A young man, amiable, innocent, exemplary in all the relations of life, is charged with a crime he has never committed—he is overwhelmed by circumstantial evidence—he endures all the torture, suspense, shame and anguish of a long imprisonment, a terrible trial, and a public death! I repeat there has been an awful wrong done! Who is the wrong-doer or the wrong- doers? Not the judge and jury who convicted him! for they went by the law and the testimony, and with the evidence before them they could do no otherwise than condemn him! not the Governor, for it was his duty to see the laws carried into effect! Who then? Daniel Hunter, I ask you, as a law-maker, a leader among men and nations, upon whose head or heads has fallen the innocent blood of this young man? (257).

The scene provides no explicit answers, though Hunter certainly feels some guilt for his role in the wrongful execution, and he attempts to make amends by visiting

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 193 O’Leary’s widow and offering to pay for her son Falconer’s college education “to repair . . . the injustice . . . suffered at the hands of the law” (280). His assertion presents one possible answer to the Bishop’s question: The novel suggests that the law itself is the prime suspect and principal wrong-doer. Yet the novel does not exonerate all of those involved in making and upholding the laws. Indeed, while the Bishop states that neither judge, jury, nor Hunter in his role as governor can be held responsible for O’Leary’s death, he does ask “who” rather than “what” is to be held responsible, and he asks Hunter in his current role “as a law-maker” to ponder this. I propose that the Bishop implies that, while governors should not be blamed for enforcing existing law, legislators are guilty if they do not attempt to rectify unjust laws (as Senator Bird, for example, fails to do in Stowe’s book). Despite the Bishop’s implied suggestion, most of the characters explicitly place the blame for O’Leary’s death on the laws alone. For example, when Falconer learns from his mother of the proof of his father’s innocence, he pronounces, “And these are the laws of a model republic! So imperfect as to immolate the innocent, and let the guilty escape!” (302). And several years later, when a physician tending to Norah in a mental asylum comes to summon the Hunters to her deathbed, he refers to O’Leary’s execution but quickly ex- cuses Hunter from responsibility: “It was one of those inevitable errors for which imperfect laws are alone accountable. We all understand that—the man died a victim to circumstantial evidence” (346). This chorus of voices directs the blame away from Hunter and toward society’s “imperfect laws.” For the most part, the dying madwoman Norah is the lone holdout, as she refuses to excuse or forgive Hunter, even preferring to risk eternal damna- tion over joining those telling him that he could have done nothing differently. Augusta’s bedside appeal to Norah intriguingly reverses the roles in the scene before O’Leary’s execution, as she now begs Norah to forgive her husband, echoing the logic of the other characters: “You have suffered a terrible wrong by a cruel law. My husband was its fated executor.” However, Augusta complicates her appeal by adding, “I do not defend him. He does not defend himself” (352). Paradoxically, Augusta claims that she does not defend her husband just after she offers a defense of him—that he was the “fated executor” of “a cruel law.” Yet her defense suggests that neither she nor the governor himself is altogether convinced of his guiltlessness or that his actions were defensible. Augusta quickly moves past this ambiguity and tells Norah that “he has suffered only less than you.” While Norah insists that forgiveness is impossible, the scene implies that this will come, as Augusta stays by Norah’s bedside, forgives her for stealing her baby and rob- bing her of a lifetime with her daughter. In a sense, she forgives Norah for doing that for which Norah will not forgive Hunter, taking away her child.

194 Paul Christian Jones In her own act of forgiveness, then, Augusta offers a model for Norah and a positive influence. She encourages Norah: “The Lord’s mercy speaks to you through me. . . . May it redeem you—may it bless you” (355). Thus Augusta intends her display of mercy to redeem Norah, who describes the effect of Augusta’s example on her: “Oh, Mrs. Hunter! While you hold my hand and talk to me so, and look at me, with heaven calling me through your eyes, I feel my heart changing, changing in my bosom! . . . If you could stay by me . . . I might not then be a lost spirit” (355). Thisredemptive moment offers an interesting counterpoint to Hunter’s earlier speech in which he expressed his understanding of the law. There, he asserted, “The laws do not attempt to reform the guilty, but to protect the inoffensive, not to regenerate the heart, but to restrain its guilty passions from breaking into overt crime. The law is not reformatory, but restraining—‘a terror to evil doers.’ Only the gospel is reformatory.” After expressing this legal philosophy, he pronounces his dissatisfaction with contemporary practices:

For some time past I have regretted to perceive a moral cowardice upon this subject prevailing in the community—they shrink from the stern duties of justice, and in their false pity of the guilty, grant them that impunity which leaves the innocent and the inoffensive exposed to their passions. In this instance, I repeat, I am glad that judge and jury have had the moral courage to convict the criminal. . . .They have done their stern duty, and gentlemen, with God’s help, I will do mine! (54–55)

Hunter concludes this justification by quoting Christ’s description of himself in the Sermon on the Mount as coming “not to destroy the law, but to fulfill” it (57). His defense of his upholding of the law as a Christian obligation leaves his opponents with little room to present a counterargument. Even though Hunter’s certainty similarly silenced his wife early in the book, Augusta ultimately offers the novel’s strongest argument against her husband’s view of the law, if not in her words then in her actions. That is, Augusta’s behavior toward Norah as “evil doer” offers a corrective to her husband’s action, representing a reformatory, compassionate handling of the criminal. Not only does she pity someone who is guilty of a crime—Norah the kidnapper of Augusta’s own daughter—but her mercy, which Hunter would consider “moral cowardice,” may enable Norah’s redemption. This scene thus becomes Southworth’s rebuttal to the

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 195 failings of the law as represented in Hunter’s theory of justice, failings that killed an innocent man, robbed his family of their father, husband, and son, and created negative consequences for everyone in the novel, including Hunter himself. Yet it is significant that when Augusta demonstrates the superiority of the re- demptive work of mercy, Hunter, the man of law, has already departed the scene, leaving this work to his wife. His absence from this scene of redemption is crucial to Southworth’s criticism of him and the law he represents. He is completely uninvolved and uninterested in the work of mercy; as a figure of law, he cannot incorporate any of the sympathy or compassion he feels into his work. Indeed, as with Senator Bird, nothing suggests that Senator Hunter will follow his private feeling (even the guilt over his “ghastly legal murder” of an innocent [269]) and make changes in the flawed public system of punishment that kills the innocent because of “human error” (256). Importantly, though, Southworth does not conclude the novel with Hunter’s distance from the site of mercy; instead, she offers a hopeful indication that compassion and feeling will eventually have a greater place in the public sphere. This hope comes in the form of a transformed Augusta, who, following the death of Norah and her understanding of the fatal consequence of her husband’s first executive action, revises her view of her marriage and her role in it. Previously, Augusta “had, as a matter of conscience, avoided taking any part in the statesman’s political toils, cares and anxieties.” Now her thinking has changed and “she felt herself drawn irresistibly more and more into closer and closer companionship in all the man’s, the philanthropist’s, the statesman’s interests, thoughts, plans and purposes.” Southworth follows this description of Augusta’s increased involvement in public affairs with the sentence “And this closer union made both happier” (396). The implication is that Augusta understands that her past refusal to challenge her husband with her own feelings—and his as well—has had ill results. Her entry into the political world, which suggests a larger role for emotions and sympathy in public matters, has led to a happier union—both marital and national. If, as Naranjo-Huebl claims, Southworth fails to include “assertive females” in The Lost Heiress, she does so not to endorse conservatively but to critique progres- sively both a patriarchal society that silences female voices and the women who do not strive to be heard.16 Quite contrary to Margaret Bailey’s interpretation of the book, Southworth suggests not that Augusta’s deference to her husband’s will makes her noble, but that her submissive silence makes her as responsible for O’Leary’s death as her husband’s dogged view of the law makes him. Readers’ positive responses to Hunter as a character, both in the nineteenth and subsequent centuries, demonstrate that they err in judgment in much the

196 Paul Christian Jones same way many of the characters in the novel do: they defer to Hunter as executor of the law while ignoring the fact that he executes a fundamentally unjust law that does violence to an innocent individual. Well before Baym and Naranjo- Huebl described Hunter positively, Bailey in the National Era had declared that Hunter was the “ideal of the statesmen,” “a master spirit,” and “the real hero of the book,” and the Home Journal asserted that Southworth’s creation of “Hunter, the great statesman” demonstrated her power as a novelist, “a power attained by few female writers.” Remarkably, I have found only one contemporary review critical of Hunter and his governance: TheS pirit of the Times noted that “the terrible decision of Mr. Hunter in refusing to pardon one who was afterwards proved innocent leads to events upon which the tale is founded.”17 While Southworth had not yet explicitly articulated her later argument that compassion should guide the state (including courts, legislators, and executives) and that reform should be the aim of justice, we should not ignore the implications of her depiction of Hunter as a sincere executive whose fidelity to the law and rejection of personal feeling causes great tragedy. Making Hunter both admirable and flawed, Southworth not only anticipates her later, more sustained anti-gallows critique but also prefigures Herman Melville’s Captain Vere in Billy Budd, who serves as a warning of the dangerous consequences of feelings being exiled from the workings of justice.

* * * * *

Southworth’s argument about sympathy and its place in the workings of state justice was, for the most part, quite abstract in her early fiction; it seems her thinking about the issue had not advanced far beyond a conviction that the system needed to find some way to incorporate the tender feelings of compassion and sympathy. Despite her tentativeness, I believe that her depiction of the Hunters’ political marriage, like her depiction of similar marriages in Retribution and In- dia, gives some hint of the systematic revisions she would come to believe were needed the make the system just. Earlier, I suggested that the marriages in Stowe’s and Southworth’s novels symbolized the relationship between public law and private feeling, as both authors imply the need for a union between the government and sympathy, even though neither specifies how it might come about. However, if we move beyond seeing these marriages as merely symbolic depic- tions of such a union and consider them as actual antebellum marriages between husbands and wives, we can understand why Southworth saw obstacles to the emotions influencing the law. That is, the limited rights of wives within the institution of marriage parallel the limited role of women within the institutions

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 197 of governance, and Southworth suggests feeling cannot be incorporated into the law until women’s roles change. By revising Stowe’s depiction of marital union in a political marriage, Southworth proposed that women go beyond being private domestic advisors to their husbands (like Mary Bird) to take an active role in the public sphere. Furthermore, Southworth imagines that when women assume public roles their influence will be significant enough to effect real change in the system. It is important to note that Stowe’s representation of the marriage between Senator and Mrs. Bird was by no means radical in the 1850s: Mrs. Bird influences the law only personally and privately through a male family member, her husband. Indeed, the idea that women could shape public affairs by influencing the men in their lives was frequently used to counter women’s demands for political representation. In 1845 in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, when Margaret Fuller argued that women should become active participants in politics as voters and officeholders, she anticipated an already-standard conservative counterclaim: “All men are privately influenced by women; each has his wife, sister, or female friends, and is too much biased by these relations to fail of representing their interests.” Beyond claiming that women had no need for political power because conservative patriarchs represented their interests for them, opponents predicted that women’s enfranchisement would have dire effects: “The beauty of home would be destroyed, the delicacy of the sex be violated, the dignity of halls of legislation degraded by an attempt to introduce them there.” Fuller mocks these arguments by noting that they typically descend into “ludicrous pictures of ladies in hysterics at the polls, and senate chambers filled with cradles.”18 Stowe’s Mary Bird acts in accordance with the vision of conservative opponents to women’s rights. She expresses her political opinions to her husband only in private in order to influence his actions. She never leaves the domestic sphere (in the single chapter of the novel in which she appears) or aspires to a public role. Indeed, antebellum conservatives even used Mrs. Bird as an example of appropriate female behavior when they argued against the aims of the burgeoning women’s rights movements. In an 1854 piece called “The Cause of Woman,” a writer for the Independent argues,

It does not seem to us that the character of Woman in this country is ever to be improved or elevated, by a general engagement of the sex in political contests, or even in public and forensic efforts in the cause of Reform. On the contrary, we prefer . . . that the public forensic career be left to men; and that the gifted women of our time be content to

198 Paul Christian Jones cherish at home, and to express otherwise than by harangues, that re- finement of taste, that delicacy of moral sensibility, and that exquisitely elevated and unworldly character, which is the glory of their sex, and which will most surely exalt and purify the character and reform the action of those connected with them, and thus, at last, of society at large. The wife of the Ohio Senator . . . in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a woman after our own heart in this respect; and we would that her example were universally followed.19

This critic, then, perceives Mrs. Bird’s actions not as a radical feminist challenge to the status quo but as an example of a woman fulfilling her wifely role rather than pursuing a place in “political contests” or in “forensic efforts in the cause of Reform.” Content to be a private moral influence upon her husband’s public actions, Mary Bird found favor with readers like Margaret Bailey, who encouraged women to submit to their husbands and men to be open to the moral guidance of their wives. More skeptical readers, like Fuller and Southworth, found the Bird marriage an insufficient model for women’s representation in the workings of the state. As Elizabeth Barnes notes, a fundamental problem with their marriage is “the fact that the senator—acting on every level as his wife’s representative—may vote against his wife’s conscience.”20 When, in TheL ost Heiress, Governor Hunter ignores Augusta’s moral pleading, effectively silences her, and then acts only according to his personal feeling as to right actions, Southworth casts similar doubt on the universal efficacy of Bird model. Ultimately, Southworth’s fiction suggests that if women are to have a positive influence upon the state, they will need to be more than advisors to their husbands. In India (like The Lost Heiress serialized in 1853), she features a political marriage similar to the Hunters’ and the Birds’ marriages. After the Human Rights party nominates the novel’s hero, Mark Sutherland, to be a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat, his wife Rosalie encourages him to pursue the opportunity, arguing that “a seat in the American Senate” is “a great honour” because “of the place and power it will confer upon you of doing good; of speaking appropriate truths before the proper audience; of succouring the oppressed; of defending the right!” At first, Rosalie seems to fit the conventional image of the wife as moral advisor. However, later in the same chapter, she explains why she will not give up her position as a teacher of young girls despite her terminal illness, complicating this conventional thinking:

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 199 These little ones will hereafter be the wives and mothers of law-makers, as all our people are law-makers; they will live in an era when American women will have more influence upon the destinies of the nation than they dream of now. That influence must be for the right; I must sow the good seed, and cultivate it while I live, that, after I die, the germ may grow and flourish, and bring forth much fruit in other lives.21

Her assertion is compelling in its ambiguity and tantalizing suggestion of a future transformation of women’s place in the public sphere. Though Rosalie toes the traditional line when she describes her students as future “wives and mothers of law-makers,” she also claims that “all our people are law-makers,” suggesting that women may also “make laws” (certainly Rosalie, Southworth, and most of Southworth’s readers would believe women were included among “all our people”). While Rosalie does not explicitly predict that women will vote and even hold office, she strongly implies as much in her prediction that within the female students’ lifetimes, women “will have more influence” on “the nation than they dream of now.” Rosalie is not merely imagining a future in which women continue to serve as domestic advisors to their husbands, but rather one in which they can cast their own votes or even represent constituents in the public halls of the legislature. The Lost Heiress’s Augusta Hunter and her character arc suggest a similar possibility of more active engagement in the political sphere. Southworth is clear about Augusta’s capabilities for political engagement, describing her as “endowed with a high order of intellect” and “with every circumstance within and without to constitute her a female politician” (243). Unfortunately, Augusta’s sense of her domestic duty keeps her from pursuing her political interests:

Augusta conscientiously excluded politics from her thoughts and conversation. . . . She felt that if she interested herself too deeply in this subject, her husband would too often discuss it with her. And she felt that when politics entered the door, peace flew out of the window. And she wished her home to be the place of forgetfulness and repose to the toil-worn statesman. . . . She never refused to discuss any political question with him, but with matchless tact she drew him away from the fatiguing subject.

200 Paul Christian Jones Thus, like opponents of women’s suffrage, she feels she cannot engage in or even take an interest in politics without threatening the tranquility of her home and her husband’s happiness. Eventually, as noted earlier, Augusta does abandon this conservative position, moving away from her resistance to political engagement, as she “felt herself drawn irresistibly more and more into closer and closer companionship in all . . . the statesman’s interests, thoughts, plans and purposes,” and thus forging a “happier union.” The novel suggests the return of her long-missing daughter may have shifted her thinking. Perhaps just as Rosalie in India sees her teaching as benefit- ting both her students and the nation that they will eventually influence, Augusta can only change her attitude after she once again sees herself as the mother of a young woman. Only when she learns her daughter is alive (and not drowned as an infant) does she begin to assert her own opinions and act differently than antebellum culture prescribed. When she becomes a model for a daughter, a young woman soon to be a wife herself, Augusta becomes more politically engaged. This significant shift in her character suggests Maud’s kidnapping of Augusta’s daughter as an infant perhaps even advanced the cause of justice, that a home in which a husband ignored his wife’s feelings and a wife allowed herself to being silenced was an unsuitable place for a woman of the future to be reared, and that she was perhaps better off in the hands of a “madwoman” who challenged authority, made her voice heard, and acted unhesitatingly according to her own sense of right. Even the title TheL ost Heiress might lead us to ask when Maud was more lost, when she was heir to the submissive Augusta and her domineering husband or when she was under the care of the defiant Norah and the widowed Nelly. The title implies that the Mauds of the world, the heiresses of the current generation, are better served by mothers and teachers who see them as future lawmakers and who teach them to think, speak, and engage politically. Previous readers and critics of TheL ost Heiress have mistakenly characterized it as Southworth’s conservative retreat from and rejection of her previous critiques of patriarchal oppression or of her demands for more rights and privileges for American women. Instead, the novel effectively highlights the societal consequences of the marginalization of women’s opinions and feelings and of masculine tyranny, including the failure of the state to incorporate compassion and sympathy into its workings and thus to ever achieve true justice. In its argument for progressive social reform, it asserts that, in order for unions, both marital and national, to be happy, women must be active and equal partners.

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 201 Notes 1. The Lost Heiress began its serialization in the Post in July 1853, running in twenty- nine installments and concluding in February 1854. It first appeared in book form in November 1854.

2. M.L.B. [Margaret L. Bailey], review of Lost Heiress, Era, Nov. 16, 1854, 182; review of Lost Heiress, Trenton State Gazette, Nov. 13, 1854, 2. Additionally, Godey’s pronounced it “one of the best of Mrs. Southworth’s numerous productions,” and Harper’s declared it “the most finished production which has come from the pen of that fertile writer.” Re- view of Lost Heiress, Godey’s Lady’s Book 49 (Dec. 1854): 555; and review of Lost Heiress, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 10 (Jan. 1855): 282.

3. Ken Egan, TheR iven Home: Narrative Rivalry in the American Renaissance (Selins- grove, PA: Susquehanna Univ. Press, 1997), 139, 141; Linda Naranjo-Huebl, “The Road to Perdition: E. D. E. N. Southworth and the Critics,” American Periodicals 16, no. 2 (2006): 135.

4. See Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990), 64–68, for a discussion of Peterson’s concerns about the content of Southworth’s serials, including his warning in a December 1854 letter to Southworth that “I stand between you and literary perdition” (67).

5. Egan, Riven Home, 136, 140–42. According to Egan, this taming of her work also involved “a marked change in tone and characterization of women,” a tempering of “her highly wrought style,” and an effort to utilize “exclusively . . . the domestic voice” (140–41).

6. Naranjo-Huebl, “Road to Perdition,”135. Similarly, Nina Baym observes that, “in the fourteen novels from the fifties that form the subject of [her] analysis” of Southworth’s work, Governor Daniel Hunter is the “only . . . thoroughly good man” that she discovered, a deviation from Southworth’s “two basic representations of the male, . . . [as] the tyrannical and hypocritical father or . . . the impetuous, self-centered suitor.” Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870, 2nd ed. (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993), 115.

7. [Bailey], review of Lost Heiress, 182. Bailey paraphrases Eve’s address to Adam in Paradise Lost, bk. 4, lines 635–37.

8. Paul Christian Jones, “‘I put my fingers around my throat and squeezed it, to know how it feels’: Anti-gallows Sentimentalism and E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Hidden Hand,”

202 Paul Christian Jones Legacy 25, no. 1 (2008): 41. In this essay, I trace the evolution of Southworth’s campaign against capital punishment in her fiction, from its first mention in the 1847 story “A Thunderbolt to the Hearth,” through various fictions of the 1850s, including a brief discussion of The Lost Heiress, before reading The Hidden Hand as “her most sophisticated foray into the debate over capital punishment” (41).

9. Egan, Riven Home, 140–41. To support his case for this influence, he refers to Southworth’s “commercial designs,” her use of “the domestic voice,” her promotion of “conventional femininity,” and a chapter title that is “an obvious echo of Stowe’s chapter dedicated to Eva’s death.”

10. EDENS, The Lost Heiress (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1854), 29 (hereinafter cited in the text).

11. Amy Schrager Lang, “Slavery and Sentimentalism: The Strange Career of Augus- tine St. Clare,” Women’s Studies 12 (1986): 34–35; Susan L. Roberson, “Matriarchy and the Rhetoric of Domesticity,” in TheS towe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ed. Mason Lawrence, Ellen Westbrook, and R. C. De Prospo (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 121. For additional readings of this scene in terms of sentimentality and sympathy, see Catharine E. O’Connell, “‘The Magic of the Real Presence of Distress’: Sentimentality and Competing Rhetorics of Authority,” in The Stowe Debate, ed. Lawrence, Westbrook, and De Prospo, 15–18; Marianne Noble, “The Ecstasies of Sentimental Wounding in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Yale Journal of Criticism 10 (1997): 297– 99; and Elizabeth Barnes, States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1997), 92–97.

12. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York: Norton, 1994), 67–68 (hereinafter cited in the text).

13. Lang, “Slavery and Sentimentalism,” 39.

14. Baym, Woman’s Fiction, 115; Naranjo-Huebl, “Road to Perdition,” 135.

15. Glenn Hendler, Public Sentiments: Structures of Feeling in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001), 3–4.

16. Naranjo-Huebl, “Road to Perdition,” 135. To be clear, Naranjo-Huebl does not ignore Norah’s assertiveness but sees her as an exception among female characters in the novel: “With the exception of a fiercely devoted mother driven insane by injustice and wandering the countryside (a madwoman with no attic), this novel lacks any of the assertive females who had become staples in Southworth’s early fiction” (135). The implication is that Norah’s “madness” mutes the truths she asserts, though I’d suggest that her

Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in The Lost Heiress 203 truthfulness, especially her scathing evaluation of Hunter, is one of the reasons she is seen as mad. Egan similarly rejects Norah as a platform for Southworth’s feminism because she is considered mad: “While never completely sacrificing her theme of female self-reliance [in India and The Lost Heiress], Southworth toned down the melodramatic rant of her female protagonists, displacing that violent language to out-and-out villainesses or madwomen.” Riven Home, 140. I disagree with Egan: We should not ignore the depiction of “female self-reliance” in Norah merely because it is presented in the “violent language” of a “madwoman.”

17. “Mere Mention,” Home Journal, Mar. 1, 1856, 3; review of TheL ost Heiress, Spirit of the Times, Nov. 4, 1854, 447.

18. Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton, 1998), 18–19.

19. “The Cause of Woman,”I ndependent, Feb. 16, 1854, 52. This anonymous piece responds to a circular “To the Friends of the Cause of Woman” by Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, Lucy Stone, and T. W. Higginson.

20. Barnes, States of Sympathy, 93.

21. EDENS, India: The earlP of Pearl River (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1854), 371–72, 374. This work was serialized in the National Era as Mark Sutherland from January to August 1853.

204 Paul Christian Jones E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Tragic Muse Karen Tracey

E. D. E. N. Southworth is well known for happily resolved novels that blend adventure and sentimentalism, such as The Hidden Hand (1859) and Britomarte, the Man-Hater (1865–66). In these narratives, Southworth conveys a hopeful worldview: confidence that destiny can be molded by heroic action, that immoral behavior is a function of comprehensible human weakness and therefore can be defined and managed, that Providence watches over the innocent and assures that virtue will triumph and order will be restored. But Southworth at times took a much more somber approach, discarding the comedic ending and invoking instead a tragic outcome. Such is the case in the two antebellum texts examined in this chapter: Lionne: The oomD of Deville, first appearing the New York Ledger (1859) and retitled The Fatal Marriage on book publication (1863), and a novella, The Brothers,serialized in the antislavery periodical the National Era (1856) and retitled The Presentimentwhen collected in The Haunted Home- stead and Other Nouvellettes (1860). The atmosphere of both these stories is foreboding from the outset, with plots springing from sexual transgression and culminating in violent death, leaving behind fractured personal, domestic, and social orders. Both narratives center on exploited characters whose identity and self-determination is compromised by forces beyond their control. In The Broth- ers, this figure is the mixed-race slave Valentine, and inThe F atal Marriage it is Lionne, a woman seduced into a bigamous union. Initially innocent and well in- tentioned, Valentine and Lionne react to adverse circumstances by transforming into agents of revenge, pursued by what in classic tragedy would be called Fate. But Southworth aims for more than a general tragic effect, embedding the stories into specific historical contexts, the late colonial period and the antebellum era, respectively. From these different platforms, both The Fatal Marriage and The Brothers confront the deepening troubles of pre–Civil War America, employing tragic conventions to suggest that the country’s unjust social mores and abuse of power may be on the brink of igniting violence. In both TheF atal Marriage and The Brothers,Southworth’s tragic vision links her characters’ lives and deaths with sociopolitical concerns, but rather than reaching for a universal application that would be, almost by definition, ahistori- cal and elitist, she applies the lessons of her stories to the troubled world of the antebellum United States. She presents The Brothers, the tale of a slave executed for killing his master, as a factual account. “The tragic story . . . is, in all its essential features, strictly true,” Southworth writes. “[G]enerally the language used has been faithful to the letter, and always to the spirit, of the facts.”1 The Fatal Marriage is set in pre-Revolutionary America, with the early action of the novel situated during the French and Indian War, and the conclusion at the historical moment when the colonies threaten to rebel against England. In this novel, Southworth reworks the plot of a she-tragedy titled TheF atal Marriage; or, the Innocent Adultery (1694), which was adapted by Thomas Southerne from Aphra Behn’s story “The History of the Nun; or, the Fair Vow-Breaker” (1689). The rothersB is obviously relevant to antebellum political and social conflict, but in a less self-evident way, so is The Fatal Marriage. The novel blends tragedy and melodrama, but the specificity of its historical frame strikes an almost startling note of realism. The narrative opens with Orville Deville riding home in July 1755, a survivor of the disastrous battle known as Braddock’s Defeat. In that conflict, British and colonial forces were humiliated at the hands of a far smaller group of French, Canadian, and Indian fighters. General Braddock was fatally wounded, and of the thirteen hundred men with him, roughly a third were killed and another third wounded. Reviewing Southworth’s sources for TheF atal Marriage, we find ill-fated sieges similar to those featured in Behn’s story and in Southerne’s play (in both cases, husbands were reported to have been killed during sieges). The domestic plots of all these fatal marriage stories (Southworth’s, Behn’s, and Southerne’s) are as confused, morally ambiguous, and dangerous as the battles that provide some of the textual backdrop. The muddled sieges and embarrassing defeats occur in wars with indeterminate or yet to be determined outcomes; as such, they contrast sharply with the buoyant, confident successes of TheH idden Hand ’s Herbert Greyson in the Mexican War and Britomarte’s Justin Rosenthal in the Civil War. Braddock’s Defeat showcased male hubris and failure, and so do the fates of Southworth’s leading male characters: Oswald Waring of The Brothers and Orville Deville of TheF atal Marriage. Both are slaveholding aristocrats, but neither is brave or heroic, and their shared faults include self-indulgence and weak moral fiber. They boast of their entitlement but are unable to maintain their status; the slaves and women they place under siege defy them. Both men are blond, young,

206 Karen Tracey wealthy, and powerful, yet both are defeated by those they have abused. Oswald’s slave and half-brother Valentine and Orville’s abandoned wife Lionne become primary movers of the action and daunting tragic figures. Meanwhile, Oswald and Orville diminish into hapless men who show poor judgment, are misguided, and are ultimately responsible for their own destruction. In The Brothers, Southworth evokes classic tragedy, comparing Valentine’s dilemma to that of Oedipus and naming his mother Phaedra, while in The Fatal Marriage she borrows directly from a Restoration she-tragedy of the same name. High tragedy centers on an extraordinary hero who experiences a reversal of fortune or makes a fatal mistake that inexorably leads to his doom; it is distinguished from heartbreaking melodramatic or sentimental tales in that the individual hero’s fate is somehow representative of the human condition as a whole. As George Steiner puts it, the “nucleus” of pure tragedy is the fallen condition of the human race, a perpetual state of “ontological homelessness” where the human being “is made an unwelcome guest of life, or, at best, a threatened stranger on this hostile or indifferent earth.”2 Furthermore, Steiner insists, “absolute tragedy . . . is immune to hope.”3 In contrast, Restoration she-tragedies center on a victim- ized heroine. Jean Marsden defines she-tragedies as dramas that “center around the suffering and death of a female protagonist, whose protracted ‘distress’ represents the tragedy’s main action.” Typically, Marsden continues, “these female figures suffer not for their virtue but for their sins.”4 It may be fair to generalize that classic tragedy focuses on a character whose heroic but futile battle against fate inspires an audience’s empathy and awe, whereas the she-tragedy presents a suffering woman as spectacle, a victim attracting more pity than admiration. Southworth does not write pure tragedy; rather, she blends tragic allusions and tropes with the popular styles of melodrama, the Gothic, and sentimentalism. Melodrama, like tragedy, comes to novels from the stage. Lori Merish notes that in “antebellum America, the interdependence of theatrical and fictional melodrama was both pronounced and complex: the melodramatic vocabulary of the stage widely influenced American fiction.” The Fatal Marriage reads like a series of play scenes moving at a breathless pace, very much the “sensational, rapid succession of implausible actions” that, according to Merish, characterize melodrama.5 Southworth structures The Brothers more simply as a straightforward story punctuated by melodramatic scenes of conflict, each one more ominous than the one before as the story builds to its horrifying climax. As a counterpoint to the melodrama, Southworth composes sentimental scenes that ground both novels in familiar narrative territory. Defining sentimentalism not as a distinct genre but rather as “a specific type of imaginative energy,” Joanne Dobson argues

Southworth’s Tragic Muse 207 that “at its core [the sentimental imagination] manifests an irresistible impulse toward human connection.”6 This being so, “the highest threat is the tragedy of human separation, represented by severed human ties.”7 For Southworth, tragedy involves both the fall of an extraordinary individual and the breaking of the affectional bonds associated with sentimentalism. The Brothers describes the life and death of half brothers, the white master Oswald and his slave Valentine, of mixed race (African, Native, and Anglo- American). Raised as companions and close friends, their relationship deterio- rates as Oswald adopts the arrogant habits and supremacist attitudes of a slave owner while Valentine, with a stronger personality and higher intelligence than his master, struggles to restrain his resentment at increasingly scornful and eventually cruel treatment. Tension and anger escalate toward the heavily foreshad- owed crisis when Valentine kills Oswald in self-defense, a crime for which he is hung, leaving behind a wife and child. The rothersB reverberates with individual, familial, and national significance. From the outset, Southworth connects her story with classic tragedy: “From that friend I heard the story, and found that those two lines [from a newspaper account] comprised a domestic tragedy, which, for its inspirations of pity and terror, equaled any old Greek drama that I ever read. I know not whether I can do any thing like justice to the subject, by giving the story in my own words.”8 Indeed, “we find [Valentine’s] parallel nowhere in modern times, and are forced to think of the age of antiquity, and of those mighty but ineffectual struggles of some fore-doomed mortal, like Oedipus, in the power of the angry Fates.”9 Like Oedipus, Valentine is warned about his future, but also like Oedipus, Valentine is ultimately helpless to avert his doom. In naming Valentine’s mother “Phaedra,” Southworth invokes a second classic myth. Phaedra, wife of Theseus, falls desperately in love with her husband’s son Hippolytus and pursues him. Her eventual exposure leads to the death of them both. By emphasizing the connections between illicit passion and violent death, Southworth further emphasizes sexual transgression as a seed of tragedy. Initially published in an antislavery periodical, The Brothers uses the familiar tropes of miscegenation and broken family ties to demonstrate the injustices of slavery. The “tragic mulatto” was a well-established literary type, but Southworth does not depict Valentine as typical. Instead, she insists that his defiance of victimhood raises him to the status of classic tragic hero. The narrator dwells upon “the great, the almost superhuman struggle his spirit was making against the terrible, combined powers of evil; of his discordant organization; his fiery impulsive temperament; his unfortunate education; his unhappy position, and his exasper-

