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Unlikely Rhetorical Allies: How Science Warranted U.S ABSTRACT Title of Document: UNLIKELY RHETORICAL ALLIES: HOW SCIENCE WARRANTED U.S. WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY DISCOURSES OF SEXUALITY. Wendy Hayden, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Jeanne Fahnestock, English Department This dissertation reads the nineteenth-century discourses on female sexuality of the free love and social purity movements against the background of the scientific discoveries of the time. At the same time that scientists produced new knowledge of the body, American feminists in social movements for free love and social purity began to critique how the marriage system allowed the sexual subjugation of women, to demand the right to control when they chose to have sex and under what conditions, and to urge the elimination of sexual double-standards, repressive ideologies of female sexuality, and even the marriage system itself. The central scientific disciplines of physiology, bacteriology, embryology, heredity provide the basis for these women’s arguments. Each chapter of this dissertation recounts the scientific discoveries in a particular discipline, then traces the dissemination of the new scientific knowledge through medical popularizations, and then reads the discourse of the reformers as entering this larger conversation about sexuality and women’s rights. Using the rhetorical theories of Lloyd Bitzer’s “rhetorical situation” and Stephen Toulmin’s model of argument, it shows how women drew on the exigence, framework, and warrants of the new sciences to make arguments for women’s rights. Reading these women’s arguments against the background of science reveals new dimensions to their arguments. It also shows that science provided the warrants for women’s rights. Finally, it concludes that new warrants from science “refreshed” old arguments for women’s rights, giving new life and new meaning to the claims of free love rhetors Mary Gove Nichols, Victoria Woodhull, Juliet Severance, Angela Heywood, Lois Waisbrooker, and Hulda Potter-Loomis, among others. This dissertation counters the traditional view of the relationship between science and feminism by showing that science was a source of feminist arguments. This project participates in the growing recovery and rereading of nineteenth-century women’s rhetorical practices and enlarges our view of what these women spoke about and what their sources of argument were. UNLIKELY RHETORICAL ALLIES: HOW SCIENCE WARRANTED U.S. WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY DISCOURSES OF SEXUALITY By Wendy Hayden Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee: Professor Jeanne Fahnestock, Chair Professor Jane Donawerth Professor Shirley Logan Professor Leigh Ryan Professor Claire Moses © Copyright by Wendy Hayden 2007 Acknowledgements Special thanks to Jeanne Fahnestock. I also thank my two writing groups: Lisa Zimmerelli, Andrea Shanklin-Dardello, Thomas (Jody) Lawton, and Barbara Cooper and the “College Perk” writers, Julie Strongson, Linda Thompson, and Amy Karp. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................iii Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Contemporary Criticism........................................................................................ 3 Free Love Advocacy and Social Movement Discourse............................................ 5 Who Were the Free Lovers? ................................................................................... 15 Mary Gove Nichols............................................................................................. 15 Victoria Claflin Woodhull .................................................................................. 18 Juliet Severance .................................................................................................. 22 Angela Heywood ................................................................................................ 24 Lois Waisbrooker................................................................................................ 26 Free Love Feminists............................................................................................ 28 Free Love versus Social Purity ............................................................................... 30 Nineteenth-Century Science and Questions of Sexuality ....................................... 35 Darwin’s Warrants as the Core of Free Love Feminism .................................... 36 Physiology........................................................................................................... 44 Bacteriology........................................................................................................ 45 Embryology......................................................................................................... 47 Heredity............................................................................................................... 48 Scientific Discourse in the Popular Sphere......................................................... 49 Women’s Involvement in Science ...................................................................... 50 Explanation of Methodology .................................................................................. 52 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 57 Chapter 2: Physiology............................................................................................... 59 The Science of Nineteenth-Century Physiology..................................................... 63 Enlightenment Philosophies of the Body............................................................ 64 “One Sex” or “Two Sex”? .................................................................................. 67 Into the Nineteenth Century................................................................................ 70 A Public Knowledge: The Scientific and the Social in Medical Discourse on Women’s Bodies..................................................................................................... 71 “Physiology” and its Uses................................................................................... 72 Physiology in Medical Advice Books and Lectures........................................... 77 The Rhetorical Situation of Nineteenth-Century Popular Health Texts ......... 80 Mary Gove (Nichols) ...................................................................................... 83 Russell Trall.................................................................................................... 88 Elizabeth Blackwell ........................................................................................ 92 Clelia Mosher.................................................................................................. 95 Physicians’ Advice on Sex................................................................................ 101 Free Love as the Answer: The Argument for Women’s Sexuality and Women’s Health.................................................................................................................... 102 Mary Gove Nichols........................................................................................... 103 Victoria Woodhull ............................................................................................ 106 Hulda Potter-Loomis......................................................................................... 112 iii Dora Forster ...................................................................................................... 114 Free Love and Physiology ................................................................................ 116 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 117 Chapter 3: Bacteriology ......................................................................................... 119 The Warrant Established: Bacterial Agents of Venereal Disease......................... 122 The Making of A New Science......................................................................... 122 The Shifting Knowledge of Venereal Diseases ................................................ 125 The New Discourse of Disease......................................................................... 127 The Situation Exploited: Medical Writers and the Discourse of Disease............. 128 John Scudder..................................................................................................... 129 Elizabeth Blackwell .......................................................................................... 134 Prince Albert Morrow....................................................................................... 138 The Situation Transformed: Opportunities for Social Applications and the Alliance of the Scientific, the Medical, and the Domestic.................................................. 143 The Situation Exploited and the Warrant in Use: The Rhetoric of Sexuality in Feminist Reform Discourses................................................................................. 148
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