'Each Wise Nymph That Angles for a Heart': the Politics of Courtship in the Boston 'Fishing Lady' Pictures

Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Art and Art History College of Arts & Sciences 2015 'Each Wise Nymph that Angles for a Heart': The Politics of Courtship in the Boston 'Fishing Lady' Pictures Andrea Pappas Santa Clara University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/a_ah Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, American Material Culture Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Andrea Pappas, "'Each Wise Nymph that Angles for a Heart': The Politics of Courtship in the Boston 'Fishing Lady' Pictures" (2015). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art and Art History by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Each Wise Nymph that Angles for a Heart” The Politics of Courtship in the Boston “Fishing Lady” Pictures Andrea Pappas This essay examines the Boston fishing lady embroideries in light of eighteenth-century courtship practice, depictions of women anglers in prints and on decorative porcelain, and recreational fishing in colonial culture. In representing the fishing lady as a successful independent angler, women needleworkers addressed, and even covertly resisted, male control of courtship, a crucial life transaction. The regular placement of the image of the fishing lady in the narratives created by the complex embroideries asserts the woman’s pivotal, if brief, authority in the courtship process. Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. … For thee, thou need’st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait: That fish that is not catch’dthereby, Alas, is wiser far than I. ( John Donne, The Bait, 1633) O READ the opening and closing verses this rhetorical figure was a staple of more than En- of John Donne’s 1633 poem, The Bait, a med- glish pastoral poetry. In fact, in the eighteenth cen- S itation on love and courtship. Cast as a sug- tury, visual images of the woman angler appeared on gestivemetaphor,onethatimagineswomenin both sides of the Atlantic. A century after Donne the role of fisher and figures men as helpless fish, penned his poem, young women at one or more fin- ishing schools in Boston used “silken lines” to create Andrea Pappas is associate professor of art history at Santa new versions of this imagery in the renowned fishing Clara University. lady embroidered pictures, primarily dating from The author thanks Amy Hudson Henderson and Kirstin 1740–70 ’ — Ringelberg for their comments on and suggestions for an early .AsinDonnes poem, the image both tex- version of a larger text from which this project is drawn; Michelle tual and visual—of the woman fishing had ties to Burnham for reading a draft of this article and for her suggestions courtship; fishing functioned as a metaphor for and support; Stephen Carroll for his editorial and rhetorical exper- “ ” tise; and Kathleen Maxwell for her eagle eye. Thanks also go to the women patiently luring menwiththeirlooks author's research assistant, Samantha Nelson, for last-minute fact- and feminine accomplishments, the ultimate goal checking. She is grateful for the comments and encouragement of- being an advantageous, successful marriage.1 In fered by the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript, the assistance and advice of Amy Earls and the Winterthur Portfolio staff, and for the years before women began to make these fishing Susan Newton’s and Carrie Glenn’s help with locating and securing illustrations and the associated permissions. Thanks also go to all 1 Fishing was a staple of pastoral imagery in poetry between who supplied images. This research was partially supported by an “‘ ’ the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. David McMurray, A Rec- SCU College of Arts and Sciences Dean s Grant for Research and ’ ’ reation Which Many Ladies Delight In : Establishing a Tradition by the SCU Provost s Faculty Student Research Assistant Program. of Fisherwomen in Britain and North America Prior to the Mid- B 2015 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Nineteenth Century,” Sport History Review 43,no.2 (November 2012): Inc. All rights reserved. 0084-0416/2015/4901-0001$10.00 152 nn. 40–41. 2 Winterthur Portfolio 49:1 lady embroideries, norms for courtship and mar- the hitherto overlooked significance of the fishing riage had been evolving, a companionate model lady embroideries for women: the changing con- for marriage edging out existing views of it as a so- tours of eighteenth-century courtship practice, fish- cial, political, or economic alliance between fami- ing as one line of recreational pursuit in colonial lies.2 Artifacts such as prints, decorative ceramics, culture, women anglers as depicted in print and and the fishing lady embroideries register and par- material culture (often accompanied by lines of po- ticipate in that change; thus, the fishing woman etry), and the images of women anglers that women should be understood within this context. To date, patiently stitched with strands of wool