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The Art of Citizenship: Suffrage Literature As Social Pedagogy

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The Art of Citizenship: Suffrage Literature As Social Pedagogy CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt THE ART OF CITIZENSHIP: SUFFRAGE LITERATURE AS SOCIAL PEDAGOGY by Maggie Amelia Rehm Bachelor of Arts, Allegheny College, 1997 Master of Arts, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, 2000 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English: Critical and Cultural Studies University of Pittsburgh 2011 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Maggie Amelia Rehm It was defended on April 1, 2011 and approved by Troy Boone, Associate Professor, English Ronald J. Zboray, Professor, Communication Dissertation Co-Advisor: Paul Kameen, Associate Professor, English Dissertation Co-Advisor: Susan Harris Smith, Professor, English ii Copyright © by Maggie Amelia Rehm 2011 iii THE ART OF CITIZENSHIP: SUFFRAGE LITERATURE AS SOCIAL PEDAGOGY Maggie Amelia Rehm, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2011 The Art of Citizenship examines the largely forgotten literary tradition that emerged as part of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, exploring through these texts and their history the relationship between literature, pedagogy, and social change. It argues that suffrage literature and its performances constituted what I have labeled “social pedagogy,” or pedagogy as social action, a project that included both intentional and unintentional educational aspects. The study focuses on the genres of suffrage literature that could be performed at suffrage meetings and elsewhere (the plays, pageants, poems, and songs) because the claiming of public spaces that occurs in such performances reinforces the lessons about women’s rights and roles to be found in the texts themselves, thus adding another dimension to their pedagogy. It also considers the larger rhetorical context within which this literature existed, examining the forms of criticism suffragists faced and the ways suffrage writers engaged with this criticism. In part, the study is an archival project, a continuation and extension of earlier feminist recovery work that reclaims women’s literary texts and women’s history. It significantly expands the currently known body of suffrage literature, much of which was written and performed by women, by examining many texts that have not at this time been reprinted or collected in anthologies. The study is also an exploration of the ways suffragists understood and theorized gender, performance, and pedagogy, often anticipating the ideas and theories of second and third wave feminists and proponents of critical pedagogy. It argues that in their efforts to gain enfranchisement for iv women, suffrage writers and their writing played a pedagogical as well as an aesthetic role, offering images of female enfranchisement as logical and natural, challenging notions of separate spheres, and generally inviting discourse about women’s rights and roles. In doing so, they negotiated normative gender patterns in order to ensure that their words could find an audience, yet also invited American men and women to consider alternative possibilities for gender identity and expression. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................... viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION: SUFFRAGISTS AS CITIZENS AND PEDAGOGUES ................ 1 1.1 SUFFRAGE LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE: DEFINING AND SITUATING THE STUDY .................................................................................. 12 1.2 THE (IN)DIVISIBILITY OF ART AND PROPAGANDA .................................... 22 1.3 SUFFRAGE LITERATURE AS SOCIAL PEDAGOGY ....................................... 27 2.0 POLITICAL BODIES: SPECTACLE AND PEDAGOGY IN SUFFRAGE THEATER .......................................................................................................................... 39 2.1 THE EMBODIED SIGNATURE: SPECTACLE AS SUFFRAGE STRATEGY .................................................................................... 42 2.2 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERFORMER AND AUDIENCE ................ 51 2.3 MODELING NEW “FASHIONS” – EMBODYING CHANGE ............................ 63 2.4 HAZEL MACKAYE’S SUFFRAGE PAGEANTS ................................................ 72 3.0 SUFFRAGE SONGS AND POEMS AS PUBLIC LITERATURE ............................... 85 3.1 PUBLIC GENRES, FORGOTTEN TEXTS............................................................ 89 3.2 CONSTRUCTIONS OF SELF AND SISTERHOOD IN THE POETRY OF THE SUFFRAGIST ............................................................. 105 3.3 FEMALE HEROES AND A HEROIC SISTERHOOD ........................................ 