Elizabeth Stoddard & the Boundaries of Bourgeois Culture (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

ELIZABETH STODDARD AND THE BOUNDARIES OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE MAJOR LITERARY AUTHORS VOLUME 31 STUDIES IN MAJOR LlTERAR...

Author: Lynn Mahoney

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ELIZABETH STODDARD AND THE BOUNDARIES OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE

MAJOR LITERARY AUTHORS VOLUME 31

STUDIES IN MAJOR LlTERARY AUTHORS OUTSTANDING DlSSERTATIONS VOLUME 31

Edited by William Cain Professor of English Wellesley College

A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

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STUDIES IN MAJOR LITERARY AUTHORS WILLIAM E.CAIN, General Editor Performance of Modern JOYCEAN FRAMES Consciousness Film and the Fiction of James Joyce Sara J.Ford Thomas Burkdall JOSEPH CONRAD AND THE ART OF SACRIFICE The Evolution of the Scapegoat Theme in Joseph Conrad’s Fiction Andrew Mozina TECHNIQUE AND SENSIBILITY IN THE FlCTION AND POETRY OF RAYMOND CARVER Arthur F.Bethea SHELLEY’S TEXTUAL SEDUCTIONSPlotting Utopia in the Erotic and Political Works Samuel Lyndon Gladden “ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE”ZDramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley’s Novels Charlene E.Bunnell “THOUGHTS PAINFULLY INTENSE”Hawthorne and the Invalid Author James N.Mancall SEX THEORIES AND THE SHAPING OF Two MODERNSHemingway and H.D. Deirdre Anne (McVicker) Pettipiece WORD SlGHTlNGSVisual Apparatus and Verbal Reality in Stevens, Bishop and O’Hara Sarah Riggs DELICATE PURSUITDiscretion in Henry James and Edith Wharton Jessica Levine GERTRUDE STEIN AND WALLACE STEVENSThe

LOST ClTYFitzgerald’s NewYorkLauraleigh O’Meara SOCIAL DREAMINGDickens and the Fairy Tale Elaine Ostry PATRIARCHY AND ITS DISCONTENTSSexual Politics in Selected Novels and Stories of Thomas Hardy Joanna Devereux A NEW MATRIX FOR MODERNISMA Study of the Lives and Poetry of Charlotte Mew and Anna Wickham Nelljean McConeghey Rice WHO READS ULYSSES?The Rhetoric of the Joyce Wars and the Common Reader Julie Sloan Brannon NAKED LIBERTY AND THE WORLD OF DESIREElements of Anarchism in the Work of D.H.Lawrence Simon Casey THE MACHINE THAT SINGSModernism, Hart Crane, and the Culture of the Body Gordon Tapper T.S.ELIOT’S CIVILIZED SAVAGEReligious Eroticism and Poetics Laurie J.MacDiarmid THE CARVER CHRONOTOPEInside the Life-World

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of Raymond Carver’s FictionG.P.Lainsbury THIS COMPOSITE VOICEThe Role of W.B.Yeats in James Merrill’s Poetry Mark Bauer IN THE SHADOWS OF DIVINE PERFECTIONDerek Walcott’s Omeros Lance Callahan

ELIZABETH STODDARD AND THE BOUNDARIES OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE Lynn Mahoney

Routledge NewYork & London

Published in 2004 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Copyright © 2004 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mahoney, Lynn. Elizabeth Stoddard and the boundaries of bourgeois culture / by Lynn Mahoney. p. cm.—(Studies in major literary authors ; v. 31) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-96834-8 (alk. paper) l.Stoddard, Elizabeth, 1823–1902—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Literature and society—United States—History—19th century. 3. Women and literature—United States— History—19th century. 4. Social classes—New England—History—19th century. 5. New England—Intellectual life—History—19th century. 6. Middle class in literature. 7. Sex role in literature. II. Title III. Series. PS2934.S3Z77 2003 813′ .4–dc21 2003014637

ISBN 0-203-48405-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57940-2 (Adobe eReader Format)

For my family: Charlie, Caroline and Christopher

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER ONE

Becoming Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard

2

CHAPTER TWO

Female Self-Expression in a Sentimental Age: The Pythoness and the Sentinels of Genteel Literature

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CHAPTER THREE

“I was not allowed to give myself—I was taken”: Passive Women and Feminized Men

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CHAPTER FOUR

“Shall I dare tell the truth about men and women?”: Reconstructing the Victorian Self

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CHAPTER FIVE

Rewriting Region: The Postbellum Celebration of New England

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CONCLUSION

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NOTES

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BlBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

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Acknowledgments

SINCE THE CONCEPTION OF THIS PROJECT I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH CONTINUOUS personal and intellectual support. The graduate faculty and my fellow graduate students at Rutgers University provided a truly stimulating intellectual milieu for an aspiring historian. Jackson Lears, Grace Elizabeth Hale, and Eliza McFeely shared my early excitement over Elizabeth Stoddard, and without their early support this might never have been completed. Dee Garrison, Jan Lewis, and Myra Jehlen contributed in a variety ways at different points and encouraged me to look at Stoddard from different vantage points. More recently, my colleagues at Purchase College, SUNY, particularly Louise Yelin, Lee Schlesinger, and Elise Lemire, have shared their professional expertise and time with me. The School of Humanities and the Women’s Studies Board offered me opportunities to share my work publicly and I have benefited from the insightful comments of many colleagues. My students, particularly those in my courses on the history of feminism and the cultural construction of gender, force me to always look anew at issues and topics that I have studied for years. I continuously benefit from their fresh ideas and smart questions. I would like to acknowledge James Matlack’s incredible generosity in sharing with me the research notes he collected for his dissertation on Stoddard, “The Literary Career of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard.” His notes, as well as his meticulously researched project, provided me with a critical starting point and directed me toward important sources. His work convinced me early on that Stoddard truly was a fascinating woman. Librarians and archivists at many institutions have helped me tremendously. I would like to note in particular the courtesy and professional help I received from the librarians and archivists at the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Public Library, Colby College, Columbia University, Harvard University, the Library of Congress, Middlebury College, and the New York Public Library. Sandra Stelts and the staff of the Rare Book and Manuscript Room at Pennsylvania State University graciously shared their time and resources, and later diligently worked, under trying circumstances, to share a copy of Philip Shelley’s “The Poets and the Pythoness” with me. On a personal note, my family has been instrumental in seeing this project through to its completion. Doug and Lotta Mahoney, Eileen Mahoney, Kelly

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Mahoney, Michael Mahoney, Chris Mahoney, and Erik Jaffe have provided me with valuable support. While my mother passed away before I began graduate school, Lily Ponce de Leon has done as much for me as any mother could have. For their financial and emotional support, I am truly grateful. My greatest debt is to my husband and children. Caroline and Christopher inspire me daily. They good-naturedly interrupted a family vacation on Long Island to wander the streets of Sag Harbor, the site of many a Stoddard vacation. And they gamely gave up a morning at the beach to help search a local cemetery for the Stoddard graves—drawing the line only when their mother wanted to take a photograph. Their good humor and enthusiasm for learning and for new experiences amazes and impresses me daily. My husband, Charles Ponce de Leon, has supported me in all the usual ways and more. His dedication to his own scholarship, as well as to his students, has furnished me with a model of excellence to which I will always aspire, and his knowledge of American cultural history has provided me with an invaluable resource. For all this and more, I thank him.

Introduction

I know of no prototype of Mrs. Stoddard—this singular, woman… Brilliant and fascinating, she needed neither beauty nor youth, her power was so much beyond such aids. On every variety of subject she talked with originality and ready wit; with impassioned speech expressing an individuality and insight most unusual and rare.1 ILLIAN WOODMAN ALDRICH WAS NOT ALONE IN HER VIVID MEMORIES OF THE nineteenth-century novelist Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard. William Dean owells, among others, remembered fondly his early visits to the Stoddard salon—generally considered, along with Pfaff’s and the studio building on Tenth Street, to be the center of literary life in mid-century New York. Looking back over the field of nineteenth-century literary figures, Howells was particularly struck by the story of Stoddard’s career. Observing her great ability and limited success, he suggested it was a “peculiar fate” that would make “the scheme of a pretty study in the history of literature.” Howells set the context for subsequent studies of her literary career, locating Stoddard in a transitionary moment within American literature. Her obscurity, he believed, resulted from the “foretaste of realism” her “tales and novels” evoked—a taste which was “too strange for the palate of their day, and is now too familiar.” Applauding her iconoclasm, he observed: “In a time when most of us had to write like Tennyson, or Longfellow, or Browning, she never would write like anyone but herself.”2 As Howells implicitly recognized, writing like oneself was not an easy task in mid-nineteenth-century America. For Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard, it would prove to be a long and uneven process. Elizabeth Barstow, the daughter of a New England ship builder, moved to New York City in the early 1850s, hoping to improve herself through contact with New York’s literary and cultural greats. She soon became acquainted with an emerging poet, Richard Henry Stoddard, and, following their marriage, became an intimate of his select circle of poets, writers, and artists. This group, which included the travel-writer Bayard Taylor, the playwright George Henry Boker, the editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and the literary critic Edmund Clarence Stedman, exercised considerable influence on the fledgling author from Massachusetts.

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Born in New England, Richard Stoddard moved to New York City as a child in 1835. He attended school until the age of 15, and, after a succession of jobs, found work as a blacksmith. His true passion, however, lay in poetry. Working at a foundry during the day, he read voraciously at night and published his first poem in 1843. In 1848, at the offices of the Union Magazine, Richard met another aspiring poet, Bayard Taylor. Taylor was best known for his travel writing; his first volume, Views A-foot appeared in 1846 and was widely read. Taylor introduced Richard Stoddard to yet another young poet, George Henry Boker. Like Taylor, Boker would achieve success in another medium—writing for the theater. In the late 1840s, the three were confident they were on the brink of success. They anticipated that their work would change the face of American poetry forever.3 Enthusiastically crafting poetry and penning literary criticism, Richard Stoddard, Taylor and Boker formed the center of a literary movement historian John Tomsich identified as the "genteel endeavor." They were joined later by Stedman, Aldrich, and editors Richard Watson Gilder and George W.Curtis. Dismissed by twentieth-century critics as banal, the genteel tradition, as embodied by this group, emerged as something quite different—a potentially radical literary movement. Their early works borrowed heavily from European romantic themes, which they adapted to an American context. Idealistic and yearning for liberation, Richard Stoddard and his friends hoped to unshackle American poetry from the moralism of the Boston Brahmins and promote poetry as a form of truth and beauty. And, like other Victorians, they feared the increasing pervasiveness of commercial values in cultural and social life. Art, as an expression of an ideal, existed for its own sake and not for any explicitly didactic purpose. The emancipatory impulse within their literature, however, foundered on the specter of social upheaval, particularly in the wake of the American Civil War, and on its own internal contradictions. Recognizing the potential subversiveness of their endeavor, Stedman, in particular, "was torn by conflicting impulses to assert romanticism and restrain it." Stedman and his comrades advocated self-expression, but feared its excesses. By the 1870s, the revolutionary promise of the genteel endeavor 's project of liberation had dwindled into a defense of imagined antebellum ideals. Initially "romantic rebels," Richard Stoddard and his colleagues became instead "apostles of culture." It was in this volatile context Elizabeth Stoddard struggled to create her own authorial voice.4 Inspired by the romantic idealism of the genteel endeavor, Elizabeth studied poetry and prose, composing in the 1850s several short stories and poems, as well as writing a regular column for a San Francisco newspaper. Throughout this decade she strove to create her own authorial style amidst the more prominent expressions of her male companions. Stoddard found her husband and his friends to be a source of both inspiration and frustration; their romantic idealism fueled her fiery prose, but their fears of unrestrained self-expression disheartened her. She labored to find her own way. She was most drawn to the radical possibilities

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romanticism proffered, in particular the subversive potential of self-expression, especially female self-expression. Adapting the romantic objective to women, she composed prose that explored the possibilities open to bourgeois women at mid-century if they dared articulate their desires. Stoddard rejected representations of passionless women sacrificing their happiness for the sake of others. Her heroines challenge prevailing paradigms of sentimental womanhood. They embrace their sexuality, explore the limits of their world, and, despite flouting convention, achieve happiness. In Stoddard’s fiction, women who fail to challenge the boundaries of their culture are doomed to unhappy, unfulfilled lives.5 Stoddard’s earliest poems and short stories earned the praise of her husband and the men she most admired—Taylor, Boker, and Stedman. As her prose matured, however, and her heroines became more powerful and more assertive, the early enthusiasm of these men, particularly Taylor, turned into fear and resentment. At best, her fiction made them uneasy; at worst, it enraged and terrified them. Like Margaret Fuller a generation earlier, Stoddard adopted a masculine model of self-development to feminist ends, articulating a vision of selfhood for women that was both feminine and masculine. She promoted selfexpression at the expense of selfdiscipline and challenged dominant nineteenthcentury ideals of womanhood, calling into question some of the founding tenets of bourgeois culture.6 As her husband and his colleagues created increasingly conservative texts, aimed at preserving antebellum idealism in the face of industrial change, Stoddard honed her critique of American womanhood, advocating a wholescale assault on the nineteenth-century cult of true womanhood. She soon found herself, again like Fuller, an object of admiration and horror. Studying verse at her husband’s side in the early 1850s, in awe of his ambition and talent, Stoddard foresaw little of the conflict which lay in her future. Instead she anticipated a future of possibilities as she embraced the radical potential of romanticism and set about redefining American selfhood. Shortly after the publication of her first novel, The Morgesons, in 1862, she became aware of the tumultuous path she had chosen. Bayard Taylor, while pleased with Stoddard’s regionalist descriptions of minor female characters, vehemently disliked Stoddard’s heroine, Cassandra Morgeson, and was “glad” only at the end when the heroine was “married and out of the way.” Taylor found Stoddard’s fiction profoundly disturbing. He wrote his own novel later affirming the gender ideals Stoddard had attacked in The Morgesons. Taylor’s novel, Hannah Thurston, published two years later in 1864, reinscribed the unsettling implications of Cassandra’s sexu al maturity into a tale about the domestification of a strong-minded woman by a cosmopolitan male, modeled on Taylor himself. Where Stoddard’s novel concludes uneasily upon Cassandra’s marriage, Taylor’s novel ends with the triumphant births of Hannah’s son and a fulfilled and domesticated Hannah. Taylor’s fiction did not inflame Stoddard as hers aroused

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him, but she found little to praise in his novel. Years later, she remembered,“… I could not tell him that I thought he had succeeded in a novel.”7 Despite Taylor’s objections and the criticisms of reviewers, Stoddard persevered and continued to write fiction challenging representations of bourgeois women as passionless and self-sacrificing. Her later novels disturbed friends and readers even more. In Two Men and Temple House, she looked at the ways in which cultural and social institutions affected masculine development, highlighting in particular the imprisoning power of family inheritance. Autonomous individualism, she concluded, was as much an illusion for men as it was for women. After the release of her second novel, Two Men, Taylor dismissed Stoddard as “hopelessly diseased, mentally and morally.” In 1868, he read Stoddard’s last novel and wrote to their mutual friend Stedman: “I have read ‘Temple House.’ I see that Lizzie’s case is hopeless.” While contemporary observers, particularly George Boker, ascribed Stoddard’s erratic relationship with Taylor to her intemperate behavior and her outspokenness, Stoddard understood their disagreements had deeper roots. She believed the source of their conflict lay in a difference of literary opinion stemming from her criticisms of Hannah Thurston. But her quarrel with Taylor was more significant than even she realized.8 Within the context of nineteenth-century debates over bourgeois womanhood, their disagreements take on heightened meaning. For decades, historians have studied and refined Barbara Welter’s pathbreaking work on nineteenth-century women. Moving from studies of the confining nature of bourgeois womanhood to celebrations of women’s culture, historians and scholars from other disciplines have illuminated the disparate images of women nineteenth-century Americans created. More recently scholarly attention has been directed toward the social construction of womanhood as a process that women both participated in and were subjected to, yielding more nuanced understandings of true womanhood and separate spheres as a class-specific ideology which alternately empowered women and circumscribed their lives. The very ambiguity of this ideology, according to Linda Kerber, explains its tremendous appeal to nineteenth-century Americans, as well as the disparate understandings scholars have of nineteenthcentury gender identities. Literary scholars have discovered much the same thing in their work on nineteenth-century American literature: where Ann Douglas saw complicity and submission, Jane Tompkins unearthed subversion and empowerment. The either/or nature of the Tompkins-Douglas debate has obscured the extent to which nineteenth-century American women actively chose one identity over the other. Most, including Elizabeth Stoddard, constructed their identities on a continuum which mixed submission and rebellion. Their lives were a process of negotiation—with their culture, with their friends and family, and with themselves.9 While the history of patriarchy dates back over four thousand years, the midnineteenth century, according to Gerda Lerner, Linda Kerber, and others, was a pivotal moment in the history of capitalist social relations. The “…

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dramatic force of capitalist pressures on women’s sphere” combined with the destabilizing effects of postrevolutionary republicanism forcing middle-class Americans to confront and redefine the relationship of women to the public sphere, just as American men had altered their public roles during the American Revolution. Starting in the mid-eighteenth-century, Americans witnessed tremendous change, particularly in and around cities. Industrialization and the commercialization of agriculture transformed patterns of work and social life. Time-driven work routines altered work experiences for workers and entrepreneurs alike and created ever-finer distinctions between manual and salaried employees. Concomitant changes in family structure and gender roles fostered even greater class differentiation. For the rapidly expanding urban middle class, the first half of the nineteenth-century was a time of great optimism and fear—opportunity was coupled with insecurity. Questions about identity and selfconstruction abounded alongside fears of decay and disorder.10 In this context, competing definitions of masculinity and femininity took on heightened significance, and Stoddard’s contest with Taylor, as well as her disagreements with prominent architects of women’s sphere (Fanny Fern, E.D. E.N. Southworth, and Caroline Dall, for example), appeared much more dramatic.11 Debates about the nature of Victorian womanhood were part of an even larger argument about the construction of bourgeois selfhood. Stoddard and Taylor, along with other nineteenth-century intellectuals, participated in a redefinition of American selfhood, elevating the imagination and intuition over the faculty of reason and, in Stoddard’s case, reconfiguring the role of women in American culture. In Making the American Self, Daniel Walker Howe identifies a key shift in late-eighteenth-century philosophies of selfhood. American intellectuals, borrowing from Enlightenment thought, reordered their understanding of human nature. Long concerned with fears of corruption and self-definition, they arrived at a new synthesis in the nineteenth century: one which balanced the need for self-development with the need for moral and social order. While they continued to elevate reason over passion, men such as Horace Bushnell and Abraham Lincoln emphasized the need for balance. In Victorian America, self-development, within the parameters of a moral society, became a duty and a cornerstone of bourgeois identity.12 Romantics from Emerson to Fuller modified this philosophy to suit their own emphasis on emotions and transformed nineteenth-century depictions of selfdevelopment into celebrations of human potential. Life was redefined as a process of perpetual self-construction, of which self-expression was a crucial component. Margaret Fuller applied this romantic objective to feminist ends. In her hands, self-expression took precedence over self-discipline, and selfrealization, a potentially subversive faith in nineteenth-century bourgeois America, became an important achievement for men and women. According to historian Susan Phinney Conrad, Fuller’s “moral romanticism” relocated “the source of value and order from the external world to the perceiving self” and allowed her to construct a heroic model of female development—one that looked