and silk. Pull- these mid-eighteenth-century embroidered pic- ing threads from print, material, and visual culture tures have been discussed primarily for their allows us to weave a new interpretive frame for these function as a kind of capstone project in an elite embroideries that illuminates how women, in these woman’s education or for their role in the family’s needleworks, transformed preexisting images of presentation of its gentility and fashionable taste.3 women fishing, extending our understanding of This essay takes a different tack, pulling together the politics of courtship in American visual culture. several strands of inquiry in order to illuminate One such embroidery visualizes this courtship metaphor by isolating the figure of the fishing 2 The growing literature on courtship, marriage, and sexuality woman and her suitor. We see a couple, framed in eighteenth-century British America depicts an intricate web of by a pair of trees, in the center of this large embroi- influences on the norms for courtship, marriage, and the changes 1765 1 that took place in these norms over the course of the century. Re- dery stitched by Susan Colesworthy in (fig. ). cently, these investigations have focused on women’s experience Birds, trees, and flowers populate the lush land- in particular. See Carol May Barske, “‘The Lover’s Instructor’: scape. The elegantly dressed gentleman gestures Courtship Advice in Anglo-America, 1640–1830” (PhD diss., Uni- versity of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2011). For changing ideas to his right while paying court to the woman on about the relationship between love and sex in the eighteenth his left. She, finely attired and seated with her back century, see Ruth Bloch, “Changing Conceptions of Sexuality to him, turns her head to listen to his address while and Romance in Eighteenth Century America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., Sexuality in Early America, 60, no. 1 ( January her body faces the fish on her line and the pond 2003): 13–42. For courtship letters and a model of courtship that fills the lower right corner of the picture. Off more nuanced than the old polarity between love and money, to the right behind the woman, partially occluded see Nicole Eustace, “‘The Cornerstone of a Copious Work’: Love and Power in Eighteenth-Century Courtship,” Journal of Social by a tree, a large building sits amid rolling hills, History 34,no.3 (Spring 2001): 517–46; Richard Godbeer, perhaps alluding to domestic life. Colesworthy posi- “Courtship and Sexual Freedom in Eighteenth-Century America,” tioned a basket overflowing with fish at the woman’s in “Sex, Courtship, and Dating,” special issue, OAH Magazine of “ ” History 18, no. 4 ( July 1994): 9–13; Ingrid H. Tague, “Love, Honor, feet: is the fishing lady displaying her bait or her and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Mar- prowess for him? Below the gentleman several dogs riage in the Early Eighteenth-Century,” Journal of British Studies 40, frolic near a reclining stag; does this allude to his 1 2001 76–106 no. (January ): . “hunt” for a wife? Does this genteel interaction in 3 For example, Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Sam- plers and Pictorial Needlework, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1993); nature depict a fantasy of courtship practices at Pamela Parmal, Women’s Work: Embroidery in Colonial Boston (Boston: mid-eighteenth century, a time when they were un- MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2012); Mary der pressure? And what can such iconographical Jaene Edmonds, Samplers and Samplermakers: An American Schoolgirl ’ Art, 1700–1850 (New York: Rizzoli/Los Angeles County Museum cues reveal about women s engagement with the of Art, November 7, 1991–February 2, 1992). The considerable politics of courtship among America’s elite in the body of literature on embroidery sounds this theme repeatedly. eighteenth century? In order to answer these ques- Ring and Parmal, provide, respectively, early and recent examples of this approach. A different tack is taken by Maureen Daly tions, we must first look at the social and material Goggin, “‘An Essamplaire Essai’ on the Rhetoricity of Needlework backdrops for the making and meaning of these Sampler-Making: A Contribution to Theorizing and Historicizing needlework pictures. Rhetorical Praxis,” Rhetoric Review 21, no. 4 (2002): 309–38, which theorizes embroidery as discourse. William Huntting Howell, “Spirits of Emulation: Readers, Samplers, and the Republican Girl, 1787–1810,” American Literature 81, no. 3 (September 2009): 497– Courtship and Matrimony 526, looks at the role of emulation in embroidery pedagogy and citizenship. Jennifer Van Horn examines embroidery instruction as a vehicle for upward mobility in Jennifer Van Horn, “Samplers, During the eighteenth century courtship and mat- Gentility, and the Middling Sort,” Winterthur Portfolio 40,no.4 rimony were key sources of change, for better or (Winter 2005): 219–48.

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