208 Karen Tracey ating surroundings, all antagonistic, false, and fateful.”10 Valentine’s fate is the inevitable product of “combined evils,” which include mixed ancestry, personal beauty, a volatile and proud personality, a privileged education, and his condition as a slave. His mother is “Mestizza,” or half African and half Native American, and his father is her blond-haired, blue-eyed master, Colonel Waring. Valentine is an “exquisitely beautiful boy.” The narrator dwells on his appearance, emphasizing the “numerous spiral ringlets” of his soft black hair. Valentine has “clear, light-blue, Saxon eyes,” which are “an absolutely frightful contrast to that dark skin and raven black hair and eyebrows.”11 His fascinating appearance reminds others, and himself, of the immoral circumstances of his birth. The slave receives an education equal to his brother’s, which instills in him confidence in his superior intellect and an appreciation for literature, music, and art. However, this education does not help him to manage his temperament or accept his “unhappy position” as a slave.12 The “exasperating surroundings” of the Waring plantation13 are saturated with the hatred, distrust, oppression, and dehumanization that un- derpin and perpetuate the institution of slavery. Initially, the cordial and even loving relationship between Oswald and Valentine seems benevolent. But the apparent harmony is a veneer for an evil system, as Southworth dramatizes by employing Gothic style to link individual and collective tragedy. Marianne Noble argues that Gothic literature in 1850s America manifested the “uncanny fear in whites of a disjunction between appearances and a suspected reality—the fear that the seemingly happy order could crumble at any moment, revealing resentment and rage boiling over into a wave of violence.”14 In many ways Valentine is a Gothic hero who battles dark forces within himself. The perverse sexual secrets, ominous foreshadowing, rising suspense, and sudden terror mark both a Gothic subtext and the precarious state of the country. Oswald and Valentine’s personal story becomes an allegory of “the uncanny fear” Noble identifies; it reverberates with cultural anxieties and tensions, in particular the pervading dread of slave rebellion and the specter of impending war. Because of the ugly reality of how white power is maintained and perpetuated, the broth- erly relationship disintegrates into violent resistance, the murder of the master, and the subsequent dissolution of the slave-owning family’s name and property. As a counterpoint to the tragic arc of The Brothers, Southworth offers a sentimental plot that draws Valentine into the circle of a reader’s sympathy. He is constructed as a deeply loving father and husband, driven to attack Oswald because of the urgency of getting to his suffering family. Valentine participates in a familiar domestic story, bonded to his mother Phaedra, his wife Fannie, and his daughter Coralie. Phaedra is a familiar mother figure who pours herself out for

Southworth’s Tragic Muse 209 her son, warns him of obstacles and dangers in his path, and guides his moral and spiritual development. Fannie is a free black who works to support herself; as a slave, Valentine cannot provide for her except as his master permits. Once she gives birth to Coralie and cannot work steadily, Fannie’s situation worsens and she becomes ill during a cholera outbreak. Oswald, fearful of contagion, refuses to allow Valentine to go to Fannie and Coralie, and the clash of his dismissive and cruel attitude with Valentine’s frantic worry for his wife and daughter precipitates the final crisis. Oswald beats Valentine in an attempt to prevent him from leaving, and Valentine retaliates by smashing him in the face with a stool, driving one of its legs through his eye and into his brain.15 Valentine’s story bears partial resemblance to slave revolt as feared by whites, a revolt in which illiterate black “savages,” driven by bloodlust, arm themselves to wreak lawless revenge on their owners. Valentine is “maddened” and “frenzied” when he kills Oswald,16 but he is not a savage. Rather, he is a thoughtful, pious, long-suffering man devoted to his mother, wife, and daughter, and he strikes Oswald in spite of himself, following years of painful self control in the face of capricious oppression by a man who is, in every factor save the arbitrary one of race, his inferior. Southworth deliberately and extensively builds reader sympathy with Valentine before the violent crisis so that a reader might be persuaded to see the murder as a tragedy rather than a criminal outrage. At the close of the novel, after eighteen years as a fugitive, Valentine reappears to describe the crime in his own language. Southworth renders this passage in free indirect discourse, and yet she adds a footnote stating, “I use here the precise words of the unhappy man, as they were repeated to me”:

The deed was premeditated, inasmuch as it had long loomed up before him, a black mountain [Southworth’s footnote asterisk appears here] in his forward path of life, from which it was impossible to turn aside; to which every breath and every step drew him nearer and nearer. . . . Yet he said he agonized in soul to escape that black crime.17

Valentine’s fierce interior battles reveal a passion for self-determination: He refuses to become a victim. The tragic hero becomes the agent of his own revenge but, in so doing, destroys himself. Oswald and Valentine’s story reverberates with the anxieties of antebellum and wartime America. As Valentine himself is torn by the warring elements of his nature (elements ascribed to his mixed-race descent), the country itself, tortured

210 Karen Tracey by conflict over slavery and its threatened expansion, was ripping asunder. In 1856, the year The Brothers appeared in the National Era, the Kansas Territory was the site of violent strife over whether it would enter the union as a free or slave state. In the halls of Congress, Senator Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner following Sumner’s antislavery speech. The following year would mark the Dred Scott decision. No matter how hard the country struggled to avoid self-destruction, as the black mountain stood in Valentine’s path whichever way he turned, so disaster seemed inevitable for the nation. In the aftermath of Valentine’s execution, Southworth hints at the precarious position of slaveholders. Unlike Valentine, Oswald dies without having produced a child, and the Warings are left without an heir. The novel offers a presentiment of the disastrous Civil War soon to erupt and foreshadows the dire consequences that will strike the slaveholding aristocracy. Southworth states that The Brothersderives primarily from a factual contemporary account and then connects the story to classic tragedy by narrative allusions. In contrast, the highly theatrical Fatal Marriage derives from and incorporates well-known Restoration tragedies and many of the tropes of melodrama and Gothic. Southworth explicitly links her antiheroine to dark female characters from the English stage, in particular Roxana, a character in Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens, perhaps the best-known she-tragedy. Southworth’s novel, set in pre- Revolutionary America, weaves together specific historical allusions, improbable events, and hyperbolic characterization. But whereas melodrama typically draws sharp lines between good and evil and eschews moral ambiguity, the problem presented by the “innocent adultery” plot positions each of the main characters in a compromised situation where no wholly moral resolution is possible. In fatal marriage plots, a character inadvertently becomes married to two people at once, posing a dilemma that becomes the crux of tragedy. Thomas Southerne, author of The Fatal Marriage, adapted his play from Aphra Behn’s “History of the Nun.” Although Southworth’s novel contains no explicit link to “The History of the Nun,” the distinctions between Behn’s and Southerne’s heroines are instructive because Lionne has more in common with Behn’s heroine than with Southerne’s. In Behn’s story, the nun Isabella breaks her religious vows to marry and her husband goes to war. Receiving a report that he was killed in battle, Isabella remarries, only to have her first husband return. Maddened by her humiliating position, she suffocates her first husband and persuades her second one to dispose of the body; Isabella surreptitiously sews the sack containing the corpse to his coat, and the second husband catapults himself into the river, along with the dead body of the first husband, and drowns. Isabella is found out and executed. Behn’s Isabella is highly regarded for her virtue and piety even after her

Southworth’s Tragic Muse 211 crimes have been exposed, and she is a woman of action rather than a passive sufferer. Her obsession with her own reputation is what provokes her to murder. At her execution, Isabella, refusing to wear a hood, stands to deliver an admonitory speech before voluntarily kneeling for her beheading. Thomas outherne’sS version also sets up an inadvertent adulterous situation and reiterates the plot device of the first husband returning from war after being reported dead. However, in the case of the female protagonist, Southerne transforms Behn’s prototype, making his Isabella a conventional she-tragedy heroine, whose “victimization,” as Laura Brown explains, “provides the essential material of the plot.”18 Her first husband’s brother and father mistreat Isabella. The brother conceals his knowledge that her husband is alive in order to push her into the second marriage, and the father refuses to lift her and her child out of poverty. When Isabella learns of her false position, she is maddened by the prospect of public humiliation. Having lost her reason, she futilely attempts to stab her first husband to prevent exposure, but horrified at her own murderous impulse, she commits suicide rather than live in shame. In the place of a single Isabella with two husbands (the situation in both Behn’s and Southerne’s plots), Southworth presents two heroines, Adelaide and Lionne, who marry the same man, Orville Deville. Whereas the seventeenth- century Isabellas are, in varying degrees, virtuous and violent, pure and passionate, pious and insane, Southworth’s women divide these characteristics in a conventional way, with the blonde Adelaide remarkable for piety, passivity, self- discipline, and purity and the dark-haired Lionne characterized by uncontrolla- ble passions and a burning desire for revenge that keeps her on the verge of insanity. As rivals who love the same man, Adelaide and Lionne echo the two heroines of Nathaniel Lee’s popular she-tragedy TheR ival Queens. Late in Southworth’s novel, when Lionne has become an actress, she plays the passionate Roxana of Lee’s play, a character who kills her more fragile rival Statira. Southworth makes clear that both heroines are initially innocent. She places the burden of moral responsibility on Orville, even though his first marriage was imposed on him. Orville and Adelaide are married by their elders while still children, age fifteen and twelve. They are immediately separated, and Orville is educated in England while Adelaide is raised by her mother-in-law on a Virginia plantation. Before he returns home to Virginia, Orville joins colonial and British forces in the French and Indian War. Returning south wounded, Orville and his slave Nero take refuge with Lionne and her father. Orville pursues Lionne and marries her secretly, rationalizing that his unconsummated first marriage cannot be binding. He is wrong. In time Orville begins to love Adelaide and regret his

212 Karen Tracey passion for Lionne, who learns of the betrayal and pursues him. When Lionne confronts Adelaide with her wedding ring and marriage certificate, Adelaide acknowledges that Lionne is morally Orville’s wife, although she herself has the prior legal claim. Adelaide becomes the virtuous wronged wife, while Lionne dedicates herself to taking vengeance upon Orville. The climax of the novel, some fifteen years later, finds Orville convicted of bigamy and dead of suicide. Lionne, her vengeance complete, immediately sinks and dies, while Adelaide survives. Adelaide Deville is a familiar type of sentimental heroine: a religious, domestic, long-suffering woman whose husband abandons or neglects her. Passive though she is, she can withstand years of deprivation and yearning, always hoping for a better day while submitting to the way things are. Adelaide resembles Marah Rocke and Clara Day of The Hidden Hand and Erminie Rosenthal of Britomarte. These characters are commendable, eventually rewarded for their patience and submission with happy marriages, but they are not tragic heroines. Lionne Delaforet is Southworth’s larger-than-life queen of tragedy, though constructed from humbler elements familiar to readers. She is the natural child of the forest, raised in complete freedom, entirely ignorant of society. She is the seduced and abandoned woman, lured into a false marriage and then left to fend for herself, pregnant and disgraced. And she is also the dark fiend, wielding her sensual power to destroy her enemies. The narrator describes her as “one of those characters that seldom or ever follow a common-place career, or fill an ordinary station; one who, according to circumstances, may become devoted and heroic, or sensual and vindictive; that may be developed, in this world, into heroes or into criminals, and become in the next—angels or devils!”19 Lionne can instantly transform from charming girl to fierce avenger, delivering threatening speeches “with a look and tone that might have become Lady Macbeth” (32). Lionne is compared to “the awful priestess of Apollo” (78) and to the tragic heroine of “Fazio, or the Italian Wife’s Revenge” (86).20 Early in the novel, foreshadowing the plot, Lionne declares that if she were to “suffer the deepest wrong that a woman could possibly suffer,” she would take revenge “as long as our natural lives! . . . It should be the study of my nights, the work of my days, the cure of my grief, the interest, excitement and passion of my life to make his existence one long, long, long agony!” (87). In the course of the novel, Lionne succeeds in her quest to make Orville miserable, depriving him of opportunities for social and material advancement by threatening his exposure at key moments. Lionne’s vengeance ends in death for herself and Orville, which frees Adelaide for a happier future. Lionne in effect carries out revenge for both of the wronged wives, who are doubled in multiple ways. They turn out to be cousins,

Southworth’s Tragic Muse 213 descendants of an aristocratic Scottish family. Both are rushed into marriage with Orville without full awareness of the consequences. Both become mothers, and both believe their babies to be dead. Due to twists of fate, however, they actually raise one another’s daughters: Adelaide adopts the apparently abandoned Perdita, and Lionne steals Adelaide’s baby and only pretends to drown it. (Adelaide takes charge of both children at the conclusion of the novel.) Adelaide sublimates her anger in religious devotion, but her marriage is inharmonious. She loses respect for her husband as she comes to understand his shifty moral nature, and he in turn treats her harshly (405). Much as the extraordinary Valentine might avenge the sufferings of “ordinary” slaves, so might the queen of tragedy Lionne manifest the anger of “ordinary” women. Through her use of tragedy and melodrama, both in her own plot and in the dramas staged within her novel, Southworth magnifies the outrages inflicted on women by despotic men, whether through seduction or the oppression of marriage. Southworth draws a series of connections that link Lionne to real women. By the end of The Fatal Marriage, Lionne has become a world-famous actress known only as Melpomene, or the Tragic Muse. In this role she becomes a fictional version of Sarah Siddons, the British actress who, in roughly the same time period as Lionne’s, dominated the London stage as the incarnation of Tragedy, even making her “brilliant debut” in 1782 as Isabella in Southerne’s Fatal Mar- riage.21 Writing of Siddons, William Hazlitt’s extreme praise attests to the actress’s iconic status: “She was regarded less with admiration than with wonder, as if a being of a superior order had dropped from another sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. She raised Tragedy to the skies, or brought it down from thence. . . . Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. She was Tragedy personified.”22 Like Mrs. Siddons, Lionne holds audiences spellbound as if by supernatural force. Southworth further gestures toward the source of her story and adds another historical flourish by linking Lionne with Anne Bracegirdle, the English actress who spoke the prologue for Southerne’s Fatal Marriage during its original run in 1694. Bracegirdle’s fame peaked late in the seventeenth century and she was dead well before Lionne’s time. Nevertheless, Lionne as “Melpomene” was reportedly discovered by “the celebrated Mrs. Bracegirdle,” who “became the patron- ess of the friendless young aspirant, gave her instructions and brought her forward” (418). The thematic similarities between Southworth’s Fatal Marriage and Bracegirdle’s own career are suggestive. The historical Mrs. Bracegirdle was renowned for her chastity off stage and her performance of threatened virtue on stage. James Peck notes that she “became the [English] nation’s most noted per-

214 Karen Tracey former of women assaulted by the nobility,” and that “well over half of her known serious repertoire is made up of pathetic heroines who fall victim to or repel a high-born sexual tyrant.”23 Choosing plays that reenact her own life’s tragedy, Lionne lives out her un- relenting rage and hatred in famous dramas of wronged first wives, including Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s rejected first wife, and Alexander the Great’s Queen Roxana in The Rival Queens. The climactic scenes in The Fatal Marriage blend Lionne’s performance of Roxana with off-stage confrontations between the two wives and Orville, confrontations that culminate in the public exposure of the bigamy trial. Through intertextual and historical ties, TheF atal Marriage captures the theater of life and spotlights the tragedies suffered by many obscure women. Despite the obvious differences between The Brothers and TheF atal Marriage, the two works have key elements in common, and from these shared features we can derive an understanding of what, for Southworth, constitutes tragedy. First, in both stories, privileged southern white men are destroyed at the hands of those they have scorned, social inferiors who ought to have been rendered powerless by custom and by law: a slave and a fallen woman. Marianne Noble notes that “dominant narratives defining a society and its values are constructed through repudiation or negation of possible alternatives posed by ‘others’ within that society.”24 Both the slave and the fallen woman are dark others, rejected by society as antithetical to accepted moral, social, and political values. Second, Valentine and Lionne, outcasts as they are, are necessary figures to prop up privileged white male identity. When Southworth splits the Restoration Isabelle into the light Adelaide and dark Lionne, Lionne becomes the negated other whose suppressed existence enables Adelaide’s identity as virtuous woman. And in much the same way, the brothers Oswald and Valentine represent the white scion of planter society and the dark other (here both African and Native) that enables the construction of white superiority. And third, in Southworth’s tragic vision, the negated character emerges from the repressed role to take on a fearsome agency. The “possible alternatives” to the “dominant narrative” become reality. The potency of the tragic figures, their ability to break free from the position of pariah, relies upon racial and/or moral ambiguity. The light and dark, good and evil binary is unstable in these texts from the outset. In The Brothers, Valentine’s heritage and appearance immediately signal moral confusion. In the opening chapters of TheF atal Marriage, an apparently comic set piece inverts a master-slave relationship and thus establishes a link between the historical setting in eighteenth-century colonial America and

Southworth’s Tragic Muse 215 Southworth’s own mid-nineteenth-century U.S. milieu. Invited by Lionne’s father to tell the war story from his perspective, Orville’s slave Nero exposes the unheroic nature of the battle and the weakness of his master. When Orville reminds Nero that “we have shared many dangers together,” the slave responds that “we have shared danger, but you have shared all de glory, which shows de unequality of human fortunes” (25–26). As Nero narrates Orville’s war story, he pronounces his master’s name “Awful” or “Offal.” Nero, rather than Orville, is the hero, courageously saving the helpless “Awful” by killing an attacking Indian. This reversal of unequal human fortunes presages the coming action of the novel and the threats looming in 1850s America. The dénouement of The Fatal Marriage is set in New York “at the time,” as the narrator describes it, “when public interest was divided between two subjects. The first, and ultimately the most important, was the first murmurings of discontent with the mother country preceding the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The other, infinitely less important, but for the moment more exciting topic, was the advent of a great theatrical star [Lionne as Melpomene]” (415). One might take this public buzz as paradigmatic of Southworth’s composing strategy. The Fatal Marriage dramatizes “the more exciting topics” throughout—the personal, the passionate, the tragic, the sensational; however, the excitement of the novel’s events are bracketed by the “infinitely more important” and inflexibly grim reality of American wars. The connection of The Brothers with the threat of racial unrest and civil war is overt, but those same threats also inspire Southworth’s version of TheF atal Marriage. Here we may locate the most potent inspiration of Southworth’s tragic muse—where the dramas of domestic life intersect with the great narratives of history. Southworth’s plots invert the human hierarchy of classic tragedy. Instead of featuring the struggle and doom of characters from the highest social echelons, the tragic figures of The Brothers and TheF atal Marriage resist their social sentence of shame to rise in their own defense. Valentine and Lionne both meet tragic deaths, but they do so because they resist victimhood, assert their right to full personhood, and defy injustice. In both The Brothers and TheF atal Marriage, Southworth dramatizes particular instances of social oppression and rebellion, and in so doing she warns readers of the dangers inherent in tyranny. The fatal flaw is not the hubris of individuals, but of America itself.

216 Karen Tracey Notes 1. EDENS, “The Brothers,” Era, Apr. 26, 1856, 61. Southworth made some small, but significant, changes to this novella when it was first published in book form in The Haunted Homestead. Because the context of 1856 is important to my argument, I quote from the original serial installments.

2. George Steiner, “‘Tragedy,’ Reconsidered,” New Literary History 35, no. 1 (2004): 2.

3. Ibid., 4.

4. Jean Marsden, “Sex, Politics, and She-Tragedy: Reconfiguring Lady Jane Grey,” SEL 42, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 502.

5. Lori Merish, “Melodrama and American Fiction,” in A Companion to American Fic- tion, 1780–1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 191–92.

6. Joanne Dobson, “Reclaiming Sentimental Literature,” American Literature 69, no. 2 (June 1997): 172.

7. Ibid., 170.

8. EDENS, “Brothers,” Era, Jan. 31, 1856, 17.

9. EDENS, “Brothers,” Era, Mar. 6, 1856, 37.

10. Ibid.

11. EDENS, “Brothers,” Era, Jan. 31, 1856, 17.

12. EDENS, “Brothers,” Era, Mar. 6, 1856, 37.

13. Ibid.

14. Marianne Noble, “The American Gothic,” in A Companion to American Fiction, 1780–1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 169.

15. EDENS, “Brothers,” Era, Mar. 27, 1856, 49.

16. Ibid.

17. EDENS, “Brothers,” Era, Apr. 3, 1856, 53.

18. Laura Brown, “The Defenseless Woman and the Development of English Trag- edy,” SEL 22, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 429.

19. EDENS, The Fatal Marriage. (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1863), 29 (hereinafter cited in the text).

Southworth’s Tragic Muse 217 20. A verse tragedy by Henry Hart Milman, Fazio was not published until 1815 and so could not have been read by Southworth’s characters in 1755. But the plot of a scorned wife who takes revenge certainly fits Southworth’s theme.

21. Heather McPherson, “Picturing Tragedy: Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse Revis- ited,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 33, no. 3 (2000): 406.

22. William Hazlitt, “Mrs. Siddons,” Examiner (June 16, 1816), quoted in McPherson, “Picturing Tragedy,” 401.

23. James Peck, “Albion’s ‘Chaste Lucrece’: Chastity, Resistance, and the Glorious Revolution in the Career of Anne Bracegirdle,” Theatre Survey 45, no. 1 (May 2004): 96.

24. Noble, “American Gothic,” 171.

218 Karen Tracey Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife Ellen Weinauer

In an often-overlooked moment in the 1838 story “Ligeia,” Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator remarks on the money that came to him from his first wife. “I had no lack of what the world calls wealth,” he explains, for “Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals.”1 Ligeia was, in short, a wealthy woman who brought to her marriage, and consequently to her husband, considerable property. After Ligeia’s death, the narrator uses that property, first to purchase and decadently decorate a crumbling abbey and then to purchase a new wife, the ill-fated Lady Rowena. Even through the haze of opium addiction, the narrator recognizes, and pauses to comment upon, the mercenary transaction involving “the fair-haired and blue-eyed” Rowena. “Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride,” he wonders, “when, through thirst of gold, they permitted . . . a maiden and daughter so beloved” to enter “an apartment so bedecked” (321) and a marriage so lacking in love? Setting the opium aside, this story’s reflection on inheritance and bequest, and on the ways in which ambition, aided by marital law, can pervert parental duty, seems more in keeping with the fictions of E. D. E. N. Southworth than with those of Poe. Southworth’s corpus is replete with plots driven by questions of inheritance, paternal exploitation, and perversions of marriage (both by fathers and by would-be husbands) in the interest of proprietary gain. While Southworth turns to these themes far more insistently than does Poe, they resonate throughout the work of the latter as well. “Berenice,” “Morella,” “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Oval Portrait,” “The Black Cat”—all bear traces of Poe’s interests in the often-abused power that social and statutory law gives men over women, in possession, bequest, and inheritance (of property, of character traits), and in marriage as an institution of control and domination. The phrasing could well be Southworth’s, but it is in fact Poe who refers, in an 1845 review of Longfellow’s Poems on Slavery, to the “crime of making matrimonial merchandise . . . of one’s daughter.”2 Given the insistent presence of Gothic forms and conventions in the work of both writers, we might anticipate this shared concern with the exploitative potential of marriage. For from its inception in Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764), the Gothic has been interested in the death-dealing potential of marriage, particularly when it becomes a vehicle, as it almost inevitably does in the Gothic, for the pursuit of property. In this chapter, however, I want to explore what both Poe and Southworth depict as a more instrumental, even structural, relationship between marriage and the Gothic. An examination of the legal foundations of antebellum marriage, and of the contemporary debates about marriage with which both writers would have been familiar, reveals an intriguing Gothic valence to which Poe and Southworth were attentive and attuned. In the pages that follow, I want first to make a case for reading Poe’s “dead women” tales in the context of the antebellum debate about marriage. In particular, I am interested in Poe’s awareness of the transformational power of marriage, its capacity to refashion female and male identity in destructive and disturbing ways. Writing in the years immediately preceding Southworth’s emergence as a published author, Poe deploys a kind of Gothic vocabulary about marriage on which Southworth will go on to work her own unique variations. Focusing in particular on Southworth’s 1851–52 text The Discarded Daughter,I want to consider how Poe’s earlier gothicized treatments of marriage might be seen to pave the way for Southworth’s own. A novel that uses the mercenary marriage plot twice over, The Discarded Daughter echoes Poe’s earlier renditions in sometimes surprisingly direct ways. While it certainly seems likely that Southworth, an imaginative and bookish child who was formally educated in her stepfather’s Washington, D.C., school, would have encountered Poe’s work, such direct influence is, at this point, only speculative.3 What is definite, however, is that both writers confront a particular legal complex—marriage—in similar ways, strategically deploying the Gothic language circulating in the debate about marital reform in order to draw attention to what marriage does to both women and men. In short, regardless of whether Southworth encountered Poe’s work in the Southern Literary Messenger, Godey’s, or the many other mainstream publications to which she is likely to have had access, Southworth’s work reverberates with Poe’s in its consideration of the death-dealing dynamics of legal marriage. With regard to marriage in the antebellum period, the issue of property was one of the most widely, and hotly, debated. The laws governing married women’s property rights varied from state to state, but in general, antebellum women experienced an economic, procedural, and even, arguably, a kind of ontological transformation upon marriage. While the unmarried woman, or feme sole, could

222 Ellen Weinauer own and devise both real and personal property, execute a will, and engage in trade, the married woman, or feme covert, could do none of these things. Any real or personal property belonging to a woman prior to her marriage devolved upon her husband, as did any wages she might earn during its course.4 The married woman could neither sue nor be sued, make a contract, engage in trade, or execute a will without her husband’s permission. In order to mitigate these rigid losses, courts of equity recognized trusts and antenuptial agreements that could grant a wife property for her separate use and procedural rights not allowed for under common law.5 Only a privileged class, however, possessed the knowledge of equity’s complexities or the financial wherewithal to appeal to equity courts; moreover, from early on there was widespread suspicion about courts of equity, in large part because of their antidemocratic nature and their “association with the prerogative powers of king or governor.”6 In the lives of most married women, laws of coverture operated without the prospect of relief or amelioration. These economic and procedural disabilities had their origin in the common law “fiction of marital unity,” the “presumption,” as legal historian Norma Basch explains, that “the husband and wife were one person—the husband.”7 At the root of the loss of property and procedural rights upon marriage was thus a more fundamental loss, for “in the eye of the law,” as one commentator stated plainly in 1845, the married woman “exists not at all.”8 In his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–69)—a key text for American legal practitioners and, according to Marlene Wortman, “a primary reference on women’s position through most of the nineteenth century”—William Blackstone provides this often-cited redaction of the married woman’s change of condition: “By marriage,” Blackstone writes,

the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-french a feme-covert; is said to be covert- baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture.9

Discussing this common law fiction and the disabilities that follow from it, Basch suggests that the married woman “acquire[d] a cloak of legal invisibility.”10 His- torian Linda Speth goes even further. By subsuming the married woman entirely

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 223 into her husband and “suspending” her “very being” during her marriage, the law, she writes, “ensured a woman’s ‘civil death.”11 Beginning in the 1830s, a variety of factors (economic pressures, legal reform, political agitation) encouraged debate about the civil and economic utility and, in some contexts, the morality of laws of coverture. In 1839, Mississippi became the first state to enact a revised “marital property act.” Other states followed suit in fairly short order: Maryland in 1843, Maine and Massachusetts in 1844, and New York in 1848. By 1850, seventeen states had revised the statutes governing married women’s property and procedural rights, and by the end of the Civil War, the number had grown to twenty-nine.12 Perhaps not surprisingly, conversations about these new laws were not restricted to state houses, courtrooms, or even to the more rarified environment of the woman’s rights conventions. Whether or not it is accurate to claim, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton once did, that marital property rights “became the topic of general interest around many fashionable dinner- tables, and at many humble firesides,” it is certainly true that the issue became a remarkably pervasive “topic of interest” in popular periodicals and high culture magazines.13 The American Monthly Magazine, the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, the New England Magazine, the North American Review, Godey’s Lady’s Book, the Southern Literary Messenger—these are just some of the periodicals that took up the issue, many of them on multiple occasions, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In these published debates and conversations, the trope of the married woman’s civil death made frequent appearances. Perhaps the most familiar of these can be found in the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, produced at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Listed as one of the “injuries and usurpations” committed by man against woman is the fact that “[h]e has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.”14 But the Seneca Falls activists were not the only ones to draw on this language. Typically using the trope of civil death as a means of arguing in favor of legal revisions, commentators often took note of the transformation the law worked upon the person of the married woman. As Hendrik Hartog notes, “Reformers . . . knew that the thingness of a wife was a legal metaphor, a fiction. Still, they often spoke as if the fiction was descriptive of social reality. And when they did so, they animated the law with demonic power.”15 We find a vivid example of such “animation” in Elisha P. Hurlbut’s widely reviewed 1845 treatise, Essays on Human Rights and Their Political Guarantee. In Essays, Hurlbut asserts that the “single woman . . . becomes most emphatically a new creature after [marriage]—a being of the law’s own creation—a monster, (pardon the word,) whom nature disowns—a fictitious being, breathing a legal,

224 Ellen Weinauer not a moral atmosphere.” Hurlbut goes on to extend this reading of the married woman, underscoring her “monstrosity” by referring to the “legal tomb” in which she is placed. Discussing the ways in which such legal entombment shapes the feme covert’s (lack of) property rights, Hurlbut wryly concedes that “every body knows that the dead cannot keep their property—and the wife is legally dead.”16 In Hurlbut’s formulation, the married woman becomes an interstitial creature. She lives and moves but is supposed not to exist outside of her husband; she both is (in body) and is not (at law). No wonder he figures her as a being “whom nature disowns.” Two years later, journalist and feminist/antislavery activist Jane Swisshelm would deploy this trope of legal entombment with vivid force. Writing in the Pittsburgh Daily Commercial Journal in October 1847, Swisshelm declared,

Fact of the business is, marriage no[w] reduces a woman to an enigma— a mathematical problem that has never yet been solved! She is dead in law, but can be punished for any breach of it. She becomes a dignified mistress of a family, occupying a lower place in the laws of the country than her coachman. . . . I never heard the relation explained satisfac- torily but once; that was long ago, when riding with a gentleman—he pointed to a house, and remarked—“There, in that house, one year ago, I spent a pleasant evening. They had there three beautiful daughters. One of them is since dead, one is married, and the other is still living.”17

Neither living (like her unmarried sister) nor dead (like her deceased one)— erased by the fiction of marital unity yet existing in her own body, moving of her own volition but unable to act of her own accord—the now-married daughter in Swisshelm’s scenario is an “enigma,” paradoxical, illegible, equivocal. In the married woman, in short, the law has produced an indeterminate subject, one characterized by the ambiguity with which we have come to associate the Gothic. Prematurely buried in her “legal tomb,” the married woman is indeed a creature “whom nature disowns”; she is, in short, the undead. It is this idea of the undead married woman that both Poe and Southworth will exploit in their fictions about marriage. The notion of civil death and its ontological implications would, of course, have fascinated Edgar Allan Poe, whose stories frequently meditate on complex, indeterminate states of being. Furthermore, as Joan Dayan has suggested, Poe was interested in the law’s ability to produce

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 225 such states of being, its power to take people and, out of them, “create new, paradoxical, and often unnatural entities.” The “concept of the legal person obsessed Poe,” Dayan goes on, “as did similar philosophical inquires into the constitution of personal identity.”18 For Dayan, Poe’s tales about women function in large part as meditations on the ravages of slavery. Those tales, she asserts, “enact what it means legally to disable, kill off, or nullify the person in the slave body.”19 Peter Coviello has also addressed the ways in which “race and sex” are deeply connected for Poe, arguing that “the forms and figures of racial meaning that traverse Poe’s writing are . . . the engine that sustains, through a range of permutation, the ongoing drama of sexual promise and sexual frustration in Poe’s work.”20 I do not intend, certainly, to deny the complex intertwining of race and sex, slavery and gender roles that Dayan and Coviello make so suggestively apparent in Poe. But I want to suggest that even as Poe uses his uncertainly alive wives to meditate on the “uncertain aliveness” of the slave,21 he is also writing about wives qua wives, about the institution of marriage qua marriage. As Dayan herself notes, “Poe’s fantasies of degeneration or disability . . . are never only about the enslavement of the African American. . . . Instead, Poe set himself a riskier goal of puzzling over the mysteries of identity”22 —mysteries that are captured in part in the married woman’s fungibility under the law, in her legally mandated position between life and death. It is certainly not a stretch to suggest that Poe, fully immersed in the periodical culture of his day, would have encountered the debate about marital property and the status of the married woman at law. Indeed, Poe published in Godey’s Lady’s Book and the Democratic Review, both of which, throughout the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, featured essays and reviews with such titles as “The Legal Wrongs of Women” (Democratic Review, 1844), “The Rights of Married Women” (Godey’s, 1837), and “Ought a Married Woman to hold Property?” (Godey’s, 1852). Un- like Southworth, who, as we will see, took full advantage of the opportunity that fiction provided her to teach her readers about specific laws of property and bequest, Poe does not use his tales to comment directly on issues of coverture or as salvos in the periodical debate about marital property. Nevertheless, the legal personality of the antebellum wife filters into his work and shapes, much as it will for Southworth, the complex and unusually troubling dynamic between men and women so central to his tales. Stories such as “Eleonora,” “Ligeia,” and “Morella” are not just tales about dead women, after all; they are also stories about dead wives. They are stories, in short, about marriage—about what marriage does to both women and men. To what extent, for example, might the terrible, wasting diseases that afflict such women serve as reflections on the transformations worked by marriage? In