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much like Emerson’s masculine archetype. Challenging and redefining prevailing definitions of femininity, Fuller won the admiration of some and the fear and hostility of a great many others.13 Beginning her career several years after Fuller’s premature death, Elizabeth Stoddard benefited from her innovative work in a number of ways. Stoddard left no direct evidence proving she read Fuller’s writings, but she left a trail of clues which suggest her familiarity, at least, with the European philosophers and writers who had so profoundly influenced Fuller. Stoddard rejected Beecheresque arguments extolling female exceptionalism. She, like Fuller, adapted masculine models of romantic selfhood for female self-development. Stoddard embraced the romantic ideal of the artist as alienated and marginalized, and drew on American romantic thought to reconstruct literary representations of womanhood. She created rebellious heroines and cast herself as a misunderstood artist, but remained deeply ambivalent about the culture she critiqued in her fiction. Disgusted with prevailing models of virtuous womanhood, she religiously subscribed to other bourgeois values, dressing her son in the finest clothes, complaining incessantly about her servant troubles, and struggling to maintain the appearance of affluence on her husband’s moderate income. Stoddard’s critique of patriarchal gender relations never extended to working women, whom she saw as either difficult domestics or loyal servants. Though her feminism was limited by her classist assumptions, her exploration of the outermost edges of middle-class respectability demonstrated the parameters and the fluidity of Victorian culture, ultimately enriching along the way the very culture she set out to critique.14 An integral part of the development of capitalism, the formation of the bourgeoisie in the U.S. and Europe has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention. Historians of nineteenth-century American middle-class life have constructed and reconstructed the boundaries of bourgeois culture, relying, until recently, on representations of it as monolithic and static. According to this paradigm, middleclass Americans exercised control over print culture and composed written texts, fictional and nonfictional, which promoted bourgeois cultural ideals of duty and virtue, industry, self-denial, and self-improvement. Middle-class literature, characterized by moral certitudes and a faith in human perfectibility, was profoundly didactic. It sought to transmit bourgeois values of self-control and morality to everwidening circles of people. Building on this historiographical model, proponents of modernism have been quick to dismiss American Victorianism as static, predictable, and based, in the words of Daniel Singal, on a “unified and fixed set of truths about all aspects of life.”15 More recent scholarship, however, suggests that Victorian culture was not as narrow as its critics portrayed it to be. Was it ever as “unified” or “fixed” as its detractors believed? Or was it constantly shifting—its representations part of a perpetual process of negotiation? For some historians, James Russell Lowell represented the quintessential American Victorian. As editor of middle-class literary journals, he exercised a significant amount of cultural authority,

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determining, in many cases, standards of respectable literature. Lowell also happened to be one of Elizabeth Stoddard’s earliest mentors. Reviewing one of her first short stories for publication in the Atlantic Monthly, Lowell praised Stoddard’s fiction, but cautioned her against “going near the edge.” Stoddard quickly revised her story, making it respectable enough to satisfy the famous editor. “My Own Story,” however, still contained hints of the untempered Stoddard and pointed to her future fictional concerns—self-expression and the liberation of female sexuality. Lowell’s revision of Stoddard’s tale demonstrated the limited boundaries of the bourgeois cult of respectability, but his publication of a still provocative story—as well as his later praise of the more rebellious Cassandra Morgeson—suggests that Victorianism may not have been quite as restrictive as historians previously thought.16 In letters to friends, Stoddard defended her heroines from Lowell’s criticisms neither with assertions of principle nor with declarations about the rights of women, but with protestations based on experience. American women, she asserted, were not like the artificial heroines of prescriptive literature, but were more like the passionate and introspective heroines of her own fiction. Stoddard saw nineteenth-century Americans as more sexual, more turbulent, and more fiery than they were later portrayed, an interpretation contemporary scholars increasingly share. Ridden with ambivalence and aware, to a certain extent, of her own eccentricities, Stoddard’s lifelong dialogue with bourgeois cultural ideals and her struggle to create a gender-neutral model of self-development suggest much about the ambiguities upon which middle-class Americans attempted to construct their personal and cultural identities. In 1871, midway through her career, Stoddard concluded an essay in Appleton’s Journal with a playful allusion to the multifaceted nature of bourgeois identity. “What memoir, anecdote, letter, gossip, reveals more than some man’s many-sided existence? [sic]” she asked her readers. “For my part,” she announced, I believe I shall die an impenetrable secret, even if I should be subjected to the visits of newspaper reporters, desiring to describe my warts and my wens. By broadening studies of American Victorian culture to include alternative writers such as Stoddard, the shifting boundaries of bourgeois culture come into better focus, bringing into relief the fluidity and openness that characterized antebellum America, illuminating yet more of its secrets.17

ELIZABETH STODDARD AND THE BOUNDARIES OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE

Chapter One Becoming Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard

FROM 1854 TO 1858 SAN FRANCISCANS ENJOYED SATIRICAL LETTERS ABOUT New York City from the Daily Alta California’s “Lady Correspondent.” Witty and opinionated, the “Lady Correspondent” advertised her varied literary talents: Has no objection to writing bogus book notices for publishers…is perfectly willing to write immoral articles for Sunday papers…would also sit as a ‘notorious criminal’ for a pictorial, and write a memoir to suit the expression of countenance. She assured her readers that she would happily “appear in any desired medium.” But, of course, “all this must be paid for in advance.” The chameleon-like author of this advertisement was Elizabeth Stoddard, a young New York writer on the verge of starting her career as a novelist. Beneath her amusing description of her abilities lay a more significant enterprise for Stoddard—the creation of her own authorial voice. Throughout the 1850s she experimented with a number of literary forms, including poetry, short sketches, and a bimonthly newspaper column. In 1862 Stoddard achieved her goal. Declaring “I am an AUTHOR,” she published her first novel, The Morgesons. This chapter describes the first part of Stoddard’s self-creation as an author and looks at how a bright young woman from New England became Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard the novelist.1 In her letters to the Alta, Stoddard often satirized the maritime community of her childhood—Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. “Its inhabitants catch fish, eat fish, and spread fish on the sterile land,” she wrote in 1855, “and, if I am not mistaken, clothe [sic] themselves in fish skin.” “They are in fact a scaly set,” Stoddard concluded. She described Mattapoisett’s “saline” and “puritanic flavor.” But Stoddard conceded that “truth and beauty” could be found there, particularly in the sea. “Unpitying” as the sea was, she was “…drawn to it by a resistless fascination.” Stoddard saw a connection between the sea and her self. “If it be true that we are in conformity with the configuration of the country and climate in which we are born,” she told her readers, then “I arrive at the conclusion that I am full of dents.” Describing herself as a “queer cove,” Stoddard explicitly

BECOMING ELIZABETH BARSTOW STODDARD 3

linked the development of her peculiar self with her childhood experiences in maritime Massachusetts. Any understanding of Elizabeth Stoddard then must start with Elizabeth Drew Barstow and the Mattapoisett of her childhood.2 Mattapoisett shared a similar pattern of development with other better-known port towns in maritime Massachusetts. A distinct part of the town of Rochester throughout the nineteenth-century, Mattapoisett’s location as a seaport caused it to flourish and overshadow the traditional and agricultural town center of Rochester. Mattapoisett prospered first through sea trade and then as a center of shipbuilding. As the American whaling industry expanded, it became one of the most prominent shipbuilding communities in southeastern Massachusetts. For several decades Mattapoisett’s production of whaling ships exceeded any other port town in the world. Mattapoisett shared the success of the American whaling industry, and it suffered with its decline. Elizabeth’s childhood memories of a thriving whaling community would later be contrasted with images of Mattapoisett as decayed and spent.3 Prominent among Mattapoisett shipbuilders was the Barstow family. Elizabeth’s great-grandfather settled in Mattapoisett in 1760 and quickly made a name for himself as a shipbuilder. Not until her father, Wilson Barstow, took over the firm in the 1820s, however, did the family enjoy sustained prosperity. A decade after his marriage to Betsey S. Drew, Barstow expanded the family business and became the first whaling agent in Mattapoisett. The 1830s and 1840s were prosperous years for the Barstows. But financing whaling expeditions was both profitable and economically insecure. Lost ships and the eventual decline of the whaling industry forced Barstow to declare bankruptcy three times. Following the last crisis in 1857, the Barstow family never regained their former prosperity. Born in 1823, Elizabeth was the eldest of the five Barstow children who survived to adulthood. Her father’s business, its unpredictability, and her family’s high social position affected her girlhood in several ways. Frequent storms and shipwrecks impressed upon her the sea’s power and unpredictability. Rather than being repelled by this, Elizabeth was drawn to the sea’s ferocity. In the Barstow family home, she insisted that her bedroom window face the sea. Her younger sister Jane happily acquiesced—she preferred her room face inland.4 Even more than the sea, the religious climate of Mattapoisett left its imprint on the future author. Raised a Congregationalist, Elizabeth was repelled by the rigid Calvinist doctrines and pervasive moralism that dominated the religious community of her childhood. In The Morgesons she described the fictional Mattapoisett as “lonely, evangelical, primitive.” The one light in all this for the young Elizabeth was Dr. Thomas Robbins, the town’s minister from 1831 to 1844. Dr. Robbins and his vast library figured importantly in her memories of her early education. Despite her relationship with Dr. Robbins, she remained unaffected by the revival that swept through Mattapoisett in 1834. Elizabeth completely rejected the church when church members replaced Dr. Robbins with an unreconstructed Calvinist minister, Isaiah Thacher. After leaving Mattapoisett

4 ELIZABETH STODDARD AND THE BOUNDARIES OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE

in the 1850s, she never joined a church again. Her contempt for the culture of Calvinism eventually found its way into much of her prose. She was particularly concerned with the effects of Puritan patriarchy and oppressive morality on the development of the female self.5 In his memoirs Richard Stoddard, her future husband, described the young Elizabeth Barstow as “one of those irrepressible girls born in staid Puritan families” who puzzled their parents and were always “misunderstood.” Her “spirits were high, and her disposition wilful,” he recalled. Giving life to the image of girlhood Elizabeth Stoddard created in her fiction, Richard Stoddard continued his description of the young Elizabeth: The despair of her beautiful mother, who could not help being amused by her vagaries, she was the pride of her good-natured father.... She was not approved of by her schoolmates, for she would not learn; besides, she was very handsome. Whether or not this image accurately represented Stoddard’s childhood, it became an important basis for her literary heroines.6 Elizabeth Barstow’s world changed dramatically in the late 1840s. Stunned by the successive deaths of her beloved sister Jane and her mother, she perceived her girlhood as over. Though already in her twenties, Elizabeth mourned the passing of her Mattapoisett childhood. “I long for a happy home,” she confided to a friend in 1853, “Mother took what remained of home with her when she died.” She also blamed the subsequent financial decline of the Barstows on her mother ‘s death. “Since poor mother died it seems also as if we have lived in a state of ruin,” she lamented. Yet the death of Betsey Drew Barstow was oddly liberating for Elizabeth. The demise of her domestic setting encouraged, perhaps even forced, the young woman to travel and eventually relocate. Early trips to New York City were interspersed with trips to Boston and Portland, Maine. On two of these trips in 1851 Elizabeth Barstow met two people who would figure importantly in her future development as a writer—Margaret Sweat and Richard Stoddard.7 In the fall of 1851 Elizabeth visited Portland and made the acquaintance of Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat, daughter of a locally prominent family and wife of a prosperous lawyer and politician. Well-to-do and well educated, Sweat shared Elizabeth Barstow’s aesthetic interests and was herself an aspiring writer. In 1851 the two women began a rich correspondence which lasted four years. In her letters Elizabeth explored her earliest ideas of love and marriage, literature and authorship, and gender and creativity. Echoing the concerns of European Romantic writers, her early letters were obsessed with alienation, individualism, and passion—themes Elizabeth Stoddard would explore more fully in her later fiction.8 Elizabeth believed she was disclosing her most inner self to Margaret Sweat and hoped that Sweat was doing the same in her notes. “I wish that I could know


your inner life,” she wrote to Margaret early on in their friendship. Second only to wishes that they could be together, this desire for total disclosure pervaded her correspondence with Margaret. Yet she also feared what would be revealed: “It seems to me that back of all our belongings we have a terrible self.” Several weeks later Elizabeth picked up this theme again. “You will find perhaps little benefit and finally little pleasure in your knowledge of me,” she warned Margaret, “I am a fatal person to those who love me.” Elizabeth trusted Margaret would be able to forgive her all her faults.9 Elizabeth disclosed bits and pieces of her “turbulent” nature in every letter. She depicted herself as passionate, chaotic, and strong-willed. “Knowing me only from my letters you would picture me, red faced, black eyed” and with a “quick tongue,” she jokingly told Margaret later in their friendship. Elizabeth feared her beloved friend would truly get the wrong impression. “You get the surf, the roan,” she allowed, “but I never send you a picture of a serene, deep ocean.” She hoped Margaret realized that she was “not all ‘sound and fury signifying nothing.'" To remedy this, Stoddard spent a considerable amount of time revealing the depths of her nature. “I am passionate,” she confided in a very early letter. Her passion was coupled with an “indomitable” self-possession; she planned to “live intensely, and have calmness promised” her. A month later, she disclosed: “I am shaping my destiny with a relentless will.”10 The young Elizabeth expressed a yearning for calm, but she foresaw a life of strong emotions and discontent for herself: “I have got this feeling that I am to be a wanderer to life’s end, everything in my life is unrest.” Absorbing much of what she read by and about European Romantic authors, Elizabeth consciously constructed an image of herself as alienated and unconventional. “I am afraid that I shall always be one of those souls created to buffet the storms of life,” she acknowledged. Elizabeth consistently set herself up as different from other women. In June of 1852 she admitted: “I have stronger passionate powers than most women.” As Elizabeth immersed herself in reading and traveling, she increasingly felt distanced from her girlhood life in Massachusetts. She visited Mattapoisett in 1852 and wrote Margaret that it pained her to “fit myself into my place here.” Intent upon her own sense of alienation, Elizabeth was startled by Margaret‘s feelings of estrangement. She confessed that she found it “strange” that Margaret felt “as much out of place” in Portland as Elizabeth felt in Mattapoisett. Still, she saw herself as somehow more alienated. “You may pity me,” she instructed her friend, “for I am not like other women, yet a woman.”11 To assuage her angst Elizabeth turned to reading: “All I can hope to attain in repose is a certain intellectual contentment.” Inspired by the writings of Emerson on “self-culture,” she devoted herself to absorbing European literature and culture, reading, among others, Schiller and Goethe. She soon became frustrated again, complaining to Margaret: “Is it not most difficult to find an intellectual woman sympathiser [sic]?” She was “nigh disgusted with the search.” In July 1852 Elizabeth expressed her frustrations to her close friend and hinted at her own literary ambitions:


I have all your aspirations and all your discouragements…it is a labor to have aspirations, we must endeavour to reach up to them. Early on Elizabeth knew she wanted more for herself than the roles of wife and mother. After a visit from a male cousin who believed “in the vocation of woman that she may never dare to be else,” she recognized that the achievement of female ambition would be a “struggle,” and asked Margaret: “What is there for such women as you and me?” Marriage was clearly one obstacle in an ambitious woman’s path. “What are you married for!” Elizabeth wailed to her friend. She wished that Margaret had “no husband…so that we could be partners in divers concerns.” Despite these proclamations, Elizabeth was unsure exactly what role she did want. Her “destiny,” she believed, was “vaguely shaped yet much desired.” In search of this destiny and intellectual companionship she immersed herself in the literary culture of New York City.12 In the late 1840s and 1850s, Richard Stoddard would later remember, New York City had a “perceptible flavour of literature in its society.” Most likely living in New York with one of her brothers, Elizabeth Barstow found this flavor appealing. Literary salons were a crucial element of New York’s literary culture. Both Richard and Elizabeth frequented Ann Lynch’s salon during their early days in New York City. Lynch’s salon, like other nineteenth-century literary and cultural movements, was part of a larger effort to create an autonomous literary culture divorced from the dominant commercial culture of the city. Later in life Elizabeth remembered her early visits to Anne Lynch’s literary salon on Ninth Street. One Saturday evening an unnamed New York friend brought Elizabeth Barstow to the Lynch salon as a “looker-on of the literary, artistic, musical creators, such as could not be seen elsewhere.” In the years following she would meet here “great generals, actors, artists, musicians, and travelers,” as well as the literary lionesses and lions who made those “evenings celebrated.” Visitors to the Lynch apartment included William Cullen Bryant, Horace Greeley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, and Edwin Booth. While the Lynch salon, and others that emerged later, attracted many of the most famous nineteenth-century Americans, Elizabeth recalled it held no appeal for New York’s commercial elite who “may have read books,” but ignored writers. In the late 1840s a group of emerging poets began frequenting the Lynch salon, and Elizabeth Barstow soon made the acquaintance of one whose work she had admired in the New York Albion—Richard Henry Stoddard.13 Richard Stoddard was also the product of a Massachusetts maritime community. His father, a seaman, was lost at sea in 1827 when the future poet was only two. After several years of depending on family and struggling in near poverty, his mother married another seaman, James Gallon, and the new family moved to New York City in 1835. Richard engaged in a variety of trades and found work as an iron-molder in 1843. Yearning to be a poet, he resented working at the foundry and was miserable. The struggling poet began publishing poems in the early 1840s in literary journals such as The Knickerbocker and


