EMILY DICKINSON, MATERIAL RHETORIC, and the ETHOS of NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN's POETRY by JUDITH JEANNINE SCHOLES B
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EMILY DICKINSON, MATERIAL RHETORIC, AND THE ETHOS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN’S POETRY by JUDITH JEANNINE SCHOLES B.A. (Hons.), McMaster University, 2003 B.A. (Hons.), McMaster University, 2005 M.A., McMaster University, 2007 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May 2015 © Judith Jeannine Scholes, 2015 Abstract “Emily Dickinson, Material Rhetoric, and the Ethos of Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry” examines the ethos of women’s poetry as it was negotiated through the material rhetoric of mid-nineteenth-century American periodicals, and Emily Dickinson’s strategic alignment with that ethos to paradoxically distance herself from the literary market. As I argue, Dickinson negotiated an enduring marginality that would forestall her entry into public modes of poetic address while she lived, in order to preserve a poetic address that could foster interpersonal affectivity. Establishing the methodological framework for my study, the introduction demonstrates how material rhetoric contributes to the ethos of poetry by defining ethos as emerging from a poetry’s delivery and reception in material contexts of address. Chapter 1 maps the ethos of women’s poetry as it develops in the U.S. between 1830 and 1864, and especially the crucial ground that Civil War newspapers provided for the negotiation of a gendered authorial ethos for women’s poetry. Chapter 2 demonstrates how Dickinson’s poetry was implicated in such negotiations, as her poems were published in her daily newspaper, the Springfield Republican, under literary editor Fidelia Hayward Cooke during the early 1860s. Arguing that this implication transformed her poetic address and prompted decisive action on her part to limit further publication, I then investigate the ethos Dickinson herself negotiated with poetry she addressed to correspondents. Chapter 3 reads Dickinson’s negotiation of an amateur ethos with her correspondent Thomas Wentworth Higginson as a deliberate move to indefinitely defer her entry into the literary market. Chapter 4 maps Dickinson’s practice of sending poetry as, in, or with letters to correspondents, to demonstrate her investment in mobilizing interpersonal affectivity through personal, specific—not public, unspecific—poetic address. This dissertation makes substantial contribution to the field in three ways: it redresses the critical omission of ii materiality in the study of the rhetoric of nineteenth-century American women’s poetry; it extends feminist historiography of women’s rhetoric to include the materiality of poetic address; and it extends the study of Dickinson in context, by situating her among her peers, deeply and inextricably in the material context of mid-nineteenth-century periodical culture. iii Preface This dissertation is original, independent work by the author, Judith Jeannine Scholes. A version of Chapter 2 has been published as “Emily Dickinson and Fidelia Hayward Cooke’s Springfield Republican” in The Emily Dickinson Journal 23.1 (January 2014): 1–31. Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press. iv Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ....................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. viii Dedication .................................................................................................................................. x Introduction: Reading the Rhetoric of Women’s Poetry ........................................................... 1 Rhetoric and the Historicizing of Women’s Poetry .................................................................................. 5 Toward a Material Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry ................................. 14 Chapter 1: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Poetry and the Matter of Ethos ............................ 24 Negotiating Gendered Ethos in Antebellum Literary Culture ............................................................... 30 Professionalizing the Woman Poet in the 1860s ..................................................................................... 43 Women’s Poetry in American Periodicals at Mid-Century .................................................................... 50 The Function of Women’s Poetry in the Drum Beat ................................................................................ 54 Chapter 2: Emily Dickinson and Mrs. F. H. Cooke’s Springfield Republican ......................... 71 The Springfield Republican in the 1860s ..................................................................................................... 77 Offering “The May-Wine” ..................................................................................................................... 90 Reversing “The Sleeping” .................................................................................................................... 108 Chapter 3: Materializing an Amateur Ethos: Dickinson’s Letters to T. W. Higginson ........ 121 Material Rhetoric in the Higginson Letters .......................................................................................... 130 T.W. Higginson’s Discomfort ............................................................................................................... 138 Dickinson’s “Safest Friend” .................................................................................................................. 147 Chapter 4: Affectivity and the Rhetoric of Dickinson’s Addressed Poetry ........................... 169 Poems Sent as Letters............................................................................................................................ 178 Poems Set in Letters .............................................................................................................................. 194 Poems Enclosed with Letters ................................................................................................................ 212 Conclusion: Portrait of Dickinson’s Addressee ..................................................................... 229 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 240 v List of Figures Figure 1.1 Drum Beat 4 March 1864: 1 ...................................................................................................... 58 Figure 1.2 Drum Beat 24 February 1864: 2 ................................................................................................ 62 Figure 1.3 “Flowers,” Drum Beat 2 March 1864: 2 .................................................................................... 68 Figure 2.1 “To Mrs.———, with a Rose,” SR 2 August 1858: 1 ............................................................. 75 Figure 2.2 “Original Poetry,” SR 4 May 1861: 6 ...................................................................................... 91 Figure 2.3 “Original Poetry,” SR 4 May 1861: 8 ...................................................................................... 96 Figure 2.4 “The May-Wine,” SR 4 May 1861: 8 .................................................................................... 100 Figure 2.5 “A feather from the Whippowil,” poem addressed to Samuel Bowles (F 208A; AC 796) ..... 106 Figure 2.6 “Original Poetry,” SR 1 March 1862: 2 ................................................................................. 109 Figure 4.1 “Except the smaller size,” poem addressed to Susan Dickinson. Front (p. 1) and back (p. 4; rotated 180 degrees) of folded sheet of stationery (F 606B; H MS Am 1118.3 [250]) .............................. 189 vi List of Abbreviations F The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. Ed. R. W. Franklin (Cambridge: The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1998). L The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Eds. Thomas Herbert Johnson & Theodora Ward (Cambridge: The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1958). BPL Emily Dickinson Papers, Galatea Collection, Boston Public Library Rare Books and Manuscripts. Manuscripts from this collection will be cited by this abbreviation followed by the catalog number (e.g., 1097.3) OMC Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Eds. Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith (Ashfield: Paris P, 1998). SR The Springfield Republican, Springfield MA. DB The Drum Beat, Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair, Brooklyn NY. Images by permission of The Houghton Library, Harvard University © The President and Fellows of Harvard College. AC Emily Dickinson Collection, Archives & Special Collections, Amherst College. Manuscripts from this collection will be cited by this abbreviation followed by the catalog number (e.g., 769).