226 Ellen Weinauer this light, it is interesting to consider Poe’s story “Berenice,” published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835. “Berenice” recounts the horrifying after- effects of a betrothal between an obsessively imaginative first-person narrator, Egaeus, and his cousin Berenice. An “agile, graceful” girl, “overflowing with energy,” Berenice is decimated first by a “fatal disease” and then, more hideously, by Egaeus himself, who becomes so monomaniacally obsessed with her teeth (“they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me”) that he plunders her grave to extract them.23 No wonder Egaeus declares that it was in an “evil moment” that he “spoke to [Berenice] of marriage” (214). As he discusses the period leading up to their nuptials, the narrator remarks on the transformation wreaked upon his emaciated, spectral fiancée. When she visits Egaeus in the library where her spends much of his time, her “figure” is, he notes, “vacillating and indistinct”; indeed, “not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour” (214–15). Drawing attention to the “singular and most appalling distortion of [Berenice’s] personal identity,” the narrator “ponder[s] . . . upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass” (213). Like the protagonist of Southworth’s The Deserted Wife (1850), transformed by the “few words” of the marriage ceremony from “a wild, free maiden” into something “little better than a bondwoman,”24 the once sprightly and lighthearted Berenice of Poe’s tale has become a shadow of her former self. Her eyes are now “lifeless, and lusterless,” her “countenance” is “melancholy” (215). Thus, I am suggesting, this deeply disturbing tale about mania, objectification, substitution, spirit and matter is also about marriage and its disturbing transformative potential. Like a “disease,” marriage can “pervade” a woman’s “mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturb[] even the identity of her person” (211). Indeed, Egaeus’s description of the altered Berenice echoes uncannily Elisha Hurlbut’s description of the “single woman” who “becomes most emphatically a new creature after [marriage],” a “monster . . . whom nature disowns.” Among what we might think of as Poe’s wife-monsters, however, Berenice is an intriguing but not, perhaps, most fitting exemplar. For one thing, she does not actually make it to the altar. For another, it is her would-be husband whose monstrosity we remember, along with his blood-clotted garments, his “instruments of dental surgery,” and the thirty-two teeth he has extracted from his still-living, prematurely entombed betrothed (218–19). And while such tales as “Morella” (1835) and “Eleonora” (1841) might profitably be read in the context of the married woman’s civil death—both stories feature spectral wives who return from the grave to visit their husbands—it is to the masterful 1838 story “Ligeia” that

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 227 I want to turn in order to illustrate most pointedly Poe’s engagement in the discourse of marriage and marital property.25 Like “Berenice,” “Ligeia” tells the story of a woman plagued by a transformative and wasting disease. In the course of the story, Ligeia becomes “emaciated,” her “wild eyes blazed with a too—too glorious effulgence,” and her “pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave” (311, 316). But Ligeia differs from Berenice in many ways. She is, for example, actually married to the story’s (unnamed) narrator, and she is a woman of prodigious and formidable intellect to whose intellectual management he subjects himself. Perhaps most significantly, Ligeia is a spectral wife: Having fought a tremendous battle with death, she is buried, only to reappear later in the story in the transmogrified person of the widower’s second wife, Rowena—another victim, not coincidentally, of a wasting and fatal illness. Critics have long been interested in the significance of Ligeia’s vast intellectual capacities, as well as the narrator’s subjection to them. So “gigantic” were the “acquisitions of Ligeia,” the narrator observes, and so “aware” is he of her “infi- nite supremacy,” that he “resign[s]” himself “with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation” (315, 316).26 As Leland Person and others have noted, in depicting the narrator’s intellectual dependence on Ligeia, the story “reverses the conventional power imbalance between husband and wife. Whereas a True Woman was supposed to be submissive,” Person asserts, “Ligeia remands the narrator to a feminine place within the domestic sphere.”27 It is true that the narrator seems to abject himself to Ligeia. But also notable is the fact that undergirding their relationship is the matter of property. However subject he is to Ligeia’s intellectual control, in short, the narrator maintains his proprietary dominion, as he himself observes when he notes that his wife had “brought me . . . very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals” (320). This emarkr about the designation of property in marriage is brief but salient. For in “Ligeia,” Poe proceeds to literalize the legal incapacities of the married woman. Those incapacities help explain the rather curious fact that, as the narrator admits, “I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed” (311); indeed, the narrator cannot remember how he “first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia” or even where he met her (he “believe[s]” it was “in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine”) (310). These omissions and lack of clear detail, peculiar as they first seem to be, make sense in the context of coverture: Ligeia’s prehistory, what she was before, is insignificant, for upon her marriage, she becomes something else altogether. Poe seems well aware that,

228 Ellen Weinauer as Hartog notes, “the wife, the self created by marriage, the self that, in important respects, could only exist in relation to a spouse, counted for nearly everything.”28 No longer what she was—a propertied feme sole—she is a now a wife, property- less feme covert. The “wife of my bosom” (311), the narrator calls her, echoing Blackstone’s depiction of the married woman whose “very being” is “incorporated . . . into that of her husband.” This absorption of Ligeia into her husband’s “bosom” might also help explain why, as Cynthia Jordan and others have noted, Ligeia, her intellectual power notwithstanding, speaks almost not at all in the course of the story.29 Even the poem that she writes, “The Conqueror Worm,” is read back to Ligeia (albeit at her request) by the narrator (318–19). But it is in Ligeia’s return from the dead, of course, that Poe pushes the idea of the married woman’s civil death to its limit. For, after her marriage, Ligeia is never really alive. Her return in the body of Rowena merely actualizes her status as undead. And in this regard it makes sense that she does not simply reanimate Rowena but instead returns as Ligeia, using Rowena’s body as a vessel for her “hideous drama of revivification” (328): The wife, as wife, loses individual identity. All wives, the tale thus suggests, are identical under the law. However, the story’s final image—the narrator, prostrate at the feet of his revivified wife and enveloped in the “huge masses of long and disheveled hair” that “stream[] forth” when Ligeia casts off her “ghastly cerements” (330)—suggests that we have not yet resolved this story’s depiction of the dynamics of antebellum marriage. In this image, I would suggest, we uncover the disconcerting power that might reside in the married woman’s complex condition. In her study of Gothic literature at the fin de siècle, Kelly Hurley has written that “in place of a unitary and securely bounded human subjectivity,” the Gothic offers a subjectivity “that is both fragmented and permeable.”30 Intriguingly, one could replace the Gothic in Hurley’s formulation with “laws of coverture.” Like the Gothic, marital law produced a subject “both fragmented and permeable,” a subject whose penetration by and fragmentation in the law breaks down a variety of boundaries—between “inside” and “outside,” “self” and “other,” even “life” and “death.” In these respects, the feme covert comes to resemble what Hurley calls Gothic “monstrosities”— “interstitial creatures” who “exist across multiple categories of being and conform cleanly to none of them.”31 Most significantly, perhaps, the feme covert fails to “conform cleanly” to the ideal of liberal subjectivity, an ideal characterized by “self-sufficiency, self-continuity,” and a “self-contained interiority.”32 Neither self-sufficient, self-continuous, nor self-contained, the married woman under the law bears unsettling witness to the law’s transformative power— to the ease with which interiority can be vacated and self-possession exposed as

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 229 a fiction. And further, she reveals men’s own susceptibility to those powers. The unity forged between (living) husband and (undead) wife—her “very identity,” we should recall, is “incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband”— renders the male self fundamentally relational and, in Poe’s rendition, fundamentally vulnerable. Reading Poe’s fascination with the concept of morbidity, or “uncertain aliveness,” Peter Coviello suggests that “white femininity functions, essentially, as the place where morbidity can be sequestered.” “Sexual difference,” he argues, serves as a stay against the “ambiguous animation” that characterizes the slave, “a vehicle . . . for the racial distinctiveness of white men.”33 But I would assert that, however hard the (fictional) antebellum man might try to find it, Poe’s stories of spectral wives reveal that there is no such place of protection. In short, Ligeia and the other dead wives haunt their husbands because they are their husbands, who are therefore themselves subject to uncertain aliveness. If Poe is indeed “obsessed” by “the concept of the legal person,”34 and if that obsession might now be understood as fueling his stories of wives who return from the dead, then we might also recognize that at the heart of Poe’s repeated inquiries into the uncertain aliveness of the married woman is the recognition that white men are also susceptible to the death-dealing powers of antebellum law. Although her aims are more insistently instructive, even at times didactic, E. D. E. N. Southworth, like Poe, is concerned not only with the perils of patriarchal marriage, but also with the legal subject(s) at the institution’s core. Indeed, The Discarded Daughter revisits in striking ways much of the ground over which Poe ranges in his earlier stories of marriage and its depredations. The “mercenary” parents of Lady Rowena find their parallels in the property-hungry fathers of Southworth’s story; Alice Chester, the wrecked and weakened bride in the first part of the novel’s doubled forced marriage plot, points up the author’s treatment of matrimonial transformation; and finally, most arrestingly, Southworth replays the story of a spectral wife who comes back from a premature burial to haunt her husband to death. Addressing this scene of revivification, Ken Egan has noted the parallels between Poe and Southworth. Indeed, for Egan, this scene “virtually rewrites ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ from a female perspective.”35 Although I see a different Poe intertext for Southworth’s novel, Egan’s reading of the connections between the writers, particularly in relation to the Gothic, is suggestive. Southworth, Egan argues, adopts “counter-Gothic strategies,” “challeng[ing] a male Gothic tradition that represents women as pure victims”36 in order to release women from the Gothic’s entrapments. It is certainly true, as I will discuss below, that Southworth offers what Egan calls “vivid fantasies of female power,”37 but I would also suggest that her texts have more in common with Poe’s than Egan might suggest. In particular, Southworth’s novels echo Poe’s tales in their abid-

230 Ellen Weinauer ing awareness of the vulnerability, and ontological uncertainty, that ensues upon marriage for both women and men. Serialized in 1851–52 in the Saturday Evening Post and published in book form in 1852, The Discarded Daughter is, like most of Southworth’s novels, obsessed with both matrimony (it dramatizes no fewer than five marriages) and pat- rimony.38 In its course, the author describes an astonishing number of legal documents focusing on the conveyance of property, both real and personal, from deeds and wills to dower portions and gifts. Even more to the point, Southworth offers a guided tour through marital property law, providing a lengthy exposi- tion on the issue through a mouthpiece figure about midway through the text. Southworth’s literalness in this regard seems to differentiate her from Poe, whose treatments of these issues are less direct and explicit. Nor does the opening of the novel bear any of the spooky traces with which we have come to associate Poe’s Gothic or, for that matter, the Gothic in general. The property with which we are presented in the novel’s first line—“Let me introduce you to Mount Calm,” The Discarded Daughterbegins—appears, at first glance, to be the antithesis of the foreboding castles that figure so prominently in property-obsessed Gothic novels like The Castle ofO tranto or the crumbling piles that appear so often in Poe’s texts.39 Southworth stresses the elegance of the mansion—with its “front . . . of white granite,” its “broad hall,” “lofty . . . apartments,” skylights, and parlors— along with the peacefulness of its environs: “undulating hills”; “the distant village of Hutton, with its quiet little life; the bright inlet flowing on to the sea”; “a succession of terraces reached by marble steps, and adorned with beautiful foreign trees and parterres of flowers” (1:20). But a closer look at Southworth’s description suggests the more menacing dimensions of the setting. To get to Mount Calm, for example, we go “up and down the grassy hills that rise one above the other beyond it,” “enter a deep hollow, thickly grown with woods, and passing through it, begin to ascend, by a heavily shaded forest road, the last and highest hill of the range—Mount Calm” (1:20). Images of enclosure by “brick walls” and a “magnificent old forest,” of “serpentine walks” and “empty and closed up” wings further suggest a hidden and threatening reality that is veiled by the “calm” exterior of the Mount Calm estate (1:20–21). That ealityr has a very great deal to do with ownership—or, more specifically, with violations perpetrated in the name of ownership. Like so many Gothic novels, The Discarded Daughter focuses on men’s desires to gain access to property owned by women. Indeed, this theme emerges from the beginning of the text, when, as a consequence of the death of two older brothers in the Ameri- can revolution, “the heirship of the heavy estate, with all its burden of onerous

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 231 responsibilities, fell upon the frail shoulders of young Alice Chester” (1:22). Alice’s inheritance of this “vast estate . . . was to prove the greatest misfortune of her life” (1:22), for in its wake her father breaks her engagement with a poor but worthy parson and promises her to General Aaron Garnet, a man who “has no fortune, but a name among the most glorious in the land” (1:30). Despite the fact that his commands drive his daughter to near-madness and his wife to her death, Chester forces Alice to marry Garnet, whose acquisitive drives match his own. In this episode, Southworth registers, much as Poe did before her, the inva- sive effects of the law. Like the sorts of radical transformations we have seen in Poe’s tales of marriage, we watch here as a “bright-spirited,” “warm-souled” girl (1:29) is fundamentally altered by her marriage. At her father’s edict, she turns “deathly pale[],” becoming “incapable of thought—almost of feeling—all was hard despair, stupor, torpor” (1:30–31). It is in that state that she “glide[s],” ghostlike, “through the shadows” of her mother’s “dark room” and gives voice to her anguish: “‘Oh! mother! mother! I am ruined! ruined!’ she wildly gasped, and sinking down upon the floor, dropped her head upon the bed with hysterical sobs, and gasps, and inarticulate wailings” (1:31). Alice’s hysteria gives way to “severe and nearly fatal” illness (1:55) from which she only slowly recovers. Neither would-be husband nor father feels remorse for thus breaking her spirit and her health, and she is forced to the altar, where she stands “pallid, cold, nearly lifeless” (1:56). Echoing quite specifically Blackstone’s delineation of the feme covert, Southworth writes, “After their marriage, . . . she had, as it were, lost her identity, seeming to herself to be some one else” (1:56). Alice has become Jane Swisshelm’s married woman; fully structured by patriarchal discourse, she is neither dead nor living, but in between, “nearly lifeless” in her legal tomb. Aptly, Southworth describes the events that ensue from Alice’s inheritance as a “calamity, worse than death” (1:28). In his own desire to gain power through property, Alice’s husband eventually follows in his father-in-law’s footsteps. Described as a kind of demonic shape shifter,40 whose “soft, gentle” eyes can suddenly “bea[m] with a lurid fire, or fla[sh] with a fierce, terrible light,” whose hair looks black but reveals “threads of fire,” and whose smile is mesmerically “charming” (1:29), Garnet shows his true colors when it comes time for Elsie, the daughter he has with Alice, to marry. Here Southworth replays, but with significant twists, the earlier forced marriage plot: Elsie Garnet’s betrothed, Magnus Hardcastle, is a noble young doctor who stands to inherit the neighboring estate. Desiring nothing more than to unite Mount Calm with its neighbor, Garnet consents to the betrothal. But with the reappearance of Magnus’s long-lost cousin and the estate’s rightful heir, Magnus

232 Ellen Weinauer is displaced both as inheritor and as Elsie’s bridegroom. Like his father-in-law before him, Garnet responds to the changed conditions of inheritance by trying to force his daughter to break an engagement to a worthy man and marry a man whom she does not love. But this time around, Southworth modifies the story. Unlike “fairest, gentlest, and most fragile” Alice (1:22), who attempts briefly to resist her own father’s will but is finally too isolated and broken in spirit to do so, Elsie refuses to comply with Garnet’s demands: “[H]aving engaged myself with your consent and blessing,” she insists, “I will not break that engagement, come what may” (1:160).41 Momentarily thwarted by his recalcitrant daughter, Garnet resorts to a classic Gothic trick. In an effort to “break her will or break her heart” (1:161), Garnet, now an “unmasked tyrant” (1:176), locks Elsie in the attic “without a spark of fire or light” (1:178). But Elsie continues to hold her ground, insisting on her right of consent to marriage. Nor will Alice allow for that right to be taken from her daughter as it was taken from her so many years before. Having perhaps learned the severe cost of compliance with such dictates, Alice gets a locksmith, releases Elsie from her incarceration, and arranges an elopement between the true lovers. In depicting the two women’s united front of resistance to patriarchal authority, Southworth offers an appealing model of female power. But the effects of that resistance are limited, for Alice is unwilling to exercise fully the power granted her by new laws of marital property. Garnet vows to exact revenge for Alice’s and Elsie’s rebellion, and Southworth illustrates, in excessive detail, just how he does so. Garnet wants to punish his wife by “discarding” and disinheriting his daughter, but the property laws around which Southworth structures the novel prohibit him from doing so. Although The Discarded Daughter is set just after the American Revolution, Southworth forgoes historical accuracy and bases the novel’s events on a property act passed in Maryland in 1843. Under the terms of that act, which gave a married woman her own separate estate in real property and slaves, General Garnet is prevented from merely willing Mount Calm away from Elsie. According to the laws of marital property, Mount Calm belongs not to him, but to Alice. In order to explain these laws, Southworth brings in the lovable Judge Wylie, who has overheard Garnet making his plan to “discard” Elsie and who comes to warn Alice not to be either “kissed or kicked” out of property that is legally hers (1:205). Wylie explains Maryland’s marital property laws in notable detail, bearing out a suggestion made by Barbara Bardes and Suzanne Gossett that The Discarded Daughter was “used to educate readers and implicitly to influence their political attitudes.”42 If Alice Garnet is any indication, education is much needed: “No—no—I

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 233 know nothing about it,” she tells the judge, when he inquires whether she understands “the Maryland laws of property, of inheritance, and of marriage” (1:205). Making use of a careful understanding of the Maryland statutes, Southworth has Wylie inform Alice, and Southworth’s own readers, about the laws in all of their complexity: “[W]hen a girl marries, all the personal property she may be possessed of at the time of her marriage, or may afterwards inherit, becomes the property of her husband,” he tells Alice; but “[a]ll the landed property she possesses at the time of her marriage, or afterwards inherits, is hers—hers alone. Her husband can neither alienate it during his life, or will it at his death. He cannot mortgage it, nor assign it—nor can it be taken for his debts. It is hers, and hers alone. She alone has the disposal of it” (1:205).43 Only if Alice cedes ownership to Garnet can he exercise absolute control over Mount Calm. And, as we might expect, Garnet gets his wife to do precisely this. Playing on her sense of guilt for what she calls “the one revolt of my whole life” (1:199), Garnet presents Alice with a deed of assignment that would grant him absolute ownership of the estate and asks her to “prove [her] affection and confidence” by signing it (1:207). Alice does so willingly, and Garnet promptly exacts his revenge. Having gained control of the property, he “discards” Elsie and deeds Mount Calm to Nettie Seabright, his granddaughter from an earlier, secret marriage. It is after Alice signs away the rights in property that remain to her after marriage that Southworth makes use of the trope of the spectral wife to which Poe has earlier turned. When Garnet reminds Alice that by her own action she has impoverished Elsie—“all the broad lands of Mount Calm that came by you, and should descend to your child, and enrich her, will I bestow on the child of my love”—he also wills her to “die of rage!” (1:216). More out of despair than of rage, perhaps, Alice obliges him. She “dies” and is buried. But when Elsie and Magnus go to see Alice’s body in the vault, they meet with a shock. Attempting to “wipe off the glass” of the coffin the better to view Alice’s corpse, they discover that the “new mist upon the glass was from within the coffin.” “she lives!” Magnus exclaims. “She has been placed here in apparent death only” (2:28). Like Poe, Southworth here makes literal Jane Swisshelm’s metaphor of the undead married woman: The feme covert breathes in her tomb, and, wearing her death shroud, “raise[s] up in the full possession of all her senses” (2:32). Indeed, Alice seems to have more sense now than she did prior to her premature burial. Mount Calm, she immediately remembers in strikingly legalistic language, “is not my home any longer! I do not own an interest there—not even a wife’s interest in the homestead which I should have had, even had the estate come by General Garnet, for I have signed even that away—‘all right, title, and interest’” (2:33).

234 Ellen Weinauer As Bardes and Gossett note, “Lying in her shroud Alice seems much better informed about marital property rights than she had been when visited by Judge Wylie.”44 Alice’s new self-knowledge does not, however, yield new subjective coher- ence. Indeed, it is precisely when Alice returns to reveal that she is alive that she becomes, paradoxically, most ghostlike. Believing that she would otherwise be guilty of a grave sin, Alice feels compelled to show herself when she learns that Garnet intends to remarry. In a scene replete with Gothic images and language, Alice returns to Mount Calm in the dead of night. When she proposes openly entering the household, Magnus tells her that “seeing us enter at midnight together,” its inhabitants “will sooner believe me to be a second ghost than you to be a living woman. No, my dear friend, you must veil yourself closely, . . . pass quietly up to General Garnet’s chamber, and reveal yourself to him” (2:101). Ironically, then, the more Alice works not to appear as a ghost, the more ghostly she becomes. By the time Alice and Magnus reach Garnet’s room, having moved “noiselessly” and “silently” through the house, Alice is “more dead than alive—really almost pale and cold as a corpse” (2:101–2). Inside the chamber is a man fully susceptible to Gothic imaginings. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Simon Legree, haunted by the image of the mother whose morality he has rejected, Garnet drinks glass after glass of wine in an attempt to lay the image of his wife to rest. “I did not kill her. No, I did not kill her,” he attempts to reassure himself. “Why does her image haunt my bed, driving sleep thence?” (2:104). In a scene that suggests more than a passing familiarity with Poe’s work, Southworth shows how Garnet’s nightmare comes to an even more nightmarish end:

The door swung open—but he did not know it. Alice—his lost wife, stood within, motionless—pale—but he did not see her. She gazed at him—growing paler every instant—she glided towards him—she stood over him—where he sat, with his face buried in his hands—but he gave no sign of consciousness. Trembling, pale, and cold with fear, she laid her icy hands upon him, saying, in a voice faint and hollow with exhausting emotion— “Aaron, I have come.” He sprung up, as if shot; his face ashy pale, his countenance aghast, hair bristling, eyes starting with horror, as he exclaimed— “then such things are! You have taken form at last—or else— yes!—it must be so—I am mad—mad!—”

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 235 Dashing his hands against his forehead, as though to shut out a horrible vision, he sunk back into his chair. . . . [H]is form swayed to and fro an instant, and then he fell forward, prostrate, at the feet of his wife. . . . General Garnet was dead! (2:104–5)

In the tradition of Ann Radcliffe, whose novels always provide rational explanations for seemingly irrational happenings, Southworth makes it clear that these are Gothic effects: Alice is not really a ghost, of course, Garnet merely takes her for one. But I would also argue that, like Poe before her, Southworth draws on the law’s very real transformative powers. Just as she did when she rose up from her tomb, Alice here actualizes the condition of coverture. Realizing her status at law, the undead married woman has, like Ligeia, “taken form.” In her intersti- tiality, she rises up to penetrate the boundaries and unsettle the ground of male subjectivity. And for Garnet, the effects of such penetration are fatal. He takes one look at his revivified wife and falls dead at her feet. For Southworth no less than for Poe, then, the law subjects both men and women to a frightening, even lethal, ontological vulnerability. Southworth’s novel eventually moves toward a comic conclusion that seems to belie the notion of a society haunted by its own precarious contingencies. At the end of The Discarded Daughter, tyrannical men are dead and the effects of their tyranny are apparently effaced. Long-parted lovers are reunited and Mount Calm is ceded back to Alice, its rightful owner, by Garnet’s granddaughter, who realizes that her claim to the estate is unjust, even if legal.45 The curator of this restored order is Magnus Hardcastle, a man who repeatedly proclaims his commitment to democratic ideals. As he declares regarding his wife, “Me tell Elsie to do or not to do! Whew! Do you know, my dear lady-mother, what is the highest, the very highest boon of God to man? free will— . . . shall I fetter her will? no, by my soul!” (2:136). Magnus thus fits the pattern that Nina Baym ascribes to Southworth’s work. He is the “ideal man” who allows for full female development and sees “woman as a human being entitled to possession of herself . . . rather than an object for use, pleasure, or exploitation.”46 Similarly, Ken Egan suggests that Southworth writes her female characters into “self-reliance” and a “mature self-possession,” and Joanne Dobson argues that Southworth depicts the “strong resources of the self upon which a woman can draw to overcome even overwhelming odds.”47 These claims seem to me to be indisputable.Taken as a whole, Southworth’s corpus is indeed remarkable for, and differentiated from Poe’s by, its explicit commitment to women’s empowerment and women’s right to exercise fully their own

236 Ellen Weinauer free will. But I would like to suggest that, even as she endorses female strength, self-reliance, and self-possession, Southworth is at the same time aware, as was Poe, of the ontological contingencies that follow from the legal institutions that bear on the lives of both women and men. An 1839 article endorsing revisions in marital property laws provides an interesting and suggestive gloss on these contingencies. Published in the Boston Quarterly Review, “Rights of Woman” argues that current laws undermine domestic harmony; along the way, it offers a rather odd depiction of the influence that women exert over men: “From the cradle to the grave of man, woman exercises an all-pervading and unintermitted influence upon his character and destiny,” the writer intones:

She is his earliest conception of God. Through the whole of his mortal existence, a mother’s love is to him a bright and visible symbol of divine love; pure, unselfish, self-sacrificing, unchanging, unquenchable, it goes out with him in all the alternations of life, . . . and even in disgrace and infamy not forsaking him:—love stronger than pain, than death, and the grave.48

Even while seeming to affirm the beatific glory of the true woman, “Rights of Woman” reveals a more unsettling dimension of woman’s power: Crossing all spatial and temporal boundaries, that power is, finally, inescapable. Conveying the relentlessness of female influence—“unselfish, self-sacrificing, unchanging, unquenchable”—this passage depicts the antebellum man as a kind of haunted man, stalked by woman’s ceaseless, all-pervading, undying, grave-defying love. Eugenia DeLamotte has written that what fuels Gothic literature is a deep and anxious “concern about the boundaries of the self.”49 In representing woman’s incursion into “the whole of [man’s] mortal existence,” “Rights of Woman” seems to wonder whether such boundaries exist at all. So too do Poe and Southworth. With their grave-defying wives and their haunted husbands, both writers inquire into the integrity and security of the self’s boundaries. Amid the thicket of the differences between Southworth and Poe—differences of style and aesthetic commitment, of audience, of popularity in their own day and critical reception in ours—it is easy to think of them as having radically divergent thematic interests as well. But these writers are, I suggest, far closer in interest than they first appear. Joan Dayan has written that “the realm of legal fiction compels us to reconsider the nature of Poe’s particular brand of Gothic: a supernatural grounded in the materials, the habits and usages of society.”50 By reconsidering “Poe’s particular

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 237 brand of Gothic,” with its grounding in the “legal fiction” of coverture, we also open up a reconsideration of Southworth’s own. Even if she is more committed to happy endings than is her rather more gloomy predecessor, E. D. E. N. Southworth echoes Poe’s troubled exploration into the meanings and consequences of the married woman’s civil death.

Notes 1. Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia,” in The Collected Works ofE dgar Allan Poe, Tales and Sketches, vol. 2, 1831–1842, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978), 320 (hereinafter cited as Mabbott, Collected Works; page numbers cited parenthetically in the text).

2. Edgar Allan Poe, Essays and Reviews, ed. G. R. Thompson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 763.

3. Poe died in October 1849; Southworth’s first published work appeared in 1846, but the author came to real prominence with the publication of Retribution in the Na- tional Era in 1849.

4. The husband exercised control over real property, but he could not sell it, give it away, or devise it because, by law, it descended to the wife’s legal heirs.

5. For discussion of equity courts and their role in establishing separate estates for (some) married women, see Elizabeth Bowles Warbasse, The Changing Legal Rights of Married Women, 1800–1861 (New York: Garland, 1987), 29–48; Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982), 70–112; and Peggy A. Rabkin, Fathers to Daughters: The Legal Foundations of Female Emancipation (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), 21–28.

6. Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1986), 11. Several colonies refused to create separate equity courts. Legal historians disagree on the extent to which equity courts, as the sites for creating alternative economic and procedural relationships between husbands and wives, helped erode procedural disabilities associated with coverture. For alternative positions, see Basch, In the Eyes of the Law, 64–66; Rabkin, Fathers to Daughters, 21–28; and Warbasse, Changing Legal Rights, 33–44.

7. Basch, In the Eyes of the Law, 17.

8. Elisha P. Hurlbut, Essays on Human Rights and Their Political Guarantees, 1845 (Lit- tleton, CO: Rothman, 1996), 148. In his provocative Man and Wife in America: A History

238 Ellen Weinauer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000), Hendrik Hartog debates the “constitutive power of coverture” (133), arguing that laws of marriage often did not dictate how marriage worked in practice. Even still, he notes, “In a culture that identified contractual capacity with humanity, the rules of coverture stood as a denial of female humanity. They were not everything, but they were something” (133).

9. Marlene Stein Wortman, Women in American Law, vol. 1 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 15; William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1, 1765–1769, ed. Stanley N. Katz (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), 430.

10. Basch, In the Eyes of the Law, 53.

11. Linda E. Speth, “The Married Women’s Property Acts, 1839–1865: Reform, Re- action, or Revolution?” Women and the Law, vol. 2, ed. D. Kelly Weisberg (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1982), 69.

12. Speth, “Married Women’s Property Acts,” 70, 71. The particular nature of the revisions varied from state to state, depending largely on both the state’s legal history and its economic needs. Most historians seem to agree that Mississippi’s marital property act was a response to the changed economic conditions produced by the Panic of 1837; as with many of the acts that passed in southern states, Mississippi’s act notably protected a wife’s property in slaves—so that valuable slave property could not be seized by a husband’s creditors. Historians differ as to the factors motivating later property acts, however. Some view economic need as the source of reform, noting not only state-by-state responses to the many financial panics of the antebellum period but also the need to defeudalize and more easily alienate land in an increasingly commercial society. Others suggest that legal reform movements—the desire to free American law from its roots in feudal Britain, to codify legal procedures, and to eliminate equity courts—motivated the acts. Still others attribute a large role to feminist agitation. Speth offers a useful overview of the debate, as well as of differences among the early married women’s property acts. Significantly, Speth notes, in virtually all cases the changes were incomplete and partial, leaving women in what she calls an “economic and procedural limbo” (71).

13. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 1848–1861 (1881; reprint, New York: Arno, 1969), 51–52.

14. Ibid., 70.

15. Hartog, Man and Wife, 123.

16. Hurlbut, “Essays on Human Rights,” 146, 148.

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 239 17. Jane Swisshelm, “Mrs. Swisshelm’s Letter,” Daily Commercial Journal, Oct. 28, 1847. Quoted in Warbasse, Changing Legal Rights, 232–33.

18. Joan Dayan, “Poe, Persons, and Property,” American Literary History 11 (1999): 409, 411. This essay extends Dayan’s earlier groundbreaking thinking about the “en- tangled metaphysics of romance and servitude” in “Poe, Ladies, and Slaves,” American Literature 66 (1994): 241.

19. Dayan, “Poe, Persons, and Property,” 412.

20. Peter Coviello, “Poe in Love: Pedophilia, Morbidity, and the Logic of Slavery,” ELH 70 (2003): 878.

21. Ibid., 885.

22. Dayan, “Poe, Persons, and Property,” 419.

23. Edgar Allan Poe, “Berenice,” in Mabbott, Collected Works 2:210, 211, 215 (hereinafter cited in the text).

24. EDENS, The Deserted Wife (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1850), 78. Ken Egan similarly notes the “legal transformation” in this scene. The Riven Home: Narra- tive Rivalry in the American Renaissance (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna Univ. Press, 1997), 151. At work in Southworth’s metaphor—the newly married woman is “little better than a bondwoman”—is, of course, an analogy between wives and slaves that had by now become commonplace in reform discourse. An analysis of the implications of this analogy for Southworth’s fiction is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this chapter.

25. Like “Berenice,” “Morella” was published in 1835 in the Southern Literary Mes- senger (“Berenice” in March, “Morella” in April). “Eleonora” first appeared in 1841 in the holiday annual The Gift,which might explain its relatively happy ending. “Ligeia” was published in the American Museum in September of 1838. For details on textual variants and publication dates, see Mabbott’s notes in Collected Works, vol. 2.

26. In this regard, Ligeia resembles Morella, whose “powers of mind” are described, like Ligeia’s, as “gigantic.” Edgar Allan Poe, “Morella,” in Collected Works, ed. Mabbott, 2:229. Mabbott suggests that Poe’s depiction of Morella is influenced by an article about Juliana Morella, a celebrated Spanish woman of great learning, published in Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1834 (222).