Union Magazine. Richard met fellow poet Bayard Taylor in 1848, and they joined literary forces, hoping to invent a distinctive American poetic tradition. Inspired by English Romanticism, they sought to liberate American poetry from the moralism of reigning New England poets. They rejected New England’s “poetry of conviction” and perceived themselves as “defenders of ideality.” Their poetry would embrace all that was ideal and remove art from the commercial and moral worlds of bourgeois America. Full of bravado and optimism, Bayard Taylor wrote to George Henry Boker: “…if we…don’t do something great in ten years, we ought to be damned to an immortality of ‘appendix.’” In 1849 Richard Stoddard quit the foundry to devote himself to poetry. Scraping by on money he earned by publishing poems and pieces of criticism, he released his first volume of poetry, Poems, in October of 1851.14 Shortly before the publication of his book of verse, Richard Stoddard met Elizabeth Barstow. It was not love at first sight. Richard Stoddard remembered: Miss Barstow and I were not apparently suited to each other. I was a penniless young man…good-looking,…but ill-dressed,…and with no manners to speak of. His memories of Elizabeth Barstow were no more rosy. Though “she was… handsome,” he recalled, she “had a sharp tongue and off-hand ways” and a “determination of her own.” They shared, however, a “love of books.” While little evidence of their early courtship remains, the two had clearly overcome their initial resistance by the summer of 1851 when Richard visited Elizabeth at her family home in Mattapoisett. In her descriptions of their courtship Elizabeth mixed expressions of joy with apprehension about the future. Richard worried that his financial situation precluded marriage; Elizabeth feared the threat marriage posed to her individuality. Several months after meeting Richard, Elizabeth summarized her anxieties:15 I possess the quality of love for a man possessing a beautiful soul… Yet my self-possession is indomitable. I am my own. On 4 June 1852 she revealed to Margaret Sweat: “It is my rare fortune to be wonderfully loved, loved beyond all account.” She kept Sweat apprised of Richard Stoddard’s published poems and glowingly quoted any praise she read of his work. But during the following weeks, as her relationship with Richard developed, Elizabeth increasingly expressed feelings of unrest, dissatisfaction, and confusion. “Oh I am so restless, wandering, and uncertain, I am miserable,” she wailed to Sweat in August.16 Though she reveled in the acquisition of an intellectual soulmate, Elizabeth’s anxieties over love mounted. “I must tell you,” she disclosed to Margaret Sweat, “Stoddard belongs to me, heart and body.” But, she continued, “I am not his.” Elizabeth’s reluctance to “belong” to Richard Stoddard, despite his surrender to


her, reflected both her strong “self-possession” and her uncertainty about marriage. Even more suggestive of Elizabeth’s ambivalence towards marriage was her subsequent failure to announce her wedding—even to Margaret Sweat. Writing to Margaret on December 12, she exalted her love for Richard Stoddard. “I love and am loved,” she wrote. And now she was confident that she could balance this love with her other interests. Elizabeth’s assured tone was undermined by the fact that she failed to tell Margaret that she had married Richard Stoddard six days earlier. “For the first time in my life I have genuine passion for a man,” she assured Margaret two weeks later. After carefully studying this love from every angle—physical, emotional, and intellectual— Elizabeth was confident she could “obtain no more.” Yet once again she made no mention of her marriage. Later still, she described Richard as the ideal husband—noble, forgiving, and capable of tremendous love. This time she hinted at a new relationship between herself and Richard and reminded Sweat how “rare” an “intellectual marriage” was. Despite expressing longings to have him “possess me soul and body,” Elizabeth continued to keep her new position as his wife secret.17 Not until February did she announce her marriage. While Elizabeth never made her reasons for keeping it a secret explicit, she explained the timing of her admission. Prior to her marriage Elizabeth lived with her younger and favorite brother, Wilson Barstow. Like many young men with few financial prospects, Barstow planned to make his fortune in California. He left for California in February of 1853. Elizabeth announced her marriage “in order to avail myself with marital freedom of Stoddard’s protection during Wilson’s absence.” Her subsequent letters celebrated her tremendous love for Richard Stoddard, but soon enough her misgivings about marriage reappeared. She described her husband as a “most strange man” and divulged, “he has subdued me by some power the [source] of which I do not divine.” Elizabeth worried Richard would “master” her. Symbolic of her mixed emotions at this time, she insisted that Margaret call her “Mrs. EDBS,” but added, “I do not like the adoption of the lords [sic] initials.”18 While Elizabeth’s anxiety over autonomy was certainly a large part of her hesitancy towards marriage, she also saw marriage as an ending of sorts. On the one hand, she happily anticipated beginning life with Richard. “I cannot realize the comical fact that I am to sleep with him every night, dine with him every day,” she wrote to Margaret Sweat. But she also saw marriage as an end to youthful dreams about the future. “Only two more things, a baby and death,” she grieved. Marriage also coincided with a shift in her friendship with Margaret. After announcing her marriage, the new Mrs. Stoddard noticed a change in the tone of Margaret’s letters: “But how is it there seems some reserve between us, a lack of warmth.” “Whose fault is it?” she wondered. Several months later Elizabeth addressed her concerns to Margaret more explicitly: “I hope I shall not lose you.” While Sweat’s early shift in tone may have reflected her annoyance with Stoddard for keeping her marriage a secret, their friendship did end within two years of the Stoddard marriage. Decades later Elizabeth told a friend that she and


Sweat had a disagreement over Richard’s “intemperate” behavior at the Sweat home, and had ceased to be friends after 1854. It would appear Elizabeth’s fears were well grounded—her marriage ultimately cost her her friendship with Sweat.19 As a newly married woman, Elizabeth felt the change in her relationships with her father and her brother most dramatically. Shortly after her marriage she confessed to Margaret: “I was in love fifteen years with my father—Now I am in love with Wilson.” As Wilson prepared to leave for California, his distraught sister cried: “I would give all my possessions and sacrifice all else if I could go with Wilson.” “I am madly in love with him,” Elizabeth continued, “and my heart weeps blood to lose him.” While her love for Wilson did not diminish her love for Richard, she surmised that her marriage had “lost” her her brother. In fact, she explicitly drew the connection by referring to Richard as her “compensation” for losing Wilson Barstow.20 As Mrs. Richard Stoddard, Elizabeth keenly felt the loss of her former life. The sale of the family home on the heels of her marriage renewed her grief over her lost youth. More traumatic for Elizabeth was her father’s remarriage within a year of her own wedding. She confessed to Margaret Sweat that she had fought with her father over this and had lost: A struggle silent to the world has been fought between us… I shook his life but I could not conquer him… I married and so became defenceless [sic]. Undoubtedly Elizabeth believed that in becoming a wife she had lost her power as a daughter. Her father’s remarriage continued to haunt her, and her subsequent letters mentioned again and again her unhappiness at losing her father. But as with Wilson, her love for her husband consoled her because “he is mine, he is with me.” Despite fears for her own “self-possession,” Elizabeth found solace in possessing Richard.21 At the end on March 1853, the financially insecure newlyweds moved into rented rooms on Henry Street. “There is wonderful electricity in the thought that I am Stoddard’s wife,” Elizabeth wrote to Sweat two weeks before moving to New York City with Richard. Her enthusiasm for marriage even overcame any doubts she may have had about her new “home”: I accept this mode of life with delight…no mansion in the 5th Avenue all windows, no gay hotel would furnish half the prospect that these rooms in a dingy house in an unfashionable street offer. Three months later Richard obtained a position at the Customs House. Guaranteed one thousand dollars a month, in addition to what he earned with his pen, Richard soon moved his bride to larger quarters, and in the summer of 1853 they rented a home on Sands Street in Brooklyn. They were forced to return to rented rooms in the city the following April when Richard’s literary endeavors failed to earn him as much as he had hoped.22


Stoddard’s enthusiasm for her new role as Mrs. Richard Stoddard wavered. “I have abandoned my life, soul and heart to my love for S.,” she declared. Soon after, however, her earlier fears about autonomy resurfaced. While “the me would live and die for him,” she realized that “another part” of herself pulled away from Richard and analyzed their love and its costs. Elizabeth found this “dual life…painful.” She expressed it more explicitly three months later: “To go to him I leave myself, thus I alternate between heaven and hell.”23 Stoddard’s concerns for her self were compounded by her dissatisfaction with her role as a wife. “I am idle, only live married,” she sighed to Margaret Sweat. Elizabeth expanded on her many complaints about her “utter idleness” and protested to Sweat that “the devices that fill up our woman-life are nothing to me.” She “chafed horribly when S. leaves me to go into the world of men.” But, as if to minimize her own dissatisfaction, Stoddard quickly assured Sweat, “I am happy thank God as a wife.” She was even less interested in the role of mother. Early on in her marriage she confessed, “I shall have no children yet I hope. I do not want my purposes averted.” Sharing Richard’s belief that “genius is expressed by poems, pictures, statues, but not by the fruits of the body,” Stoddard did not want children to interfere with her half-formed ambitions for her future. As usual, her expressions of doubt and anxiety were combined with protestations of love for her husband. She acknowledged her own ambivalence, writing to Sweat: “I am very happy in my heart but my soul is burning within me, restless, desiring and full of dread and painfully ennuid [sic].”24 Stoddard quickly moved from the boredom of life as a housewife to anxieties over her unfulfilled intellectual needs. Alas my mind is greatly discontented… All others seem to me to be fulfilling their destiny, everybody has a way of labor but me. Early optimism that marriage to a poet would ensure her access to literary and intellectual stimulation quickly evaporated. First there was the problem of finding time and energy for intellectual concerns amidst the pressures of keeping house: “I fear I shall not show very bravely intellectually henceforth, I must be in clothes and housekeeping atmosphere.”25 Elizabeth also found her new relationships with Richard’s poet friends to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, she found their company exciting and intellectually engaging. On the other, their goals and achievements created within her a knowledge of the gap between herself and them. “We have learned soirees,” she told Margaret Sweat. “I play a very quiet part,” she continued, “and the most that I learn is my own insignificance.” But, again, Elizabeth wavered between her own desires and her great love for Richard. “There are moments, neither of phrenzy [sic] or illusion, when I am ready to sacrifice an ambitious future to the most intensified form of love,” she confessed.26 Elizabeth’s letters to Sweat documented her growing resentments. In May of 1854 she told Sweat that she often found herself yearning for a fight. “I do


quarrel with Stoddard some,…[and] I hate most of my friends a great part of the time,” she admitted. She speculated it might be the “family insanity” in her “blood.” Not coincidentally, Elizabeth’s complaints about ill health also increased at this time. In the early years of her marriage she complained of backaches, general malaise, and “deranged ‘female functions.’” She described herself as “physically upside down” and expected that she would always be unwell. After weeks of ill health Elizabeth wondered at its cause. “Some principle of the destroyer is at work within me,” she wrote in March 1854. The frustrated young wife picked up this theme again in her next letter and insightfully made the connection between her intellectual ambitions, her dissatisfaction with her gender role, and her physical ailments: My intellectual life is at variance with my other life, and my body is not a rock for the troubled waters of my soul to dash against. Well aware that her “worries” over “mental occupation” undermined her “physical capacity,” Stoddard embarked on a search for intellectual fulfillment.27 Exploring the possibility of a literary career, she recounted to Sweat a story about a female literary friend. Elizabeth had asked this woman if “her life was filled, if she was quiet in intellect?” The woman said no, “she had great unhappiness.” This particular female author even suggested that the entire enterprise was “foolish” because “what could any woman do of amount?” While Elizabeth reluctantly agreed with this assessment, she realized the alternative was worse. In lieu of a career as an author, she divulged to Margaret, this unhappy writer “devotes herself to a charlatan husband and sees much company.”28 Stoddard knew she could never enjoy the kind of life this woman had embraced but agonized over her own literary abilities. In May of 1853 she confessed to Margaret Sweat that the Southern Literary Messenger had rejected a “sketch” she had written “sometime ago.” “I fancy I shall never be much in a literary way,” she admitted. Elizabeth sought Margaret’s advice: “Tell me how you think I might write, if I pursued the theme with patience.” Stoddard complained about her own “laziness,” but wondered if it masked a more significant problem: My desires or aspirations are above my creative powers. Sometimes a pang of belief shoots across my mind that it is in me but momentary, I relapse into the meagre formulas of daily life and am no more than I seem to be. Always self-critical, she believed her own letters to Sweat were not as well written as Sweat’s responses. Richard apparently agreed. He believed, according to Elizabeth, that Margaret’s letters were “beautifully written” and showed more “method” than his wife’s. Richard thought his wife’s notes were just like her tongue—“quick and sharp and hard.” Agreeing that she had trouble writing “a


long, involved sentence,” Elizabeth believed “it would be wise to make prose studies a year or two and burn what I write.”29 Stoddard apprenticed herself to her husband and tried her hand at poetry. She was quite impressed with his ability to construct “sweet” poems from the merest suggestion. Hoping to learn this, she attended “school daily” with her “masterpoet.” Her lessons were not always easy. Elizabeth whined more than once to Sweat about her “terrible apprenticeship.” She found it difficult to compose poetry. She repeatedly complained about how long it took her to write a poem and marveled at the ease with which Sweat wrote: “Your verse flows more easily than mine, mine comes out in hard knots and hurts me.” Stoddard also worried that her nature undermined her efforts and made her create the opposite of what she had strived for. Again she feared she could only “aspire” “I can impress but Lord God when it comes to an actual work a creation I am ‘nowhere.’” Elizabeth’s frustration with writing eroded her confidence in her letters. She demanded that Sweat not bind her “stupid letters.” Two months later Elizabeth promised her that “sometime I will write you letters more worthy of you and myself.” While she experienced flashes of hope and belief in her abilities, they were often followed by harsh self-criticism. Nor was Richard overly generous with his praise. “Stoddard is a severe master and I get so discouraged that I cry dreadfully,” Elizabeth wailed to Margaret. By May of 1854 she was so disheartened she moaned, “I feel too dead to write.”30 Stoddard also had an ambivalent relationship with her husband’s creativity. His most ardent supporter, she believed his work original, “bold,” and “radical” and was disgusted when his poems were rejected. She often quoted gushing praise of Richard’s verses in her letters, and she worried when her husband was not writing. Elizabeth surmised that his work at the Customs House drained his creative energies. Fearing that Richard’s “writing faculty” was “extinguished,” she hoped Bayard Taylor’s return to New York City would revive him. But Stoddard also saw her husband’s literary career as competition. While she was truly happy when Richard resumed his poetry career in June of 1854, she was significantly less thrilled several months later when he turned his hand to prose. “I hate to have him much absorbed in writing. I lose…so much of him,” she complained to Margaret Sweat.31 Stoddard’s disappointment with her own poetry and her envy of Richard’s prose work rekindled her determination. In June 1854, she vowed, “I am writing and with Gods will shall do something.” For Elizabeth the summer of 1854 was a turning point. Spurred by her own ambitions and her husband’s aspiring prose career, she finally fulfilled her earlier promise to herself and began to study prose. Sometime that summer she made the acquaintance of Charles Washburne, the editor of the Daily Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper. He contracted her to write letters from New York City at the rate of $24.00 a month. Stoddard was thrilled. Revealing the depths of her bourgeois perceptions, she applauded herself as the first female wage-earner she had ever known, despite having grown up amidst female servants and having attended female academies. Her own


ability to earn wages had a profound affect on Elizabeth, and she was filled with a “curious sense of independence.” And, as she would remember late in life, it was here that she first learned how to write prose. And so, on October 8, 1854, Stoddard’s career as the Daily Alta’s “Lady Correspondent” commenced.32 Two years into her run with the Daily Alta California, Stoddard recollected writing her first column. She had agonized over it for a week, stored it in a “sacred box,” and gazed at it repeatedly. After sending it off, she was “filled with a secret pride and dignity, and pitied people who didn’t know what it was to be in print.” Stoddard’s tenure as the Daily Alta’s “Lady Correspondent” was significant both for its contribution to the crafting of her prose and for the “imaginative possibilities” her wages created. But most important, Stoddard’s columns were her first public exploration of the themes and concerns that would fill her letters and fictional works for the next three decades. Her missives were published regularly until 1858 and then sporadically under a pseudonym. Her columns, full of literary reviews and observations, were a chronicle of the years leading up to her own birth as a novelist in 1862. On the pages of the Daily Alta California Stoddard began her half-century-long public dialogue on literary style, gender conventions, and the culture of respectability that pervaded nineteenthcentury bourgeois America.33 “My letters, are in fact my autobiography,” Stoddard told her readers in 1857. She saw them as a “sort of mental almanac” and anticipated that one day she would look back on them with “the sentiment of a lover who weeps over the time-stained letters from the love of his youth.” Stoddard knew that occasionally readers complained that her columns were “too personal.” Yet she dismissed the idea of making them more “newspaperish” and declared herself an “egotist.” “I had much rather look at my own daguerrotype [sic] than that of anybody else,” she confessed. “And,” she added, “I do think my affairs are of more importance than the affairs of other folks.” Stoddard’s biographer, James Matlack, has suggested that her letters to the Alta functioned also as a way of maintaining contact with her brother Wilson Barstow in San Francisco. In 1855 she referred to the Alta as “a friend that sticketh as close as a brother.” In many ways Stoddard’s letters to the Alta echoed her letters to her friend Margaret Sweat. Though less personal and far wittier, they addressed similar issues—poverty and ill health, female intellectual life, and literature and authorship. In these published letters Stoddard created a role for herself as a satirical observer of middle-class life. In this capacity she first gave voice to a subject that would later fuel her fiction—the complexities and absurdities of the bourgeois cult of respectability. Sardonic and witty, her observations and her inversions of middleclass standards and morals filled her letters and drew her readers.34 Stoddard was particularly disturbed by bourgeois efforts at moral reform. She saw these as superficial attempts to gain political favor. New York City’s mayor, she noted, “buys his reputation by his energetic measures.” On a deeper level, Stoddard was not sure that morality could be legislated. “The millenium [sic] of morality approaches through legislation,” she quipped. The mayor’s campaign at