117 3.4 RECOVERING A SUFFRAGE POETIC: SOME FINAL WORDS .................. 134 4.0 REVOLTING WOMEN: SUFFRAGE LITERATURE AND PUBLIC CENSURE ............................................. 137 4.1 NAVIGATING IDEOLOGY, NEGOTIATING CHANGE .................................. 143 4.2 IMAGE CONTROL: WHO OWNS BEAUTY? .................................................. 149 4.3 FEMALE AGENCY: MONSTROUS OR HEROIC? .......................................... 156 vi 4.4 SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND SEPARATE SPHERES...................................... 164 4.5 THE “TRUE WOMAN” AND HER ADMIRERS: A DIALOGUE IN POETRY .............................................................................. 173 5.0 GENDER LESSONS AND ACCIDENTAL PEDAGOGY IN ANTI-SUFFRAGE DRAMA .......................................................................................... 179 5.1 GENDER LESSONS ............................................................................................. 185 5.2 ACCIDENTAL PEDAGOGY IN ANTI-SUFFRAGE PLAYS ............................ 201 5.3 ANTI-SUFFRAGE ARGUMENTS AS HUMOR IN SUFFRAGE THEATER ................................................................................ 216 6.0 CONCLUSION: THE ART OF CITIZENSHIP AND THE PROMISE OF A PAST ................................................................................ 221 APPENDIX A: A SAMPLING OF SUFFRAGE THEATER PERFORMANCES IN AMERICA................................................................................................................... 228 APPENDIX B: SUFFRAGE PLAYS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA ................................... 230 APPENDIX C: AMBIVALENT OR AMBIGUOUS SUFFRAGE PLAYS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA .......................................................................................... 232 APPENDIX D: ANTI-SUFFRAGE PLAYS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA........................ 233 APPENDIX E: POEMS AND SONGS THAT APPEARED IN THE SUFFRAGIST ....... 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 239 vii PREFACE I would like to express my gratitude to the many individuals and institutions that helped make this project possible. For financial support that enabled me to travel to the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women, I am grateful to have been awarded a Schlesinger Library Dissertation Grant and an award from the University of Pittsburgh Women’s Studies Program’s Research Fund. For their knowledge, interest, and assistance, I am indebted to the helpful librarians at the Schlesinger Library. I am also grateful to have received assistance from a number of librarians in several different locations. In particular, I would like to thank Laurie Cohen at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library, for patiently walking me through some database searches, and Denise Urbanski at the Oregon Health & Science University, for making it possible for me to have full access to academic library sources after I moved away from my home university. For their ongoing mentoring, I am especially grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, all of whom served as careful readers and critics, offering a wealth of advice and information throughout the entire project. I would also like to thank the other colleagues who read one or more chapters and offered thoughtful feedback. These individuals include Robin Clarke, Kathryn Flannery, and the members of my dissertation writing group: Brenda Glascott, Jean Grace, Tara Lockhart, Juli Parrish, and Chris Warnick. Many others shaped my thinking in important ways, too, in seminars and informal conversations. For their daily support and encouragement, I am thankful for the members of my online writing group, whose practice of sending daily progress reports creates both structure and community: Lisa Brush, Kirsten Christensen, Katie Hogan, Linh Hua, Anita McChesney, Sara (Sally) Poor, and Donna Strickland. I am also grateful for the friends who visited libraries I was unable to reach and sent me copies of the archival materials I needed (or who found me others who could): Marie Elia, Michael Marshall, Danielle Stein, and Marie Valigorsky. And I would like to thank Jeff Aziz for providing the music that became my writing “soundtrack.” Finally, for their faith that I could do this and for their patience when I could do nothing else, I would like to thank my family. Their kindnesses are far too many to list, but a few highlights include my grandmother sharing family history with me, my sister Hillary coming all the way from Korea to sing suffrage songs on my birthday, and my sister Emma’s flurry of care packages, postcards, and supportive chats during the final months of revision. Above all, I am grateful to Rajal Cohen, whose encouragement and assistance has
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