27. Leland S. Person, “Poe and Nineteenth-Century Gender Constructions,” in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. Gerald Kennedy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 135. See also Person’s Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in

240 Ellen Weinauer Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1988); and Cynthia Jordan, Second Stories: The oliticsP of Language, Form, and Gender in Early American Fiction (Cha- pel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988).

28. Hartog, Man and Wife, 98.

29. Jordan, Second Stories, 137–38.

30. Kelly Hurley, The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 3.

31. Ibid., 24.

32. Ibid., 8.

33. Coviello, “Poe in Love,” 885, 892.

34. Dayan, “Poe, Persons, and Property,” 411.

35. Egan, Riven Home, 159.

36. Ibid., 158.

37. Ibid., 145.

38. The novel was published in twenty-five weekly installments, between October 1851 and April 1852. Regis Louise Boyle observes that the novel’s “popularity was so in- stantaneous that at its conclusion it was published in book form” by A. Hart of Philadel- phia. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novelist (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1939), 37. Within nine months, two more editions of the novel appeared.

39. EDENS, The Discarded Daughter;O r, The Children of theI sle, 2 vols. (Philadel- phia: Hart, 1852), 1:20 (hereinafter cited in the text).

40. Noting Southworth’s interest in tricksterism, Joanne Dobson uses the concept of the “shape shifter” to describe the complex mobility of both the protagonist of TheH idden Hand and her “masculine counterpart,” Black Donald. See her “Introduction” to TheH idden Hand; or, Capitola the Madcap (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988), xxxix.

41. Southworth offers a fairly tempered notion of female resistance to male authority; Elsie does not suggest that it would be acceptable to marry without her father’s consent, but rather that, once given, his consent cannot be withdrawn. Despite the fact that this novel is peopled with unprincipled and tyrannical fathers, Southworth adheres to the notion that a father must consent to a daughter’s marriage.

Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife 241 42. Barbara Bardes and Suzanne Gossett, Declarations of Independence: Women and Political Power in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1990), 89.

43. Maryland was the second state, after Mississippi, to pass a marital property act. Whereas Mississippi established women’s personal property as part of her separate estate, Maryland limited the statute to real property. Judge Wylie’s advice to Alice is consistent with this detail. Southworth seems to clearly know her statutes. Interestingly, however, and in an act of potential sidestepping, Southworth leaves out the fact that the Maryland statute also protected a wife’s property in slaves. For a detailed discussion of Maryland’s property act, see Warbasse, Changing Legal Rights, 155–60.

44. Bardes and Gossett, Declarations of Independence, 91.

45. For a discussion of Nettie’s role in The Discarded Daughter, see Egan, Riven Home, 159–62; and Bardes and Gossett, Declarations of Independence, 91–94.

46. Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Urbana: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993), 116.

47. Egan, Riven Home, 162; Dobson, “Introduction,” xx. See also Mary Kelley, Pri- vate Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984), 321–22.

48. “Rights of Woman,” Boston Quarterly Review 2 (1839): 351.

49. Eugenia DeLamotte, Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic (New York : Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 14.

50. Dayan, “Poe, Persons, and Property,” 414.

242 Ellen Weinauer E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms Elizabeth Stockton

Throughout her storied and prolific fiction-writing career, E. D. E. N. Southworth expressed deep skepticism about the legal system’s ability to produce justice, particularly for women. Critics often point to her notoriously difficult marriage as a likely source of this skepticism.1 Her husband, Frederick, abandoned her and their two children in 1844 in order to chase fortune in the Brazilian gold rush—only to return later to seek copyright of his wife’s popular novels.2 Southworth’s experiences dealing with her prodigal husband, as well as her male editors, provided her with extensive knowledge of several important nineteenth-century legal issues, including married women’s property laws, copyright statutes, and the complicated labyrinth of divorce procedures. Her insights into and concerns about the legal system appear in plots and subplots in much of her fiction. Although I have found no evidence that she ever entered a courtroom, she was unquestionably familiar with America’s legal institutions and, given her particular marital situation, would have experienced a good deal of frustration over women’s subordinate legal position. Considering her marriage, it is perhaps unsurprising that Southworth’s novels present a seemingly endless series of troubled unions. However, it is somewhat puzzling that she routinely eschewed discussions of divorce in her fiction. Melissa Homestead has uncovered archival evidence that Southworth at one point did seek legal counsel about procuring a divorce from Frederick.3 She ultimately decided against it, and she remained “Mrs. Southworth” for the rest of her life. Although she might have decided to retain her title as a married woman in order to appear more conventional and acceptable to her readers, it is notable that her novels also reject divorce. Like the legal theorists of her time, Southworth seems to have consistently resisted viewing marriage as a contract, expressing anxiety about being able to sever the matrimonial bond too easily. As such, her novels support the prevailing belief that marriage was a unique arrangement—distinct from other contracts. Critics who have examined Southworth’s views on marriage law focus on her complaint that wives were barred from owning separate property. For example, Joyce Warren emphasizes “the importance of [women’s] economic independence” as a central theme in Southworth’s work.4 Similarly, Barbara Bardes and Suzanne Gossett claim that “Southworth believes that protecting inheritance through the female will maintain family estates and social stability.”5 These views present Southworth as almost exclusively disapproving of or disappointed by masculine legal institutions. It may seem, then, that she did not present divorce as a solution for women because she did not have faith that the legal system would ever afford women their just desserts. Bardes and Gossett go on to argue that, regardless of married woman’s property reforms, Southworth “contends that no law can sufficiently protect women from threat or coercion by the men in their lives.”6 These analyses rightfully highlight Southworth’s disappointment with the rules of coverture inherited from Britain, which continued to influence marriage law in the United States during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Southworth’s novels stage a critique of the dominant antebellum legal philosophy that claimed that a husband—as the stronger, wiser party—would provide all of the security that a wife could need. Many of Southworth’s novels, most notably The Discarded Daughter and The Deserted Wife, seem to draw their material directly from the prevailing debates over married woman’s property rights in the 1840s and 1850s. This criticism, however, has failed to fully explore the complicated evolution of nineteenth-century U.S. marriage law. It tends to depict married women’s legal transformation as following a linear progression in which women moved from being “covered” by their husbands, whose legal identity subsumed theirs, to full independence and legal equality. In other words, these critics subscribe to the view that marriage transitioned “from status to contract” over the course of the nineteenth century. This conception ignores the fact that even after the initial wave of married women’s property reform (from about 1820 to 1860), legal practitioners continued to view marriage as a status relationship; rather than change the legal construction of marriage entirely, they shifted the ways they presented wives’ legal inferiority. Southworth—at least in her fiction—followed suit. While recognizing the myriad ways that husbands can disappoint and even endanger women, Southworth’s novels do not advocate that women should become legal equals to men or that marriage should be treated as a contract like any other. Instead, her novels foreground the law’s obligation to women, asserting that the law must protect women when male relations fail to do so. In this chapter I will examine two of Southworth’s novels, The Lost Heiress (1854), written in the midst

244 Elizabeth Stockton of the first wave of married women’s property reform, andI shmael; or, in the Depths (serial publication, 1863–64), a kind of historical fiction that looks back to that period of reform and creates a fictionalized account of how and why the legal changes came about. In both novels, Southworth demonstrates the need for the law to take into account women’s legal disadvantages in marriage. She portrays women who are at the mercy of the male legal system, but her texts do not assert that wives need to become equal in the eyes of the law. Rather, Southworth advocates that the law should acknowledge women’s suffering and victimization at the hands of their purported male protectors. The legal solution to wives’ suffering, for Southworth and for many legal thinkers of her time, is not to turn marriage into a contract and wives into equal parties; instead, women need sympathetic (male) legal mediators to safeguard them from male abusers.

The Unique Legal Structure of Nineteenth- Century Marriage To understand more precisely the ways that Southworth’s novels both critique and endorse prevailing legal thought, it is necessary to first explore the complicated evolution of antebellum marriage law. Although nineteenth-century legal practitioners refer to marriage as a contract, they emphasize that marriage remained a status relationship. A status relationship is a hierarchical construction based on categories such as gender, race, and class through which “the legal system . . . allocate[d] privileges and entitlements” to a certain group while denying them to others.7 The notion of marriage as a status relationship contradicts the prevalent narrative about legal reform in the nineteenth century—that the law moved from “status to contract,” a transition Henry Maine first noted in 1861.8 Maine himself, however, claimed that marriage was an exception to this transformation. In his discussion of women’s legal position, he asserts, “The status of the Female under Tutelage, if the tutelage be understood of persons other than her husband, has also ceased to exist; from her coming of age [until] her marriage all the relations she may form are relations of contract.”9 Essentially, the act of marriage transformed men and women into one legal identity and “the very being or legal existence of the woman [would be] . . . incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband,” as British jurist William Blackstone infamously wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England.10 Marriage was initiated as a contract, but then it became a relationship of status.11 Once a woman married, she lost her civic identity and, consequently, the ability to contract; the contract itself, in

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 245 other words, foreclosed for the wife the possibility of further contract. Moreover, the husband and wife could not negotiate the terms of the contract, and they could not dissolve the contract themselves. Despite the law’s increasing tendency to define other relationships in terms of contract, marriage continued to be seen as a unique, noncontractual arrangement, and this conception of marriage actually grew in popularity from roughly 1830 to 1880.12 Southworth similarly resisted viewing marriage as a contract, even as she supported the expansion of married women’s property rights. Her position might seem surprising, even contradictory, but it was fairly consistent with dominant legal views. Those who advocated for legal reform did not necessarily seek to liberate wives from an oppressive marital structure or set women on an equal legal footing with men. Instead, antebellum married women’s property reform was primarily a reaction to the increasingly powerful market economy. Although property reforms varied from state to state, the new laws typically allowed a woman to hold some types of property in her name; her legal identity continued to be subsumed under her husband’s. By letting wives own certain forms of property, the new laws sheltered one portion of family wealth from market forces, thereby reassuring husbands that their families would not become impoverished if their business speculations failed. By configuring married women’s property laws in this manner, legislators did not break from traditional views of marriage; reforms preserved marriage as a status relationship, and wives (and wives’ labor) remained the possessions of their husbands. Rather than reconceptualizing the marital relationship, legislators changed the terms and conditions of wives’ inferiority by moving away from a feudalistic model, in which a male patriarch is “king” of the household, to a model of the family as held together by affective bonds. Thus when American legislators and jurists interpreted new statutes, they further reinforced the legal fictions of marital unity and marital privacy. As legal historian Hendrik Hartog explains, lawyers and judges often used the term “marital unity” as if it were syn- onymous with marital privacy: “‘Unity’ identified a private household . . . [that] was private both in the sense that it was not, ordinarily, subject to public regulation and in the sense that it was private property. It ‘belonged’ to the husband.”13 It is this configuration of marital privacy that Southworth targets in so much of her fiction. Although she may not depict women as fully autonomous legal agents, she rejects the notion that the domestic sphere should be removed from public scrutiny and free of legal regulation. In fact, many of her novels expose the dangers that wives face from abusive husbands.

246 Elizabeth Stockton Antebellum legal practitioners implicitly recognized the ways that domestic novelists like Southworth attempted to disrupt marital privacy in order to advocate for women. As one judge wrote in 1844:

We often see acts of tyranny and cruelty exercised by the husband towards the person of the wife, of which the law takes no cognizance, and yet no man of wisdom and reflection can doubt the propriety of the rule which gives to the husband the control and custody of the wife. It is the price which female wants and weakness must pay for support and protection. That a woman should contemplate her intended husband as likely to become her enemy and despoiler, and should guard against him as a swindler and a robber, and then admit him to her embraces, presents a sombre and disgusting picture of matrimony.14

This judge decries exactly what Southworth, and other women writers of the period, presented in their novels, “somber and disgusting picture[s]” of marriages gone wrong because of the actions of husbands. By envisioning the potential threats within marriage, their novels encouraged a woman reader to contemplate how a husband could “become her enemy and despoiler” or a suitor could in fact be a “swindler and robber.” In his statement, the judge concedes that certain wives do suffer at the hands of their husbands and that the law fails to address such abuses. However, in his view, this is an unavoidable consequence of the marriage relation, in which a wife places herself solely in her husband’s trust. To redress spousal cruelty in the courtroom would fundamentally change the definition of marriage. Southworth rejects this conception of marital privacy in which the public—and, by extension, the law—has no authority to intrude upon the marital relation, even when abuses occur. She repeatedly shows that wives need a safeguard beyond their husbands’ protection, and she asserts that strong legal agents should provide such advocacy. Rather than demanding legal equality for wives, Southworth depicts women as needing legal mediators who can convince the law to invade marital privacy when necessary. She understood, however, that good mediators were hard to find.

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 247 Becoming a Blank Sheet: Women in Nineteenth-Century Legal Discourse By depicting the difficult circumstances of women wed to devious husbands in her fiction, Southworth foregrounded women’s wrongs, but she also argued that legal practitioners were obligated to intervene on behalf of aggrieved women. Her call for action was not exclusively a critique of the legal culture of her time. Rather, her views were largely consistent with the increasingly popular view that wives needed protection, not a reconfiguration of the legal definition of marriage. And, indeed, as legal historians such as Michael Grossberg have shown, judges and jurists in the mid-nineteenth century (all male) increasingly config- ured themselves as “a new kind of patriarch,” the heroes that aggrieved women’s husbands had failed to be.15 In order to explain the concept of legal mediation as it related to wives in the mid-nineteenth century, I will explore Drury v. Foster, a case from the period that, even if not entirely representative, touches on a number of the complicated issues arising from wives’ unusual legal standing. Even as they became able to hold and control certain kinds of property, they still were not viewed as full legal agents, entitled to make decisions about their property for themselves. Thomas osterF of Minnesota was an eager and ambitious man who lacked capital for his ideas. In need of money for a new venture, Foster hoped to use his wife’s land, which she held in her own name as a separate estate, as collateral for a loan. According to Minnesota state law, Mrs. Foster could not convey her lands to her husband until she underwent a privy examination, an interview con- ducted by a public official outside of the husband’s presence. Such an interview was intended to ensure that the husband did not coerce his wife into surrender- ing her property. In keeping with the law, Thomas Foster hired a notary public to draw up a mortgage, perform the privy examination, witness Mrs. Foster’s signature to the document, and then adhere the official seal that would confirm her voluntary compliance. Yet Mrs. Foster was, as her lawyer later described, “fearful that the speculation her husband was getting into would not come out right,” and apparently she said as much to the notary public.16 In addition, when signing the document, she believed that her husband was seeking to raise several hundred dollars rather than the $12,785 she unknowingly pledged. As the notary public later admitted, Mr. Foster had instructed him to leave blank the amount of the mortgage. Therefore, Mrs. Foster signed a legal document not knowing its stipulations, which were deliberately obscured by the men—her husband and the notary—who were supposed to protect her interests.

248 Elizabeth Stockton Foster’s business venture did eventually fail, and he defaulted on his loan. When his creditor, Drury, attempted to foreclose on Mrs. Foster’s property, she refused to surrender her land, and Drury sued Mr. Foster. In response, Foster and his lawyer claimed that Mrs. Foster’s mortgage was invalid because her privy examination had been faulty. They argued that the notary public had ignored her concerns and that he had presented her with a document that lacked the key terms of the agreement, making it unenforceable. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on De- cember 23, 1864, attorney J. M. Carlisle presented Foster’s case. He argued that the privy examination “is the protection with which the law hedges the gentle nature of a woman.”17 Specifically, Carlisle emphasized the need for the law to protect women from their husbands’ speculative transactions; he claimed that wives could not resist their husbands’ wishes, even when they knew that their husbands were wrong. He explained to the court that Mrs. Foster’s “woman’s fears had foreseen what her husband’s intelligence never suspected; but like a woman, lovely and confiding, she yielded everything to him.”18 Carlisle’s statements reveal the complex set of beliefs that constructed the wife’s position in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not that women were incapable of understanding business. Rather, men were naturally attracted to speculation, and even though women might understand the dangers implicit in such transactions, as wives they had neither the power nor the inclination to defy their husbands. The truly guilty party in this case, though, according to Carlisle, was not Mr. Foster but the notary public, whom Carlisle called “the great offender.”19 The notary failed as legal mediator because he did not protect the woman from her husband’s deceptions. The upremeS Court unanimously ruled in favor of the Fosters. In his opinion, Justice Nelson cited Minnesota’s privy examination statute, which he claimed “exist[s] . . . by common law for [the wife’s] protection, in consideration of her dependent condition, and to guard her against undue influence and restraint.”20 In other words, when a husband violates the status arrangement of marriage and uses undue influence upon his wife, it then becomes the law’s responsibility to protect her. Since the notary public failed to do so, the court now was obligated to intervene on her behalf. The persistence, and even increasing popularity, of protectionist measures well into the nineteenth century underscores the continuing belief of legal authorities that women needed legal protection, not legal equality. As the law made clear, Mrs. Foster needed a separate legal representative to sign the contract alongside her. Implicitly, the notary was supposed to provide extra protection to Mrs. Foster in order to ensure that Mr. Foster was not forcing Mrs. Foster to sign

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 249 an imprudent contract. As it turned out, Mrs. Foster did sign an imprudent contract. But rather than claiming that her husband duped her and therefore should be held responsible, Foster’s lawyer claimed that the notary public was at fault. After all, the lawyer reasoned, it was the notary public’s role to ensure that Mrs. Foster was not taken advantage of. Because the notary had failed to do so, the lawyer argued, the court should step in to protect her. This transfer of the law’s power from husbands to judges was supposed to stop the abuses of errant men. However, “as the powerful image of the patriarchal judge reminds us,” Brook Thomas asserts, “it was a double-edged reform. It did not challenge patriarchal rule; it merely relocated it. In doing so, it inscribed the dominant patriarchal beliefs more deeply into the law.”21 Thus the legal realm’s intrusion into marital privacy perpetuated women’s dependence and paternalism in general. Similarly, while Southworth’s novels criticized the law for exposing women to their husbands’ profligacy, her solution to that injustice was to find the right legal mediator, even if she had to create him herself.

Women’s Intuition and the Law in The Lost Heiress The novels Southworth wrote in the 1840s and 1850s were contemporaneous with the progress of married woman’s property reforms through state legislatures, and in them she repeatedly presents stories of women who suffer at the hands of an unjust legal system. Her criticism of American legal practice stems from its failure to properly acknowledge and address women’s experiences. In novels like TheL ost Heiress, Southworth asserts both that the legal sphere needs to recognize important insights derived from women’s sentiment and that legal actors should protect women from abuse. Indeed, implicit in her argument that women need protection from men is a recognition that they have no power to advocate for themselves. Furthermore, little in her novels suggests that she felt women should have the power of public advocacy. Even if Southworth did not envision women speaking up for themselves, she consistently asserts that a just law must better recognize women’s perspectives. Her novels thus repeatedly demonstrate how moral reasoning and sentiment are essential for effective jurisprudence. TheL ost Heiress explores three areas of law: capital punishment, adoption, and married women’s property rights. The novel opens the night before Willy O’Leary’s scheduled execution for a murder he did not commit, when his wife and mother travel to plead his case to the governor,

250 Elizabeth Stockton Daniel Hunter. Though he listens politely, Hunter refuses to pardon O’Leary, explaining that the evidence does not warrant overturning the jury’s verdict. He rejects the women’s argument that sympathy should determine legal judgment: “Yes, the time may come when moral suasion will govern the world, but the world must be prepared for it first—a generation from infancy up must be educated in its spirit. . . . At present the law must reign.”22 As Hunter makes clear, the women are asking him to judge based on feelings, not on legal evidence. All of the women in the scene—including Hunter’s own wife, who does not know Willy O’Leary but still senses his innocence—plead with Hunter to reconsider. He steadfastly refuses, and Willy hangs the next day. Later in the novel, after Willy’s innocence has finally been established, his widow, Ellen, laments to Daniel Hunter, “We [the female characters] always knew Willie’s innocence, sir, and we always hoped it would be found out. He was a martyr, sir—his death was a ghastly legal murder” (269). The devastated widow’s juxtaposition of “legal” and “murder” highlights the distinction between law and morality: The law’s sanction of an action does not make it right. The women feel that Willie O’Leary is innocent, even though evidence establishing his innocence does not surface until it is too late. Daniel Hunter’s insistence on the sentiment-blind application of the law sets all of the plot’s tragic turns in motion. Through the novel’s labyrinthine narrative, Southworth emphasizes how a legal system that refuses to take into account women’s experience and knowledge provides imperfect justice at best. Forced to fend for themselves, women attempt to reconstitute the family on their own terms and outside the bounds of the law. After Willy’s wrongful execution, his mother, Nora, takes revenge on the legal system—and the Hunters specifically. She stages an accident during which it appears that the Hunters’ daughter, Maud, dies, but in fact Nora kidnaps the young girl. Nora brings Maud to the home of her daughter-in-law, Willy’s widow Ellen. Nora does not disclose that Maud is the Hunters’ daughter and instead presents her as an orphan. Ellen agrees to raise Maud alongside her own children, Honoria and Falconer. When the plague strikes the region, Ellen’s poverty makes her family particularly susceptible to the disease, and they are all placed in a hospital to die. In one of many coincidences in the novel, Daniel and Augusta Hunter just happen to be volunteering at this very hospital, and they are struck by Honoria, Ellen’s daughter, who has not fallen prey to the plague. Having “lost” their own daughter years ago, the Hunt- ers ask to adopt Honoria, and Ellen agrees because of the material benefits that Honoria will receive, though she does express sorrow that the Hunters are taking her biological daughter rather than her adopted daughter, Maud (who is, of course, the Hunters’ real daughter).

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 251 Throughout the novel’s very involved plot, Southworth remains focused on the law’s effects on family life, and on women’s experiences, in particular. The Lost Heiress expresses skepticism about adoption and asserts that a person’s nature will not be transformed by a legal process. When the Hunters adopt Honoria, Augusta Hunter emphasizes the legal stipulations of their arrangement. As she tells Ellen O’Leary,

[Daniel Hunter] will legally—understand me—legally adopt her, give her his name, and every advantage of his wealth, station, and social connection. . . . You perceive, Ellen, that his wish is to draw the child as closely as possible to ourselves—to make her as exclusively our own as if she had been born ours. And I think he would be glad if he could deceive himself and every one else into the notion that she is ours. (209)

Southworth, however, asserts that legal decrees cannot successfully deceive anyone; Honoria, of working-class heritage, was not born to be a Hunter. While living with the Hunters, she enjoys a life of luxury and soon becomes dissipated. She disparages Ellen as a peasant who is beneath her (she is unaware of Ellen’s true relation to her) and generally disgraces the Hunter family. In other words, her “legal” adoption utterly fails to transform her into a Hunter. Instead, she experiences the worst of both class conditions. Vain and snobbish as a result of the influences of high society, she is also coarse and impolite, Southworth implies, because of her inferior blood. Maud, raised in the American countryside but carrying aristocratic blood, represents the ideal outcome for cross-class adoption. Because of her upbringing and her ignorance of her true identity, she has no concept of inherited privilege. After Ellen dies, Willy O’Leary’s mother, Nora, finally reveals that she had stolen Maud many years ago. The Hunters are then reunited with their biological daughter and continue to raise both Honoria and Maud. Maud feels fortunate when she discovers her parentage, and she continues to live the life of a humble, hard-working woman even after she returns to her privileged biological family. Most important, she continues to love the hotheaded, low-born, and staunchly democratic Falconer O’Leary, her adoptive brother and future husband.23 The dynamics of adoption presage the dynamics of marriage in the novel. In the early nineteenth century, marriage purportedly transformed both husband

252 Elizabeth Stockton and wife, who became one and, ostensibly, new people.24 However, just as adoption does not really transform Honoria or Maud but instead highlights their inherited characteristics, marriage does not really transform men and women. More specifically, though women might become wives, men remain unchanged. Southworth closes The Lost Heiress by assuring readers that Falconer is capable of being an appropriate (and appropriately protecting) husband to Maud. On the night before their marriage, Maud presents him with a deed to all of her inherited possessions, and Southworth describes the legal document in careful detail: “It was a deed of conveyance of Howlet Hall, and the whole of her landed estate, to Falconer O’Leary—regularly and legally drawn up, signed, witnessed, and sealed” (499). Initially, Falconer refuses Maud’s gift, balking at her decision to leave herself “penniless” (499); in other words, he objects to her placing him in command of both her heart and her possessions. Yet Maud responds that this arrangement simply reflects marriage as it should be constructed: “Are not our interests one?” she asks him (499). Falconer, however, remains unconvinced. If their interests are truly one, then there could be no harm in Maud maintaining “an estate in [her] own right . . . since [their] interests are inseparable” (499). Falconer’s position must have appealed to Southworth, who struggled to wrest control over her own property from her husband, Frederick. Yet Maud rejects Falconer’s premise, arguing that he does not understand women’s nature: “[Y]ou do not know a woman’s fond doting heart. She does so delight to depend upon her husband; to owe all things to his love; to receive everything from his hand! That is the way with her; God has made her so!” (500). Maud, then, supports the predominant legal view of women, that it is natural for them to place their trust in their husbands. There is no need for husband and wife to maintain separate estates if they truly love each other. At this point, we might expect the case to be closed, but the discussion does not end there. Touched by Maud’s devotion, Falconer abruptly shreds the deed and throws the fragments of it on the floor. This exchange embodies the hope of many domestic novels—that women would be willing to offer up their possessions, and that worthy husbands would protect them without requiring absolute control over them. Maud hoped to express her unity with Falconer through a written legal instrument, but as Falconer words and actions suggest, documents are unnecessary when love is strong and true. Thus, in outhworth’sS novels, the legal realm is often insufficient when compared to the realm of feeling. Falconer, whose father died because Maud’s father insisted on adhering to the letter of the law, understands the law’s weaknesses better than anyone. He destroys the deed and permits affection to structure their relationship instead. The legal realm recedes from view at the end of the novel;

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 253 wives need no legal mediator if their husbands are caring. The mechanics of the law become irrelevant, Southworth suggests, when two people love and trust each other—but first, Falconer must demonstrate how a good husband should think of his wife’s property.

Ishmael: The Lawyer-Hero of Married Women’s Property Reform The conclusion of TheL ost Heiress makes it all the more curious that in Ishmael Southworth chooses a lawyer as her hero. Ishmael, the novel’s protagonist, uses the power of his profession as a means to force legal institutions to acknowledge women’s testimony and address their suffering. In effect, Ishmael becomes the ideal legal mediator because he incorporates the register of women’s narratives, sentiment, with the register of legal writing, rationalism. Consistent with the dominant legal philosophy of the time, Ishmael’s seeks to protect women, not liberate them. By the time Southworth wrote Ishmael in the mid-1860s, many states had given wives the right to separate property and the legal system had demonstrated a greater willingness to invade marital privacy in order to protect women’s property rights, as the Supreme Court did in Drury v. Foster. Whereas in The Lost Heiress Southworth indicts the contemporary legal system as corrupt and unjust, primarily because of its refusal to recognize and incorporate women’s perspectives, in Ishmael she presents a historical fiction of the origins of legal reform. Rather than portraying the complicated processes of legislative change, however, Southworth’s novel imagines needed reforms resulting from the passionate courtroom arguments delivered by her lawyer-hero, Ishmael. Ishmael is capable of delivering such effective and important arguments because he understands the connection between sympathy and justice that Southworth portrayed as missing from the legal system in her earlier novels. Importantly, though, sympathy does not enter the legal realm through women’s direct involvement. Rather, the upright legal mediator, Ishmael, becomes a conduit, making the law recognize its obligations to women. ThusI shmael, looking back on the early nineteenth century, suggested to Southworth’s mid-nineteenth-century readers that legal reform had already succeeded—without a woman having to make a public argument for justice on her own behalf. Ishmael sympathizes with aggrieved women so deeply because of his own mother’s suffering. Nora Worth, a poor country woman, discreetly marries a local wealthy landowner, Herman Brudenell. Nora’s sister, Hannah, and minister who

254 Elizabeth Stockton performs the ceremony are the only others who know of their marriage. Just as Brudenell is preparing to tell his mother about his new wife, a mysterious woman named Countess Hurstmonceux arrives, who, it turns out, had also entered into a private marriage with Brudenell years earlier. Brudenell believed that she was dead and consequently that he was legally entitled to marry Nora. When Nora learns of the previous marriage, she is devastated and dies soon after giving birth to Ishmael. Perhaps the most curious aspect of the novel is that Brudenell was married in secret not once, but twice. In wooing Nora Worth, he asks her to keep their union quiet in order to shield his aristocratic mother from the disappointment of having her son marry a peasant girl. When Nora’s sister, Hannah, objects to this covert arrangement, Brudenell rebuffs her concerns by saying that the marriage will not really be secret after all because the law will acknowledge it: “[Nora] shall have the marriage certificate in her own keeping, and every legal protection and defense; so that even if I should die suddenly . . . she would be able to claim and establish her rights and position in the world.”25 Brudenell believes that the letter of the law—the marriage certificate—will provide Nora with adequate protection and keep her safe. Indeed, after the ceremony, Brudenell reassures Nora that she is now “safe.” Yet Southworth’s narrator interrupts to ask, “But—were either of them really safe or happy?” (74). Of course, Nora is not really “safe” because, according to Southworth, the law does not intrude on marital privacy; in her community, legal agents do not view themselves as Nora’s rightful protectors. As Southworth made clear in The Lost Heiress, the law of marriage does not fulfill its promise to transform women into sufficiently protected beings. If husbands eschew their responsibilities to their wives, legal practitioners will not see it as their responsibility to intervene. In keeping with this view, the characters in Ishmael do not believe the law can adequately punish Brudenell. Instead, Hannah’s fiancé, Reuben, takes it upon himself to enact a more personal form of justice. Reuben begs Hannah to tell him the name of Ishmael’s father so that he might kill the guilty man. As Nora’s “nearest male relation,” Reuben feels he must avenge Nora’s death, claiming that it is his “solemn duty” to “womankind” to “seek out the wretch as wronged her and kill him where I find him, just as I would a rattlesnake as had bit my child” (181– 82). Horrified, Hannah insists that this would be murder and that Reuben would certainly be hanged. Yet Reuben counters, “But they’d not hang me, Hannah! . . . [I]f a man is right to kill another in defense of his own life, he is doubly right to do so in defense of a woman’s honor. And judges and juries know it, too, and feel it, as has often been proved!” (182). In Reuben’s view, because he is Nora’s only

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 255 male family member, he would merely be fulfilling his right and proper role as Nora’s protector by killing Brudenell. Reuben believes that, because the law has failed to protect women, he has no choice but to step in, and that the law will excuse his actions. Hannah, however, understands that the legal system does not take women’s needs seriously. Instead, the law will punish Reuben if he avenges Nora’s death. Ishmael’s courtroom advocacy, not Reuben’s proposed vigilante justice, ultimately avenges her death. Ishmael vows to become an advocate for women after learning from children in the village that he was born out of wedlock. Upon hearing this news, he staggers to his mother’s grave and cries out, “Oh, poor, young, wronged, and broken-hearted mother! Sleep in peace; for your son lives to vindicate you. Yes, if he has been spared, it was for this purpose! to honor, to vindicate, to avenge you!” (378). Hannah, seeing her distraught nephew sobbing at his mother’s grave, decides to tell him the full story of his mother’s suffering, from her secret marriage to her sudden death. The story prompts an even greater emotional outpouring from Ishmael: “At some parts of her story his tears gushed forth in floods, and his sobs shook his whole frame. Then Hannah would be forced to pause in her narrative, until he had regained composure enough to listen to the sequel” (379). It is hard to imagine a more sentimental moment—the young man being caressed by his aunt while shedding tears over his mother’s tragic fate. Ishmael has become what Daniel Hunter called for in The Lost Heiress: one who has “from infancy up [has] been educated in the spirit of moral suasion” (55). In a moment of heightened sympathy and emotion, he takes on his mother’s suffering as his own. It is her story that causes him to become a lawyer and attempt to correct the world’s injustices against women. Ishmael avenges his mother’s death in a way that no heroine in Southworth’s fiction could—he becomes a lawyer who defends women deceived and abandoned by their husbands. He receives his first case when his mentor, Judge Merlin, refers a friend, Mr. Walsh, who abandoned his wife and is now returning to the city to force his wife to give over their children. Judge Merlin advises Ishmael:

[Walsh] will sue for the possession of the children, and his wife will contest the suit; she will contest in vain, of course, for the law always gives the father possession of the children. . . . You cannot do better than to take this brief. It is the very neatest little case that ever a lawyer had; all the plain law on your side. (582–83)