this moment was against prostitution. Stoddard called his choice of a target cowardly because it attacked a “class of women, whose name is frailty.” In an inversion typical of her Alta letters, she suggested the mayor instead arrest the prostitute’s patrons. “What a small, still squeak of praise would come from the papers, and the people then!” Stoddard snidely commented.35 An admitted drinker, Stoddard found the efforts of temperance advocates particularly galling. She speculated that legislative prohibitions would prove unsuccessful and satirized their expected results: The cup is thrust from the lips of the drunkard: he is saved. The rum seller receives his reward for evil-doing; wives will cease to mourn, and children will grow up virtuous. Stoddard assured her readers: “We may expect that all unlawful appetites will be entirely eradicated from the citizen of the temperance zone.” Unconvinced that temperance would solve all of society’s ills, she dismissed all efforts at reform as unnecessarily restrictive. On one occasion she poked fun at the mayor’s crusade against gambling and apprised her readers that “there is a universal doing away with the flesh pots of Egypt.”36 Beneath the humor lay a deeper problem for Stoddard. In response to a reader who was disturbed by the tone of her letters in the Alta’s Sunday edition, Stoddard responded: “Sinner that I am, I confess to secular habits entirely.” The evangelical revivals of her childhood had left her cold, and the doctrinaire minister of her family’s church had failed to inspire her. She never embraced the evangelical optimism of many of her contemporaries. Unabashedly “irreligious,” the ideals of self-control and social perfectionism held no sway for her. She was unsure they were even attainable. “The active and energetic ghosts of the passions pursue us incessantly,” she wrote in 1856. And, she warned her readers, they were “robust fellows with whom we wrestle and don’t prevail.” Stoddard sympathized with her readers’ needs for religious understanding and selfimprovement, but poked fun at the bourgeois institutions created for these purposes. Churches were fine places for studying faces, but not for real spiritual growth. She snidely dismissed “New Englanders” fascinations with “organizations.” The poor needed material goods, not moral uplift from tract societies. Similarly, she criticized the lyceum movement. Stoddard doubted that most of the people flocking to lectures to “learn something” actually did.37 Acknowledging the church’s function as an arbiter of “good manners,” Stoddard remained unimpressed with it as a source of spirituality. More recently she had discovered a different source of spiritual renewal—motherhood. On June 20, 1855, Elizabeth gave birth to her first son, Wilson, named for her much-loved brother and father. Her earlier misgivings about the impact of parenthood on creativity must have plagued her during her pregnancy. Shortly before Willy’s birth, George Henry Boker wrote Richard and Elizabeth, rejecting “that absurd idea which you both have, that you will not fancy a child.” He assured them they


would both love their “own gosling.” And, true to Boker’s prognostications, the Stoddards were thrilled with parenthood. They reveled in their son’s milestones and accomplishments. And, at least initially, he did not interfere with Elizabeth’s writing. Despite the effort it must have taken giving birth to the better than nine pound baby, Elizabeth continued to publish her bimonthly letter in the Alta, not pausing at any time that summer. Motherhood, rather than impairing her ability to write, provided fodder for later columns, and Willy’s achievements, as well as humorous accounts of the trials of parenthood, made their way into her letters.38 Stoddard enjoyed writing for a California paper because she imagined California as a place immune to the forces of respectability. She recounted tales of husbands who went to California, became rich, and chose new wives and families. In another inversion characteristic of her Alta letters, Stoddard did not attack these wandering husbands, but wondered if, perhaps, “California widows” were not better off without them. She suggested to all unhappy wives: “Send your husbands to California.” Alternately, Stoddard believed, California could do wonderful things for female individuality. After meeting a woman recently returned from California, Stoddard noted that the shabbily attired woman had remarkable “self-possession.” California presented a clear contrast to the “puritanic flavor” of New England. It was untainted by the repressive cast of New England. “San Francisco nature is genuine,” she informed her readers. It was “peculiar and original.” According to Stoddard’s eyewitnesses, everything and everyone there were larger than life. Vegetables grew larger, and the people were more spontaneous. But Stoddard feared that this would not always be so. She warned her readers against appeals to self-control and self-reform. If reformers had their way, Californians would soon become as “tiresome as the old Puritans.”39 While her dispatches to the Alta were not nearly as intimate as her letters to Margaret Sweat, Stoddard did touch on personal subjects. In particular, she continued her discussion of gender roles and expressed her own dissatisfaction with her position as a housewife. In early 1856 Stoddard noted that “like all women and wives, I am a martyr.” She went on to play with notions of wifely obedience. “When my lord says ‘board,’” she divulged to her readers, “I am bored.” She even managed to “say ‘thank you,’ without meaning ‘damn you,’ scores of times.” Upon Bayard Taylor’s marriage in 1857, Stoddard described matrimony as a “pleasant illusion.” “Peace is preserved in the married relation in this way,” she jokingly informed her readers: One party has everything it wants, and the other has nothing. This obviates all disputes on one side, and all expectation on the other. On a more serious note, Stoddard observed that female and male expectations for marriage differed. In a barely veiled reference to male sexuality, Stoddard told her readers that men married for the “immediate possession of a paradise” and set straightaway to “planting.” Women, however, saw marriage as a “laying up of a


treasure in the future.” They married to have children and for companionship in old age. Stoddard referred to her own dissatisfaction in May of 1857. She apologized to her readers for having missed a letter and explained: “I ran away… I had grown tired of the monotony of my life.” Stoddard’s tone was jestful, but her lack of satisfaction with Victorian gender roles was apparent.40 Stoddard protested that her wifely duties interfered with her writing. For financial reasons the Stoddards moved frequently and with every move came renewed domestic upheaval. Between their marriage in 1852 and 1872, when they moved to 329 E. 15th Street, the Stoddards relocated over a dozen times, often bouncing back-and-forth between the city and Mattapoisett when they could not afford their rent in New York. Stoddard frequently found herself amidst boxes. She complained: “What then can be expected of me amid this domestic chaos?” She believed that her constant efforts at maintaining a home preoccupied her mind with the “unpoetic” material concerns of everyday life. Other women undoubtedly struggled with similar problems, but the self-centered writer doubted they suffered as much as she did. Appalled by the behavior of working-class women at a firemen’s parade, Stoddard wondered at the “insanity that possess women to run after the processions.” Was it their “innate love of glory?” “Or,” in a rare moment of cross-class sympathy, did their behavior reflect “an ardent desire in their hearts to break out from the prosaic routine and confinement of home-duties?”41 In her guise as the “Lady Correspondent,” Stoddard persistently expressed discontent with the constraints middle-class women faced—women who were not even allowed the ignominious privilege of chasing fire engines. “Keeping in view my duty and dignity as a correspondent, I make excursions,” she told her readers in an early letter. These trips included the theater, museums, musical performances, and visits to locally important sites. Stoddard often recounted her promenades on Broadway—describing for her readers the people, the fashions, and the stores. But as her letters ran into the late 1850s, she increasingly protested her limited mobility and the spatial restrictions imposed by her gender. In 1855 she complained to her readers after being excluded from a dinner thrown by New York booksellers: “I wish I were a him, so that I might be present.” On other occasions Stoddard noticed that she was one of few women in attendance. “It is unnecessary to say that I was the only woman present,” she told her readers after visiting the Astor Library. In her last year as the Alta’s “Lady Correspondent” Stoddard frequently complained about having nothing to write about. She feared that readers would find the letters by the Alta’s male correspondent from New York City “more interesting than” her own. “I like events and adventures, but events do not come to me, and I cannot go to adven tures.”42 Questioning the rhetorical basis of Victorian womanhood, Stoddard asked her readers: “Is virtue agreeable?—Is duty handsome?” She had studied this image of womanhood and found it “ugly.” “By the way,” she wondered, “who founded the generosity of calling all the virtues female?” Over a year later Stoddard


received a letter from a fan calling her a “model letter-writer.” She quickly disavowed being a model anything. Stoddard described the model woman as “amiable” and “deferential.” She was a “human tree-toad” with no opinion of her own. “She harasses the household out of all comfort, to keep it in order,” Stoddard continued. The model woman was never idle, always dressed well, and loved her minister. But, Stoddard explained, “she never speaks the truth because she has never learned it.” And her memory will persist “just long enough to say ‘she was a model woman.’”43 Stoddard rejected conventional representations of virtuous womanhood and searched for alternative visions. Disturbed at the way some critics praised her letters to the Alta, Stoddard hoped she was not considered an exception or an anomaly like the “Learned Pig” or the “Five Legged Calf.” She was not complimented when male readers praised her by “saying I am a ‘hombre’ in my style of writing.” Stoddard yearned for female examples of success. In her letters to the Alta she repeatedly noted the achievements of the French painter, Rosa Bonheur. “A remarkable woman and a remarkable artist,” Bonheur had flourished in a “domain appropriated by men.” O courageous woman! What you have done for song, or art, under the disadvantage of crying, teething babies, the contemptuous silence of your husband, the incredulity of all your male acquaintances. She admired creative women who were determined to succeed and hoped ultimately to include herself among them.44 Stoddard’s columns in the Daily Alta California were part of her larger struggle to create a literary voice for herself. As such they were preoccupied with questions of authorship and literature. Stoddard opened her first letter to the Alta by addressing concerns over her own literary style. “I debate in my mind,” she revealed to her readers, “how to appear most effectively, whether to present myself as a genuine original, or adopt some great example in style.” She went on to poke fun at her favorite target—American literary women. She wondered if she should mimic “the pugilism of Fanny Fern, the pathetics of Minnie Myrtle, or the abandon of Cassie Cauliflower.” This opening foretold two of Stoddard’s greatest interests: the construction of her own authorial voice and the limits of female authorship in the nineteenth-century United States.45 In her second letter to the Alta, Stoddard clearly set herself up as a critic of woman’s fiction. In a long paragraph she declared her deep interest in the “development of the woman mind,” and, more specifically, in the lack of development among American female authors. Stoddard was particularly disturbed by the motivations these authors purported: This one has a ‘spontaneous up-gushing’ that must be spoken. Another has a ‘mission,’ although her book does not explain it. Another has no reason, except that she was ‘willed to publish.’


She realized, of course, their real reason was a “desire to make money.” Stoddard found another “class” of female writers equally disturbing—female activists and reformers. She often complained that the American literary world had no version of Charlotte Bronte or George Sand. “Eight books in ten,” she protested, “are written without genius.” Four years later she confessed to her readers that amidst her vast library “the poorest lot of books in my possession is the American Authors.” While Stoddard clearly shared with many of her contemporaries a belief in the superiority of English and European cultures, she also had specific, and legitimate, criticisms of American female authors.46 In reviewing “Bertha and Lily” by Mrs. Oaks Smith, Stoddard complained that she “read the book without being able to divine its meaning.” “The story was improbable,” she declared. Only the “sketches” of minor characters were any good, probably because Smith “assigned no importance” to them. In a typically sarcastic vein, Stoddard declared Mrs. Jameson, author of the “Common Place Book,” “…one of the most talented women writers we have. The titles of her books almost proclaim a woman of thought and learning.” She also laughed when these “country ladies” attempted to write about city life, a subject with which she believed herself well acquainted. Stoddard hoped they would stick to the countrysides and towns they knew best. On the other hand, she sardonically observed, their novels of country life were as “truthfully” and as “picturesquely” written as their other works.47 In the fall of 1855 Stoddard noted the simultaneous publication of several novels by “lady writers.” She quickly summarized her review of them:”…it is much like reading the same novel in so many volumes. You ask yourself in reading each one, if you have not read it before.” The common plot among these novels was particularly tiresome: Most of the heroines are obliged to keep school…some family cloud arises, and they feel called upon to leave the paternal roof, and walk through thorny paths. “It all comes right though about the four hundredth page,” she sarcastically assured her readers. Stoddard found “melo-dramatic” plots just as uninspired. “The usual villain” was reformed and embraced by the community, and the virtuous young heroine was saved by the “unexpected and impossible appearance of a heroic deliverer!” Stoddard had similar criticisms of theatrical productions. When the actress Julia Dean produced one of her own plays, Stoddard quickly dismissed it as unoriginal. “The wrong man is ‘round’ while the right man isn’t,” she explained. “Right man comes back at the last gasp,” she continued, “and the ‘piece is brought to a happy end.’” “Imitation is more catching than originality,” she concluded.48 Stoddard particularly blamed male critics for the proliferation of unoriginal American “lady writers”:


All the women in this country can follow out their fancies, as far as book making is concerned. No criticism assails them. Men are polite to the woman, and contemptuous to the intellect. Stoddard believed that male critics let the untalented majority of woman authors multiply, while they discouraged more important and interesting female authors. “They do not allow the woman to enter their intellectual arena to do battle with them,” she told her readers. “Our truly excellent female writers have been jostled aside.” This was not limited to women authors. Female artists and actresses suffered similar fates in the hands of critics. In 1856 she saw a caricature of herself by the western humorist “Squibob.” “Your correspondent is represented with a squalling baby, a shirtless husband, and shoes down at the heel,” she described for her readers. Stoddard criticized Squibob’s choice of imagery: “O, Squibob! where is your originality? Strong-minded women are always caricatured in this way.” While her retort to Squibob was clearly in jest, Stoddard made an important point. In a variety of ways reviewers attempted to contain the meanings and significance of literature by “strong-minded” women while allowing the more banal female authors to proliferate.49 Stoddard was especially appalled by the prevalent habit of friends uncritically praising works by one another. She found that literary friendships, rather than merit, often determined the level of an author’s success. Stoddard repeatedly mentioned the friendship between two female writers—Elizabeth Ellet and Ann Stephens. She considered their works pedantic and unimaginative. When Ellet reviewed Stephens’s The Heiress of Greenhurst and declared it a “‘creation of genius’” Stoddard was aghast. She was also disturbed by reviewers who failed to criticize authors who had made their reputation already. “The tradition of a man’s greatness is too often adopted“and allowed to persist unchallenged, she objected. She speculated that if questioned many reputations would prove a mere “bubble.” Stoddard remained critical of literary reviewers for decades. Years later she informed a friend that the United States would suffer from inferior literature as long as its standards of criticism remained low.50 Stoddard was frustrated and outraged that the “lady writers” represented, for many, American female authorship, especially when Britain had Charlotte Bronte and her “powerful pen” and “intellect so brilliant.” Stoddard applauded Bronte, who wrote not for “fame and money,” but because “she felt it ‘needful to speak.’” Bronte’s writing was “daring” and “masculine.” Stoddard also raved about the “genius” and “passion” of George Sand. By elevating Bronte and Sand above others, Stoddard adopted a particular literary heritage. Her choice of Bronte and Sand signified her embrace of literature as a male and female vocation, and her appreciation of a particular type of fiction.51 Stoddard clearly preferred a literature of strong emotions and passion, and she admired works that explored the “extremes of the human heart, its morbid passions and sufferings.” She praised novels in which heroines sought selffulfillment and were neither passive nor self-destructive. On her own side of the


Atlantic she admired the writing of Caroline Chesebro. Chesebro wrote within what Stoddard described as the “people school of fiction.” With her “clear head and metaphysical mind,” Chesebro created complex characters who were neither unrealistically good nor bad. Most female authors, British and American, marred their work by creating heroines who stoically performed unpleasant tasks, and who ultimately learned to like the disagreeable. Novels of this sort generally concluded that “life has holier ends than happiness.”52 While Stoddard claimed to “dine and sup” on novels, her engagement with them went far beyond simply devouring them. In her Alta columns Stoddard began an exploration of fiction and form that would continue for over forty years. She assessed available forms and showed clear preferences between them. Inspired by European romanticism and her circle of New York poets, she increasingly asked that art embrace ideality. Representations of the ideal created within the reader’s imagination the “hope that he is, or can be, like it.” She absorbed many of the prevailing ideas about authenticity and art, and thought creative representations should not be artificial. In late 1855 she complained about an artist whose paintings, she believed, were “expressions of some other man’s ideal” and thus suffered from a “want of actuality.” Concerns about ideality, actuality, and authenticity would haunt Stoddard’s writings for decades.53 Stoddard maintained that a novelist should never “make life a novel.” If an author tried to reconstruct real life, her novel would be a “series of disjointed epochs, with great wastes of time between them.” “When novels cease to be ideal,” she concluded, “we shall no longer care for them.” Stoddard believed that the novelist should be more than a “story teller.” Good novels, according to the “Lady Correspondent,” explored the interiorities of human life, focusing primarily on idealizations of romantic love and passion. Stoddard noted that critics often excluded women from this tradition of artistry. Reviewers were quick to give women credit for “faithful representation,” but rarely accorded them status within the “ideal school of art.” To a certain extent Stoddard agreed that many women writers had neglected the ideal in favor of the “common place.” She feared that the better female authors embraced only the “objective school of writing,” and was disturbed that no “woman of erudition” had ever written a “metaphysical tale, novel or poem.” She yearned to read a “story” written by an American woman that “holds in analysis the passions of the human heart.” It was a gap that seven years later she would try to fill with The Morgesons. But, as Stoddard the novelist would later discover, maintaining the distinctions between romantic idealization and mimetic realism would not always be possible.54 Stoddard’s run as “Lady Correspondent” abruptly ended in February 1858. For some months, however, a new correspondent from New York had published on the pages of the Alta—“B.” Ostensibly written by a man, these pieces read more like formal columns and less like letters to a California friend. They were more stylized and more serious than pieces by the “Lady Correspondent.” “B”


informed his readers that the object of his column was to “enumerate a few of the most important events” without dwelling on any one event at length. His columns highlighted literary matters and book reviews. While the two columnists shared many topics, the tone and style of their pieces differed dramatically. Where the “Lady Correspondent” was witty and sarcastic, “B” was sincere and even righteous. Her simple and friendly manner contrasted sharply with his flowery and carefully constructed style.55 Stoddard mentioned “B” in several of her own letters. “What a tre-men-jous correspondent you have in ‘B,’” she facetiously told her readers. In one of her last letters she thanked a reader who had sent “B” one of her earlier missives with a “slight notice, but not a slighting one” of his columns. Stoddard playfully requested that this reader send “B” a copy of this letter, “with my sincere respects.” She taunted her readers with the idea that she and “B” had some sort of relationship. She knew who “B” was, did they? “B” teased readers about his identity as well, repeatedly giving them hints. After acknowledging that “neither I nor my readers are strangers to each other,” “B” concluded a discussion of a recent murder trial the “Lady Correspondent” started. In another piece, “B” mentioned a poet, “little known to fame, but well known to me” who was struggling to keep his job at the Customs House. A thinly veiled reference to Richard Stoddard, this, combined with striking similarities in content, led James Matlack, Stoddard’s biographer, to claim that “B” and Stoddard were one and the same.56 Stoddard believed her readers knew that the “Lady Correspondent” was behind these new columns. “Or at least such you have given me to understand,” she told them in her guise as “B.” Why the charade then? While James Matlack was clearly on the right track when he identified “B” as Elizabeth Stoddard, he (and others) have failed to note that “B” most likely embodied a collaboration between Elizabeth and Richard. As early as October of 1854 Richard had hinted he had a hand in his wife’s columns in the Alta. In a note to the publisher James Fields, Richard announced he had recently reviewed some volumes of poetry, but he could not give Fields any details. I, or my wife, it’s the same thing, have written of it…in our Foreign Correspondence. It is a secret, but by and by I’ll let you in on it. While there is little evidence Richard contributed to the bulk of the Lady Correspondent’s letters, Elizabeth herself confirmed his contribution to her later letters. 57 In late 1858 and 1859, Elizabeth, pregnant with their second child, found it difficult to maintain her schedule for the Daily Alta, and Richard increasingly contributed to her letters. In May or June of 1858 Stoddard gave birth to a boy. Born severely ill and handicapped, the baby, whom the Stoddards never named, died in July at the Taylors’ home in Pennsylvania where Elizabeth had retreated to avail herself and the baby of the best possible care. She wrote home regularly,


