Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 Affectionately Yours: Women's Correspondence Networks in Eighteenth- Century British America Wendy Weston McLallen Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES AFFECTIONATELY YOURS: WOMEN’S CORRESPONDENCE NETWORKS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH AMERICA By WENDY WESTON MCLALLEN A dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded Spring Semester, 2007 Copyright © 2007 Wendy Weston McLallen All Rights Reserved The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Wendy Weston McLallen defended on 30 March 2007. _____________________ Dennis D. Moore Professor Directing Dissertation _____________________ Sally Hadden Outside Committee Member _____________________ Leigh Edwards Committee Member _____________________ Karen L. Laughlin Committee Member Approved: _____________________ Nancy Warren, Director of Graduate Studies English Department The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A project such as this one, representing years of classroom study and independent research, does not happen without incurring a number of debts along the way, both personal and professional. I would like to thank the members of my committee for their insightful comments that have allowed me to begin to think more productively about where my work goes from here. Far too many doctoral candidates end their graduate careers as ABD; the fact that I did not is due in part to Dr. Dennis Moore and his encouragement as I shaped the early stages of this project and his willingness to help as I collected resources, drafted chapters, revised arguments, and ultimately prepared for my defense, all from outside the comfort zone of traditional academia. Belle Bush, the head reference librarian at the Nola Brantley Memorial Library, tirelessly processed interlibrary loan requests and helped me work through the snags of doing academic research from a small-town collection. The primary research from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia evidenced in this dissertation was enabled by a Dissertation Research Grant from Florida State University—dollars I stretched by relying on the generosity and hospitality of Karen and John Myers, who never blinked when I, the daughter-in-law they barely knew, simply announced I was coming to stay for a month. That first trip and its Wednesday-night dinners which I will always remember fondly was followed by many others and Karen and John have always helped with the logistics of transportation and, more recently, childcare and have nourished me with good food and outstanding company. I organize the chapters that follow around networks of women, and I am greatly indebted to my own networks, without which these pages would never have been written. Susan Colón, Rhonna Robbins-Sponaas, and Elizabeth Trelenberg became my academic touchstones. They are the ones who commiserated with me about the trials of dissertating with young children at home and the challenges of gathering research materials and maintaining an academic perspective without the resources of a research university. They read drafts, fielded questions, and chimed in with cries of “get to work,” or “atta-girl” whenever necessary. There is simply no way I would have completed this project without the help of Elizabeth VanArsdall, Sarah Archer, and Penny Mussro. Elizabeth VanArsdall became iii “Grandma extraordinaire” and along with GP took on many of the daily joys and challenges of babyhood and then toddlerhood, sometimes for weeks at a stretch, to afford me the time to both write and sleep. Sarah Archer took it upon herself during the long months of deployments to guarantee I was eating more than nuts and berries. Her hours of trusted childcare allowed me to work without worry and her friendly converse energized me; her certainty that I would complete this project encouraged me, especially on the days I most doubted it. Penny Mussro likely had no idea what she was getting into that first evening of home fellowship when the McLallens knocked on her door and she, within hours (if not within moments), decided without even knowing us that we would be family, simply because we had no family nearby. Penny’s home quickly became my home, and I think I may have eaten more meals around her table the past few years than I have around my own. Again and again she selflessly volunteered her and her daughters’ time to help with whatever needed doing and together the Mussro women have swooped in to save the day more often than I can count. Despite the fact that networks of women take center stage in these pages, my most heartfelt thanks must go to the men in my life— first, to Dan who supported beginning this project and finally, to Colin who motivated finishing it. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: ‘There is no Sex in Soul’: The Philadelphia Coterie and the Legacy of Friendship ..................................................................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER TWO: ‘I Wish I could always be on my Guard’: Loyalist Women and the Limits of Sociability..................................................................................................................................... 45 CHAPTER THREE: ‘My heart overfloes with gratitude at the success I have met with’: Elizabeth Murray and her Network of Boston Shopkeepers......................................................................... 58 CHAPTER FOUR: ‘Where do you get your maxims of state?’: Mercy Otis warren, Abigail Adams, and their ‘tribe’ of Women .............................................................................................. 94 CONCLUSION: Leaving a Literary Legacy: Early-American Manuscript Culture and Repositioning the Early-American Novel................................................................................... 118 NOTES........................................................................................................................................ 136 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………...……………………………………………………………….151 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………....161 v ABSTRACT This dissertation examines epistolary manuscripts circulated among networks of women in eighteenth-century British America. The women saved and collected correspondence, copied important letters into commonplace books, and composed entire journals in letter format for family member or close friends. These writings, as they circulated from hand to hand, helped to solidify culturally significant social networks. This dissertation delves into the markedly performative nature of these writings and asks: even though these women writers, ostensibly, did not intend their texts for public consumption, to what extent did those texts provide public stages on which the women could rehearse, control, inscribe, or elide the fluid, yet often conflicting subject positions of the era? This dissertation examines five specific networks of writing women in eighteenth-century British America. Chapter one focuses on the writings of Elizabeth Fergusson, Annis Stockton, Hannah Griffitts, Milcah Moore, and Susannah Wright, the group of writers known as the “Philadelphia coterie,” and uses their letters to establish epistolary patterns that inform my readings of the other networks of women writers—the same patterns that will ultimately influence the earliest epistolary fiction. Chapter two examines the diary of Grace Galloway and the letters of Anne Hulton, two avowedly loyalist women in British America. Chapter three focuses on the life and letters of shopkeeper Elizabeth Murray and her network of women merchants while chapter four examines the letters of the two most historically recognizable women in this study: Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. The networks of women I address in these chapters span multiple generations, and this multi-generational dynamic leaves a legacy of friendship that can help us better understand and locate the belles lettres of British America. However, the writings generated by these networks also leave a literary legacy that allows us to reconsider other writings in other genres, and it is to that endeavor I turn in the conclusion. The conclusion looks at Hannah Foster’s epistolary novels in the context of early-American networks of writing women and uses the women’s manuscripts to reposition the early-American novel. vi INTRODUCTION Sensibility and the Public Sphere G. J. Barker-Benfield has written what has become the authoritative text on the development of a “culture of sensibility,” an outgrowth of the “cult of sensibility” which characterizes much of the literary output of late-eighteenth-century writing in English and in French (xix).1 Benfield maps the historical development of sensibility and traces the ways in which all things sentimental developed cultural cachet in eighteenth-century Britain. Barker-Benfield uses the terms “sensibility” and