256 Elizabeth Stockton Despite the assurances that the “plain law” would be on Walsh’s side, Ishmael responds that it is “cruel” to deprive a woman of her children, regardless of what the law sanctions (585). Thinking Ishmael foolish, Judge Merlin insists that it is “good [for the woman] to be reunited to her husband” (585). Educated in the spirit of moral suasion, though, Ishmael argues that this strict adherence to marital unity ignores women’s feeling. “Her own heart, taught by her own instincts and experiences, is the best judge of [whether she should reconcile],” he asserts (585). Ishmael recognizes that woman’s feelings can—and should—accurately “judge” what is best for them and their children, in a way that the “plain law” of his time was incapable of doing. Ishmael’s reaction to women’s suffering, and his belief that the law does not adequately acknowledge women’s feelings, makes him the embodiment of the legal mediator as hero. As a lawyer he takes the place of male relatives, like Reuben, who might seek to defend women privately outside the legal realm. Ishmael does not reject protection or paternalism; rather, he thinks that male relations should not be the only source of such authority. Thus, instead of taking Mr. Walsh’s case, Ishmael decides to defend Mrs. Walsh, even though she cannot afford to pay him. During the trial, Ishmael delivers powerful speeches on behalf of Mrs. Walsh, and the novel devotes several detailed pages to his addresses to the jury. In his arguments, he tells the Walshes’ story in such a way as to highlight the injustices that women suffer at the hands of profligate husbands. This argument is worth quoting in detail because his rhetoric echoes the plots of many nineteenth- century novels, as well as nineteenth-century legal reasoning:

He told the court how, . . . when [Mrs. Walsh] had come into her property [Mr.Walsh] had squandered it all by a method that he, the plaintiff, called speculation, but that others called gambling; how he had then left her in poverty and embarrassment and with one child to support; how he remained away two years. . . . She was prospering when he came back, [he] took up his abode with her, got into debt which he could not pay, and when all her stock and furniture was seized to satisfy his creditors, he took himself off once more, leaving her with two children. . . .When at the end of seven or eight months he came back again—she received him again! He stayed with her thirteen months; and suddenly disappeared without bidding her good-by, leaving her within a few weeks of becoming the mother of a third

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 257 child. A few days after his disappearance another execution was put into the house to satisfy a debt contracted by him, and everything was sold under the hammer. She was reduced to the last degree of poverty. (614–15)

Ishmael’s rhetoric resembles Carlisle’s arguments in Drury v. Foster, as well as arguments found in legal treatises and legislative records across the country surrounding married women’s property reform. His arguments reinforce Mrs. Walsh’s natural antipathy toward defying her husband: She only resists his advances after he repeatedly deserts her. As in Drury v. Foster, it is not in the wife’s nature to act against her spouse, but it is in the husband’s nature to gamble away the family’s wealth in speculative business ventures. Ishmael’s lengthy address to the jury focuses on the law’s failure to recognize the injuries that husbands like Walsh cause:

But now at the end of nine years comes back the plaintiff. Her husband? No, her enemy! for he comes, not as he pretends, to cherish and protect; but as he ever came before, to lay waste and destroy! . . . If the court did not protect her home against his invasion, he would again bring ruin and desolation within its walls. (615; emphasis added)

Ishmael’s speech highlights the danger when a husband becomes a predator rather than a protector. Furthermore, he asserts that the court should provide an alternative site of protection, with the law taking on a paternal role. Because wives have no (and should have no) legal identity separate from their husbands, they need the law to step in to protect them when their male relations cannot or do not. Serving as Mrs. Walsh’s legal mediator, Ishmael can press the law to recognize her—and by extension, his mother’s—sufferings without demanding equal rights for wives. Presumably, Southworth presents this particular case in such detail because it marks a formative moment in Ishmael’s career, signaling the kind of cases he will continue to take up. In other words, it actualizes his promise on his mother’s grave that he will vindicate the wrongs done to her. In imagining her heroic legal mediator, Southworth grants women testimo- nial authority, or the right to tell the legal system how they have been wronged. However, neither her novels nor mid-nineteenth-century legal discourse granted women what Jeannine DeLombard has called “exegetical authority,” the right to make meaning from one’s own story.26 As DeLombard argues, abolitionists will-

258 Elizabeth Stockton ingly allowed former slaves to testify, either in court or in print culture, to the abuses that they suffered, but their testimonies were always mediated by white authority figures, who presented themselves as capable of interpreting the larger message of the former slaves’ experiences. Similarly, in Southworth’s novel, Mrs. Walsh can testify in court about her suffering, but Ishmael must re-present and interpret her story to making it part of an effective plea for individual justice for her and for broader reforms leading to justice for all wives. Again, Ishmael’s reforms do not supplant patriarchy; they merely shift patriarchal authority from abusive husbands to upright lawyers and judges. Southworth wrote Ishmael in the early 1860s, after most states had adopted some degree of married women’s property reform.27 Yet the novel’s action takes place before these changes, and it imaginatively reconstructs the origin of these reforms, turning Ishmael into the central force behind them. As Southworth characterizes Ishmael’s closing arguments, he

uttered thoughts and feelings upon this subject [of women’s right to separate property], original and startling at that time, but which have since been quoted, both in the Old and New World, and have had power to modify those cruel laws which at that period made woman, despite her understanding intellect, an idiot, and despite her loving heart a chattel—in the law. (621)

Here Southworth imagines a kind of historical romance of the law, presenting her hero as the original crusader for married women’s property rights. According to Southworth’s fiction, the catalyst for these reforms is the heroic legal mediator rather than state legislators debating laws or vocal proto-feminist women advocating for themselves. The novel does not represent the haphazard, state-by-state progress of reforms, still incomplete at the time Southworth wrote the novel (many states did not pass reforms until very late in the nineteenth century). A more accurate account would detract from the story Southworth wants to tell— the story of one legal hero who, driven by his sympathetic attachment to women, singlehandedly prompts the law to recognize its obligations to protect women. For Southworth, the letter of the law was never sufficient to address women’s suffering at the hands of men; instead, the law had to incorporate feeling and moral reasoning—the key characteristics Daniel Hunter and other lawmakers pride themselves on lacking. Through Ishmael—impassioned, driven, and as

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 259 emotional as any woman in her novels—Southworth embodies her ideal of legal paternalism. Consistent with Southworth’s legal critique, Ishmael’s story highlights men’s wrongheadedness in placing faith in masculine, legal writing, as when Brudenell tries to assure Ishmael’s mother by holding up the marriage certificate as a certain guarantee against any trouble or difficulty. Her literary fictions speak back to “the rule which gives to the husband control and custody of the wife,” a rule that pre- supposes a husband alone can provide “support and protection” sufficient for her weakness. Southworth’s novels entertain the very real possibility that a husband could in fact become a wife’s “enemy and despoiler.” In other words, they imagine the same scenario of women’s suffering and offer the same rationale for invading marital privacy as in the Drury v. Foster case: A husband unjustly takes advantage of his wife’s trusting love and legal agents must intervene and protect her. Thus Southworth seems to agree with the court that wives need legal mediators when their husbands abuse them. Ishmael succeeds as a legal mediator because women’s sufferings affect him deeply from the moment he first hears his mother’s story. He has a sentimental understanding of women’s position and knows what can happen when a husband is a “despoiler.” He realizes, because of his mother’s suffering, the incompleteness of the “plain law.” He becomes the hero by bring- ing the story of his mother—and the countless number of wronged women just like her—into the masculine space of the courtroom and asserting the rightful place of sympathy within its walls while keeping women hidden in its benevolent shadows. Just as Southworth rewrote the history of married women’s property reform in Ishmael, she rewrote the history of her own experiences with marriage, property, and legal mediation in a letter to her granddaughter, Rose Lawrence, in the 1890s. In her letter, Southworth counsels that it is better for married people “to suffer much” or “separate and live apart” than to divorce.28 In this same letter, she also claimed that in the early 1860s, “Congress gave the courts of the District [of Columbia] the power to grant divorces under a bill . . . entitled ‘A Bill for the Relief of Emma Southworth’” and cites her editor, Robert Bonner, and two senators as instrumental in the law’s passage, which, she claims, happened “much to [her] regret.”29 However, as Melissa Homestead has detailed, there was no bill by that name in the 1860s, although Southworth did at least consider divorc- ing Frederick Southworth in the early 1850s. Thus Southworth presents herself to her granddaughter as the beneficiary of magnanimous legal mediators rather than focusing on (or confronting) her own earlier attempts to divorce Frederick, meager or incomplete as they may have been. Of course, we can only guess at

260 Elizabeth Stockton Southworth’s motivations for presenting her past in this way to her granddaughter. Perhaps she actively dissembled in an attempt to influence Rose, who felt wronged by her own husband, to stay married; perhaps she actually believed her revisionist history. Regardless of her intention, what this letter, and the historical facts that refute it, reveal is Southworth’s willingness to subsume her actions beneath those of her male mediators. Importantly, though, Southworth keeps herself at the heart of the legal reforms; the bill is named for her, after all. She implies that Bonner and the senators proposed the legislation because they had heard of her suffering; that is, she puts herself in the role of the victim who merely provided the necessary testimony. Our knowledge of the actual historical events, though, complicates this analysis because we recognize that Southworth’s “testimony” did not prompt any such actions. Rather than being the victim or testifier, as she presents herself, she was exercising exegetical authority by representing and interpreting her own story. Whether she is depicting Bonner or Ishmael as a heroic legal mediator representing a woman’s suffering to legal authorities, she is in narrative control, addressing the courtroom of public opinion on her own terms rather than acquiescing to a judge, jury, or legal procedures.

Notes 1. For example, in her analysis of The Deserted Wife, Joyce Warren claims, “In this novel, Southworth was writing the story of her own abandonment by her husband. . . . There was no reconciliation with Frederick Southworth in real life, however.” Women, Money, and the Law (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2005), 96. Similarly, Paul Christian Jones has argued, “Because this issue [troubled marriages] was such a personal concern for Southworth, she populated much of her work . . . with these deserted wives and their usually but not always repentant husbands.” “Burning Mrs. Southworth: True Womanhood and the Intertext of Ellen Glasgow’s ‘Virginia,’” Southern Literary Journal 37 (2004): 32.

2. See Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press 1993), 111.

3. See Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822– 1869 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 48.

4. Warren, Women, Money, and the Law, 92.

5. Barbara Bardes and Suzanne Gossett, Declarations of Independence: Women and Political Power in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1990), 94.

6. Ibid.

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 261 7. Reva Siegel, “Why Equal Protection No Longer Protects: The Evolving Forms of Status-Enforcing State Action,” Stanford Law Review 49 (1997): 1116.

8. Maine’s original text referred to changes in the British legal system; however, the phrase “from status to contract” was adopted and used frequently by American legal theorists to describe legal reform in their country as well.

9. Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law, Its Connection with the History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas, 3rd ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1873), 16.

10. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1783; reprint, New York: Garland, 1978), 1:442.

11. Because the particularities of marriage law varied from state to state, it can be difficult to characterize the exact situations of husbands and wives throughout the country. However, we can establish a general sense of how a wife’s legal identity would have af- fected her sense of self-possession: “What rights a wife had . . . existed as rights possessed by her husband: as rights he lost, he gave, or he abused. Her place in the world, both metaphorically and spatially, was his place in the world; his home was her home wherever she actually lived. Citizenship would, from this perspective, have been something close to a contradiction in terms for a married woman.” Hendrik Hartog, Man and Wife in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000), 100. It is important to note that this legal description—or theory—did not always match people’s experiences. Although a wife’s legal “place” was with her husband, she might, in practice, live elsewhere.

12. The growing resistance to a purely contractual model of marriage can be found in various legal decisions and treatises of the mid-nineteenth century. In 1841, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story asserted that marriage was not a contract in “the common sense definition of the word” but “something more than a mere contract. It . . . has some peculiarities of its nature, character, operation, and extent of obligation, different from what belongs to ordinary contracts.” Quoted in Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Law and Family in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 21. For more cases that ruled marriage was a unique arrangement, Grossberg points to the following: Maguire v. Maguire (Ky. 1838), Dickson v. Dickson (Tenn. 1826), Townsend v. Griffin (Del. 1843–47), and Parde v. Cirahon (Fla. 1851).

13. Hartog, Man and Wife, 108.

14. “Marriage Settlements,” American Law Magazine 3 (1844): 16–22.

15. Grossberg, Governing the Hearth, 121.

16. Drury v. Foster, 17 L. Ed. 780; 1864 U.S. Lexis 404 (1864).

262 Elizabeth Stockton 17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Drury v. Foster, 69 U.S. 24 (1864) at 33.

21. Brook Thomas, Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 171.

22. EDENS, The Lost Heiress (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1854), 55 (hereinafter cited in the text).

23. Interestingly, Ellen O’ Leary is given no credit for raising the magnanimous Maud; Southworth seems to write over Ellen’s character, transforming this woman who pleaded for her husband’s life, worked to support her family, and tended an estate into a passive, weak, dreamy character who had little effect on her adopted daughter or her son, Falconer.

24. For more on the transformative aspects of marriage, see Hartog, Man and Wife.

25. EDENS, Ishmael, or, in the Depths (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1876), 72; emphasis added (hereinafter cited in the text).

26. Jeannine Marie DeLombard, Slavery on Trial: Law, Abolitionism, and Print Culture (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2007), 137.

27. By the end of the 1840s, Mississippi, Arkansas, California, Texas, all of the New England states, New York, Pennsylvania, and three of the “northwestern” states allowed a married woman to own property separately from her husband. For more on the married women’s property reforms, see Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982), 21–36; and Richard Chused, “Married Women’s Property Law: 1800–1850,” Georgetown Law Journal 71 (1983): 1359–1425.

28. EDENS to Rose Lawrence, June 2, 1895, Emma Dorothy Eliza (Nevitte) Southworth Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

29. Ibid.

Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms 263

“What Did You Mean?” The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom Cindy Weinstein

The problem of marriage in E. D. E. N. Southworth is intimately linked to the ambiguities of language. “What did you mean?”—a quotation taken from Southworth’s Maiden Widow—is a refrain that runs throughout many of Southworth’s novels in which marriage is a continual topic of conversation and confusion. To wit: “Oh! . . . What do you mean?” in The Missing Bride; “What do you mean by that?” in Self-Raised, or From the Depths; “What do you mean?” in The Mysterious Marriage; and “What—what do you mean?” or “What mean you?” in TheF atal Marriage.1 Southworth’s young women are often in a chronic state of misunderstanding because the men who are wooing them frequently use language to conceal the truth. Sometimes, in the comic version of this problem, the suitors simply don’t know what they mean (they think they love someone, but they really don’t); sometimes their past is complicated (they have made a prior vow); and sometimes their intentions are ignoble (they want sex without marriage or they are already married). Southworth is particularly interested in exploring the consequences of linguistic ambiguity and outright deceit that lead up to and culminate in marriage, and what, if anything, women can do about it either before or after they say “I do.” By examining Southworth’s rendering of the marriage vow—who says it, who means it, where it is said—we can begin to understand her attempts to carve out a space where women are not simply the victims of their “I do’s” (a frequent theme of her novels) but subjects with an active role in shaping the meanings of those vows. Indeed, the status of a promise, pledge, or vow is very much on the minds of Southworth’s characters, one of whom asks quite bluntly, “Do you know the nature of a vow?” (MB, 502). Obviously, “the nature of a vow” is not automatically understood. Some characters think of it as having a status as binding as the law; others assume a vow spoken is not the same as a vow meant (“when I was promising, I made a mental reservation” [MB, 557]). In other words, Southworth represents the vow as a complicated speech act that contains within it a possible gap between the speaker’s intention and her utterance, a gap between the time the vow is uttered and the solemnizing of that vow, and the difference between a vow made in public and a vow kept private. These ambiguities more often than not favor the man, but in the case of The Missing Bride, for example, Miriam, the main character, marries in a private ceremony, though “she never would consent to be his own until their marriage could be proclaimed” (MB, 128). Having said “I do” does not mean she will. What, then does “I do” mean? My goal in this chapter is not to give a monolithic account of how marriage works (or does not) in Southworth’s oeuvre—that would be impossible given the number of novels she wrote and the variety of plots she devised—but rather to conduct a close reading of two particular novels that speak to each other about how best to solve the problem of marriage, a problem that has its roots in the instabilities of language. To this extent, my analysis intersects with Caroline Levander’s reading of TheF atal Marriage, in which she argues that Southworth, and Melville in Pierre, “reimagine the role of women’s language in American culture and mount a powerful critique of the gender, linguistic, and sexual ideas of their middle-class audiences.”2 Whereas disembodiment is, for Levander, a site of female power and critique, I am more interested in how Southworth’s critique of marriage is worked out through a literal attention to the words people speak to one another, and what those words mean, might mean, and do not mean. The texts upon which I shall focus are The Fatal Marriage (serialized under the title The Doom of Deville, or the Maiden’sV ow) and the two-volume novel TheF amily Doom and The Maiden Widow (serialized under the single title The Malediction; or the Widows of Widowville). The first is a cautionary tale about marriage entered into too quickly and the disastrous consequences that follow; the donnée of the second is that marriage is disastrous. Its three generations of women have lost their husbands because of an ancient Native American curse that dooms their husbands to early and violent deaths, leading the reader to believe that, at the very least, one should postpone entering into marriage until the curse (no matter what the source) upon the institution has been lifted. Taken together, these novels reflect both Southworth’s profound skepticism about marriage and her awareness that marriage is, despite its potential fatality, the outcome desired by both her protagonists and her readers. Thus my reading of these novels proceeds, first, by delineating the pressures of genre that, on some level, require Southworth to work toward the resolution of the plot through marriage; second, by examining the speech acts (here the work of J. L. Austin will provide a theoretical framework

266 Cindy Weinstein for this section) that eventuate in marriage; and third, by offering a close reading of these texts that reveals Southworth, the nineteenth-century tactician of marriage, who wished to discover within that putative site of coercion the possibility of female agency and consent.

(Mis)Marriage Southworth had good reason to be suspicious of marriage. Through her career as an author, she was the sole supporter of two young children after having been abandoned by her husband, who occasionally showed up to try to take a cut of her profits based on his rights as her husband. Because she was so acutely aware of just how vulnerable a woman is when she becomes a wife, her representation of marriage and the courtship leading up to it is especially charged and complicated. No writer, I would submit, is more consistent and often outrageous than Southworth in the obstacles she invents to keep her protagonists apart, or more consistent and outrageous in her efforts to delineate just how bad a bad marriage can be. To keep her unmarried characters apart or to demonstrate the fragility of the martial relation, Southworth’s repertoire features an assortment of fictional concoc- tions ranging from the inaccurately identified dead body to the name change of a character, and from the rather unexceptional artifice of the lost letter to the more bizarre obstruction of an ancient curse with intergenerational powers. Nina Baym adds some others: “false or purloined wills, forged or intercepted or lost letters, storms, floods, fires, droughts, kidnappings, mock murders, feigned marriages and suicides, carriage accidents, shipwrecks, poisonings.”3 Shirley Samuels focuses on how war in Southworth’s Fair Play and How He Won Her produces “extended plots [that] may also be seen to defer the anticipated marriages. . . . That the novels end with marriage after 1,000 pages may not be as significant as that the resolution through marriage is deferred for 1,000 pages occupied by the interruptions of war.”4 Like Samuels, I want to examine the use and purpose of obstacles in some of Southworth’s texts and suggest that if enough obstacles are thrown in the way of the two characters foolish enough to consider marriage, perhaps the marriage will not take place. Alternatively, if it does, perhaps the fact that the couple has outlasted so many arbitrary acts of fate (designed by South- worth, of course)—and the wilder, the better—then maybe this marriage might just survive. Moreover, I am interested in delineating a specific kind of delay that Southworth repeatedly deploys. I am referring to the panoply of accidents, literal ones, that happen to texts. They get lost, they are misread, they are buried, they are stolen, they are burned. Southworth’s novels, in fact, are often about the

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 267 recovery of the missing text or the correction of a misread wedding announcement or the discovery of witnesses to the signing of the marriage certificate. The hermeneutic undecidability of oral communication seems to infect written communication as well, but unlike the ambiguity of the spoken word in Southworth, texts can almost always be found, misreadings can almost always be fixed, and meaning can be (re)secured. But this recovery of meaning usually takes a very long time and many, many pages. I do not mean to downplay the real economic motives driving Southworth to write long and numerous books, but I do think that her frenzied compositional pace, voluminous output, and incredible plot complications are usefully viewed in terms of her vexed relation to a literary tradition that demanded an ending about which she was deeply suspicious. Simply put, she is ambivalent about the fact that her novels about courtship (as opposed to the novels that begin with marriage and tell the story of its deterioration) are supposed to end in marriage, given the conventional requirements of sentimental fiction. The obstacles to the marriage constitute the plot of the narrative at the same time as they enable the text to keep its distance from that ending as long as possible. Indeed, it is hard to believe, with titles such as Family Doom, The Fatal Marriage, The Maiden Widow, The Unloved Wife, and The Missing Bride, that marriage is the relation to which women ought to aspire and the one in which women will be emotionally and economically cared for. Southworth certainly has her doubts, and she is not alone. Marriage, as virtually every sentimental writer notes, makes a woman vulnerable to physical and mental abuse, and legally speaking, she becomes a feme covert.5 She is, according to eighteenth-century British law, which provided the template of American jurisprudence at the time, literally a hidden woman, whose husband takes her property, her name, her very self. Novel after novel represents marriage as both a potentially terrible mistake (in fact, one of Mary Jane Holmes’s novels is called Ethelyn’s Mistake) and a joyous fulfillment of a woman’s destiny, and because Southworth is aware that this ending is not automatically a happy one, the marriage toward which the entire plot is driving is often subject to what can sometimes seem like endless (and pointless) deferral.6 It is almost in spite of these artifices or accidents that her novels conventionally conclude with happy marriages. The delay in marriage is accomplished through the following strategies: She introduces a voluminous array of characters whose intersecting lives and relationships must be disentangled before a marriage can occur, and she comes up with so many awful scenarios, so many negative possibilities that must be cleared away—exorcised as it were—in order for the

268 Cindy Weinstein union to take place. Indeed, the sheer number of characters in her novels acts as a strategy for additional obstruction. After all, two people can only be subject to so many lost missives and misunderstood wills. Multiply that by several groups of star-crossed lovers, and it is not simply a matter of getting the hero and heroine down the aisle—all of those other characters whose love lives have gone awry through various sorts of misunderstandings must get sorted out as well. Thus a novel such as The Maiden Widow does not just end with one couple getting married, but five. It is marriage with a vengeance. Permeating Southworth’s novels are multiple kinds of deferral, whether they be the characters misunderstanding one another, the number of characters entering the plot (providing for further instances of misunderstanding), or the (temporary) loss of texts that would clarify everything and put an end to the story. The material documents containing correct names (birth certificates), death notices (newspapers), and legal dispensations (marriage vows) are especially vulnerable to fire, theft, or fate. That is why some of Southworth’s characters, most often women, actually carry their marriage certificates with them. Such is the case with Lionne Deforet in The Fatal Marriage, a novel to which I shall return, whose marriage certificate to Orville Deville hangs from her neck so whenever it is necessary to remind him of his marriage to her, she has the document at the ready. In the instance of Belvedira Boone, one of the main characters of A Leap in the Dark and its sequel, The Mysterious Marriage, her marriage certificate, which she keeps with her at all times in a special box, inexplicably disappears and later turns out to have been stolen by a freakish African American character, who was initially mistaken for ghost but actually entered the house through the chimney, took the documents, and buried them, only to have them be exhumed much later. Indeed, the more outrageous the deferral, the better. Whereas spoken words disappear into thin air, the written word, even if it is a lie, has the potential of being restored and rendered transparent. Language literally gets lost, and the plot of the novel is to find it, to restore it to its rightful owner, to restore it to its rightful meaning, and to bring about a marriage (or to demonstrate the lie[s] culminating in that marriage). The written word ultimately functions as a bulwark against the vicissitudes of oral communication. In- deed, it is interesting to think about the plethora of Southworth’s own words, the enormity of her written archive, in relation to her own sense of the inadequacy and the immateriality of the spoken word. In her fiction, the spoken word, even (and especially) the “I do,” is always potentially tainted by its insecure relation to the person saying it (has he said it before and is therefore a bigamist?) and the person asking them both to say it

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 269 (is the woman being set up by a couple of devious men?). Furthermore, marriage sometimes exists in a state of in-betweeness where one person (usually the woman) thinks she is married, even in the absence of a ceremony, and the other person (usually the man) uses that ambiguity to his advantage. Characters have access to an enormous linguistic range, which is part of the problem in its impre- cision, when it comes to describing marriage. Nero, a black character in TheF atal Marriage, observes Orville’s flirtation with Lionne and remarks, “Now, see here, honey—sollum betroffed is sollum betroffed! Still, it aint by no means marriage” (FM, 69). In The Maiden Widow, Berenice attempts to explain her “betrothal in marriage” (MW, 108), which cannot be consummated in marriage (because of an ancient curse): “Our betrothal does not so much mean that we shall ever marry each other as that we shall never either of us marry any one else!” (MW, 109). Another character in that novel explains (sort of) that the man who loves her has “frightened me into half promising to be his wife” (MW, 121). Characters have good reason to be continually asking one another what they mean. Thus outhworthS scrutinizes not only the marriage relation but also, and more distinctively than other writers of her time similarly preoccupied with the problem of marriage, the speech acts leading up to and including the final “I do.” These include the promises, the pledges, and the vows eventuating (or not) in the wedding vow. Hers is an interrogation of the speech acts that form the plot of courtship and end in the marriage ceremony. Hers is also a deeply contextualized understanding of the marriage vow. For example, the consequences of saying “I do” are profoundly different for a woman and a man. Not only does the woman become a feme covert, but she often becomes pregnant shortly after uttering those words. When a man says “I do,” his wife is rendered completely vulnerable. He is not. Thus Belvedira tries to commit suicide when the man she marries in a secret ceremony disappears for several years (he eventually finds his way back to her) because she had “gr[own] to believe that even our marriage had not insured our reunion” (MM, 255). Lilith Hereward, the protagonist of The Unloved Wife and its sequel, Lilith, faces a similar dilemma after her husband discovers her alleged betrayal and announces that though he will not divorce her, “I shall not the less surely repudiate you, and forbid you to bear my name, or to speak of me as in any manner related to yourself.”7 In taking away his last name, she now has none and is, as she asserts, “in some sense of the word . . . dead.”8 This is why the documents are so important and why the textual accidents are so devastating. For Southworth, marriage vows do not always perform marriage; sometimes they merely say, “I am saying ‘I do.’” At the conclusion of Lilith, when one of the other main characters gets married, we are informed that “a

270 Cindy Weinstein small party . . . witness[es] the signing of the marriage contract” (L, 234), in addition to which “there were two notaries public with their clerks” (L, 234) and after which a “civil ceremony, which the French law requires, was duly observed,” followed by “the grand pageant of the ecclesiastical rites” (L, 235). The ending of the novel does not grant this last “I do” any more validity than the preceding utterances; rather, it takes as a given the need to bolster those words with as many witnesses, documents, and civil and religious forms as possible.

“I Do,” or The Fatal Marriage The most important speech act a woman will utter, at least according to much nineteenth-century American fiction, is “I do.” To say “I do” is to do it, which is to marry. J. L. Austin develops a theory of speech acts in his classic 1962 linguistic treatise, How to Do Things with Words. He begins by distinguishing between constative and performative utterances, the former being subject to the criterion of true or false, the latter being equivalent to an action (which is neither true nor false). He goes on to unravel this distinction by explaining how “there can hardly be any longer a possibility of not seeing that stating is performing an act.”9 However, in the opening chapters of his book, Austin establishes his definition of performative utterance as separate from constantive statements and focuses on the following speech acts: betting, bequeathing, promising, and, last but not least, marrying. Austin uses “I do” as a paradigmatic example of performative utterance because saying “I do” is the equivalent of doing. He concedes that certain requirements must be in place for the action to be achieved by the performative utterance, and when they are not, the utterance is not functioning properly; for example, “We are not in a position to do the act because we are, say, married already.”10 Interestingly, he further explains that it is not that an act has not occurred but that the wrong act has occurred. The “I do” has produced a bigamist, not a husband. Instead of marriage, we have bigamy. For Austin, performatives cannot be contested on the grounds of truth or falsehood, as is the case with constatives, because actions are neither true nor false. Rather, performatives, like actions, are understood according to the logic by which they “have [been] happily brought off.”11 Actions, that is, are either accomplished or void. When “something goes wrong and the act . . . is therefore at least to some extent a failure,” the performative utterance has “misfired” or been “abused.”12 For the purposes of this chapter, it is not necessary to go into the many finer distinctions that Austin develops in his account of the various kinds of infelicities. What is important to take from his analysis, though, is the notion

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 271 that performative utterances are “not a true or false report of something.”13 “I do” is not necessarily a true or false report of someone’s feelings for someone else. “I do” is not even a guarantee that a marriage has taken place. If it is the second time a man has said “I do” (and his first wife is still alive and they are not divorced), the utterance has, according to Austin, “misfired.”14 Southworth goes so far as to suggest that even a marriage that follows all of the legal formalities is not necessarily binding, or might “misfire,” if one of the parties is an unwilling (or deceitful or underaged) participant in the ceremony. Southworth is at great pains to make the point that the marriage vow is a speech act (although she would not call it that) that must be contextualized in terms of gender.15 If “I do” is “I don’t,” the implications of that verbal misfiring are far graver for a woman than a man. Thus, in the case of The Fatal Marriage, much of the novel revolves around the question of exactly what it means when a fifteen- year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl are forced to marry. As the protagonist Orville Deville falls in love with another woman, he wonders about the legality of what the narrator refers to as his “baby-marriage” (FM, 94) with Adelaide Lorne: “Is it binding? Should it be binding? Should a betrothal solemnized at the instance of their guardians between a boy and girl who were then for the first time and never afterwards met again, be binding upon either party?” (FM, 73). Deville decides that these ties are not binding. He marries Lionne Deforet and in the eyes of the law commits bigamy because the “baby-marriage,” “though only nominal, being the prior, is consequently the legal one” (FM, 193). The meaning of a marriage, in Southworth’s analysis, is not fixed but subject to the context in which it takes place. If the wedding is forced, if the couple is too young, if the wife is unsure, if the husband is lying—all of these contexts play into Southworth’s sense of the illegitimacy of a marriage. Thus the words “I do” are necessary but not sufficient to make a marriage binding. One might think of this slippage as potentially liberating for all concerned, because if marriages can be mistakenly or unintentionally entered into, presumably they can also be dissolved.16 But it is much more difficult for women than men to make the case that, on the grounds of a compelling context, a marriage should be discounted. Deville, for example, initially justifies his second marriage to Lionne by declaring his first to Adelaide null and void because “we could neither have known each other or understood the purport of what we mutually promised” (FM, 127). Yet when he begins to like Adelaide and covet her utter devotion to him, he invokes that same marriage whose validity he had denied just a few pages before as absolutely binding upon her. He intones, “I am master!” and she is “my wife! My wife! My own, own indisputable wife! No power on earth can take her from me! . . . she belongs

272 Cindy Weinstein to me! she is my wife! ” (FM, 129). Thus, when he wishes to question the status of his “baby marriage” with Adelaide, he provides an account of their marriage, which he speciously calls a “betrothal,” that is subject to intention, age, affection, and context; however, when he wants the “baby marriage” to matter, he invokes the law of coverture. Lionne’s only (lousy) option is to make her first marriage to Deville (but his second, at least in certain of his moods) binding, and if she cannot do so on the grounds of affection, she will try to do so by invoking the authority of the law. Thus despite her belief that she is the wife of Deville’s “true marriage” (FM, 193), she carries at all times the marriage certificate in order to document her legal status as his wife. Documents verifying marriage have almost talismanic properties in Southworth. They have the authenticating power that words such as “I do” do not. The “certificate of marriage”F ( M, 184) between Lionne and Orville is the only thing preventing Orville from completely obliterating Lionne’s existence. The irony, of course, is that that very certificate accomplishes a different kind of obliteration—turning her into a feme covert—but clearly, that identity is prefer- able to none. The textual evidence provided by the marriage certificate authenti- cates Lionne’s version of the story against Orville’s, and in addition to establishing her as the victim of his perfidy, it gives her back the identity, albeit the identity of a covered woman, that Orville is trying to take away from her. That certificate is, on a fundamental level, the document of who she is, which is why she has it with her at all times and why she will show it anyone who will read it. This includes Kate Kyte, a friend of Lionne’s, who “star[es] at the document” (FM, 204), as well as Orville himself, who, when Lionne confronts him and asks, “‘[D]o you remember this document?’ . . . drawing from her bosom and holding out a small written paper. He cover[s] his face with his hands and groan[s]” (FM, 351). Later on in the course of the novel, Orville is ready to run for political office, but Lionne warns him against trying to establish a good name for himself by conveying the following to him: “[C]opies of the two marriage certificates that constituted Deville a bigamist; and next against them on the left, a copy of the statue-law that constituted the crime of bigamy a felony, punishable with imprisonment or slavery” (FM, 413). There is yet another copy “of that fatal marriage-certificate” (FM, 454) that Lionne attempts to use to extract her vengeance upon Deville, but he is ready to take his chances in a court of law, never imagining—though why not speaks to his own lack of imagination— that Lionne would go so far as to destroy his reputation in public (her previous acts of retribution have been private) by putting “the documents . . . in the hands of justice” (FM, 468). As the documents or, more precisely, copies of the document, proliferate, Deville comes