reporting on the baby’s deteriorating health. Shortly before her baby’s death, she sent Richard a letter complaining she missed him and reassuring him that Willy was well and happy. She included in her parcel a letter to the Daily Alta and, confirming the collaborative nature of the “B” letters in particular, she asked him to add some theatrical news from New York. While it is impossible to determine their specific contributions to the “B” letters, it is likely that the style of these letters better exemplifies Richard’s more ornate style of writing, a style Stoddard herself adhered to when she wrote as “B.” As a collaboration between Richard and Elizabeth, “B” represents in many ways the strong bond between this husband and wife. Elizabeth chafed at the restrictive bonds of womanhood and poked fun at matrimony, but she loved her husband intensely. While comfortable at the Taylors’ that summer and thankful for their care, she missed her husband fiercely. She longed to return home, “so that I may receive and give the embraces you love.” Devoted and resentful, delighted and angry, inspired and intimidated, supportive and competitive, Elizabeth simultaneously loved her husband and railed at the limits placed upon her. While “B” epitomized the Stoddards’ complicated relationship, he also symbolized her dwindling enthusiasm for her Alta columns. By 1859 she was ready to move on. 58 In an early letter for the Daily Alta California Stoddard foresaw the end of her columns. “I shall cry, and howl, and refuse to be comforted by the other little children of my brain,” she lamented to her readers. By the late 1850s, however, Stoddard was becoming more interested in her other literary offspring. In 1856 she enjoyed a brief mention in Rufus Griswold’s anthology of American poetry. Thanking him profusely, Stoddard thought it was “something nowadays” for a woman “to be ‘predicted’ about.” But, she continued, “I am afraid ‘to think of writing’ a book, and only intend to keep up a kind of guerilla warfare by sending out odds and ends.” Within just a couple of years, however, Stoddard would no longer be content with writing mere “odds and ends.” She dismissed her poems and sketches as inferior pieces that existed in the “corners of newspapers, and spaces that ‘must be filled up’ in magazines.” After almost half a dozen years studying literature and writing prose for the Alta, Stoddard was ready to try something new. Building on her more recent efforts at short story writing, she began writing a novel in the late 1850s. It was a painful but rewarding experience. Stoddard presented herself to the public as a novelist in early 1862 with the publication of The Morgesons. And so, Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard became, “to the horror of the male sex” and to “the ridicule of her own,” a literary woman.59

Chapter Two Female Self-Expression in a Sentimental Age The Pythoness and the Sentinels of Genteel Literature

IN THE FALL OF 1862 ELIZABETH STODDARD SENT A COPY OF HER FIRST NOVEL, The Morgesons, to her good friend Bayard Taylor.1 While praising its realistic descriptions and its “well-drawn” minor characters, Taylor was disturbed by Stoddard’s heroine, the irrepressible Cassandra Morgeson. “You feel a strong interest in Cassandra without much liking for, or sympathy with her,” he disclosed to Stoddard. He expressed relief at the conclusion when “the heroine [was] married and out of the way.” Taylor interpreted Cassandra as a woman “tossed to and from by an animal tumult for which marriage is the cure.” He found this independent young heroine who embraces her sexuality and acquires self-awareness amidst repressive nineteenth-century cultural ideals of womanhood troubling. Her transgressions were justified only by the domestic resolution of the novel.2 Taylor was not alone in his ambivalent response to The Morgesons. Stoddard’s favorite brother, Wilson Barstow, serving in the Union Army at Fort Monroe, wrote to her after reading the novel for a second time. It was “very different from every book I have ever read,” he confessed, and warned her, “you must prepare yourself for all sorts of abuse and of a mean kind also.” It is original and startling and will be called wicked and with few redeeming points in it, and if I am not mistaken the critics will say that it is a book which should not be introduced into common schools, or recommended for a ‘drawing room companion.’3 Barstow reminded his sister to take heart as this was her first novel. He thought she would do “better” the next time. “It was necessary that you should have ‘sloughed’ off some of your morbidness,” he continued, “so that you might get into a more healthy condition when you start again.” Morbid, unhealthy, wicked —what exactly had Stoddard written that unsettled Taylor and so worried her brother?4 In her novel of female self-discovery, Stoddard constructed conventional narratives of transgression and redemption only to undermine them. Following Cassandra through a series of trials, readers familiar with the common plots of woman’s fiction could expect to see the heroine overcome both psychological


and socio-cultural obstacles in time to wield power as an agent of moral reformation. Some readers, like Taylor, were profoundly disturbed when Cassandra followed a different path. Most reviewers, including close friends such as Edmund Stedman, responded in Taylor’s fashion, praising the novel’s regionalist possibilities and containing its potentially radical gender implications within readings of it as a tale about the domestification of an independent woman.5 In the novel, Ben Somers, a school friend of Cassandra’s, summarizes the effect she has had upon him, in many ways portending her impact upon Bayard Taylor. By understanding, defining, and following her “‘instincts,’” Cass “‘debased’” Ben’s ideals of womanhood and “‘confused'” him. More disturbing to Ben, he could “‘never affirm’” that she was “‘wrong.’” He is unable to cling to cultural ideals of virtuous womanhood. Neither can he reject them. Ben becomes confused, alternately admiring and fearing Cassandra. Cass destabilizes his world, forcing him to wrestle with his beliefs. Like her heroine, Stoddard hoped to leave her contemporaries puzzled and doubtful, pushing them to confront the cultural construction of their own identities. Her project had potentially radical ramifications.6 Many of Stoddard’s literary acquaintances, particularly those identified by later critics with the genteel tradition, were profoundly disturbed by both Stoddard and her fiction. Stoddard, a self-described “good hater” and vicious verbal combatant, frequently angered and even outraged her friends. She aroused their fear as well as their wrath, and they derisively referred to her as “the Pythoness.” Noting the classical education of these men, Stoddard’s biographer, James Matlack, argued that by calling her “the Pythoness” they described her snake-like efforts at crushing her prey and drew attention to her affinity with the pythoness of Greek mythology—”a woman endowed with…demonic spirit.” Taylor, joined at times by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Edmund Stedman and George Boker, repeatedly referred to the “unconquered Satan” and the “born devil” within Stoddard, as well as to her “devilish interpretations” of their actions. Her fierce persona alone cannot account for the intensity of their reactions, especially Taylor’s. Taylor was equally agitated by Stoddard’s attempt to challenge prevailing paradigms of femininity. While her efforts at reconstructing gender relations resulted in her demonization by the sentinels of genteel literature, Stoddard’s pathbreaking exploration of gender identities has won her recent accolades, leading some to call her “the most strikingly original voice in the midnineteenth-century American novel”—a tribute “the Pythoness” would haye been thrilled to read.7 Stoddard’s career as a literary rebel originated at a surprisingly conventional source—James Russell Lowell, editor of the respectable Atlantic Monthly. Conforming to prevalent gender conventions, she approached Lowell through her husband. In late 1859, as his wife’s career with the Daily Alta California was winding down, Richard Stoddard passed along one of her short stories to Lowell for possible publication in the new Atlantic Monthly. He half-

FEMALE SELF-EXPRESSION IN A SENTIMENTAL AGE 25

heartedly endorsed the story, telling Lowell: “It has some faults of construction, I believe, but it seems to me that its good parts more than balance these; at least I think so.” He anticipated its rejection, and asked Lowell to send his refusal along with critical comments to “help clear [Elizabeth’s] mind.” Not surprisingly, Lowell rejected the story several weeks later. Richard Stoddard assured him his wife would work harder and make the story “what it ought to be.” He promised Lowell: “I will see that she labors to accomplish what you think is lacking in the story.” Richard Stoddard claimed he had given the young writer all the advice he could, and he thought she would benefit from the “criticism of a new and outside mind.”8 For the group of young poets with whom Stoddard socialized, James Russell Lowell was an important figure. As editor of the Atlantic, and later as co-editor of the North American Review, he commanded their attention. They admired his advice and depended upon his literary encouragement. Their admiration, however, was not always whole-hearted. Poets such as Richard Stoddard, Bayard Taylor, George Henry Boker, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and Edmund Clarence Stedman were drawn together by their common desire to release poetry from the moralism of the New England poets, including Lowell. They formed the center of the literary movement historian John Tomsich identified as the genteel endeavor. These poets did not diverge from New England literary culture to the extent they imagined, but in the 1840s and 1850s they envisioned grand things for themselves.9 Promulgating aesthetic notions of poetry, the genteel poets borrowed from English romanticism to fashion a poetic rebellion against the reigning literature of their time. Art, they believed, should be dedicated to the search for beauty, not for promoting moral certitudes or political ideologies. They feared the corrosive effects of market rationality, and they shared with other American Romantics an emphasis on emotions and intuition. Building on the work of eighteenth-century philosophers, including Jefferson, they recognized and embraced human potential. The human self was not to be denied but developed.10 In its earliest conception, the genteel endeavor was idealistic and emancipatory. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, its radical potential disintegrated, foundering on its internal contradictions. Stedman and Taylor, in particular, recognized the subversive potential of self-expression and feared its excesses. The specter of social upheaval unleashed by the American Civil War further horrified them. By the postbellum period these romantic rebels had become “apostles of culture,” longing for the simpler days of antebellum America and retreating to older cultural standards.11 The sentinels of genteel literature channeled their later efforts into a didactic “mission” of “teaching young men how to behave” in the shifting urban world of nineteenth-century America. Tomsich cites Richard Watson Gilder’s editorial rules at The Century as an example of how the romantic rebellion of this generation deteriorated into a defense of respectability. Gilder, who published Elizabeth Stoddard’s later short stories, demanded that “‘no vulgar slang, no


explicit reference to sex,’” and “‘no unhappy endings for any work of fiction’” make their way into his magazine. Mistaking the respectable for good literature, Tomsich argues, genteel editors, such as Gilder, promoted literature that was “publicly acceptable” and suppressed the unacceptable.12 Just as the poets of ideality created prototypes of enlightened male behavior, the female authors of woman’s fiction constructed “the domestic heroine” as a “model of genteel behavior.” These novels of “‘trials and triumphs’” shared an overplot: “the story of young women discovering and asserting their powers, thereby wresting recognition and respect from a hostile and indifferent world.” According to Nina Baym, the heroines of woman’s fiction fall into two broad categories: the “flawless” and the “flawed.” The flawless heroine is virtuous, strong, and stable, the flawed in need of developing self-control. Orphaned or recently destitute, both heroines achieve “self-conquest” and set out in the “conquest of the other”—usually a male reprobate, ready to be reformed by a strong but virtuous woman. Just as male genteel literature emerged as an alternative literary tradition, but evolved into an hegemonic discourse affirming middle-class gender ideals, so too followed woman’s fiction. Originating as a call for influence and power in a social world that limited female roles, woman’s fiction was later denigrated for its uncritical celebration of domesticity. Latenineteenth-century “anti-Victorian” literature increasingly valued self-expression over duty.13 Stoddard’s literary career emerged from the early antagonism of the genteel tradition to New England moralism. The radical potential of their literary movement appealed to the young woman from Massachusetts who still chafed at the restraints of her evangelical childhood. Inspired by the grand romantic visions of her friends and husband, Stoddard hoped to open up the possibilities of self-expression to women. Her first attempt, “My Own Story,” quickly came up against Lowell’s boundaries of respectable literature and his vision of what stories for and by women were supposed to be like. Lowell failed to respond to Richard Stoddard after rejecting Elizabeth’s story, so the “young writer” took it upon herself to write him. She defended her story as having “fine eyes and a good complexion,” but recognized it was “ricketty, round shouldered and big headed.” Lowell responded to Stoddard almost immediately, and, two weeks later, she sent off her revised narrative to him. Thanking him for the “personal note which pleased me so much,” she reworked her story following his criticisms. She was thrilled that he thought the “whole story…exceptional.” And, she con ceded, the “passages you marked were too rabid.” Stoddard worried, however, that she may not have toned it down enough. “If I have not in my alteration made it respectable—will you cut it out, or add ings and engs to make it so!” she instructed Lowell. Lowell must have found the revised piece acceptable for “My Own Story” appeared in the Atlantic Monthly four months later.14 Rather than rejecting Lowell’s advice, the usually contentious Stoddard graciously complied. On one level, “My Own Story,” can be read as Stoddard’s


‘s attempt to assuage Lowell’s anxieties and appeal to his readers. In fact, the title itself exposed the degree to which Stoddard acquiesced to Lowell’s advice. In one of his earliest letters to Lowell, Richard Stoddard mentioned his wife’s story had no title and asked him to “christen the child.” Several months later Stoddard herself thanked Lowell for the “good” title he had chosen. The irony of Lowell’s choice, “My Own Story,” was apparently lost on both of them.15 Stoddard’s story, tamed by Lowell, appeared in the May 1860 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. While Stoddard subdued her “sensual perceptions” and removed references to the body, her tale of female self-discovery contained hints of the female rebellion she would unleash in The Morgesons two years later. Unlike her later novel, however, “My Own Story” conforms, at least superficially, to the plot conventions of woman’s fiction—a literary style Lowell recognized and appreciated. It describes a young woman’s struggle to achieve self-awareness and romantic fulfillment Following the sentimental heroines who preceded her, Stoddard’s heroine resists temptation, exercises self-control, and is rewarded with domestic fulfillment. Much of it told retrospectively, “My Own Story” opens with a discussion between the heroine, Margaret Denham, and her desperately ill friend, Laura, in which the two remember the wonderful summer they spent with three new friends: Redmond, Harry, and Maurice. Their remembrances rouse the painful feelings they had repressed in the wake of the men’s departure. Margaret confesses that she loved Redmond despite his engagement to another woman. Laura admits that she knew Redmond returned Margaret’s love, but believing in duty and obligation she had never revealed this to Margaret. Laura, too, had fallen in love that summer, with Redmond’s friend Harry Lothrop. But, in this instance, it was Laura who was already engaged, and who faithfully fulfilled her prior obligations. Laura dies shortly after this conversation, leaving her fiance, who had heard rumors of her friendship with Harry, to wonder: “‘Did she die…do you know, because I held her promise that she would be my wife?’” Margaret fails to reassure Frank that Laura’s consumptive death was not his fault, suggesting, perhaps, that it was. Laura herself had recognized the cost of her repressed love for Harry. Before her death, she asked Margaret to give Frank some letters. “There is not a reproach in them,” but she expects they will make him sad. Laura’s words and her subsequent death cause Margaret to reexamine the events of that summer, in the process embarking on a journey of self-discovery that will save her from Laura’s fate and lead to personal and romantic fulfillment.16 Margaret first reconstructs for the reader how she and Laura rewrote the pain of that summer into “sentimental” memories which “created an illusion of pleasure.” They even hid their true feelings from one another: “neither of us knew or suspected the other of any deep or lasting feeling toward the two friends.” Laura’s death, having “awakened feelings which I thought I had buffeted down,” gives Margaret “deep voluptuous dreams.” Hearing of Laura’s death, Harry Lothrop visits Margaret and offers his memories of that summer. He


was struck by Margaret ‘s “pride” and “self-control,” and he remembers that it was a “‘desperate matter’” between her and Redmond, “‘a hand-to-hand struggle.’” Believing their relationship over—Redmond is about to be married— Harry asks Margaret’s permission to visit her again. “Charmed” by his refined and educated manner, she agrees.17 Harry leaves, and Margaret gives in to her unhappiness. A “rage” takes “possession” of her, and the events of that summer come flooding back. Frank, Laura and Margaret make the acquaintance of Redmond, Harry, and Maurice at a local ball. Frank, preferring cards to dancing, leaves the two women to dance with their new friends. “Tall, slender, and swarthy,” Redmond is immediately captivated by the fair and beautiful Margaret, his “antipode” in looks. The attraction between Margaret and Redmond quickly intensifies. Introducing imagery that would appear frequently in her fiction, Stoddard used animals, particularly horses, to explore issues of self-control and sexual passion. Out for a ride, Redmond notices that Margaret’s horse, Folly, appears nervous. His “ears moved perpetually, and his wide nostrils were always a quiver.” Margaret rides him with great confidence, however. “‘You are a bold rider,’” Redmond tells her. She disagrees and calls herself a “‘careful one,’” and displays her worn whip to demonstrate her control of Folly. The reader, of course, is left to wonder what Margaret is really like—bold or careful. Margaret’s faith in her own control remains undiminished in spite of Redmond’s persistent concern. For a short while she appears in command of Folly, but soon enough Folly bolts away, and she is saved from great harm by the quick actions of Harry Lothrop. Her hands “crushed,” Margaret resumes her ride, refusing to acknowledge this momentary lapse in her control.18 Margaret’s struggle with Folly, of course, foreshadows her “battle” with Redmond. Redmond insists on riding back with Margaret so that he can keep an eye on Folly. He notices her shaking hands, and ties Folly’s reins to those of his own horse. Margaret muses on Redmond’s nature as the two set off. She realizes he is a “wild animal.” In the dark, she finds it impossible to “separate him from his horse.” The horse that Stoddard used earlier to suggest the limits of Margaret’s self-control now represents Redmond’s sexual power. The two—Margaret’s selfcontrol and Redmond’s sexuality—are on a collision course. When Margaret’s hand inadvertently falls upon Redmond’s, she sets torch to the “fire” which will torment her: My hand fell on Redmond’s. Before I could take it away, he had clasped it, and touched it with his lips. The movement was so sudden that I half lost my balance Recoiling from Margaret, “as if he had received a blow,” Redmond seems to regret his action almost immediately. “‘Take up your rein,’ he said with a strange voice,—‘quick!—we must ride fast out of this.’” Margaret furiously tries to undo the knot in the handkerchief which binds their reins together, but “the knot is too