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 273 closer to being charged with the crime of bigamy, which ultimately leads him to commit suicide. But Lionne dies too for a crime she has committed. In meting out justice according to her own code of conduct, Lionne becomes a “monomaniac” (FM, 461) who does terrible things, not least of which is kidnapping Adelaide’s biological child. Southworth eventually hands Orville to the justice system, but not until Lionne has totally destroyed him (and herself). Making public the story of Lionne’s victimhood is the necessary bookend to his unwillingness to make their marriage public. Bigamists, like Deville, can no longer dissimulate behind the alleged distinction between his betrothal to Adelaide and their marriage (FM, 126); no longer can he refuse to acknowledge “a felony to which he dared not give its legal name” (FM, 127).17 Southworth’s courtrooms, as we see in the case of her novel Ishmael as well, are fantasies of linguistic restoration and transparency, where language—at last—means what it should.18 Despite the ultimate restoration of meaning in the final scenes of TheF atal Marriage, there is no good resolution for two of the protagonists. Lionne, heartbroken but deeply vengeful (and a mother, thanks to Deville), loses her mind and devotes her every waking moment to destroying him, which she eventually accomplishes by handing over the documents to the courts. Perhaps the most fascinating and unexpected aspect of the novel’s conclusion is Adelaide’s reward. In the final paragraph, we are told that “in due time, [Adelaide’s] hand was sought by the Duke of Donaldben, a gentleman in every way worthy to make her forget the sorrows of her youth, and with whom she lived a long life of nearly perfect married love and happiness” (FM, 487). As much a victim of Deville’s ethical lapses as Lionne, Adelaide at one point actually tries to give Deville back to Lionne; in other words, when she discovers his secret marriage, she acknowledges the second wife’s rights and recognizes that, in fact, the “baby-marriage”—Adelaide is twelve (FM, 94) and Orville fifteen—was an unfair manipulation of two children who did not know any better. An antebellum judge might well have taken the same position as Adelaide, giving Orville’s second marriage, bigamous though it is, priority over his first. Historian of marriage Hendrik Hartog observes, “When bigamous second (and sometimes third) unions were challenged I court, judges were remarkably accepting and accommodating of the bigamous pair.”19 Nancy Cott similarly observes that “except in the few states that absolutely prohibited or nullified self-marriage by law, courts were generally satisfied when a couple’s cohabitation looked like and was reputed in the community to be marriage, whether or not authorized ceremonies could be documented.”20 Clearly, there is an interpretive ambiguity about marriage that Southworth finds deeply problematic. How can bigamy

274 Cindy Weinstein ever be acceptable? How can a marriage be real if there are no documents (even with documents, it is difficult enough in Southworth to establish the reality of a marriage)? As if the status of a bigamous marriage weren’t legally complicated enough, Southworth also introduces the problem of what legal historian Michael Grossberg explains as the “youthful marriage.”21 Although there was a consistent movement among the states to raise the statutory age to “sixteen for women and eighteen for men,” Grossberg explains that justices were often loathe to intervene in what was also “considered private matters. . . . Many jurists and their professional allies retained a striking, if increasingly anachronistic, faith in the social utility of youthful nuptial fitness.”22 On this view, Adelaide’s “youthful marriage” has priority over the bigamous union. It is astonishing that Adelaide, who has been trained from early on to obey, to please, and to submit, is ready to concede the illegitimacy of her marriage, especially in the face of Orville’s opposition. Adelaide may be a feme covert, but she is ready to act in a way that fiercely challenges her husband’s ownership of her. She is willing to accept Lionne’s first marriage as legally binding (even though he is not), despite the fact that Adelaide’s first marriage could certainly be considered, because prior, the legally binding one. Moreover, the fact that the two women are trying to negotiate their relative rights vis-à-vis Deville puts him in the position of being the object. Or to put the point another way, the women are trying to figure out to whom Deville belongs. This interpretation has its limits, because Adelaide and Lionne are also struggling to adjudicate the question of which wife really belongs to Deville. Who has the greater claim to being Deville’s possession? Divorce will not settle this question, and Adelaide refuses to consider it (she has been trained her entire life to love him and does not want his character to suffer). She does, however, attempt to run away and vanish into the Maryland countryside, but she is unsuccessful and is brought back to Deville so that the novel can continue questioning the validity of both marriages. I call attention to Adelaide’s fate at the very end of the novel because it is so bizarre, truncated, and utterly inauthentic in a novel full of inauthenticities. That fate also supports the notion of Southworth’s conflicted relation to sentimentalism. She gets over the death of the man who was the raison d’être of her life in record time and quickly experiences “renewed health and peace” (FM, 486). We are informed that Adelaide was “not destined to wear her days out in mourning over the past” (FM, 487), which is a kind way of saying good riddance to the man in her life who wreaked such havoc. And then she marries again. It all happens so quickly—in a page—and so seemingly unnecessarily and arbitrarily, until one remembers that marriage is the expected conclusion for sentimental novels. For

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 275 all intents and purposes, the novel ends with the rapid-fire deaths of Deville, Lionne, and Deville’s mother (one of the guardians who forced the marriage), which means that Adelaide is now free to do anything, including the one thing the novel has shown us will lead to unhappiness. That, of course, is marry. But Southworth must give her audience a marriage. Southworth is in a bind. She wants to reward Adelaide for her good works and kindness toward Lionne (after all, Adelaide is the only main character not to die), but the only way she can do so is by granting her character perfect happiness in marriage, a condition that this novel has shown to be virtually impossible. That is why Adelaide’s second marriage gets two sentences in a novel of five hundred pages. While sentimentalism places certain demands on her plot, her plot has demonstrated the profound limitations of those very requirements. Thus Adelaide is given a moment in the story where she defies the role of feme covert only to be put back into that position—as a reward—at the novel’s utterly inauthentic end.

“What does it mean? Oh, what does it mean?” Southworth rarely receives this kind of close reading. The texts I have been discussing, let alone their language, are seldom analyzed. Language, however, is very much on the minds of Southworth’s characters, as the quotation from TheF atal Marriage with which this section begins implies. Her characters exist in a chronic state of misunderstanding, which on the most obvious level functions to propel the plot. But I would submit that in addition to characters not recognizing each other or letters getting lost in the post, the misunderstandings in many of Southworth’s novels, and here I shall take up The Family Doom and its sequel, The Maiden Widow, are quite clearly linguistic and organized around the very particular issue of marriage and how men and women talk about it before they actually marry. As with The Fatal Marriage, but on a considerably larger scale, in The Family Doom proposals, pledges, promises, vows are constantly made, except that no one seems to know exactly what they mean. With a title like TheF amily Doom, one might imagine that a fatal marriage is somewhere in the offing. It is not, though, because it has already happened in the story of the widows of Henniker House. Granted, marriage has happened four times, but the point of the novel is to prevent it from happening again. And Southworth manages to avert a fifth generation of marital disaster by giving her protagonist, if not a future without marriage, at least a way to make sure she enters into the right one, not unlike

276 Cindy Weinstein Adelaide’s second marriage. Within the framework of perpetually ambiguous speech acts that characterizes this particular story of star-crossed lovers, Southworth’s novel allows women a chance to renege on their pledges, an opportunity to be misunderstood and not suffer too terribly for it (like Lionne), and everyone is happier for it. The two olumesv tell the story of several generations of women who have married and lost their husbands because of an ancient Native American curse, which has exerted its fatal grip over multiple generations: “And the maid shall be widowed / Before she is wed” (MW, 240). The Family Doom and The Maiden Widow concern Berenice Brooke, the youngest of the cursed women, who falls in love with Vane Vandeleur. She cannot marry him because to do so, under the conditions of the curse, would result in his death. Their temporary solution is to pledge an oath to one another whereby “she has bound herself by the solemn vow never to marry Vane Vandeleur until those impossible conditions are fulfilled, which, according to the Indian oracle, would make the marriage safe” (MW, 91). Other pledges and promises are also made and broken. In TheF amily Doom, Vane refuses to “accept [Berenice’s] pledge” because he has made a “promise to her [Bererenice’s mother]” that her daughter will “be entirely free from any engagement.”23 Nevertheless, Berenice “keep[s] it [the pledge] for Vane”: “I also promise to be faithful to you, and to wait with you any length of time, and to use every means in my power to merit your constancy and to gain my mother’s consent!” (FD, 139). Later, when Berenice learns about the curse and tells Vane, “I must not marry you,” he chastises her for reneging on the pledge that he could not accept but that she insisted on keeping: “And you promised that though you would yield present obedience to your mother and guardians, yet, when you should become of age, you would be my wife” (FD, 229). Other pledges follow in The Maiden Widow, when Vane refuses to accompany another character to Europe on the grounds that “I have pledged myself to my beloved Berenice . . . to be, at least, her friend and neighbor” (MW, 95). In turn, through “the voluntary act of Berenice, in releasing him from his pledge to remain in the neighborhood” (MW, 101), he leaves. The plot demands that Berenice and Vane must be legally (and publicly) married, and it takes all of Southworth’s ingenuity to resolve the paradox that Berenice be both maid and widow prior to her wedding. Berenice marries Basil Wall, an ailing old man, who within hours of their marriage dies, making Berenice maid and widow. As if that part of the curse is not been enough of an obstacle to their marriage, the curse also can only be broken “when the noon shall be midnight, / And eve shall be morn” (MW, 240). Southworth provides an eclipse of the sun. With

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 277 the curse broken, the story might end, but the author introduces yet another plot complication, this one involving Vane, who has been out of the country during the time when the characters have cooked up the scheme of Berenice’s “nominal marriage” (MW, 294) to Basil Wall. Except there are two Basil Walls: the old, de- crepit one and the youthful Wall, although a marriage announcement would not necessarily make that distinction evident. Thus, just when Southworth seems to have cleared the way for her protagonists to marry, “Old Captain Storms had run off with a wrong version of that marriage story, as Vane had drawn a wrong infer- ence from the marriage notice” (MW, 206). Another one hundred pages awaits the reader to whom the narrator has confided, “[D]oes my reader believe that Berenice Brooke had forfeited her faith, and married young Basil Wall?” (MW, 206). The fact thatVane judges Berenice so harshly and infers so wrongly, even after everything they have been through—the separations, the pledges, the promises, the vows—is evidence of a problem that will not go away, despite his apologies and her blushing. In other words, it is only a matter of time until the next misreading occurs, although there will be no curse to blame for the misunderstanding, except for the curse of their marriage. “What is the meaning of them?” (MW, 187) is Vane’s first response to his misreading of the marriage notice. His second is violence: “There shall be another Widow of Widowville. Ah! One can understand the meaning of the malediction when one sees such treachery!” (189). Vane’s emotions quickly travel from wanting to marry Berenice to “reproach[ing]” her with her “falsehood” (189) to imagining deadly violence. With good reason, then, has Southworth, as well as the widows of Widowville, warded off that marriage and many others as long as possible. But marriage remains the inevitable conclusion for the sentimental novel. The final chapters go back and detail the ceremony of the “nominal marriage” between Berenice and Old Basil Wall, and a final page lists the long-awaited marriages of four sets of additional characters. Although TheF amily Doom and The Maiden Widow end in multiple marriages, virtually all of the female characters are faced with the choice of embarking upon a marriage, which they have at one point or another vowed to enter into, that will obliterate their self-respect or breaking that vow and marrying the person who will allow them, within the limits of coverture, a degree of self-possession. This may not seem like much of a choice, but in the world of the novel, the difference between the first, wrong marriage and the second, right one matters im- mensely. Thus minor and major characters, mostly women but sometimes men, all constantly make pledges from which they are allowed to extricate themselves. One of the many subplots of these volumes affords a comedic version of what happens when the utterances of courtship are incorrectly viewed as actions,

278 Cindy Weinstein as performative, in this case those of Halcyone McAlpine and Clarence Fairlie. Clarence has a crush on Halcyone and insists that if she does not agree to marry him, “I will walk out and put a bullet through my brain” (FD, 241). Becoming concerned about his state of mind, Halcyone tries to calm him down by saying, “I don’t reject you,” which Clarence interprets as a “promise to marry him” (FD, 242). Halcyone insists, “I meant no more than I said” and “I by no means meant to promise to marry him” (FD, 243). In a follow-up conversation with her girlfriend, who actually would like nothing better than to promise marriage to Clarence, Halcyone revisits the scene of her promise, which she insists on calling a “half promise” (FD, 247). Through strategic badgering, Halcyone convinces Clarence that “he had been foolish in his love, and hasty in his proposal” (MW, 141), and the two live happily ever after apart and with the partner they love. By focusing on the utterances of courtship, and allowing men and women, especially women, to change their minds and renege on their pledges (painful as that might be, but less painful than a fatal marriage), Southworth tries to create a more flexible trajectory for women, where their language is not the equivalent of their action and where misspoken words do not doom them. This is not a diminution of female agency but a way for Southworth to allow her female characters the agency to change their minds, to reflect, and to make better decisions. Thus when Clarence calls Halcyone his “promised bride,” her next words are “Oh, your promised fiddlestick!” F( D, 249). Southworth’s novels make it clear that the only words that have that performative power are “I do.” Once they are uttered, by man or woman, they cannot be undone, except by death or divorce, and anyone who tries to pretend that an action has not occurred will be punished accordingly. By contrast, a “half promise” to marry and even a “whol[e] promise” can and should be undone in order that true love will prevail. Characters say, “I’m bound to you forever” (FD, 175), but they are not. Even Berenice, who “has bound herself by the solemn vow never to marry Vane Vandeleur” (MW, 91), is allowed to unbind that vow and marry him. Although circumscribed by marriage and the demands of convention, Southworth’s plots work to establish for women a degree of agency and freedom within an institutional framework that legally allows neither. I would, however, call attention to the fact that three characters do remain unmarried, and these are the widows of Henniker House, where “Woman’s Right’s [sic] and Petticoat Government reigns” (FD, 27). Indeed, early on in the novel, Captain Storms, one of the novel’s many main characters, hypothesizes the following reason for why they do not marry: “It is said that a woman is never free until she is a widow. In her girlhood she is under her parents; in her wifehood she

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 279 belongs to her husband; but in her widowhood she belongs to herself” (FD, 48). Unlike Adelaide, once these women have been released from coverture, Southworth does not force them to become hidden again. They have, as it were, served their time, and Southworth did too. Like the widows, she eventually “belong[ed] to herself,” refusing to become another man’s feme covert. To those women for whom the status of feme covert is their be-all and end-all, her fictions admonish, advise, and implore them to exercise their agency (while they still have it) before saying “I do.” Her novels instruct them to deliberate, to change their minds, to know what is meant.

Notes I would like to thank Melissa Homestead and Pamela Washington for their critiques of this essay, as well as their support of and patience with its author.

1. EDENS, The Maiden Widow: A Sequel to “The Family Doom” (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1870), 154 (hereinafter cited as MW). Indeed, the novel repeatedly uses this phrase: “What is the meaning of all this” (29); “What do you mean” (153); “What do you mean, tell me that!” (154); “What is the meaning of them” (187); “What do you mean by it?” (53); “What do you mean, my dear?” (234); and “What is the meaning of all this?” (263). EDENS, The Missing Bride or Miriam, the Avenger (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1855), 558 (cited as MB); EDENS, Self-Raised or From the Depths (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, n.d.), 114; EDENS, The Mysterious Marriage, AS equel to “A Leap in the Dark” (New York: Burt, n.d.), 228 (cited as MM); EDENS, The Fatal Marriage (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1863), 118, 366 (cited as FM).

2. Caroline Field Levander, Voices of the Nation: Women and Public Speech in Nineteenth- Century American Literature and Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 38.

3. Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), 118.

4. Shirley Samuels, “Woman at War,” in The Cambridge Companion toN ineteenth- Century American Women’s Writing, ed. Dale M. Bauer and Philip Gould (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001), 150.

5. Not all readers of Southworth are convinced that she ought to be categorized as a writer of sentimental fiction. Dana Luciano, for example, maintains that the “work is far more sensational than sentimental” and launches a critique, through sensationalism, “of domestic life, the horrors of domination, manipulation, and exclusion that the senti-

280 Cindy Weinstein mental bonds of the ‘natural’ family attempt to conceal.” “The Gothic Meets Sensation: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, and E. D. E. N. Southworth,” in A Companion to American Fiction, 1760–1865, ed. Shirley Samuels (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 342, 326. It is true that Southworth’s texts deploy sensationalism as critique, but I do not think this is incompatible with sentimental fiction, which itself mounts a critique of the natural family. See my Family, Kinship, and Sympathy in Nineteenth- Century American Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004). Also see Paul Christian Jones, who argues that Southworth’s sentimentalism functions as the foundation for her critique of capital punishment. “‘I put my fingers around my throat and squeezed it, to know how it feels’: Antigallows Sentimentalism and E. D. E. N. Southworth’s TheH idden Hand,” Legacy 25 (2008): 41–61.

6. A similar claim can be made for TheF atal Marriage, TheF amily Doom, and The Maiden Widow, though the generic pressure to resolve the plot through marriage(s), and Southworth’s vexed relation to that resolution, should not be underestimated.

7. EDENS, The Unloved Wife: A Novel (New York: Burt, n.d.), 317 (hereinafter cited as UW).

8. EDENS, Lilith: A Novel, A Sequel to “The nlovedU Wife” (New York: Burt, n.d.), 149 (hereinafter cited as L).

9. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), 138.

10. Ibid., 16.

11. Ibid., 14.

12. Ibid., 16.

13. Ibid., 25.

14. Ibid., 16.

15. The linguistic work of John R. Lyne is particularly relevant here. In a powerful account of why speech act theory must be informed by various contexts in which words are spoken, he writes, “Beyond the variability in how a given illocutionary force may be achieved, the character of the force itself may be vague in nature. If we can assume that new ways of acting emerge as language and culture change, then it would be a mistake to suppose that every act exemplifies any particular ‘type’ for which we have clearly coded antecedents. . . . Because illocutionary forces occur in different shades and degrees, are often more ‘evoked’ than performed, and draw their power from complex antecedents, it

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 281 is especially important that we understand the interpretive apparatus that permits people to make sense of them.” “Speech Acts in a Semiotic Frame,” Communication Quarterly (Summer 1981): 206.

16. Michael Grossberg, in Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth- Century America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 143, cites an Alabama case that resonates with The Fatal Marriage. A man who committed bigamy attempted to nullify his first marriage because “he was below the statutory age of seventeen.” The court refused to do this, citing his bigamous second marriage as a worse infraction than his first underaged one. If we were to use this case to comment on Southworth, we would say that his marriage to Adelaide would be upheld; however, Grossberg also notes that “the bench treated marriages as voidable when one or both parties wed below the new statutory ages” (143). Clearly, the plot of the novel reflects, on the one hand, the ambiguity surrounding the legality of “youthful marriage,” and, on the other hand, the absolute crime of bigamy: “[E]very state outlawed bigamy and authorized criminal penalties” (121). Southworth clearly thinks the “baby marriage” outrageous—she calls it a “solemn farce” (FM, 92)— but thinks it even more outrageous that Deville refuses to acknowledge it at first, then does, then refuses to acknowledge his second marriage to Lionne. Annulment, which is clearly what Adelaide has in mind, never comes up—at least the word doesn’t—as a legal option. This might be because Southworth considers it one more instance of the law protecting the perpetrator (the man) and not the victim (the woman). If Adelaide’s marriage to Deville is annulled, he never suffers the consequences of his immorality. On the complexities of annulment in the antebellum period, see Grossberg.

17. It is worth noting that this is a fantasy. Historians Hendrik Hartog (Man and Wife in America: A History [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press], 2000) and Nancy Cott (Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000]) demonstrate the flexible nature of marriage in the nineteenth-century United States, and hence the ambiguity that Southworth’s work is trying so hard to contest. Joyce W. Warren observes about Southworth’s portrayal in The Deserted Wife of Hagar in relation to the justice system: “[W]e have the wife’s story; Southworth details the accumulation of abuse from the wife’s point of view. Although Hagar’s story would not have held up in court, it apparently gained a sympathetic hearing from a ‘jury of her peers’—the women who read Southworth’s novels and helped to propel her to fame and fortune as a novelist.” Women, Money, and the Law: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gender, and the Courts (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2005), 91. For a different perspective on the marriage vow, especially as represented in Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, see Amanda Claybaugh, The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2007).

282 Cindy Weinstein 18. See Levander, who argues that their authors “reimagine the role of women’s language in American culture and mount a powerful critique of the gender, linguistic, and sexual codes of their middle-class audiences” (Voices of the Nation 38). Levander juxtaposes TheF atal Marriage and Pierre, focusing on Lionne’s voice, specifically, how its disembodiment gives her power over Deville, whereas I am more interested in the various speech acts of the novel and how their function varies depending upon speaker, context, and intention.

19. Hartog, Man and Wife, 87.

20. Cott, Public Vows, 39.

21. Grossberg, Governing the Hearth, 41,

22. Ibid., 142.

23. EDENS, TheF amily Doom, or, TheS in of a Countess (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1869), 139 (hereinafter cited as FD).

The Language of Marriage in The Fatal Marriage and Family Doom 283

A Chronological Bibliography of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Works Privileging Periodical Publication Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin

Introduction and Rationale Previous attempts at a comprehensive bibliography of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s fiction have organized her works alphabetically by book title or chronologically by book publication date.1 Serialization information—if included at all—is subordinated to book entries or listed separately. These bibliographic conventions better suit authors who published fewer novels than Southworth did and/or did not routinely serialize their works. As a result, earlier bibliographies have caused confusion about the size and chronology of Southworth’s body of work. Adding to the confusion, her book publisher T. B. Peterson arbitrarily broke many of her novels that appeared in serial form under a single title into separately titled volumes; even more confusingly, he sometimes retitled these novels yet again in later editions without referencing the former titles.2 Organizing our bibliography chronologically by first publication (which is most often, but not always, periodical publication), we make an accurate count of the number of novels she wrote possible. Although this number—just under fifty—is lower than others’ estimates and does not include her short fiction, it is still substantial, representing more than a novel a year during the four decades Southworth actively wrote fiction.3 In compiling this bibliography, we used previous bibliographies as a starting point but strove, whenever possible, to examine for ourselves Southworth’s fiction as published serially in periodicals and in book form, whether on paper, on microfilm, or in digital format. Even a few years ago, before the advent of many searchable digital book and periodical archives, this bibliography would have been less comprehensive. Notably, however, the “story papers” (weekly magazines in newspaper format) in which Southworth serialized most of her fiction have yet to be comprehensively microfilmed or digitized. A Reese Fellowship in Bibliog- raphy allowed Homestead to spend a month in residence at the American Anti- quarian Society (AAS), which owns the premier collection of story papers. Also important were visiting the Free Library of Philadelphia (which holds the only complete run of the Saturday Evening Post from the 1850s) and the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, and securing digital photographs of Southworth items from the Friend of Youth from the University of Southern Mississippi Li- brary.4 Our indebtedness to Paul Jones is also great. He pointed us to many items about Southworth, directed us to Southworth’s nonfiction “letters” to the Saturday Evening Post and Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, and located many of Southworth’s later newspaper writings based on our research in the Copy- right Office. The bibliography would be shorter and less accurate without his contributions. Even with access to a wealth of resources, we have not attempted true com- prehensiveness. We do not, for instance, track every book edition of Southworth’s novels. Instead, we focus on first book publication and selected subsequent editions, primarily those issued during the active years of Southworth’s career. We have tracked British serializations in the London Journal and related periodicals because of Southworth’s relationship with the paper’s proprietor, George Stiff, and because (as we discuss below) these serializations were sometimes earlier than the American ones. However, we have not attempted to track British book editions. And, finally, we have not attempted to account for textual differences between various editions or attribute responsibility for variations, although in the course of our research, it has become clear that Southworth did revise many of her serials for book publication. In addition to enabling an accurate count of Southworth’s novels, our chronological approach allows us to present a new biographical narrative of Southworth’s career, including a more comprehensive picture of her relationships with editors and publishers. The American Antiquarian Society recently acquired several issues of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, in which Southworth’s published fiction first appeared in 1847. In several autobiographical statements Southworth mentions publishing in the Visiter, but no issues of the paper were known. Their recovery enables us to present the bibliographic details of what is likely Southworth’s first publication, “August Vacations, or Flittings in the Country, A Tale of Real Life,” later collected and retitled “The Irish Refugee.” Appearing as by “A Lady of Washington,” it is, to our knowledge, the only work she chose to publish anonymously. Shortly after it appeared, the Visiter ceased publication, selling its subscription list to the National Era.5

286 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin The eceivedr wisdom is that Southworth was passed from one male periodical editor to another, with her relationship with each man being “exclusive.”6 Thus, the story goes, after her brief dalliance with the Visiter, she began her career proper by contributing to the National Era in the late 1840s, soon moved on to the Saturday Evening Post, briefly contributed to both the Post and the Era simultaneously before she became an exclusive contributor to the Post (even as she and Post editor Henry Peterson often disagreed), and then finally made a clean break with the Post to transfer her allegiances permanently to Robert Bonner and the New York Ledger. Our bibliography complicates such a narrative by recovering Southworth’s publication of works of fiction and occasional nonfiction sketches in several other periodicals in the 1850s, including the Friend of Youth (edited in Washington by Margaret Bailey, wife of Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the National Era), the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter (edited by Jane Swisshelm), the Na- tion (edited in Philadelphia by S. M. Bigelow), and Peterson’s Magazine, the only monthly magazine in which she serialized fiction (Charles Peterson, brother of book publisher T. B. Peterson and cousin of Post editor Henry Peterson, edited the magazine; all three Petersons published out of Philadelphia). Notably, Southworth’s contributions to the Friend of Youth, the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, and the Nation appeared during her period of ostensible “exclusivity” with the Post. Furthermore, the Friend of Youth and the Nation featured her on their mastheads as one of their editors (even though they may have featured her name for its advertising value rather than because she actually labored as an editor). The Nation’s editorial offices were steps away from the Post’s, so Henry Peterson certainly knew about Southworth’s contributions. Likewise, her contributions to Peterson’s Magazine overlap with the first year of her “exclusive” arrangement with the Ledger. Finally, by presenting information about serializations in a single chronological frame rather than broken out by periodical, we make visible South- worth’s role as a semiregular contributor to the Era from 1847 through 1856, overlapping extensively with her “exclusive” period with the Post (arguably, she reserved for Era publication her fiction advancing an antislavery argument, such as Mark Sutherland, Hickory Hall, and The Brothers). Indeed, in four of her seven years as a Post contributor (1849, 1850, 1851, and 1856), she contributed to three or more periodicals. That she contributed to the Post, the Era, and the Nation in 1856, the year before she first contributed to the Ledger, undermines any notion of a clean transfer of Southworth from Peterson to Bonner. Because many Southworth serials appeared in weekly papers over many months, our chronological list has limits. We cannot make fully visible Southworth’s incredible pace of production during key periods from 1850 through 1856 or the dizzying juggling act she performed as a new serial began in

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 287 one magazine before an earlier serial had concluded in another. Furthermore, a bibliography also does not, by its very nature, list works never published; nevertheless, in our research we found evidence that Southworth contracted with editors of additional periodicals, even though she failed to fulfill these engagements. In the first half of 1850, for example, the Mammoth Gazette (edited in Phila- delphia by Alice B. Neal and Charles J. Peterson) advertised that Southworth was writing a new novel for the paper, Cecilia Calvert; or, TheN ovice of St. Ini- goes, about the history of early Maryland.7 No correspondence with the editors of the Gazette survives, but the specificity of their notices about Cecilia Calvert makes it clear they were not engaging in false advertising to lure subscribers with Southworth’s name. Furthermore, other evidence from mid-1850 confirms that Southworth was researching early Maryland in order to write a historical novel about it.8 Indeed, Southworth seems to have overpromised editors in 1850 to an extent that made fulfilling her promises impossible. From November 1849 to July 1850, The Mother-in-Law appeared serially in the National Era, and during the first six months of 1850, both the Gazette and the Post were promising Southworth serials for the second half of the year (Celia Calvert and The Bride of an Evening, a Tale of Western Life, respectively).9 If she had fulfilled her promises to both editors, she would have had to write those two serials simultaneously, week by week. The Post continued to advertise Bride of an Evening through July, telling readers in May that the story was going to be put off just “a little longer.”10 In August, they abruptly announced they would publish Shannondale; or, the Nun of Mount Carmel instead, which “Mrs. Southworth has requested permission to substitute . . . for the present, for the one originally promised, as being, in her opinion, a finer and more interesting one.”11 Given this chronology, it is not surprising that Shannondale takes up some of the elements she seems to have intended for Celia Calvert rather than those she intended for Bride of an Evening: Shannondale is set in the South, not the West, and although the primary setting is Virginia, the “nun” (the mother of one of the three young heroines) belonged to a religious community in Mt. Carmel, Maryland. Southworth apparently made at least two more unfulfilled promises to write serials for two additional papers, the Colum- bian and Great West (edited by William Shattuck in Cincinnati) in 185112 and Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion (edited by Maturin Murray Ballou in Boston) in 1856; fulfilling these promises would have required feats of simultaneous production similar to those she promised in 1850.13 After Southworth joined the Ledger in 1857, and for the three ensuing decades, she all but ceased writing fiction in formats shorter than the novel. Nota-

288 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin bly, she subsequently collected for book publication every short story or novella published in a periodical in the first decade of her career (her nonfiction “letters” to the Post and Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter remained uncollected). We have located the periodical appearances of all the stories in Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853) (reorganized and retitled The Wife’sV ictory; and Other Nouvel- letes by T. B. Peterson in 1854). The Haunted Homestead: and Other Nouvellettes (1860) includes only two stories not located in periodicals, the title story and “The Widow’s Son.” Perhaps she wrote them specifically for book publication, but more likely they appeared in a periodical not yet located. Notably, we have located only a single copy of a single issue of the Nation (November 8, 1856), its first number, but clearly Southworth’s “The Spectre Revels” in this issue was not her only contribution.14 As a biographical narrative, our bibliography also reveals surprises about Southworth’s career after the 1850s. Southworth’s letters to Bonner in the 1860s make clear that he was fully aware of her arrangement to serialize fiction in the London Journal while under “exclusive” contract with the Ledger. Although the Journal ’s earliest Southworth serials were probably not authorized, aligning the serialization dates of Southworth’s fiction in the Ledger and the London periodical in the 1860s removes any doubt about the Journal appearance being authorized: Jour- nal serials sometimes commenced before the U.S. serialization or, when they began afterward, proceeded more rapidly and concluded earlier. Clearly, Southworth herself, with Bonner’s cooperation, provided the Journal with installments.15 While this transatlantic chronology fleshes out what was already known, we have discovered something genuinely surprising about Southworth’s relationship with book publisher T. B. Peterson. From Regis Louise Boyle forward, scholars have claimed that Peterson published nearly all of Southworth’s novels serialized in the Ledger, and that Peterson generally published the novels one to three years after initial serialization. The two acknowledged exceptions to this pattern are TheH idden Hand, which Southworth and Bonner withheld from Peterson (see Scott and Thomas’s essay in this collection), and Self-Made, which Southworth released to Peterson more than a decade after its first serialization. However, Self- Made (published in two volumes in 1876 as Ishmael and Self-Raised ) was actually the last “new” Southworth novel Peterson published. After 1876, he falsely advertised a “complete” collected edition of Southworth’s novels and occasionally retitled earlier works and offered them to readers as if they were new. In actuality, Southworth published sixteen new serial novels in the Ledger between 1873 and 1886, none of which Peterson published. Through the end of the 1870s, Southworth did maintain a relationship with Peterson that enabled her to help

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 289 her sister, Frances Henshaw Baden. Baden regularly contributed short stories to the Ledger through the 1860s and 1870s, but Southworth was not able to interest Bonner in serializing her sister’s longer fiction.16 Instead, Southworth—after seeking permission from Bonner17—arranged with T. B. Peterson to publish short story collections in which only the title story was by Southworth while the remaining stories were by Baden. Peterson published five such volumes, and the five lead stories in them appear to be rare Southworth works of fiction published in book form with no prior periodical appearance. Peterson also published a novel described as “edited by” Southworth, The Mystery of the Dark Hollow: We strongly suspect that it was by her sister and that Peterson agreed to publish it on the condition that Southworth’s name appeared on the title page. Southworth’s later Ledger novels did not appear between book covers until after 1888, when she was no longer actively contributing to the Ledger and Robert Bonner had retired, transferring the business to his sons. In 1888, beginning with TheH idden Hand, the firm of Robert Bonner’s Sons began issuingL edger serials previously unpublished as books in their Ledger Library series.18 Most of Southworth’s later Ledger serials appeared in this series. When both the Ledger and the Bonner’s Sons book publishing enterprise folded, the company transferred its copyrights and stereotype plates to Street and Smith, a major mass-market publisher of cheap paperbacks. Several later Southworth serials not included in the Ledger Library thus first appeared in book form in the early twentieth century.19 The final surprise of ouresearch r was discovering Southworth’s post-Ledger publications. After losing her salaried berth at the Ledger in late 1886 at the age of sixty-seven, she did not stop writing. Instead, she published short stories and autobiographical reminiscences in several different venues, with the last published in 1894. Copyright registration records alerted us to the existence of some of these titles, and because we have not located published versions of all of them, their publication remains conjectural. The Tillotson and Son newspaper syndicate published at least one of them, and syndicated tales could have appeared in many different newspapers under different titles and over an extended period of time. Her contributions to the Washington Star are the most numerous (including regular Christmas stories for several years), but even though the paper designated them as “exclusive,” they may also have been syndicated.20 The origin of three volumes of Southworth’s fiction published in the early twentieth century for which we located no nineteenth-century published equiva- lents (periodical or book) remains conjectural. In a newspaper interview in 1890, Southworth explained that she had in her possession an unpublished manuscript of a novel treating slavery in the South before the Civil War.21 She registered a

290 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin copyright for “The Ruin of the Horah. A Story of Southern Life before the War” in September 1888. Horah Hall is a central location in Sweet Love’s Atonement and Zenobia’s Suitors, essentially a single novel in two volumes, which Street and Smith published in the early twentieth century. Sweet Love and Zenobia might be, then, “The Ruin of the Horah” retitled, whether Southworth’s manuscript remained unpublished at her death or a paper other than the Ledger serialized it after 1890. However, Sweet Love and Zenobia also could be entirely unconnected to “The Ruin of the Horah.” The novella-length John Strong’s Secret represents a similar puzzle: Was its twentieth-century publication its first, or might it be a retitled “Mystery of Mysteries,” for which Southworth registered a copyright in 1891? Having located no extant manuscript or published works by Southworth featuring the titles “The Ruin of the Horah” or “Mystery of Mysteries,” we can only speculate. Many twenty-first-century readers encounter Southworth in hardback editions issued by publishers such as A. L. Burt, Donohue, and Grosset and Dunlap. Although libraries often catalog these undated books as nineteenth-century editions, they are, for the most part, early twentieth-century editions, often produced after the copyrights in Southworth’s novels had expired. If a reader finds an undated edition of a Southworth novel with a title that does not appear anywhere in this bibliography, it is likely an out-of-copyright edition retitled by the publisher. Publishers sometimes condensed or expurgated these later editions, so scholars should seek out earlier, more authoritative editions, a task made much easier by digital collections such as Google Books, Wright American Fiction (1851–1875), and the Internet Archive.

Notes 1. See especially Regis Louise Boyle, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Novelist (Wash- ington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1939); Lyle H. Wright, American Fiction, 1774–1850; A Contribution toward a Bibliography (San Marino, CA: Huntington Li- brary, 1948); Lyle H. Wright, American Fiction, 1851–1875; A Contribution toward a Bibliography (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1957); Lyle H. Wright, American Fiction, 1876–1900; A Contribution toward a Bibliography (San Marino, CA: Hunting- ton Library, 1966); Amy Hudock, “No Mere Mercenary: The Early Life and Fiction of E. D. E. N. Southworth” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of South Carolina, 1993); and Amy Hudock and Joanne Dobson, “E. D. E. N. Southworth,” in American Women Prose Writers, 1820– 1870, vol. 239, Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. Amy Hudock and Katharine Rodier (Detroit: Gale, 2001), 285–92.

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 291 2. Wright’s bibliography is particularly problematic. The portion covering 1851 to 1875 is reasonably accurate, but the 1876–1900 section includes retitled earlier novels as new. He also includes The Mystery of the Dark Hollow as if authored, rather than edited, by Southworth and The Coral Lady (see 1867), which bears a disclaimer of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s authorship. His errors have produced many library cataloging errors.

3. We hesitate to name a firm number because early in her career Southworth published fictions that might be labeled novels, novellas, or long short stories.

4. Thanks to Ellen Weinauer for putting us in touch with Ann McNair, who photo- graphed the stories for us.

5. The run of theV isiter at the AAS is far from complete, but a note by the editor in the same issue describes the author as a “welcome acquisition to our corps of contributors” (i.e., a new contributor). On the acquisition of the subscription list by the Era, see “Baltimore Saturday Visiter,” National Era, Apr. 15, 1847. Later accounts, including Southworth’s own, represent editor J. E. Snodgrass as transferring an unpublished manuscript to Gamaliel Bailey. See “Biographical Sketch of the Author,” in Haunted Homestead, 38, and “A Pioneer Editor,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1866, 743–51. Southworth may have published in papers in Wisconsin during her residence there, although we located nothing in our review of the incomplete extant runs of Platteville papers.

6. For a particularly influential account, see Susan Coultrap-McQuin, “The Place of Gender in Business: The Career of E. D. E. N. Southworth,” in Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century, by Susan Coultrap-McQuin (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990), chap. 3.

7. The Gazette first included Southworth’s name as a contributor in its prospectus for 1850 (see Dec. 22, 1849). On February 2, 1850, it began advertising the title of the anticipated serial as TheN ovice of St. Inigoes. A Novel of the Early Settlement of Early Mary- land. On April 13, 1850, an editorial notice mentioned correspondence with Southworth in which she promised to send the first installment “in a week or two,” announced the new title, and promised, “There will be nothing sectarian in the fiction; its tone, on the contrary, will be that of the largest Christian charity.” April 20, 1850, is the last mention of Southworth or the novel—they simply disappear. However, other advertised contributors (e.g., T. S. Arthur) similarly disappear.

8. EDENS to Morrison Harris, July 10, 1850, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore.

9. See, for example, the prospectus in SEP, Jan. 12, 1850.

10. “Our Novelets,” SEP, May 5, 1850.

292 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin 11. “Shannondale,” SEP, Aug. 3, 1850. Southworth eventually wrote The Bride of an Evening for the Ledger in 1858. However, she also promised and failed to write it for her story collection Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements. EDENS to Abraham Hart, Nov. 17, 1852, Gratz Manuscripts, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

12. Southworth first sent a notice for publication in the Post disavowing any promise to the paper (SEP, Jan. 11, 1851). The Great West responded by publishing her correspondence with them. The issue of the Great West publishing her letters is not extant, but Peterson refers to the letters in the Post (Mar. 8. 1851) and, without reprinting them, claims they evidence no firm promise. At the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, Jane Swisshelm read these letters differently, claiming they “clear them [the editors of the Great West] of all fraudulent intention” (Feb. 15, 1851). These conflicting interpretations make it clear that Southworth responded with interest to a solicitation from the Great West rather than rejecting or ignoring it.

13. See Maturin Murray Ballou to EDENS, Apr. 20, 1857, DU. See also EDENS to HP, Aug. 20, 1856, published under the title “Mrs. Southworth Again,” SEP, May 2, 1857. Published in an attempt to undermine the credibility of a departed contributor, parts of this letter (of which no manuscript is extant) may have been fabricated by Peterson. However, the letter has Southworth communicating to Peterson her promise to write Ballou a serial for 1857, adding credence to Ballou’s claim that Southworth formally and specifically promised to contribute to his paper.

14. Two months later, Bigelow wrote her about illustrations for her manuscript tale scheduled for serialization in three installments. S. M. Bigelow to EDENS, Dec. 30, 1856, DU.

15. Although we refer here only to the London Journal, its proprietor George Stiff published a series of periodicals under various names. See Andrew King, TheL ondon Journal, 1845–83: Periodicals, Production, and Gender (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004).

16. EDENS to RB, Feb. 19, 1884, DU. This letter is post-1870s, but it seems likely she made earlier pleas to Bonner on her sister’s behalf.

17. EDENS to RB, Oct. 13, 1876, DU.

18. Bonner’s Sons, and later Street and Smith, apparently authorized other publishers to bring out editions of these books. However, we focus on documenting the first book editions.

19. Our dating of the early-twentieth-century titles is tentative as we have had to rely on earliest located catalog entries and advertisements in most cases rather than copies of

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 293 the books themselves. Published on cheap pulp paper in paper covers, they are very scarce and often feature no imprint date (hardcover reprints are more easily located but also lack imprint dates). Furthermore, we were unable to locate copyright registrations for them.

20. On the complexities newspaper syndication poses for the bibliographer, see Charles Johanningsmeir, Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of the Newspaper Syndicates in America, 1860–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997).

21. “A Woman Who Writes,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Sept. 6, 1890. Consid- ering the multiple titles of Southworth’s works during her lifetime, a title change by Street and Smith would be unsurprising.

Bibliography 1847–1848 A Lady of Washington, “August Vacations, or Flittings to the Country, A Tale of Real Life,” Saturday Visiter (Baltimore, MD), Mar. 13, 1847 to Apr. 3, 1847. “The Irish Refugee,” inO ld Neighbourhoods and New Settlements, or, Christmas Evening Legends, by Emma D. E. N. Southworth (Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey and Hart, 1853). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Irish Refugee,” in The Wife’s Victory; and Other Nouvellettes, by Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854). Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth, “The Better Way; or, the Wife’s Victory,” National Era, Aug. 19–26, 1847. “The Better Way, or the Wife’s Victory: A Tale of Domestic Trials,” in Old Neighbour- hoods and New Settlements (1853). “The Wife’s Victory,” in The Wife’s Victory (1854). Unsigned, “The Sisters; or, Two Ways of Life,” London Journal, Sept. 8–15, 1855. Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth, “The Wife’s Mistake. A Sequel to ‘The Better Way,’” National Era, Sept. 16–23, 1847. “The Married Shrew. A Sequel to ‘The Better Way,’” inO ld Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “The Married Shrew: A Sequel to ‘The Wife’s Victory,’” in The Wife’s Victory (1854). Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth, “The Thunderbolt to the Hearth,” National Era, Oct. 14–21, 1847. “The Thunderbolt to the Hearth,” inO ld Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “The Thunderbolt to the Hearth,” in The Wife’s Victory (1854). “The Thunderbolt to the Hearth” in The Prince of Darkness. AR omance of the Blue Ridge, by Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Broth- ers, 1869).

294 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth, “The Temptation,” National Era, Dec. 30, 1847–Feb. 10, 1848. “The Temptation,” in Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “Sybil Brotherton; or, The Temptation,” in The Wife’s Victory (1854). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Sybil Brotherton. A Novel (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1879).

1848 “Neighbors’ Prescriptions. Inscribed to the Medical Faculty,” National Era, Mar. 2–9, 1848. “Neighbours’ Prescriptions,” in Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “Annie Grey; or, Neighbours’ Prescriptions,” in The Wife’s Victory (1854).

1849 Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth, Retribution, National Era, Jan. 4–Apr. 12, 1849. Emma D. E. Nevitt Southworth, Retribution; or, TheV ale of Shadows. A Tale of Pas- sion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849). Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Retribution: A Tale of Passion (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1856). Emma D. E. Southworth, The Deserted Wife, Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 11–Dec. 1, 1849. Emma D. E. Nevitt Southworth, The Deserted Wife (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1850). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Deserted Wife (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1855). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Fine Figure,”F riend of Youth, Nov. and Dec. 1849. “The Fine Figure. Daguerreotyped from Life. For Young Ladies Only,” inO ld Neigh- bourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “Eveline Murray: or, The Fine Figure. Daguerreotyped from Life,” in The Wife’s Vic- tory (1854).

1849–1850 Mrs. Emma D. E. Southworth, The Mother-in-Law. A Story of the Island Estate, National Era, Nov. 22, 1849–July 18, 1850. Emma D. E. Nevitt Southworth, The Mother-in-Law; or, The Isle of Rays. A Tale (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1851). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Mother-in-Law. A Tale of Domestic Life (Phila- delphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1860). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Married in Haste: or, Wife and No Wife, London Jour- nal, Mar. 20–July 10, 1869.

1850–1851 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “New-Year in the Little Rough-Cast House,” Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 5–19, 1850

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 295 “New Year in the Little Rough-Cast House. A Temperance Tale,” in Old Neighbour- hoods and New Settlements (1853). “The Three Sisters; or, New Year in the Little Rough-Cast House,” in The Wife’s Vic- tory (1854). “From Washington. Mrs. Southworth’s Letter. Washington City, Jan. 24, 1850,” Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, Feb. 2, 1850. E. D. E. N. S., “Mrs. Southworth’s Letter. Washington City, Jan. 24, 1850,” Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, Feb. 9, 1850. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “Washington Letters—#1 . . . Thursday January [sic] 7, 1850,” Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, Feb. 16, 1850. Emma D. E. Southworth, “The Little Slave. A True Story,”F riend of Youth, Aug. and Sept. 1850. “Winny; A Child’s Story,” in Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “Winny; A Child’s Story,” in The Wife’s Victory (1854). “Winny,” in The Prince of Darkness (1869). Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Shannondale; or, The Nun of Mt. Carmel, Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 10–Nov. 30, 1850. Emma D. E. Nevitt Southworth, Shannondale (New York: D. Appleton and Com- pany, 1850). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Three Beauties(Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1858). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Hickory Hall: Or the Outcast. A Romance of the Blue Ridge, National Era, Nov. 7, 1850–Jan. 9, 1851. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Hickory Hall; or, The Outcast. A Romance of the Blue Ridge (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1861). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “The Prince of Darkness; A Romance of the Blue Ridge,” in The Prince of Darkness (1869).

1851–1852 Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Virginia and Magdalene; or, The Foster Sisters. A Winter Evening’s Story, Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 4–May 3, 1851. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Virginia and Magdalene: or, The Foster-Sisters. A Novel (Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey & Hart, 1852). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Two Sisters (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1858). Emma D. E. Southworth, “Across the Street. A New Year’s Story,” Friend of Youth, Jan. and Feb. 1851. “Across the Street. A New Year’s Story,” in Old Neighbourhoods and New Settlements (1853). “Across the Street. A New Year’s Story,” in The Wife’s Victory (1854). Unsigned, “Across the Street. A New-Year’ Story,” London Journal, Dec. 31, 1859. EDEN, “Leaves from Shannondale. Stage Coaches—Monroe’s Residence—Braddock’s Residence—Gen. Morgan—Young Washington—Celebrities—Shannondale,” Saturday Evening Post, July 19, 1851. EDEN, “Leaves from Shannondale. Number II,” Saturday Evening Post, July 26, 1851.

296 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin EDEN, “Leaves from Shannondale. Number III,” Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 2, 1851. EDEN, “Leaves from Shannondale. Number IV,” Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 16, 1851. EDEN, “Leaves from Shannondale. Number V. The Marriage of M’lle Jagello,” Saturday Eve- ning Post, Aug. 23, 1851. EDEN, “Leaves from Shannondale. The Tourney. The Fancy Ball,” Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 27, 1851. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Discarded Daughter, or the Children of the Isle,” Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 18, 1851–Apr. 3, 1852. Emma D. E. Nevitt Southworth, The Discarded Daughter; or, The Children of theI sle. A Tale of the Chesapeake, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey & Hart, 1852). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Discarded Daughter(Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1855). Unsigned, Elsie of Haddon, London Reader, May 18–July 18, 1863.

1852 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Curse of Clifton. A Tale ofE xpiation and Redemption, Saturday Evening Post, July 24–Dec. 25, 1852. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Curse of Clifton: A Tale ofE xpiation and Redemption, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey & Hart, 1853). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. The Curse of Clifton (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854). E. D. E. N. Southworth, Brandon of Brandon. A Tale of Love and Pride, London Jour- nal, July 30–Dec. 17, 1859. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Fallen Pride; or, the Mountains Girl’s Love (Phila- delphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1868).

1853–1854 Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Mark Sutherland: or, Power and Principle, National Era, Jan. 13– Aug. 25, 1853. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, India: The earlP of Pearl River (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1856). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, TheL ost Heiress: A Story of Howlet Hall, Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 6, 1853–Feb. 18, 1854. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Lost Heiress (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854). E. D. E. N. Southworth (last installment only signed), The True and False Heiress, London Journal, Mar. 3–June 23, 1855.

1854–1855 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Miriam, the Avenger: or, the Fatal Vow, Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 5, 1854–Mar. 31, 1855.

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 297 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Missing Bride; or, Miriam, the Avenger (Phila- delphia: T. B. Peterson, 1856). E. D. E. N. Southworth, Captain Rock’s Pet, London Journal, Dec. 7, 1861–Apr. 12, 1862.

1856 E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Brothers, National Era, Jan. 31–Apr. 17, 1856. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Presentiment,” in The Haunted Homestead: And Other Nouvellettes. With an Autobiography of the Author, by Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1860). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Red Hill Tragedy: A Novel (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1877). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Broken Pledges: A Story of Noir et Blanc (Philadel- phia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1891). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Vivia; or, The Secret of Power, Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 5– Sept. 27, 1856. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Vivia; or TheS ecret of Power (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1857). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “The Spectre Revels. A Tale of All Hallow’s Eve,” Nation, Nov. 8, 1856. “The Spectre Revels,” in TheH aunted Homestead (1860). Unsigned, “The Spectre Revels,” London Journal, Sept. 22, 1860.

1857 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Love’s Labor Won, Peterson’s Magazine, Jan.–Dec. 1857. Unsigned, Love’s Labour Won, London Journal, Apr. 14–July 7, 1860. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Love’s Labor Won (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1862). Emma D. E. N. Southworth, TheI sland Princess. A Romance of the Old and the New World, New York Ledger, May 30–Sept. 19, 1857. Unsigned, The Double Marriage, London Journal, Aug. 15–Sept. 5, 1857 (subsequent six installments not by Southworth). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Lady of the Isle. A Romance from Real Life (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1859).

1858 Emma D. E. N. Southworth, TheO utcast. A Romance of the Blue Ridge, Peterson’s Magazine, Jan.–June 1858 (lightly revised version of Hickory Hall serialized in the National Era [see 1850], reserialized as “original”). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Bride of an Evening; A Romance of the Rappahannock, New York Ledger, Jan. 2–Mar. 13, 1858. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Gipsy’s Prophecy, London Journal, Sept. 15, 1860– Feb. 2, 1861.

298 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Gipsy’s Prophecy. A Tale ofR eal Life (Philadel- phia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1861).

1859 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, New York Ledger, Feb. 5–July 9, 1859. Unsigned, The Masked Mother; or, TheH idden Hand, Guide to Literature, Science, Art, and General Information (London, England), Feb. 12–Apr. 30, 1859. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, TheH idden Hand; or, Capitola the Madcap (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons and G. W. Dillingham, 1888). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Doom of Deville; or, The Maiden’sV ow, New York Ledger, Aug. 13–Nov. 26, 1859. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Fatal Marriage, London Journal, Dec. 24, 1859–Apr. 14, 1860. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Fatal Marriage (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1863).

1860 E. D. E. N. Southworth, Rose Elmer, or A Divided Heart and a Divided Life, New York Ledger, May 19–Oct. 13, 1860. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Laura Etheridge, London Journal, May 26–Sept. 29, 1860. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Bridal Eve (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1864).

1861–1862 E. D. E. N. Southworth, Eudora, London Journal, June 29–Oct. 12, 1861. Mrs. Southworth, Eudora, or the False Princess, New York Ledger, July 27–Nov. 9, 1861. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Allworth Abbey (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1865). Unsigned, “Speaking the Truth for a Day,” London Journal, Oct. 19–Nov. 2, 1861. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Broken Engagement; or, Speaking the Truth for a Day (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1862). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “The Broken Engagement,” in The Prince of Darkness (1869). E. D. E. N. Southworth, Captain Rock’s Pet, London Journal, Dec. 7, 1861–Apr. 12, 1862 (see Miriam the Avenger, 1854).

1862 E. D. E. N. Southworth, Astrea, or, The Bridal Day,N ew York Ledger, Aug. 2–Dec. 6, 1862. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Fortune Seeker (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1866).

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 299 1863–1864 E. D. E. N. Southworth, Self-Made, or Out of the Depths, New York Ledger, Mar. 21, 1863– Apr. 2, 1864. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Self-Made, or Out of the Depths, 7 Days Journal (London), Apr. 1863, London Reader, May 18, 1863–June 4, 1864. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Ishmael; or, In the Depths (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1876). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Self-Raised; or, From the Depths. A Sequel to Ish- mael; or, In the Depths (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1876). Unsigned, Elsie of Haddon, London Reader, May 18–July 18, 1863 (see Discarded Daughter, 1851).

1864–1865 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Sylvia; or, the Shadow of Crime, London Journal, Apr. 30–June 4, 1864 (see Hickory Hall, 1850). E. D. E. N. Southworth, All Alone, London Reader, June 25, 1864–July 15, 1865 (see Vivia, 1856). E. D. E. N. Southworth, Left Alone, London Journal, July 2, 1864–July 15, 1865. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Left Alone, New York Ledger, July 9, 1864–June 10, 1865. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Bride ofL lewellyn (Philadelphia: T. B. Peter- son & Brothers, 1866). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Widow’s Son (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1867) (second volume).

1865–1866 Mrs. Southworth, Britomarte, the Man-Hater, New York Ledger, Oct. 14, 1865–Sept. 15, 1866. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Man-Hater, London Journal, Oct. 21, 1865–Oct. 13, 1866. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Britomarte, the Man-Hater, London Reader, Oct. 28, 1865– Oct. 27, 1866. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Fair Play; or, The Test of theL one Isle (Philadel- phia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1868). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, How He Won Her. A Sequel to “Fair Play” (Phila- delphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1869).

1866–1867 Mrs. Southworth, Winning Her Way, New York Ledger, Dec. 22, 1866–Oct. 5, 1867. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Winning Her Way, London Journal, May 18–Dec. 7, 1867. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Changed Brides(Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1869).

300 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Bride’sF ate. A Sequel to “The Changed rides”B (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1869). Note: The Coral Lady by “Mrs. Southworth” (Philadelphia: C. W. Alexander, 1867) is not by E. D. E. N. Southworth.

1868–1869 Mrs. Southworth, The Malediction; or, The Widows of Widowville,N ew York Ledger, Jan. 4–July 18, 1868. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Malediction, or TheF amily Pride, London Journal, Jan. 11–Aug. 8, 1868. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Family Doom; or, The Sin of a Countess (Phila- delphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1869). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Maiden Widow. AS equel to “The Family Doom” (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1870). Mrs. Southworth, TheH idden Hand, New York Ledger, Sept. 5, 1868–Feb. 6, 1869 (reserialization, see 1859).

1869 Mrs. Southworth, TheH allow-Eve Mystery; or, A Legend of the Black Hill, New York Ledger, Feb. 20–Sept. 11, 1869. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Cruel as the Grave (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1871). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Tried for Life. A Sequel to “Cruel as the Grave” (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1871). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Married in Haste: or, Wife and No Wife, London Journal. Mar. 20– July 10, 1869 (see The Mother-in-Law, 1849).

1870–1871 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Crime and the Curse. A Legend of St. Mary’s,” in The Christmas Guest, A Collection of Stories. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth and Her Sister, Mrs. Frances Henshaw Baden (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1870). Mrs. Southworth, The Brothers; or, The Earl and the Outcast, New York Ledger, May 7, 1870– Mar. 11, 1871. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, The Lost Heir of Linlithgow (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1872). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, A Noble Lord. TheS equel to “The Lost Heir of Linlithgow” (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1872).

1871–1872 Mrs. Southworth, Between Two Fires, New York Ledger, Oct. 14, 1871–June 22, 1872. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, A Beautiful Fiend; or, Through the Fire (Philadel- phia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1873).

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 301 Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, Victor’s Triumph. The Sequel to “A Beautiful Fiend” (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1874). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Artist’s Love,” in The Artist’sL ove. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. And Stories by Her Sister, Mrs. Frances Henshaw Baden (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1872).

1873–1874 Mrs. Southworth, Unknown; or, The Mystery of Raven Rocks, New York Ledger, Feb. 22, 1873– Jan. 31, 1874. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Unknown; or, the Mystery of Raven Rocks (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1889).

1874–1876 Mrs. Southworth, Self-Made; or, “Out of the Depths,” New York Ledger, Feb. 7–Nov. 28, 1874 (reserialization, see 1863). E. D. E. N. Southworth, Only a Girl’s Heart. A Mystery of Haddon’s Ferry, New York Ledger, Dec. 5, 1874–Jan. 22, 1876. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Only a Girl’s Heart: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1893). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, TheR ejected Bride: “Only a Girl’s Heart.” Second Series (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1894). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Gertrude Haddon. “Only a Girl’s Heart.” ThirdS eries (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1894). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Spectre Lover,” in The Spectre Lover. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. And Other Stories by Her Sister Mrs. Frances Henshaw Baden (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1875). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, editor, The Mystery of DarkH ollow (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1875) (this is probably by her sister, Frances Henshaw Baden).

1876–1877 E. D. E. N. Southworth, TheL ost Lady of Lone, New York Ledger, Jan. 29–July 8, 1876. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, TheL ost Lady of Lone. A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1890). E. D. E. N. Southworth, “Em,” New York Ledger, July 15, 1876–Mar. 24, 1877. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Em. A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1892). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Em’s Husband: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1892 (second volume). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Fatal Secret,” in TheF atal Secret. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. And Other Stories by Her Sister Mrs. Frances Henshaw Baden (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1877).

302 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin 1877–1878 Mrs. Southworth, Gloria; or, Married in Rage, New York Ledger, Mar. 31–Nov. 17, 1877. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Gloria: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1891). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, David Lindsay: A Sequel to “Gloria” (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1891). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Bride’sO rdeal, New York Ledger, Nov. 24, 1877–Aug. 10, 1878. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Bride’sO rdeal (New York: Street & Smith, 1904). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Her Love or Her Life (New York: Street & Smith, 1904) (second volume). Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Phantom Wedding,” in The Phantom Wedding; or, TheF all of the House of Flint. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. And Other Stories by Her Sister Mrs. Frances Henshaw Baden (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1878).

1878–1879 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, A Skeleton in the Closet, New York Ledger, Aug. 17, 1878–June 7, 1879. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, A Skeleton in the Closet: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1893). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Brandon Coyle’s Wife. A Sequel to “A Skeleton in the Closet (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1893).

1879–1880 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Trail of theS erpent; or, Homicide at Hawke Hall, New York Ledger, June 14, 1879–June 5, 1880. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Trail of theS erpent (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, A Tortured Heart (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (second volume). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Test of Love (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (third volume).

1880–1881 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Nearest and Dearest. A Romance of Early Washington, New York Ledger, Oct. 9, 1880–Apr. 30, 1881. Nearest and Dearest (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1889).

1881 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, A Leap in the Dark. A Novel, New York Ledger, May 7–Oct. 22, 1881. A Leap in the Dark: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1889).

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 303 1882–1883 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Unloved Wife, New York Ledger, Jan. 7–Aug. 26, 1882. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Unloved Wife: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1891). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Lilith: A Sequel to “The nlovedU Wife” (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1891). Mrs. Southworth, Her Mother’s Secret, New York Ledger, Nov. 4, 1882–July 14, 1883. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Her Mother’s Secret (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Love’s Bitterest Cup (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (second volume). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, When Shadows Die (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (third volume). Mrs. Southworth, TheH idden Hand, New York Ledger, July 8, 1883–Jan. 5, 1884 (reserialization, see 1859).

1884–1885 Mrs. Southworth, For Woman’s Love, New York Ledger, Jan. 5–July 19, 1884. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, For Woman’s Love: A Novel (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1890). Mrs. Southworth, Why Did He Wed Her?, New York Ledger, Nov. 15, 1884–Aug. 1, 1885. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Why Did He Wed Her? (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, For Whose Sake? (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (second volume).

1886–1887 Mrs. Southworth, A Deed Without a Name, New York Ledger, Jan. 2–Oct. 30, 1886. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, A Deed Without a Name (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Dorothy Harcourt’s Secret (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (second volume). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, To His Fate (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905) (third volume). E. D. E. N. Southworth, Only a Girl’s Heart, New York Ledger, Nov. 6, 1886–Dec. 24, 1887 (reserialization, see 1874).

1888 Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Ruin of Horah. A Story of Southern Life before the War,” copyright registration Sept. 27, 1888, not located.

304 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin 1889 Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “Joyce Mott. A Seaside Surprise,” Belford’s Magazine, Aug. 1889. Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “The Mystery of No. 21,” copyright registration Dec. 10, 1889 (annotated with Tillotson & Son address, but Southworth is claimant), not located. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “An Awful Christmas Eve Adventure. A Reminiscence of Early Washington,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Dec. 21, 1889.

1890 E. D. E. N. Southworth, “With Lady Byron. Mrs. Southworth’s Memorable Visit to the Poet’s Widow in the Last Year of Her Life,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Oct. 25. 1890. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “A Christmas Turkey. How Grandma Stole One When She Was a Girl,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Dec. 24, 1890.

1891 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “Gallant Little Tom. A Reminiscence of a Washington Military Hospital during the War,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Apr. 4, 1891. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “Mystery of Mysteries,” copyright registration Mar. 2, 1891, not located. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “Young Dr. Ray’s Temptation,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Oct. 10, 1891. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “A Christmas Eve in the Early Days of the District. Being a True Story of How Mistress Alice Headleigh Bested the Revelers and Ended the Orgies at Headleigh Hall,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), Dec. 26, 1891.

1892–1894 Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Only a Girl’s Heart, The Rejected Bride, and Gertrude Haddan, New York Ledger, Nov. 19, 1892–Jan. 1894 (reserialization, see 1874). Emma D. E. N. Southworth, “My Fearful Winter Nights Ride. A Personal Experience,” copyright registration Jan. 25, 1892, not located. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “Uncle Hannibal,” copyright registration Feb. 12, 1892, not located. Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, “An Aerial Excursion. A Tale,” copyright registration Oct. 4, 1893, by Tillotson & Son, not located (but undated clipping from unnamed newspaper under title “A Midnight Aerial Excursion” in Southworth papers at Duke). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Widows of Widowville, New York Ledger, June–Dec. 1894 (reserialization, see The Malediction; or, The Widows of Widowville, 1868).

A Chronological Bibliography of Southworth’s Works 305 1902 and After Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, John Strong’s Secret (New York: F. M. Lupton, c. 1902; Chicago: Everyday Life, c. 1904). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Sweet Love’s Atonement (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905). Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Zenobia’s Suitors. Sequel to “Sweet Love’s Atonement” (New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905).

306 Melissa J. Homestead and Vicki L. Martin Contributors

Charlene Avallone is an independent scholar, having served on the faculties of the Universities of Notre Dame and Hawaii. Her publications treat early U.S. writers—Catharine Sedgwick, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, and Herman Melville, among others—as well as the gender and racial limitations of the Amer- ican Renaissance critical tradition.

Kathryn Conner Bennett is a doctoral candidate in the American studies program at the College of William and Mary. A Truman Scholar, she studies nineteenth- century literature, the history of the book, and cultural and intellectual history. Her work includes essays on filmic treatments of La Bohème, feminist critiques of science, and Charles Brockden Brown and rape trial narratives. She is writing a dissertation on the history of the New York Ledger.

Melissa J. Homestead is Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English and program faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822–1869 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), which includes a discussion of E. D. E. N. Southworth’s conflicts with her husband over her copyrights. She is also coeditor of Clarence; or, A Tale of Our Own Times by Catharine Sedgwick (Broadview, 2011) and the essay collection Willa Cather and Modern Cultures (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), and the author of essays on American women authors from Susanna Rowson to Bess Streeter Aldrich. She is currently at work on “The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis,” a book about the relationship between the American novelist and the magazine editor and advertising writer with whom she shared a home in New York City for four decades.

Annie Merrill Ingram is Professor of English and the Thomson Professor of Environmental Studies at Davidson College, where she teaches courses in Ameri- can literature and interdisciplinary environmental studies. She is coeditor of Coming into Contact: Explorations in Ecocritical Theory and Practice (University of Georgia Press, 2007) and has published essays on E. D. E. N. Southworth and other American women writers, environmental literature, and experiential learning. Her current research combines her interests in environmental studies and American studies in an exploration of nineteenth-century American women’s botanical material culture and literature on flowers.

Paul Christian Jones is Associate Professor of English at Ohio University, where he teaches courses primarily on nineteenth-century American literature. His most recent publication is Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment, which contains a chapter on South- worth’s anti-gallows writing. His previous work on Southworth includes a chapter in his book Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South and essays in ATQ, Southern Literary Journal, and Legacy. He is currently working on a book-length project about Southworth’s engagement with national politics in her life and her fiction.

Beth L. Lueck is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wiscon- sin–Whitewater. Her coedited book Transatlantic Women: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and Great Britain (with Brigitte Bailey and Lucinda L. Damon-Bach) examines the cultural, intellectual, and geographical circulation of American women writers in a transatlantic world (University Press of New England, 2012). She has also published on early American travel writing, including The American Writer and the Picturesque Tour: The Search for National Iden- tity, 1790–1860. President of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Society, she directed the international conference Transatlantic Women: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe (2008). She teaches courses in American literature, nineteenth-century women writers, Gothic literature, and the Civil War.