firm.” Redmond calms down, and tells her to stop. Margaret, now angry, refuses: “I put my face down between the horses’ necks and bit it apart, and thrust it into my bosom.” The two ride “fiercely” to Margaret’s house. Margaret leaps from the horse, shouts good night to Redmond, and escapes into the domestic safety of her father’s house. Rampant with sexual imagery, this passage demonstrates the “firm” bond between Margaret and Redmond, as well as Margaret’s passionate nature and her commitment to ideals of self-control.19 Suffering from an “inexplicable feeling of pride and disappointment,” Margaret retreats into domesticity for the next few days. She arranges drawers, mends stockings, and cleans the furniture, resisting the feelings Redmond arouses within her. But as her next outing with Redmond approaches, her “numbness of feeling began to pass off,…now I desired; now I hoped.” Margaret is working towards an understanding and an acceptance of her desire for Redmond. The pupils of her eyes are “dilated, as if [she] had received some impression that would not pass away.” She “artfully” prepares herself for Laura’s party. In black silk, Margaret expects to stand out and affect Redmond. Laura, however, destroys Margaret’s growing confidence by revealing that Redmond is already engaged. Engaged to his cousin out of obligation to his aunt, Redmond’s emerging relationship with Margaret borders on adultery.20 Margaret relies on her strong “self-possession” and self-control to get her through the evening. Emboldened by a glass of champagne, she meets Redmond’s gaze. He senses her “irresolution” and looks at her; “his own face grew very sad.” Clearly, Redmond’s feelings for Margaret differ from the bonds of obligation that hold him to his cousin. Resisting any inclination to divulge himself, Redmond politely walks away from Margaret. She marvels at his “wonderful…will,” and resolves to be his equal: I felt my own will rise as I looked at him,—a will that should make me mistress of myself, powerful enough to contend with, and resist, or turn to advantage any controlling fate which might come near me. Margaret, like the heroines of sentimental fiction, views self-conquest as inherently powerful. Up to this point, Stoddard’s tale of flirtation and illicit love follows the conventions of middle-class narratives of human perfectibility and self-control. Her strong and beautiful heroine struggles with forbidden love and vows to master her passions.21 Margaret’s character is tested several more times that summer, but she and Redmond successfully resist their desires. At one point Redmond seems about to yield to temptation and wonders at Margaret’s “‘infernal self-possession.’” She reminds him he is a “‘noble man’”; they must not “forget” themselves. Claiming to be weaker than Redmond, Margaret confesses she is only imitating his selfcontrol and begs him to leave. As autumn approaches, and Harry, Redmond, and Maurice prepare to leave, Margaret reflects on her experiences with Redmond. She realizes that he “must” and “shall” marry “that girl,” and she vows to “empty


the dust and ashes of my heart as soon as the fire goes down.” Margaret remains confident she can overcome her heartbreak.22 In a final confrontation, Margaret’s tremendous control prevails once again, and she denies her love for Redmond. Redmond confesses his “soul is dying,” and demands to know if she loves him. Margaret attains the highest degree of self-denial; she refuses even to admit her improper love. Redmond walks away from her, and, a short while later, he and his friends return to their city lives. Laura and Margaret revert to their “old habits,” and never speak of their troubled memories. Laura’s fiancé, Frank, visits at Christmas, aware that something has happened. Laura remains “silent…quiet and affectionate,” and Frank leaves reassured of her love. A few months later, Laura becomes ill and her death triggers the events of Stoddard’s tale. The story resumes a year later, after Laura’s death has reawakened Margaret’s slumbering passions. Margaret is “thrilled” by memories of Redmond’s “gleaming eyes,” and is seized by “a terrible longing” for him. She affirms her vows of self-denial and promises to forget Redmond and resume living. Having mastered herself, Margaret now believes she is a woman.23 Margaret’s new life begins with a new courtship. Harry Lothrop admits he has always loved Margaret, not Laura, and asks her permission to court her. The “passionate” Margaret finds it impossible to resist “the sincere addresses of a manly man.” She realizes that some would describe her as a “coquette” for this behavior. In a sarcastic reference to reigning architects of female advice literature, Stoddard reassured her readers that not all women were susceptible to Margaret’s vanities: Happily, there are teachers among our own sex, women of cold temperaments, able to vindicate themselves from the imputation. They spare themselves great waste of heart and generous emotion.24 Harry’s relationship with Margaret diverges dramatically from her powerful experiences with Redmond. Harry writes her “quiet, persuasive, eloquent letters,” sends her flowers, and reads his favorite authors with her. “He was the first person who ever made any appeal to my intellect,” Margaret concedes. She realizes that Harry was “educating” her for a “purpose”—to fulfill the ideal of the companionate mar riage. Margaret complies with Harry’s wishes, and she is lulled into an “idle life.” The passion and energy she experienced with Redmond lie dormant. Despite her vow to live again, Margaret quietly submits to a passionless relationship with Harry, and appears to the reader bored and lifeless. Clearly, Margaret is not yet a woman.25 A visit to her brother in New York City breaks “the monotony of [her] life” and reintroduces Redmond into her life. Bumping into Harry and Redmond on the street, Margaret is struck by the “expression of pain” on Redmond’s face. Margaret’s companion, Leonora, struck by Redmond’s overt sexuality, describes him as an Indian, better suited to riding a horse, than walking city streets. The


two say hello briefly, and Margaret returns to her hotel. Leonora, however, notices a change in Margaret: “I astonished Leonora at the table with my chat; she had never seen me except when quiet.” Margaret’s fleeting encounter with Redmond brings her back to life and restores her vitality. Her brother thinks he sees signs of fire in her eyes and warns her: “Smother that light in your eyes, my girl; it is dangerous.” Later that night, the two would-be lovers accidentally meet at the opera. They share some electric glances, until, intoxicated with Margaret’s perfume, Redmond confesses that his wife is dead. Margaret faints and is taken from the theater.26 Harry, fearing that he has lost Margaret, visits her the next morning to ask her to marry him. She asks him not to. He has “pursued” her “patiently,” and she likes him. “‘But,’” she admits, “‘my feeling for you did not prevent my fainting away…when Redmond told me that his wife was dead.’” Harry realizes that “‘the long-smothered fire has broken out again’” and leaves. With Margaret’s sexuality reawakened, the story moves to its conclusion. Redmond writes Margaret describing his wife’s death, his obligation to his aunt, and his current freedom. “‘Margaret, may I come, and never leave you again?’” he asks. In quick succession, Margaret accepts, Redmond visits, the two share “the first, best kiss of passion,” and they marry. The tale ends with a scene of domestic bliss and Redmond’s confession that he is “‘wild with happiness.’”27 Read one way, Stoddard’s story conformed nicely to prevailing middle-class narratives of self-control and its rewards. Margaret’s virtue and patience are rewarded with marriage to the man she loves. Redmond’s self-discipline and sense of duty similarly grant him the right to domestic bliss. But beneath this narrative lurked hints of the disturbing path Stoddard would take in The Morgesons. Margaret’s journey towards womanhood requires far more than the exercise of self-control. The acquisition of self-mastery alone does not convey womanhood on Margaret. To become a woman, she is compelled to understand and accept her nature, particularly the sensual side unleashed by Redmond. Admitting that she does not fully “know” herself, Margaret wrestles with her “two natures—one that acts, and one that is acted upon.” This is the first hint that readers receive about the limits of human control. Margaret must examine the feelings Redmond arouses in her and accept that not all things are within her control. Before she can move on to another relationship, she must acknowledge the depth of her feelings for Redmond. According to Stoddard, self-control did not require self-repression. Faced with the same dilemma as Margaret—the tension between desire and obligation—Laura chooses a different path and refuses to articulate and examine her desire for Harry, with tragic consequences.28 Intensely private, Laura keeps secret her feelings for Harry. Margaret senses that something is bothering Laura, and asks her what is wrong. “‘Nothing, Margaret,’” Laura responds, “‘only it seems to me that we mortals are always riding or fishing, eating or drinking, and that we never get to living.’” Laura, bound by obligation, cannot afford to explore the interiorities that Margaret


ultimately will. Just at the moment when Laura appears ready to delve beneath the surface, she backs away and abruptly ends her conversation with Margaret. Laura, to her detriment, never again attempts to explore these terrains, and her self-repression ultimately leads to her death. In a letter Margaret finds after her death, Laura finally confesses that Harry “‘stirred depths of feeling which [she] had no Knowledge of,’” and which did not exist between her and Frank. Writing from her death bed, Laura realizes “strong passion” is beyond her, but wonders if Margaret will experience it and use it to “master” a man. The contrast between the two women suggests Stoddard was not simply conforming to dominant narratives of self-control. When self-control required the total suppression of self, it could be deadly.29 “My Own Story” reflected a wide range of thematic concerns: courtship, romantic love, female sexuality, and the tension between self-control and selfexpression. In this early story, Stoddard only hinted at themes that would become more explicit, and more explosive, in her later fiction. Her aim was not to offer examples of dangerous possibilities—sexualized relationships and adulterous love—only to demonstrate the power of middle-class cultural ideals of selfcontrol. Laura’s death and Margaret’s lifeless relationship with Harry suggest far more than this. Laura’s silence is deadly. Margaret’s intellectual but passionless courtship with Harry leaves her unfulfilled. While the construction of heroines who learned the value of self-control without plummeting towards selfabnegation was common to woman’s fiction, Stoddard’s heroine achieves more than this. Margaret’s ultimate domestic fulfillment is predicated upon her growing self-awareness and her sexual maturity. In choosing the passionate Redmond over the refined Harry, Margaret completes her journey of selfdiscovery and is finally a woman.30 Contained within a tale of rewarded self-control, the potentially disturbing implications of Stoddard’s story were not readily apparent, as Lowell’s acceptance of “My Own Story” for publication suggests. “My Own Story” represented Stoddard’s effort to create a narrative of female self-discovery that neither offended Lowell nor violated her own desires to liberate women from repressive notions of propriety and duty. Her early deferential letters to Lowell reflected her ambition to get published and her lack of confidence in her writing. The “young writer” of “small stories” repeatedly addressed her own inexperience and lack of ability. “I do not yet know enough to be original artistically,” she wrote to Lowell shortly before the publication of her story. She yearned to learn more and write better.31 Immediately after the publication of her short story, however, Stoddard wrote Lowell assessing his critique of it, and introduced a new note of assertiveness into her correspondence with him. “Your warning strikes me seriously,” she disclosed, “Am I indeed all wrong, and are you all right about ‘going near the edge’ business?” She challenged Lowell’s right to circumscribe her fiction. “Must I create from whose, or what standard?” she demanded. Stoddard recognized that she disturbed Lowell’s “artistic sense” with her “want of


refinement.” “Coarse by nature,” Stoddard knew her “overwhelming perception of the back side of truth” often lead her fiction into places Lowell found unacceptable, particularly female sexuality.32 A couple of weeks later she recounted her exchange with Lowell in a letter to Edmund Stedman: In me he detects a tendency towards the edge of things and warns me against it…Alas, I am coarse and literal by nature, what shall I do?33 Stoddard realized her “sensual perceptions” disturbed Lowell and hoped that one day she would be “allowed to expose the body now and then.” Yet she struggled to make her story “respectable.” Stoddard simultaneously questioned the parameters of respectable literature, as demarcated by Lowell, and strove to revise her fiction to fit within them. Stoddard’s contradictory stance revealed her tremendous desire to get in print, and, more importantly, her deep ambivalence toward the genteel tradition from which she received her earliest encouragement. Unlike her male comrades, she valued self-realization more than discipline and order and welcomed the excesses of self-expression.34 After seeing her story in print, Stoddard once again thanked Lowell and mentioned that she was “about to commence a story…which I hope will not have the faults you have spoken of.” Struggling to walk a fine line between what she considered good literature and what Lowell defined as respectable, she began writing The Morgesons in the middle of 1860. In the end, however, she would write a novel that pushed the disturbing implications of female self-expression much further.35 Stoddard found writing a novel alternately frustrating and invigorating. She lamented her lack of ability to Edmund Stedman: “I am as yet incapable of wresting my conceptions from my brain, they present themselves obsteterically [sic], head and feet together,” or she conceded, “I perceive that they are misshapen.” She warned him three months later, “I pour over my MS everyday, struggle, fight, despair and hope over it… If it proves a failure I shall have a fit of sickness.” Jestfully describing The Morgesons as her bid for “immortality,” Stoddard in fact recognized the tremendous literary potential of her novel and feared it would be misunderstood.36 Even before The Morgesons was widely reviewed, Stoddard feared it had failed and linked its failure to the moralistic expectations of readers and reviewers. “I indeavoured [sic] to make a plain transcript of human life—a portion as it were of the great panorama without tacking on a moral here or an explanation there,” she admitted to Stedman shortly after its publication. Early responses from friends looking for the moral of her tale left her confused and disappointed. To Stedman she confessed her fears: “Perhaps I have failed. Indications are that it will be misunderstood.” Late in 1862 Stoddard sent a copy of her novel to her friend Lorimer Graham and his wife, who were living overseas, and conceded that her book lacked respectability. She expected they


would not “care for it much” because “it is not the kind of book your aunt would like to read aloud to her young ladies.” After reading The Morgesons, Bayard Taylor, also overseas, was relieved he had not submitted it to the censors, as he was “not certain it would have passed.”37 Contemporary scholars Sybil Weir and Sandra Zagarell have provided an explanation for these responses. Weir argues The Morgesons was a female bildungsroman—a novel of self-discovery in which the protagonist, traditionally male, must journey away from the constraints of feminized civilization in order to achieve self-awareness. She casts Stoddard’s novel within this tradition and suggests that Cassandra Morgeson follows the same journey of self-discovery as male protagonists. Over the course of the novel, Cassandra battles repressive cultural ideals, rejects conventional social institutions, and achieves the selfawareness of a mature sexual adult. Sandra Zagarell focuses on the novel’s uniqueness and convention-breaking qualities. Aligning Stoddard’s work more closely to the female gothic tradition of the Bronte sisters, Zagarell argues that Stoddard created “a fictional structure to present a heroine growing as she comes to terms with the particularities of adult female life.” Cassandra’s journeys, however, do not take her away from feminized civilization, but transport her further into the domestic world of the northeastern bourgeoisie. Stoddard’s revisionist novel, revolving around questions of female identity, sexuality, and power, details the development of a young girl into a mature independent woman who refuses to be subdued by prevailing gender conventions. Cassandra’s journey of self-discovery demands she confront prevailing models of female development, illuminate their limits and possibilities, and construct an identity for herself based on romantic self-expression. No wonder Stoddard feared her contemporaries would misunderstand her work.38 In the opening chapters, Stoddard introduced Cassandra Morgeson as a conventional preadolescent rebel—defying her mother’s suggestions for appropriate reading materials and thwarting her Aunt Mercy’s efforts at civilizing her. Cassandra refuses to listen to the evangelical musings of her mother and aunt and covers her ears, looking “defiantly around the room.” She is bored, mischievous, and bluntly honest. She refuses to greet her grandfather one morning. ’”I am not fond of my grandfather,’”" she tells her annoyed mother. Commended at school for lessons which she knows to be inaccurate, Cassandra vows to “punish” the teacher for the “undeserved praise.” She loudly disrupts class and is expelled. At a tea given by her mother, Cassandra amuses herself by observing the hollowness and hypocrisy of middle-class rituals. The self-control and restrained propriety of the assembled women crumble in the face of the deliciously prepared “feast” and the women fall “upon the waffles.” After gorging, they commence gossiping, “ridiculing their neighbors, and occasionally launching innuendos against their absent lords.”39 Stoddard criticized the superficial communalism of female teas and lambasted women’s rights advocates, noting:


It is well known that when women meet together they do not discuss their rights, but take them, in revealing the weakness and peculiarities of their husbands.40 Sarcastic and witty, Cassandra can also be cruel, tearing apart her sister’s revered butterfly in a rage. Cassandra, who is neither absolutely good nor evil, quickly repents. Like the conventional heroines of woman’s fiction, Stoddard’s Cassandra appears “flawed” and ready for reform, a heroine who needs to cultivate selfcontrol and become a respectable adult. These heroines typically struggle with their temperaments and achieve self-conquest in time to reform others.41 In Stoddard’s hands, Cassandra’s journey to maturity will differ dramatically. Even in these early pages Stoddard hinted at the depth of Cassandra’s dissatisfaction. The young Cass childishly closes her ears to the sermons of her mother and aunt and wisely rejects the feminized religion they represent. Mr. Park, a neighbor, frequently visits to engage Mrs. Morgeson in superficial discussions about religious doctrine. Mr. Park’s moral certitudes and religious “formulas” leave Cassandra cold. Listening to his prayers about sin and redemption, Cass “grew lonesome; the life within me seemed a black cave.” It was a cave from which her mother’s religion offered no egress.42 Disturbed by the evangelical bent of her female relatives, Cass finds feminized space equally onerous. Virtually all the sites of Cass’s early rebellions are female spaces—the kitchen, the school, and her “mother’s winter-room.” She leaves the room her mother has created specifically as her own as quickly as she can, “longing to escape [its] oppressive atmosphere.” In her introductory chapters, Stoddard familiarized her readers with key themes—the development of the rebellious Cassandra, religion and feminine influence, and the domestic world of nineteenth-century middle-class women—which dominate the rest of the novel.43 Just as evangelical religion leaves Cass empty, her schooling and familial relationships fail to stimulate any real internal growth. Aunt Mercy, disturbed by the freedom allowed Cass, proposes a plan that will take Cass on the first of three journeys. At thirteen, Cassandra is an “animal”—“robust in health—inattentive, and seeking excitement and exhilaration.” Aunt Mercy wants Cass to return with her to her grandfather’s home in Barmouth. Her family agrees that it will be a “good place” to “tame” the young girl. Cassandra’s iconoclastic sister, Verry, expects Cass will be stifled. All wonder how Cassandra’s education in Barmouth will affect her burgeoning sense of herself as woman.44 Cassandra’s life in Barmouth alternates between the puritanical atmosphere of her Grandfather Warren’s and the conventionally respectable environment of Miss Black’s school. Grandfather Warren, “a Puritan, without gentleness, or tenderness,” exercises strict control over Aunt Mercy. Much to Cassandra’s surprise, “Aunt Mercy was not the Aunt Merce I had known at home. She wore a mask before her father.” Cassandra slowly comes to appreciate the oppressive childhood her aunt, her moth-er, and other New England women suffered at the


hands of puritan patriarchs. Annoyed by two old spinsters visiting her grandfather, Cass runs out to the garden and tramples the chamomile beds. She stamps out her anger and thinks about the elderly women, wondering, “Had they been trampled upon?” She pities them and rushes to help them carry their packages. But the spinsters reject her help—and her empathy—and encourage Aunt Mercy to repress Cass, all in the name of good female behavior.45 Stoddard reminded her readers that evangelicalism offered little more for women by describing the decline of a “lively and pretty” neighborhood girl, Caroline. In Barmouth to “learn the tailor’s trade,” Caroline is “fearless” with Grandfather Warren and opposes “all his ideas.” Caroline is happy and warm; she refuses to be diminished by the puritanism of Cassandra’s grandfather. Reborn during a local revival, she marries an evangelical missionary and moves to Ohio. When she visits Cass ten years later Caroline is “a gaunt, hollow-eyed woman, of forbidding manners, and an implacable faith in no rewards and punishments this side of the grave.” In Stoddard’s vision neither puritanical nor evangelical traditions supported a sympathetic model of female development.46 Cassandra fares no better at school than at her grandfather’s. For Miss Black schooling is a “Christian duty”—a duty she must fulfill no matter how distasteful the student. Miss Black finds the pagan implications of Cassandra’s name disturbing. She insists upon calling her “Miss C. Morgeson,” denying Cassandra’s individuality and labelling her “peculiar.” Amidst the daughters of Barmouth’s affluent bourgeoisie, Cassandra is ostracized as the tailor’s granddaughter. She struggles to fit in, adopting their styles of dress and hair, but to no avail; the girls continue to treat her cruelly. When Cassandra finally responds to their taunts and hits another girl, Miss Black reprimands her, noting her vulgar temper. Cass challenges the teacher, who has called her a “bad girl.” “‘And you are a bad woman,’” Cassandra declared, “‘mean and cruel.’” Miss Black again dismisses her as peculiar. Another girl tries to injure Cass, and Aunt Mercy withdraws her from the school: “Thus my education at Miss Black’s was finished with a blow.”47 Cass’s trials with Grandfather Warren continue at home. His bible-reading leaves her “drugged with…monotony,” the minister’s sermons make no impres sion on her, and Barmouth’s revival has no affect upon her. While her aunt worries what will become of her, Cassandra secretly vows to become a “thorough reprobate” like a townsman who seems “remarkably happy.” Grandfather Warren is infuriated by his own inability to suppress Cassandra and cruelly shoots some pigeons after she has admired them. Cass soon returns to her parents. Upon her departure her grand-father warns her father that she has not yet been tamed: “‘Train her well, Locke; she is skittish.’” Cassandra refuses to be subdued even now and taunts her grandfather with the memory of the pigeons.48 Stoddard’s depiction of Cassandra’s experiences in Barmouth reflected her explicit rejection of Calvinism and Puritan patriarchy, a theme common to New England novelists.49 Grandfather Warren not only fails to suppress Cassandra,


but, despite the lack of physical and human warmth she experienced, Cass returns from Barmouth even more robust and more womanly than when she set off. I assumed a womanly shape…. I had lost the meagerness of childhood and began to feel a new and delightful affluence. What an appetite I had, too.50 Clearly, this first journey failed to reform the rebellious Cass. In this section, however, Stoddard rejected more than puritan patriarchy, her narrative also questioned the evangelically inspired faith in the redemptive power of women. Just as Grand-father Warren fails to reform Cass, neither Cass nor the warm and loving Caroline reconstruct the inhuman Grandfather Warren. In clear contrast to the example of Cass and Grandfather Warren, Stoddard’s “In the Garden,” published in The Aldine in 1872, recounts the transformation of a stern, silent, and puritanical grandfather by an impish young girl. The narrator lives with her grandfather and his daughter, the narrator’s Aunt Dora. He has refused to allow Dora to marry her sailor-lover, and she has settled into an unhappy spinsterhood. Grandfather’s home is a cold and unpleasant place— except the garden, which Aunt Dora, in her sorrow, lets grow wild and beautiful. Dora’s lover returns suddenly, asking her to come away with him. Prepared to defy her father and follow her lover, Dora agrees, and the old man grudgingly accedes. Dora and her husband go to sea, leaving the granddaughter with her still cold grandfather. They are drawn together by their sadness over Dora’s departure; “necessity compelled us to a closer acquaintance, to our mutual advantage.” The girl grows to appreciate her grandfather’s stories, and “he perceived signs of a mutual intelligence.” The grandfather slowly becomes a warm and communicative man. Several months later, Dora returns: Grandfather’s reform was completed; he folded his arms around her, and said in a touching voice, ‘You are the blessing of my life.’51 While secular in tone and topic, Stoddard’s short story, written quickly for money, more closely resembled dominant narratives of female influence. The contrast between this episode and The Morgesons suggests Stoddard constructed Cassandra’s experiences in Barmouth as an explicit critique of both the repression of the female self by puritan patriarchs and the evangelical glorification of female influence. Cass returns to Surrey unchanged by her year at Grandfather Warren’s. While a woman on the outside, she remains relatively unformed on the inside. Her sister scrutinizes her to see “if I had improved by the means which father so generously provided for me.”52 Of course there has been no significant growth. Clearly, according to Stoddard, self-development resulted from neither religious teachings nor money and refined education. At this point of stasis, Stoddard introduced Charles Morgeson, a distant relation and the catalyst for Cassandra’s


first steps toward womanhood. Charles quickly recognizes Cassandra’s passionate nature and her lack of self-awareness: He asked me if I knew whether the sea had any influence upon me; I replied that I had not thought of it. There are so many things you have not thought of,’ he answered, ‘that this is not strange.’53 Casting himself a role within Cassandra’s journey towards maturity, Charles proposes that she come and live with his family in Rosville. His wife would appreciate the company, and the town boasts a fine school. Cassandra admires Charles from a distance and experiences the first stirring of her sexuality. She notices the sea “murmuring softly, creeping along the shore, licking the rocks and sand.” She wants to go, yearning for fun and stimulation. Her mother warns that her constant pursuit of frivolity and self-gratification will not go unpunished: “‘I foresee the day when the pitcher will come back from the well broken.’” Ironically, Cass will return scarred, but unbroken and more womanly than when she left.54 Rosville, lacking the “probationary air” of Surrey and Barmouth, allows Cassandra to explore new possibilities without the censure of parents or society. Charles’s home is a contrast to the chaotic, iconoclastic Morgeson home—well arranged and fastidiously ordered, all is done to fulfill his demands. Compared to the abundant meals back at home, Cass is startled by the meager quantities of deliciously prepared food at Charles’s table and leaves the table “still hungry.” She wonders at the small appetites of Charles and his family and concedes she is an “animal.” While Charles’s appetite for food may be constrained, his passion for brutish horses is not. His wife Alice fears his wild horses, but he hopes Cass will ride with him. Charles brandishes his whip and asserts his mastery over the “devils.” Charles, who devoured Cassandra with his eyes at their very first meeting, is confident he can master passionate animals—whether women or horses.55 Learning that there was “little love between him and Alice,” Cassandra quickly senses the growing attraction between herself and Charles: “An intangible, silent, magnetic feeling existed between us.” As her hunger for Charles grows she worries less about food and becomes increasingly aware of her physical nature. Life made a greater impression on her, and “I was conscious of the ebb and flow of blood through my heart, felt it when it eddied up into my face, and touched my brain with its flame-covered wave.” In a series of confrontations the repressed emotion between the two builds, eventually erupting into Charles’s declaration of love. Charles displays his love for Cassandra only to have her reject him. An ardent lover of flowers, he presents her with a fragile flower, the last of the season. Cassandra accepts it, only to provoke him later by giving it to another man.56 Cassandra tries to approach Alice about her feelings for Charles, but Alice, absorbed by housekeeping and childrearing, dismisses her fears. Alice does


wonder, however, about the influence Charles and Cassandra have over one another, and unwittingly heightens the attraction between the two. She mentions Cass’s concerns to Charles at breakfast, but misses the charged look he exchanges with Cass: He raised his strange, intense eyes to mine; a blinding, intelligent light flowed from them which I could not defy nor resist, a light which filled my veins with a torrent of fire.57 While Cassandra can no longer resist the actual feelings, she continues to withstand Charles’s efforts to dominate her. Always near the surface, the repressed desire between the two erupts. Charles nearly betrays himself in front of Cassandra’s friend from school, Ben, a possible rival for Cass’s affections. Later when she and Charles are alone, Cassandra refuses to admit she belongs to him. Charles asks angrily, “‘Will you make me crush you?’” Charles becomes increasingly frustrated with Cassandra’s self-possession. When she turns down Alice’s offer of coffee as a temptation, he exclaims, “Cassandra is never tempted. What she does, she does because she will.” Stoddard depicted Cassandra’s struggle with Charles as a battle between individual wills, not as a moral dilemma over illicit sexual desire.58 Ben soon surmises there is something between Cassandra and Charles and tries to intervene, insisting Cass walk home with him after a social engagement one evening. Cass, significantly, chooses to ride with Charles. Ben candidly assesses Charles’s character, informing Cass that Charles is a “savage,” a devourer of beauty. Cass refuses to be warned away, but still she does not yield to Charles. For Stoddard, Cassandra’s struggle with Charles was less sexual than intellectual. Cassandra clearly desires Charles; it is her individualism she refuses to surrender. Ben is quite right in his assessment of Charles, as Cassandra is well aware. She shares Charles’s physical urges, but fears his wish to master her. In a highly charged confrontation between the three, Charles confesses his love, and Ben tries to take her away. While explicitly selecting Charles over Ben, Cassandra again refuses to capitulate to Charles, asking him never to speak of his love again. She acknowledges her sexual desires but refuses nevertheless to acquiesce to the demands of a tyrannical male. Cass has taken her first big step to maturity. She realizes how far she has traveled since leaving Surrey, for she “felt no longer a schoolgirl."59 As a contrast to the physically charged relationship between Cass and Charles, Stoddard offered another suitor for Cassandra, the young and naive Bill. Bill courts Cass in typical sentimental style—he helps her with her work, reads to her, and asks her to sing for him. Out for a ride—with Alice’s horses—Bill attempts to touch Cass’s hand, a gesture she shrugs off. He, unlike Charles, is unable to touch Cass literally or metaphorically. After her last encounter with Charles, Cassandra resolves to leave Rosville at the end of the year. Cass continues to thwart Charles‘s desires, and Charles


becomes increasingly frustrated, asking her in a “menacing voice,” “‘how dare you defy me? How dare you tempt me?’” Which Charles finds more painful— her defiance or the temptation—is left ambiguous.60 In a climactic scene, Cassandra seems ready to succumb to Charles. She agrees to go for a carriage ride with him—with his most “diabolical” horse in the lead. Alice warns her away, reminding her, “‘Know what you undertake, Cass.’” Charles responds firmly that Cass always knows what she is doing. Typical of much woman’s fiction, all fears center upon Cass. Will the horse hurt her? What danger awaits her if she yields to Charles? When the horse appears nervous Charles gives her a chance to back down, “‘If you are afraid, you must not come with me.’” Cass refuses to admit fear and insists upon continuing the ride. Of course, the horse becomes wild, Charles loses control of the carriage, and there is a tragic accident.61 Despite hints that Cass will suffer for her dalliance with Charles, it is Charles who is killed in the accident. Cass becomes neither a fallen woman nor a virtuous heroine. She continues on her path to maturity, with her awakened sexuality an important aspect of her womanhood. Sybil Weir’s reading of this chapter suggests that the accident is a re-birth of sorts for Cassandra, who regains consciousness and is told “‘You crawled out of a small hole, child.’” Charles’s death is oddly liberating for Alice as well. Finding reserves of strength she did not know she had, Alice tells Cass: “‘I have changed. When perhaps I should feel that I have done with life, I am eager to begin it.’” Alice confidently looks forward to running Charles’s business and raising her children. Charles, having long suppressed Alice’s abilities, dies in his attempt to conquer Cassandra, punished more for his efforts at mastery than for his moral transgressions.62 Stoddard further undermined the conventionally moralistic potential of this episode by making it clear that Cassandra, rather than repenting her illicit love, grows and matures as a result of it. After the accident, Cassandra sneaks out of bed to see Charles’s body and stumbles upon the mourning Alice who finally realizes all. Completely unrepentant, Cass admits she loved Charles and confesses, “‘I hunger now for the kiss he never gave me.’”63 She returns to her parents’ home to heal psy chically and physically, and confronts her self in a key moment of growing self-awareness. ‘Do you feel remorse and repentance?’ ‘Neither!’64 Making explicit her stance relative to conventional moral standards, Cassandra notes, “‘My teachers and myself are so far apart!’” It is a distance Stoddard applauded.65 Cassandra’s return home is colored by internal, psychological changes, unlike her departure from Barmouth. Things seem different to Cass not because they are but because “the relation in which I stood to them” was altered. Cass looks for


stability by taking “possession” of her “own” room. She pursues selfdevelopment in her own space and avoids the feminized middle-class chambers of her mother. Mrs. Morgeson surmises something has happened to Cassandra and confronts her. Cass refuses to open up, fearing her “self-control would give way.” Her mother perceives the truth and, grieving over the inability of women to protect themselves, curses women for giving birth to daughters. Cassandra, of course, does not share her mother’s fears—she is quite able to protect herself. Mrs. Morgeson wishes her daughter were not “‘so awfully headstrong.’”66 Cassandra also confronts her father with evidence of her emerging female identity. Out shopping for new furniture for her room, Cass insists he buy her a large mirror, “astonishing him with my vanity.” Mr. Morgeson is perhaps less surprised by Cass’s vanity than by her embrace of her physical self. She invites her family to see her room when she finishes decorating it. Just as she is uncomfortable in their space, her mother and aunt dislike her room, claiming to be “stifled” by it. Cass’s bedroom is luxurious and abundantly decorated. The fire burns hotly, and the older women worry Cass will burn up. Where Aunt Mercy and Mrs. Morgeson were “not allowed to have much of anything” when they were young, Cass takes and shapes things in accordance with her desires.67 Ben visits Cassandra in Surrey and is disappointed to find she still loves Charles. When he arrives Cass quietly draws his attention to her scars as a way of indicating she has not repented her love for Alice’s husband. Cass’s sister Veronica catches Ben’s attention. Depicted as the opposite of the “‘powerful’” Cass, Verry falls in love with Ben, and the two become engaged. Veronica, waiflike and prone to illness, is a constant contrast to the vital and voluptuous Cassandra. Where Cassandra leaves home to search for excitement, Veronica remains at home, avoiding people and stimulation. Cass’s bedroom faces the uncontrollable sea, Veronica’s the barren landscape. Veronica’s sublimation of desire contrasts dramatically with her sister’s pursuit of self-gratification. On a rare trip to Boston, Verry buys gifts for others, purchasing for herself only a “little cross.” Cassandra buys a variety of accessories to adorn her body—belts, buckles, ribbons, and lace—and yearns for even more.68 On the one hand, Verry appears “pure, noble, and beautiful”; on the other, she is “peculiar,” her development clearly stunted. Displaying signs of what today would be called anorexia nervosa, Verry starves herself, refusing food and avoiding stimulants like coffee and tea. She denies her body the opportunity to attain womanhood and remains “‘a child always,’” psychologically and physically. Cassandra initially sees Veronica’s isolation as a form of independence, as a symbol of self-possession. But Verry’s tragic future will suggest the dangers inherent in childlike models of womanhood. While middleclass institutions provided problematic models of womanhood, girls could not develop entirely outside them. In confronting cultural constraints, Cassandra “suffered immensely,” but only from these encounters could she mature into a woman. Veronica avoids confrontation and denies her womanhood and becomes an “anomaly,” doomed to an unfulfilled life.69


Ben, whose family inheritances include alcoholism as well as money, hopes that the quiet and self-contained Verry will help him conquer his demons. Cass fears this “one fault,” and Ben reassures her: “‘Oh, do you not know the strength, the power, that comes to us in the stress of passion and duty?’” Cassandra doubts this, but gives Ben her blessing. Foreshadowing the troubling consequences of Ben’s faith in female influence, Cassandra is struck by a unusual engraving Veronica has in her room. Verry, drawn by its beautiful foliage, has not noticed the man in the picture. Cass points him out, and Verry becomes disturbed by his presence. The man’s posture suggests he is “helpless” or “broken.” “His expression of concentrated fury” is directed at an object behind the trees—a house. The man, “waiting” for something, directs his fury at domestic icons which have perhaps disappointed him. It is a disillusionment Ben and Verry will come to share.70 Ben insists Cass return home with him to break the ice for him and Verry. This initiates Cass’s third journey. The Somers residence differs dramatically from Charles Morgeson’s house. It is cluttered and very chaotic, full of highly individualistic people with tremendous appetites—for food, for wine, and for people. The “oppressive” atmosphere here stems not from a controlling patriarch like Charles but from a manipulative matriarch, Mrs. Somers. Her power emanates from her control of the family money. Ben and his siblings cannot claim their maternal inheritance until the youngest child is twenty-one, an event recently forestalled by the birth of yet another Somers heir. The Somers children are warped by the weight of their inheritances—financial, social, and genetic. Social status and financial wealth are overriding concerns for the Somers girls, and the brothers are pursued by their own demon—alcoholism. Cassandra is initially overpowered by the strong personalities of the Somers family, but quickly comes to understand the shallow nature of their existences: “‘It is not fair —their overpowering personality—it is not fair to others. It overpowers me, though I know it is all fallacious.’” Just as she held her own in her struggle with Charles, so too will she learn to hold her own among these people.71 Ben’s brother, Desmond, notices Cassandra’s scars and asks how she got them. “‘I got them in battle,’” she briefly replies. The two are initially brought together by Cassandra’s badges of her sexuality, which attract Desmond rather than repel him. As she was in Surrey and Rosville, Cass is cast as different from other young women, receiving special attention from an old wealthy woman known for her ability to discern character. Mrs. Hepburn is drawn to both Cassandra and Desmond. She sees Cassandra as a “bold gamester” and reminds her that “‘a woman like you need not question whether a thing is convenable.’” Mrs. Hepburn likes Desmond the best of all his siblings, yet realizes “he may be the wickedest.” Observing him at a party, Cass is struck by his dark beauty and his eyes. She discovers “something animal” in his “eyes.” Again, Desmond is drawn to her scars and attempts to divine her past. He believes that “‘women like [Cass], pure, with no vice of blood, sometimes are tempted, struggle, and suffer.’” Cass winces and informs him: “‘Even drawn battles bring their scars.’”