Vicki L. Martin is a Ph.D. student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She began her studies after retiring from over thirty years of teaching English in the Nebraska community college system. She is currently reading for her written comprehensives on antebellum American women’s novels (1820–1865) with an emphasis on serial novels and plans a dissertation on Southworth.

Kenneth Salzer is a visiting lecturer of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches American literature. His previous essay on Southworth—“Call Her Ishmael: E. D. E. N. Southworth, Robert Bonner, and the ‘Experiment’ of S elf-Made”—appears in Popular Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace (Cambridge Scholars, 2007). His essay on the fugitive

308 Contributors slave Ellen Craft will be published in Transatlantic Women: Essays on 19th-Century American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe (2012). He is currently editing the 1855 autobiography of Lucy Ann Lobdell, who lived as a man in rural areas across nineteenth-century America.

Alison M. Scott became the Charles Warren Bibliographer for American His- tory at Harvard University in 2000 and accepted additional responsibilities as Se- nior Collection Development Librarian in 2007 and Librarian for North Amer- ica in 2009. She led an expansion of Widener Library’s collecting program for primary resources in the humanities and social sciences, with particular emphasis on cultural studies. When not shopping for Harvard, she pursued interests in the history of the American book, analytical bibliography, and creative nonfiction. As this book went to press, she went to Washington, DC, as Head of Collection Development for the George Washington University Library.

Elizabeth Stockton is Associate Professor of English at Southwestern Univer- sity in Georgetown, Texas. Her research focuses on antebellum domestic novels, feminist and ethnic studies, and law and literature in the nineteenth-century United States. She is the coeditor of TheS elected Letters of Elizabeth Stoddard (University of Iowa Press, 2012) with Jennifer Putzi. Her articles have appeared in the New England Quarterly and the African American Review, and she is currently finishing her book-length project, “Romancing the Law: U.S. Fictions of Marriage and Property.”

Amy M. Thomas is Associate Professor of English at Montana State University– Bozeman. The coeditor of Reading Acts: U.S. Readers’ Interactions with Literature, 1800–1950 (University of Tennessee Press, 2002), her recent publications include, “Le Pouvoir des Roman-Feuilletons en Amérique au XIX siècle: Le Début de Carrière de E. D. E. N. Southworth, 1846–1856,” in Au Bonheur du Feuilleton: Naissance et Mutations d’un Genre (Creaphis, 2007), coauthored with Alison M. Scott, and “Literacies, Readers, and Cultures of Print in the South, 1840–1880,” in TheH istory of the Book in America, vol. 3, TheI ndustrial Book, 1840–1880 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

Karen Tracey is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Northern Iowa. She is the author of Plots and Proposals: American Women’s Fiction, 1850–1890 (University of Illinois Press, 2000) and other essays on American literature. She is currently at work on a book about nineteenth- century fiction and modern spiritualism.

Contributors 309 Pamela T. Washington is Professor of English and former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Central Oklahoma. Trained as a rhetorician, she was formerly director of freshman composition at UCO and coauthored two composition textbooks, Stratagems (Fountainhead Press, 2008) and Fresh Takes (McGraw- Hill, 2007). For fifteen years, she has regularly taught a class on nineteenth- century American women writers and has presented work on Southworth at national and international venues.

Ellen Weinauer is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Southern Mississippi. She is the coeditor, with Robert McClure Smith, of American Culture, Canons, and the Case of Elizabeth Stoddard (Univer- sity of Alabama Press, 2003) and the author of articles on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Stoddard, and others. Her book in progress examines Gothic renditions of marriage in antebellum male writers such as Poe, Douglass, Hawthorne, and Melville.

Cindy Weinstein is Professor of English at the California Institute of Technol- ogy. She is the author of TheL iterature of Labor and the Labors of Literature: Al- legory in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Family, Kinship, and Sympathy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2004). She is the coeditor, with Christopher Looby, of American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions (Columbia University Press, 2012), and is currently at work on a new book, “When Is Now? Time in American Lit- erature,” a part of which has been published in Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism.

310 Contributors Index

Abate, Michelle Ann, xvii, 67n12 promote New York Ledger, 40–42, 50–51, Abolition, xx, xxii, 1–19, 107–8, 185 63; business acumen, 50–52, 54–67, 81–82; Adoption, 109– 125, 250, 252–53 concern with respectability, 52–53, 82, “Amanda: A Tale for the Times,” 4–5 87; illustration, use of, in New York Ledger, American Monthly Magazine, 224 77–81; pursuit of authors, 52–54; pursuit of Adultery, 158, 161, 166–67, 211–12; innocent Southworth, 25–26, 38–42, 50–51; reseri- adultery, 211 alization use of, 56–58; sons, Allen, Robert Artist, 26, 33–36; function of, xiv, 36 Edwin, and Fredrick, 61–63, 71n57. See also Austin, J. L., 266, 271–72 correspondence; exclusivity; New York Ledger Boston Quarterly Review, 177n37, 237, 242n48 Bailey, Gamaliel, 40, 107, 184, 197, 287; edi- Boyle, Regis Louise, xvii, 31–32, 43n6, 70n37, torial control of The National Era, xx, 10, 101n2, 176n17, 179n52, 241n38, 289, 13, 27–29; views on fiction, 1–6, 12–13, 291n1 18–19 Bracegirdle, Anne, 214–15, 218n23 Bailey, Margaret, 184, 196, 199, 287 Brantlinger, Patrick, 86 Baltimore Sunday Visiter, 7, 49, 286, 292n5, Brisbane, William H. 45 294 Britomarte, The Man-Hater, xxi, 129–47, 205, Baker, Nicholson, 73n71 213; crossdressing in, 132–35; homoerotic Bardes, Barbara, xvii, xviii, xxii, 233, 235, attraction, 133, 144–45; intertextuality, 242n45, 244 137–47; masquerade, 133; plotting of, Barker, Deborah, 33, 37 131–33; possible plagiarism, 135–37; as se- Basch, Norma, 26–27, 223, 238n5, 238n6, rial publication, 131; sensational elements, 263n27 146; textual transvestism, xxi, 135–37; Baym, Nina, xvii, 65–6n2, 92, 127n10, 148n6, women’s rights, 132, 134–35 150n27, 155–56, 166–67, 175n6, 180n74, Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre, 88, 100 190–91, 197, 202n6, 236, 261n2, 267 Brothers, The, 205–11; as classical tragedy Beecher, Henry Ward, 53, 55; Norwood; or, Vil- 207–8; Gothic elements in, 207, 209; lage Life in New England, 55, 68n30 intertextuality of, xxii, 207–10; sentimental Behn, Aphra, 206, 211–12; “The History of plot, 209–10; slave revolt, 210 the Nun; or, the Fair Vow-Breaker,” 206, Brown, Joshua, 80 211 Brown, Laura, 212 Blanton, DeAnne, 130, 136, 149n10, 149n15, Bronson, S. P.: The Widow of Toledo, 87, 88 151n30 Blackstone, William, 223, 229, 232, 239n9, Cather, Willa, xiii–xix, xxv 245 Capital punishment, xxii, xxiv–xxv, 184–94, Bobbett, Alfred, 81 250–51 Bonner, Robert, xx, 32, 36, 49–65, 87, 100, Carlisle, J. M., 249, 258 102n13, 105n46, 129–30, 145, 260–61, Civil War, xxiv, 211; Southworth’s participation 287, 289–90, 293n16; advertising, use of to in, 129–30; letters from participants, Civil War (cont.) DeLamotte, Eugenia, 237 140, 142. See also transvestite narratives. See DeLombard, Jeannine, 25 under war Deserted Wife, The, xviii, xxi, 28, 148n9, Class, xxiv, xxv, 95, 105n50, 123, 95, 167–69, 155–67, 183, 227, 244, 282n17; adultery, 172, 223, 245, 252, 266; middle-class read- treatment of, 157–58, 161, 166; changes ers, 81–82, 260, 283n18; satire of, 172. See in book publication, 163; criticism of, 28, under marriage: cross-class 161; genre elements in, 161, 167; Gothic Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., 53–54, 57–58, 60, 61, 81, elements, 166–67, intertextuality, 165–67; 87; As Colonel Walter Dunlap, 87; Bion, marriage, xxii, 227; rape theme, 28, 87; Gun Maker of Moscow, 54, 57–58; The 162–63; See under marriage: abuse in Mystic Bride, 54 Dickens, Charles, 53, 57, 71n59, 103n19, 156 Cook, Lauren M., 130, 136, 149n10, 149n15, Dillingham, G.W., 52, 63, 67n13 151n30 Discarded Daughter, The, xviii, xxii, 69n32, Cooper, James Fenimore, 155–56, 170 178nn48–50, 183, 222, 230–38, 244; Copyright, xxviin14, 36–37, 243, 290–91; Gothic elements in, 230–3, 233, 235–361; Bonner’s concern with, 54–57, 59–60, 63; intertextuality, xxii, 230–35; marriage plot, as plot device, 36–37 232–36; serial publication; 222, 231 Coultrap-McQuin, Susan, xvii, 38, 40–41, Divorce, 3, 18, 34–39, 83, 173, 272, 275, 71n57, 101n2, 202, 292n6, 279; Southworth’s, 27–30, 243–44, 260, Contracts; with Bonner, 39–42; Bonner’s view 270 on, 38; with H. Peterson, 39–42 Dobson, Joanne, xvii, 65, 82, 207–8, 236, Correspondence, 30, 77, 108, 260–61, 267, 241n40, 291n1 276, 286, 289; on Civil War, 129–31, Dupuy, Eliza A., 61, 71 145; concerning illustration, 77, 79–80; with Bonner, 25, 38–39, 56, 59–60, 61, Education, 33, 129, 163–64, 168, 170, 194; 72n67, 79–80, 129–30, 145, 289; with H. female, 14, 93–94, 161, 170, 173–74, 233; Peterson, 26, 28, 29–31, 37, 39–41; read- slave, 208–9 ers about Southworth, xv, 11, 62, 101n6; Ellen Ross, 54 Southworth to readers, 31–32, 41–42 Evans, Augusta Jane, xviii–xvix Cott, Nancy, 39, 274, 282n17, Exclusivity with periodicals, xxix, 25–26, 29, Coverture, 222–26, 228–30, 244, 278, 280; 32, 38–42, 50, 59, 69n31, 287, 289–90 Drury v. Foster, 248–50; equity courts, 223; feme covert, 30, 223, 225, 229, 232, 268, Faerie Queene, xxi, 132 270, 273, 275–76, 280; feme sole, 30, 222, Family Doom, xxiii, 268, 276–80; courtship 229; in Gothic fiction, 229–38; South- in, 278–79; coverture, 280; efficacy of worth’s, 30 vows, 276, 277–79; marriage in, 276–80; Coviello, Peter, 226, 230 Native American curse, 277–78; nominal Cowie, Alexander, 160–61 marriage, 278 Crime fiction, 170–71 Fatal Marriage, The, xxiii, 205–7, 211–14, Cross-dressing, xvii, xxi, 108, 129–47; during 266, 268, 272–76; bigamy in, 273–75; Civil War, 130; Civil War narratives (see Gothic elements, 221; innocent adultery in, transvestite narratives); in Southworth 211–14; intertextuality, xxii, 211–15; mar- novels, xxi, 132–37, 148n9 riage, 211–14; restoration tragedy use of, Cummins, Maria Susanna, Lamplighter, The, 92 211–12; as she-tragedy, 207; sentimental, 213, 275–76; war in, 206 Dallas, Mary Kyle, 57 Female agency, xxv, 211, 215, 216, 267, Dayan, Joan, 225–26, 237, 240n18 279–80; lack of, 112; as sensational, 92–97 Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe, 136 Feme covert. See under coverture

312 Index Feme sole. See under coverture Hurley, Kelly, 229 Fern, Fanny, 38, 50, 53–5, 83, 84, 85, 101n6 Huyssen, Andreas, xiii–xiv Flag of Our Union, 53, 68n22, Four Carmen, The, 54 India: The earlP of Pearl River, xviii, xxiii, xxiv, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 80, xxv, 20n14, 138, 197, 203–4n16; women’s 104–5n42 role in government, 199–201 Friend of Youth, 286–7 Ingram, Annie Merrill, 180n70, 181n77 Fuller, Jane, 61 Insanity, 107, 115–18, 167, 192, 273; caused Fuller, Margaret, 88–89, 93–94, 100, 105n46, by marriage, 212, 232; caused by miscege- 178n45, 198–99 nation, 124–26; cause for adultery, 166–67 Intertextuality, 153; with Civil War narra- Goddu, Teresa A., 113, 117, 126 tives; 137–47; with Edgar Allen Poe, Godey’s Lady’s Book, 19n2, 176n19, 202n2, 221–38; with restoration tragedy, 207–8; 222, 224, 226, 240n26 with Robinson Crusoe, 136; with George Gossett, Suzanne, xvii, xviii, xxii, 233, 235, Sand, 155–75; with Shakespeare, 88, 136, 242n45, 244 155, 215; Southworth’s awareness of, 136, Gothic fiction, xix, xxi, 86, 111, 113–14, 118, 156–57; with Harriet Beecher Stowe, 169, 175n9, 207, 209, 222, 225, 229, 183–201. See also specific titles 237–38; relationship to marriage, 222–38; I shmael; or, in the Depths, xxii, xxiv–v, 102, 164, Southworth’s use of, 114–18, 169, 230; 245, 254–61, 263n25, 266, 274, 289; court spectral wives in, 234–36. See also specific case in, 256–57; Drury v. Foster, relationship titles to, 258; illustration of, 79; legal paternalism, Grossberg, Michael, 39, 248, 262n12, 275, 256; legal reform, 254–61; rhetoric, 257–58; 282n16 role of lawyers, 254–59; sentiment in, 256 I sland Princess, A Romance of the Old and New Hartog, Hendrik, 43n4, 224, 229, 238–9n8, World, The, xx, 42, 75, 77–101, 90, 91, 94, 246, 262n11, 263n24, 274, 282n17 96, 99; copyright of, 70; as generic hybrid, Halttunen, Karen, 86 87–101; illustration of, 77–101; intertextu- Hawthorne, Julian, 62 ality, 88, 93–94; marriage plot in, 89–92; Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 49, 113 race, 97–101; serialization, 51, 69n35, 89; Harland, Marion, 62 transgressive characters in, 92–97 Hazlett, William, 214 Hickory Hall, xxi, 107, 118–26; color imagery James, Henry, xiv–xvi, xxv, xxvin6 in, 119–20, insanity in, 120–26, as Gothic, Jones, Paul Christian, 110, 118–19, 121, 118–25; miscegenation, 121–26; racism in, 127n16, 202n8, 261n1, 280–81n5 128n20 Jordan, Cynthia, 229 Hidden Hand, The, xvi–xviii, xx, 42, 49–65, Julian, Isaac H., 4 93, 97, 117–19, 131, 158, 184, 205–6, 213, 289–90; book publication, 52, 63; Kahn, Madeleine, 139 marketing of, 51; reserialization, xx, 55–60; Kelley, Mary, xvii, 28, 101n2 serialization, 49–65 Kolodny, Annette, xvii–xix Holmes, Mary Jane, 67n13, 268; Ethelyn’s Mistake, 268 Lady Lieutenant, The, 137–39 Home Journal, 197 Laffrado, Laura, 139, 149 Homestead, Melissa, xxviin14, 21n9, 30, Lang, Amy Schrager, 187, 203n11 44n18, 44n26, 45n34, 69n32, 243, 260 Lauhon, Carol Sinclair Cameron, 66n8 Howard, June, 83 Law, xxiv, 116, 172, 184, 215, 223, 244, Hurlbut, Elisha P., 224–25, 227 251–53, 268, 271; adoption, 250, 252–53;

Index 313 Law (cont.) ideal, 26, 32, 164, 169–70; for property, bigamy, 87, 148n9, 213–15, 271–74, 172–73, 228, 231–34; rejection of, 92–97, 282n16; common law, 223, 249; Drury 131–35, 144, 136, 279–80; renovated v. Foster, 248–50, 254, 258, 260; Fugitive marriage, 164–65; satire of, 160; secret, 87, Slave Act, 18, 188; lawyer’s role, 254–59; 89–90, 270, 274; sentimental, 86, 89, 92, legal reform, 245, 254–61; marriage law, 100, 144, 156, 278; as slavery, 132, 161, xxii, 132, 148n9, 161–66, 221, 244–46, 163–65, 227; Southworth’s, xxii, 122–23; 255–56, 259; marital privacy, 246–47, as speech act, 270–80; vows efficacy of, 250, 254–55, 260; unjust law, 4–5, 172, 266, 270, 279; women’s power in, 132, 193–94, 255–59; women’s status under, 186–94; youthful; see baby marriage. See xxiii, 245, 247, 249–50, 256, 259. See also also coverture; marriage plot; property law capital punishment; coverture; property law Marriage Plot, xxi, 89–92; baby marriage, LeBlanc, Edward T., 68n24, 71n59 272–75, 282n16; cross-class marriage, 160, Lee, Nathaniel: Rival Queens, The, 211–12 167–68, 173; deferred marriage, 268; dou- Levander, Caroline, 266, 280n2, 283n18 ble marriage, 36–37; false marriage, 213; Lewis, Harriet, 57, 61, 71n59 fatal marriage, 206–11, 276–77; forced Lewis, Leon, 61, 71n59 marriage, 162–63, 168, 232–33; nominal Libby, Laura Jean, xvi, 61 marriage, 278; secret marriage, 254–55 Lippard, George, 104n35, 153, 280–81n5 Marsden, Jean, 207, 217n4 Literary Marketplace, xx, 49–65; diversifica- Masquerade, xx, 87, 88, 108. See also Brit- tion of, 50; paperback editions in, 264, 90; omarte; transvestite narratives Southworth in, 35 Mass culture, xiii–xv, 64–65, 67n15 London Journal, The 286, 289 Melodrama, xiii, 107–8, 111, 138, 143, Looby, Christopher, 20n7, 66n7, 97, 101n2, 150n27, 161–67, 170–73, 183, 206–7, 101n3, 310 211, 214 Lost Heiress, The, xxiii, 183–201, 250–54; Melville, Herman, 307, 310, 45n33, 49, 113; adoption, 250, 252–53; capital punish- Billy Budd, 197; Pierre, 266, 283n18 ment, 184–94; criticism of, 183–84, Merish, Lori, 82, 103n27, 207, 217n5 196–97; intertextuality, 185–201; limits Moore, Frank: Women of the War, 143 of sympathy, 186–94; marriage, 196–97; Morrison, Toni, 82, 103n27, 207, 217n5 property law, 250–54; redemption, Mother-in-law, The, xx, 158, 171–74; abolition 194–95; as sentimental, 185; women’s role arguments in, 14–19; criticism of, 155, in government, xxii, 196 171; intertextuality, 171–74; as sentimental Lupton, F. M, 70n39 literature, 171–73; serialization of, 14–19 Mott, Frank Luther, xv, xvi, xix, xx, xxvi, xxvii, Maiden Widow, The, 265, courtship, 278–79; 20n4, 156, 175n8, 176n16, 204n1 marriage plot, 268–69; nominal marriage, Murray, Judith Sargent, 88, 94, 105n49, 288 287; serial publication, 266; speech acts in, 270, 276–78 Naranjo-Huebel, Linda, xvi, 42n2, 67n15, Maine, Henry, 245 101n2, 105n43, 156, 183, 190–91,196– Marriage, xix, xxiv, 3–4,15, 28, 37, 92, 100, 97, 203n16 118–21; abuse in, 161–62, 167, 171, 245, National Era, The, xx, 107, 159, 184; use of 247, 250, 260, 268; bigamy, 212, 255, fiction, 3–5; authors published in 2–3. See 273–74, 89; certificate, 148, 213, 255, also Bailey, Gamaliel: serial publication The 260, 268–69, 273; as contract, 38–39, National Era 244–46; courtship, 278–79; failed, xxiii, Native American, xxv, 3, 5, 119, 209; curses; 40, 157, 161; as legal tomb, 225, 232; 266, 277; legends 10 proposal, xxiii, 34; obstacles to, 267–68; New England Magazine, 224

314 Index N ew York Ledger, The, xx–xxi; authors published Property law, 168, 221–26, 231–34, 237, in, 53–55; exclusivity of authors, 38, 53–55, 243–47; debates about, 224–26, 244–45; 57–59, 62, 69n31; illustrations from, 75, reform of, 244–46, 253–54 84, 85, 88, 90, 91, 94, 96, 153, 219; illus- Prospect Cottage, xii, xiii–xiv, 25, 129, tration in, 52, 77–101; Ledger Library, The, Publisher’s Weekly, 52, 72nn69–70 62–63; physical appearance of, 52–53, 62; Putzi, Jennifer, 86, 103n31, 309 readership, 101n6; reserialization in, 58–65; respectability, 52–53. See also Bonner, Rob- Race, xix, xxi–xxii, xxiv, 11, 78, 97–100, 142, ert; serial publication: New York Ledger 168–67, 226, 245; in Gothic, 107–26; Noble, Marianne, 113, 203n11, 209, 215, in illustration, 94, 98, 99; mixed-race, 9, 217n14, 218n24 107–11, 120–26, 205, 208–211. See also Noel, Mary, xv, 46n40, 101n6 slavery; and specific titles North American Review, 224 Radcliffe, Ann, 113, 236 Realism, xxi, 130,147 Papishvily, Helen Waite, xvi Reade, Charles, Foul Play, 135, 149n12 Parr, Sarah, 60 Retribution, xx–xxi; abolition arguments in, Pattee, Fred, xv 6–11; Bailey’s revision of, 9–10; contempo- Patriarchy; critique of, xxi, 184, 196, 198, 201, rary criticism, of 11–13; generic hybridity, 230, 233; editors and, 31, 184; property xxii, 108–18; as Gothic, 114–18; Gothic and, 168, 232, 246; reform of, 248, 250, elements, 111–15; as sensational, 108–18; 259; values of, 183 serialization of, 6; St. Domingo revolt, 6–7, Peck, James, 214, 218n23 10–11, 111–16; tragic mulatta, 8–10, 109, Peck, William Henry, 57, 70n38, 178n46 118, 125 Person, Leland, 113, 127n13, 228, 240n27 Roberson, Susan, 187, 203n11 Peterson, Charles, 287–88 Rochefort, Major Alfred, 60 Peterson, Henry, xi, xx, xxi, 27, 37–39, 50, Ryan, Susan, 82–83, 103n28 155, 163, 287; criticism of Southworth, 25–32, 40–42, 155, 183; editorial control, Salzer, Kenneth, 102n10 25, 28–33, 36, 41,163; relationship with Samuels, Shirley, 104n35, 126n3, 127n12, Southworth, 26, 28, 30, 32, 35–36, 38–39, 267, 280n4, 281 40–42, 287. See also correspondence; exclu- Sand, George, xxi, 153, 155–74; adultery in, sivity; Saturday Evening Post 161; Consuelo, xxi, 158, 164–5; criticism Peterson, T. B., xx, xxiii, 36–37, 40, 55–56, of, 159–60; Indiana, xxi, 11, 163–6, 172, 72n70, 101n4, 119, 131, 153, 163, 171, 180–81; Jacques, 165–6, 168, 178; Lélia, 179n61, 285, 287, 289–90; relationship 163, 169–70, 181; Leone Leoni, 170; on with Southworth, 59–64 marriage, 164–65; Valentine, xxi, 161–62, Peterson’s Magazine, 50, 59, 287 164–66, 171, 173–74 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 71n57 Saturday Evening Post, xx–xxi, xxx, 25, 27, Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, 225, 286–87, 289 38, 53, 55, 67n15, 155, 163, 183, 231, Poe, Edgar Allan, xxii, 104n35, 113, 117, 286–87; criticism of Southworth, 155, 157, 221–22, 225–38, 240n23, 240n26, 310; 163; prospectus of 1850, xxx “Berenice,” 221, 227; “The Black Cat,” Scott, Alison M., 177n33, 179n51 221; “Eleonora,” 226–27; “Fall of the Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 153, 155, 156 House of Usher,” 221, 230; Gothic, use of, Serial publication, xix–xx, 287–91; in Balti- 222, 229–31, 237; “Ligeia,” 221, 228–30; more Saturday Visiter, 3, 49, 286; biblio- on marriage, 222–30; “Morella,” 221; graphy of, 294–306; context of, 50; in “Oval Portrait,” 221; property, 221; undead Friend of Youth, 287; in Pittsburgh Saturday wives in, 227–30 Visitor, 286–87, 289, 293n12; in Nation,

Index 315 Serial publication (cont.) cal, 15–16, 116; miscegenation, 107–11, The, 102n9, 149n12, 287, 289; in National 120–26, 208; revolts, 6–7, 10–11, 112–16; Era, xix–xxiii, 1–19, 27, 30, 108, 287; Southworth as antislavery, xix, 1–2 roman feuilleton, 159; in Saturday Evening Smith, Herbert F., xv, xvi Post, xx–xxiii, xxix, 25–32, 37–42, 53, 55, Southern Literary Messenger, 155, 158–60, 155, 163, 183, 231, 286–89; in New York 166–67, 171–72, 222, 227 Ledger, xx–xxi, xxiii, 25–26, 38–42, 49–65, Southerne, Thomas, Fatal Marriage; or, the In- 77–101, 108, 129, 131, 135–36, 142, 205, nocent Adultery, The, 206, 211–12, 214 287–91. See also New York Ledger; National Southworth, E. D. E. N.: address to read- Era, The;exclusivity ers, 31, 41; anonymous publication, 286; Sensational fiction, xix–xxi, xx–xxi, 73n73, autobiography, 24n56, 27, 31–32, 49, 155, 77–101, 107–26, 183, 207, 216; in Civil 286; biography, xiii, xxii, 3, 5, 122–23, War narratives, 140–47; genre conventions, 157, 222; bibliography, xxxiii, 287–306; 86–87, 108; illustration, 86–88, 92, 98–99; contemporary criticism of, 10–13, 155, images, 75, 88, 91, 99, 219; marriage 160, 171; copyright, concern with 55–57; plot, 89–92, 167; race, 109–13; seduc- divorce, 27, 29, 30, 260, 243; marriage tion, 161–62, 167; sentimental-sensational to Fredrick, 26–7, 29–30, 45n34, 243, hybrid, 82, 86, 89–100 253, 267; paratext, use of, 140; plots and Sentimental fiction, 156, 186–89, 207; con- plotting, xix, xxiii, 3, 118–19, 131–33, trast to sensational, 86, 89, 90, 92, 95, 100, 267–69, 277–70; popularity, xiii–xv, 58, 161, 205; French, 161, 171, 174; genre 62, 73n73, 153; revision practices, xxii, 2, conventions, 82–83, 171, 207–8, 268, 60, 66n9, 70n51; as a Southerner, xviii–xix, 275–76, 278; illustration use of, 83, 86, 90; 20n4; value to publishers, 13–14 images, 84, 85, 90, 94, limits of sympathy, Southworth, E. D. E. N., works of: Allworth 186–94; marriage plot, 89, 92, 275–78; Abbey, xxiii–xxiv; “Artist’s Love, The,” xviii, satire of, 171–72; sentimental heroine, 213; xxv; Astrea; or The Bridal Day, 79 (see also sentimental identification, 85–86, 98, 100, Fortune Seeker); Bride of an Evening, 51, 192, 209; Southworth’s use of, 185, 207–8, 69n32, 288; Cruel as the Grave, xxiii–xxv; 275; style, 83, 171. See also specific titles The Curse of Clifton, 29, 178n47, 179n50; Shakespeare, William, 100, 156; Tempest, The, Deed Without a Name, 79n53; Doom of 88, 136 Deville, or the Maiden’s Vow (see Fatal Shannondale, xxi, xxv, 29, 44n14, 155, 167– Marriage); Eudora, xxiv, 70n49, 299 (see 71, 288, 293n11; class, 167–69, 173; as also Allworth Abbey); Fair Play; or, The Test crime fiction, 170–71; criticism of, 29,155, of the Lone Isle. (see Britomarte) Fortune 171; education, 173–74; intertextuality Seeker, 127n8; (see also Astrea; or the Bridal of, 167–71; property law, 168; relation to Day); The Gipsy’s Prophecy: A Tale of Real Celia Calvert, 288; religion, 169–70; vows Life, 69n32 (see also Island Princess); A Leap 170 in the Dark, 269; Lilith, 270; Lionne: The Siddons, Sarah, 214, 218n21, 218n22 Doom of Deville (see TheF atal Marriage); Sigourney, Lydia, 38, 53–5 TheL ost Lady of Lone, xxiii–xxv; Love’s Sizer, Lyde Cullen, 20, 130, 147n3, 149n11 Labor Won, 70n45; The Malediction; or, The Slavery, xix–xxv, 97–100, 132, 159, 161, 164, Widows of Widowville (see Family Doom and 172, 185, 205, 226, 273, 287, 290; color The Maiden Widow); Mark Sutherland (see imagery, 119–26; effects on owners, 11, India); Miriam the Avenger (see TheMiss- 14–18, 110, 123–24; effects on slaves, ing Bride); The Missing Bride, or Miriam 16–18, 109–11, 208–10; emancipation, 5, the Avenger, xxiii, xx, xxv, 30–31, 148n9, 7; Fugitive Slave Act, 18, 188; images, 96, 178n48; 179n61; 265–68; The Mysteri- 99; laws, 4–5, 121, 172, 188; metaphori- ous Marriage, 266, 269; The Mystery of the

316 Index Darkw, 153 H;ollo Old Neighbourhoods the Mississippi, 138, 140–41, 144; Miriam and New Settlements, or Christmas Evening Rivers, 138, 141, 143–44; Nurse and Spy in Legends, 3, 289; The Presentiment(s ee The the Union Army, 138, 143; Pauline of the Brothers); The Prince of Darkness(see Hickory Potomac, 138, 140; Virginia Graham, 138, Hall); Rose Elmer, 70n49; “The Ruin of the 141; Woman in Battle, The, 138–39 Horah. A Story of Southern Life before the True Woman, 131, 228 War,” 291; Self-Made; or, Out of the Depths (see Ishmael); Sweet Love’s Atonement, 291; United States Magazine and Democratic Review, The Temptation, 3, 291; The Unloved Wife, 224 268, 270; Virginia and Magdalene, xviii, 179n50; Why Did He Wed Her?, 71n53; Vivia; or, The Secret of Power, xx, 25–42; artist’s Winning Her Way, 219; For Woman’s Love, role, 33–37; author’s role, 35–37; copy- 60; Zenobia’s Suitors, 291; and individual right, 36–37; criticism of, 26, 30; delay in titles publication of, 31, double marriage plot, Speech-Act Theory, xxiii, 266, 271, 281n15 26, 36–37; muse’s role, 34–37; as reflection Speth, Linda, 223 of Southworth and publishers, 25–26, Spirit of the Times, The, 197 37–42 Spofford, Harriet Prescott, xxvin7, 86 Vows, 233, 256, 265; marriage vows, 269–70, Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 224 276–80; religious vows, 170–211 Stephens, Ann, 30, 153, 176n19 Stoddard, Charles Warren, xv, xvii, xxviin18 Walpole, Horace: Castle of Otranto, 222, 231 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 49: Uncle Tom’s War, 211–12; French and Indian War, 206, Cabin, xix–xxi, 1, 10, 13, 15, 19, 104n36, 212, 216, horror of, 169, Mexican-Ameri- 183–201, 235 can War, 169, 206; Revolutionary, 7, 206, Street & Smith, 70n39, 290–91, 293n18, 216, 231, 233. See also Civil War 294n21 Warren, Joyce, xvii, xxii, 35, 45n37, 68n20, Streeby, Shelley, 108, 146, 151n27, 151n34, 101n6, 105n46, 147, 244, 261n1, 282 181n84 Weinstein, Cindy, 104n35 Steiner, George, 207 Whittaker, Captain Frederick, 60 Stiff, George, 286, 293n15 Wilson, Christopher, 71n57 Style, xv, xxi, 102n13, 116–17, 157 159–62, Wortman, Marlene, 223 171–72, 202n5, 237 Swisshelm, Jane, 20, 179n52, 225, 232, 234, Young, Elizabeth, 138–39, 150n26 240n17, 287, 293

Thomas, Brook, 38–9, 263n21 Thomas, Amy M., 177n33, 179n51 Thwaites, William H., 81, 103 Tillotson and Son, 290, 305 Tracey, Karen, xv, 26, 35, 149n12 Tragedy, 207, 211, 214–15; classical, 205–8, 211, 216; domestic, 119, 156, 208; melodrama use in, 206; she-tragedy, 206–7, 211–12 Tragic Mulatta, 8–10, 109–11, 208 Transvestite narratives: and gender, 141–44; The Lady Lieutenant, 137–39, 143; as literary transvestism, 138–43; Maud of

Index 317