Desmond doubts Cass’s self-possession, and invites her to “convince” him that a “‘woman can reason with her impulses, or even fathom them.’” It is a challenge Desmond will come to regret.72 Desmond’s voice sets “her pulse striking like a clock,” but Cassandra is disturbed by his drinking. Alcohol changes his personality: His listless, morose expression had disappeared; in the place of a brutaltempered, selfish, bored man, I saw a brilliant, jovial gentleman.73 “Which,” she wonders, “was the real man?” Unsettled by her feelings for Desmond, Cassandra reassures herself by searching out her own reflection in a mirror, inadvertently initiating a showdown with Mrs. Somers and fostering her bond with Desmond. Cass, in search of a match to light the candle in her room, accidentally meets Desmond in the dining room and sets fire to something much larger. Mrs. Somers comes upon them, and, thinking she has caught them in an assignation, rages at Desmond. Cass makes her first gesture toward rejecting the kind of power Mrs. Somers’s represents. Despite the “anger” that “raged” within her, Cass refuses to allow Mrs. Somers to dictate her emotions and restrains her fury, instead sarcastically noting the gulf between Mrs. Somers’s behavior and the ideals of “tender, true-hearted” womanhood. Cassandra returns to her room, “wondering over the mischief that a candle could do.”74 Mrs. Somers’s scene brings Desmond and Cassandra closer, forcing Cassandra to admit she is in love with him. Cassandra continues “mapping out” the “world of emotions” she started on her earlier journey to Rosville. Now, however, the battle lines are different. Having survived Charles with her individuality intact, she no longer fears for her self-possession. This time the battle rages within Desmond. He, like Ben, must conquer his alcoholism. But, unlike Verry, Cassandra will not allow Desmond to cast her in the role of his redeemer. The two can marry only after each has achieved maturity independent of the other. Cassandra is clearly on her way; it is Desmond who has yet to mature. Mrs. Somers, in an attempt to separate Cass and Desmond, warns her that Desmond plays with women and leaves them broken. Cassandra is unafraid. Drawing Mrs. Somers’s attention to her marked face she tells her, “‘I am already scarred.’” Cassandra fears not that Desmond will break her, but that he will destroy himself. Mr. Somers, handicapped by marriage to a wealthy matriarch, worries more about Ben’s relationship with Veronica. He asks Cass to warn Verry about unequal marriages. Cass needs no such warning: “Had I not seen the misery of unequal marriages?” But Cass and Mr. Somers are wary of two different things. Mr. Somers’s fears center on marriages between social unequals. Cassandra’s concerns are psychological. Can two undeveloped individuals form a satisfying union? It is risk she is unwilling to take.75 While she realizes the necessity of Desmond’s self-reformation, Cassandra, not the typical virtuous heroine, does not learn to love the unpleasant, and instead dreads life without him. She gloomily contemplates the “joyless, vacant, barren


hours” which stretch before her. Stoddard made the difference between Cass and sentimental heroines explicit and devised a scene where Cass’s moral responses are tested. On the night before her return to Surrey, Desmond tells Cass of an early illic–it love affair he had. Cass “grew rigid with virtue,” but Desmond dismissed her reac–tion. here was no “ruin” for either him or his lover, though both loved “shamefully.” In fact, he notes, the unnamed woman is at the party tonight: “‘She is no outcast.’” Desmond simultaneously rejects images of fallen womanhood and embraces female sexuality. Cassandra quickly quells her virtuous response, recognizing that what she was truly feeling was jealousy, not moral outrage. Her moralistic reaction is quickly replaced by a passionate, and, in Stoddard’s view, more human emotion.76 Cassandra returns to Surrey to find her mother dead and her family on the brink of financial ruin.77 Read along side the plots of woman’s fiction, Cassandra faces yet another trial. Stoddard, however, offered a conventional narrative only to question and undermine it. She contrasted the intricate middle-class rituals of mourning—the dress, the social expectations—with the raw emotions beneath the performance: We could take off our mourning garments and our mourning countenance, now that we were alone;…we could give way to that anguish we are afraid and ashamed to show.78 Cassandra realizes her family needs her now and destroys Desmond’s parting gift to her, symbolically accepting her duty to her family. “I never shall have any more colds, Aunt Merce; never mean to have anything to myself—entirely, you know,” she announces to her concerned aunt. Cassandra’s transformation to selfless womanhood is complete, we are supposed to believe, when she feels “no answering excitement” during a wild storm. “Grown older,” Cassandra is now a dutiful daughter and selfless female.79 Cassandra attempts to fulfill her obligations, made worse by her father’s financial failure. Forced to lead a life of “self-denial,” Cassandra’s repression of self now includes the suppression of all sensual desires. Several months of this take their toll on her. The once vital and robust young woman becomes a shadow of her former self. She catches a rare glance of herself in the mirror: “What a starved, thin, haggard face I saw… Whose were those wide, pitiful, robbed eyes?” Cassandra’s self-denial and her acceptance of female duty robs her of her identity and leaves her psychologically malnourished. Even Aunt Mercy is disturbed by what she no longer sees in Cass and wishes she could still call her “‘possessed.’” Cass’s spent appearance causes her aunt to question her old assumptions and repudiate her initial ideas about female education and selfsacrifice.80 On the eve of his marriage to Veronica, Ben confesses the profound effect Cass has had on his beliefs. “‘You have been my delight and misery ever since I knew you,’” he confides, “‘I saw you first, so impetuous, yet self-contained’”


Then, to my amazement, I saw that, unlike most women, you understood your instincts; that you dared to define them, and were impious enough to follow them. You debased my ideal, you confused me, also, for I could never affirm that you were wrong; forcing me to consult abstractions, they gave a verdict in your favor, which almost unsexed you in my estimation.81 Cassandra’s refusal to yield to social expectations and her acceptance of her passionate nature terrify Ben and force him to admire her. When he cannot reject Cassandra’s subversive stance, he questions her womanhood and “unsexes” her. But, again, Ben cannot just dismiss Cassandra as unwomanly. “‘I must own that the man who is willing to marry you has more courage than I have,’” he concedes. Fearful of Cassandra’s powerful womanhood, and the cultural chaos it potentially heralds, Ben chooses Veronica, telling Cass, “‘Is it strange that when I found your counterpart, Veronica, that I yielded?’” Ben looks forward to a life of “‘eternal repose'” with Verry, his expectations contradicted by the tragic end that awaits him.82 Veronica embarks on married life with much greater ambivalence and far less faith in the future. As Verry prepares for Ben’s arrival, Cassandra “observed that she put in order all her possessions, as if she were going to undertake a long and uncertain voyage.”83 Verry meticulously arranges her room, putting all her personal items away to make way for Ben, who is to move in with the Morgesons. Veronica’s reluctance to give up her room reflects her greater misgivings about relinquishing her identity. After Ben moves in Verry pauses before entering her bedroom. Stoddard makes it clear that her fears stem not from any physical cause, but from concerns about individuality and dominance. On her wedding night Verry tries to remain in Cass’s room. Cass quietly leads her to the room she will share with Ben. Verry stands hesitantly at the door: She stood before her door a moment silently, and then gave a little knock. No answer came. She knocked again, the same silence as before. At last she was obliged to open it herself, and enter without any bidding.84 Veronica, unlike Cassandra, refrains from taking action and avoids making decisions about her life, hoping others will guide her. The future of her relationship with Ben, who is also looking for direction, does not bode well. As Veronica enters the room, Cass wonders, “‘Which will rule?’”85 Cassandra continues to fulfill her obligations to her family, but soon perceives that she is stagnating. Another year passes, and she has not changed at all: “‘I remain this year the same. No change, no growth or development! The fulfillment of duty avails me nothing.’”86 Unlike the heroines of more conventional novels, self-denial does not make Cass a better woman. Her life becomes unsettled again when her father remarries, freeing Cass from her role as dutiful daughter. She is both devastated and liberated by her father’s remarriage. She misses her father dreadfully, but she welcomes the change in her status. When Ben and Verry move


into their own house, she becomes the sole owner and occupant of her Surrey home. I was at last left alone in my own house, and I regained an absolute selfpossession, a sense of occupation I had long been a stranger to.87 Cass regains possession of her life, and her appearance improves. Her hair regains its luster; she looks young again. In an abrupt and ill-fitting conclusion, a self-reformed Desmond appears suddenly. The sober and mature Desmond proposes to Cass, and she accepts. In three pages, they marry, move to Europe for two years, and return to Surrey in time to witness Ben’s death from alcoholism. An oddly traditional ending for an untraditional novel, Stoddard undermines her own hasty ending. She married off her heroine, but left her readers with ambiguous messages about marriage. Cass marries her equal and appears happy. Having married unequally, Ben and Verry are doomed— Ben to death and Verry to an unfulfilled life with an unresponsive baby. Ben’s expectation that Verry could reform him, that love and duty would overcome his flaws, tragically alters them both. Verry’s “eyes go no more in quest of something beyond. A wall of darkness lies before her.” Verry’s unwillingness to embark on a quest for self-awareness and her refusal to confront and challenge middle-class conventions contrive to embalm her in a kind of living death, which only true death can relieve.88 Reviews of The Morgesons, while generally laudatory, largely failed to divine the significance of Stoddard’s novel. Early pieces, written before the book was formally published, predicted that it would be a fine novel of New England life and manners. Reviewers compared her to Rose Terry and Harriet Prescott. They expected to read fine descriptions of New England scenery and accurate portrayals of New Englanders. Most found exactly what they were looking for and ignored large parts of The Morgesons in favor of its regionalist characters and descriptions. Some reviewers, like Stoddard’s friend, George Henry Boker, came close to divulging the true import of the novel. Boker claimed that he never read a piece by her without being “surprised.” He applauded Stoddard for her “defiant grappling with the secrets of the heart,” and noted that this distinguished her novel from “most of the contemporary production of her sex.” While a story about life in a New England village, The Morgesons was not about the “kind of life we are accustomed to meet with in novels.” Boker was particularly impressed with Stoddard’s refusal to create the unnaturally pure or evil characters of “so many conventionally feeble tales.” He also commended Stoddard for refusing to succumb to dominant literary modes of moralism. “We see no traces of those fearful moral struggles by which the promptings of passion are subdued.” The “moral tournament” in Stoddard’s novels was between contending passions confined within the “walls” of convention. But even Boker’s review was surprisingly superficial. He mentioned no specifics,


skimmed over Cassandra’s dubious morals and behavior, and retreated to vague references to Stoddard’s genius.89 The reviewer in the New York World, identified by James Matlack as editor Manton Marble, celebrated Stoddard’s regionalism and her “keenly truthful picture of New England life.” A month prior to the publication of his review, Marble had received a letter from Richard Stoddard imploring him to write a favorable notice of his wife’s novel. Richard Stoddard hoped that a good word from the World would “have some effect on that ASS the public.” While Marble’s response to Richard Stoddard did not survive, his review, which strove to be pleasing, does. Despite recognizing Stoddard’s affinity with the Brontes as a realist who probed the passions beneath everyday life, Marble read The Morgesons through the lens of woman’s fiction and reconstructed Stoddard’s Cassandra into a typical sentimental heroine—a woman, who is “tempted, but without sin.” Perhaps Marble hoped to find Stoddard the wide audience her husband’s letter suggested she desired. He described The Morgesons as a conventional novel of “trial and triumph,” a story about a heroine “who is made to recite the steps by which she is perfected through suffering.” For readers who remained unpersuaded, he concluded by reminding them of Stoddard’s talent as a regionalist, recounting her “charming” descriptions of the Massachusetts coastline.90 George Ripley’s review in the New York Tribune made no such effort to reinvent The Morgesons. The Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley, was an organ aimed at the most evangelically-oriented of the middle class, and Ripley’s review would not have inspired its readers to buy Stoddard’s novel. Ripley, a noted nineteenth-century reformer, highlighted its divergence from popular novels, a deviation that discomfited him. He praised The Morgesons and the “profound genius” and “artistic gift” of its author. Where many reviewers criticized Stoddard’s terse writing style, he commended her “short, transparent, incisive sentences,” which demonstrated a “master ly command of idiomatic English.” Stoddard’s novel was not part of the emerging realist school. It was an “original invention.” In line with her endeavor “to analyze passion, rather than to delineate personalities,” her characters were “creations,” not “descriptions.” But he suggested that this might be a problem, explicitly informing his readers: “We do not allude to this as a fault, but as a characteristic.” Ripley believed that the author, “accustomed to brood over the mysteries of life,” had a “remorseless habit of stripping the veil from the softest illusions.” Her passages “present the harsh, somber, unlovely features of character, which are repulsive enough in real life, with no attempt to relieve them by the softening graces of art.” “The story will be read,” he continued, as a “somewhat bitter, but perhaps not unwholesome commentary on life and society,—instead of a complete, fully rounded narrative, enticing to the imagination by pictures of ideal loveliness and romantic perfection.” While Ripley struggled to present The Morgesons as a work of genius by a skilled author, his review probably scared off more readers than it attracted.91


Ripley’s ambivalence was not noticed by Stoddard, who wrote him thanking him for his notice of her novel. Compared to sanctimonious reviews, like the one that appeared in the Portland Transcript, which dismissed the novel as “materialistic in spirit; low in moral tone, and…not on the whole a wholesome book,” Stoddard’s pleasure in more complex reviews like Ripley’s was understandable. His reply to her letter embodied his conflicting response to The Morgesons. He admired the “steel-like vigor and keenness of [the] story very much,” but was “not in love with its characters.” His complaints echoed Bayard Taylor’s and even Ben Somers’s. Ripley confessed he “might be afraid of the author.” His fear, however, was diminished because he knew the author’s “brilliant intellect was softened by human sympathies and sorrows.” Manton Marble, in his review, similarly attempted to “soften” the author of The Morgesons by noting that the “master hand” of this writer was “white and small.” These reviewers eased their discomfort with Stoddard’s fiction by reminding themselves of the femininity of its creator.92 While Stoddard failed to challenge Ripley’s observations in 1862, she explicitly impugned his critical abilities in 1889 when The Morgesons was republished largely through the efforts of Edmund Stedman. “His reviews of me were worthless,” she wrote a friend, “Of that dark undercurrent in the soul and heart of man he was either ignorant of or resolutely shut his eyes.” From the distance of twenty years, Stoddard was confident that she had “written the truth regarding human emotion—the turbulence, the repression, the expression of Passion.” But even in the late 1880s, in the waning years of American Victorianism, editors and reviewers remained, at best, ambivalent, and at worst, hostile to The Morgesons.93 In 1889, after reading yet another ambiguous notice of The Independent, Stoddard wrote the editor, John Eliot Bowen, assailing the idiocy of his reviewer. Bowen, a friend of Stoddard’s, rejoined that she had misunderstood the review. His reviewer had not “accused” Stoddard of “vulgarity,” but believed that she had the “power of discerning vulgarity.” While Bowen defended his writer, he gave Stoddard his impression of The Morgesons, which diverged little from commentaries of the 1860s. Bowen was reading the novel with “great pleasure,” but he did not “find the Morgesons very agreeable people.” “You certainly did not intend them to be such,” he continued, “You intended them to be ‘cold, peculiar, disagreeable, and outre.’” Stoddard replied that she had intended no such thing. Just as she refused to agree with James Russell Lowell that she was “going near the edge,” so too did she resist efforts by Bowen and his reviewer to label her characters “outre.” She defended Cassandra’s transgressions with Charles, particularly her longing for his kiss after his death. “To me this seems more like genuine human nature, than it seems to you, ‘cold and outre.’” Stoddard dismissed Bowen’s criticisms as mere “opinion” and continued to call attention to the turbulent dimensions of female subjectivity, asserting women’s sexuality and their rights to its expression. Having engaged the sentinels of


genteel literature in a battle over gender identities and the limits of acceptable self-expression, Stoddard refused to concede defeat.94

Chapter Three “I was not allowed to give myself— I was taken” Passive Women and Feminized Men

DURING THE SUMMERS OF 1874 AND 1875, THE GREATEST SCANDAL OF THE nineteenth century unfolded before the inhabitants of New York City. Theodore Tilton publicly accused his good friend and business partner, Henry Ward Beecher, of seducing his wife, Elizabeth Tilton. The local papers, full of dramatic confessions and strident denials, closely followed Beecher’s investigation by his church and his trial the following summer. They faithfully reported Victoria Woodhull’s radical beliefs on free love, Theodore Tilton’s shrill complaints, and the heartfelt denials of Beecher and his followers. Beecher, exonerated by a biased church investigation and neither condemned nor acquitted by a hung jury, continued to occupy the pulpit at Plymouth Church, still its most popular preacher. Narratives of the trial focused on contested images of masculinity, marriage, and bourgeois gender relations. What was “true love”? Who had victimized Elizabeth Tilton—Theodore or Beecher? Which man had violated the sacred tenets of “‘noble manhood’”? And, of course, was Beecher guilty and of what exactly?1 Writing to her friend Elizabeth Akers Allen in the summer of 1874, Elizabeth Stoddard, like many of her contemporaries, voiced her opinion of what would come to be called the “Scandal of the Age.” “I heard all the story two years ago,” she informed Allen, “You may depend that Beecher has done it.” Stoddard was certain that Henry Ward Beecher was guilty of an adulterous affair with Elizabeth Tilton. She was acquainted with all of the people involved as her husband and close friends regularly published poems in The Independent, a religious weekly edited by Beecher and Tilton. While the jury failed to reach a verdict, Stoddard remained convinced that Beecher was in fact guilty, but was relatively unconcerned about what should be done to him. The only observation she made to Allen was her astonishment at Beecher’s popularity: “How has that man gained his reputation, his language is inelegant?” She was interested neither in explanations of Beecher’s behavior nor in con demnations of Theodore Tilton. Stoddard reserved her indignation for the female protagonist of the drama— Elizabeth Tilton.2 Stoddard later affirmed her denunciation of Beecher and criticized Elizabeth Tilton, claiming Beecher had done “as he pleased with that lying weak fool Elizabeth Tilton.” In Stoddard’s hands, the Beecher-Tilton scandal was neither a tale

"/ WAS NOT ALLOWED TO GIVE MYSELF—I WAS TAKEN” 51

of broken conventions nor of disgraced womanhood. Nor was it a drama of competing ideas of masculinity or marriage. Stoddard’s version of the BeecherTilton affair highlighted instead the problem of female passivity. Focusing not on Beecher’s culpability, but on Elizabeth Tilton’s weakness, Stoddard saw their story as just one among many in which women were victimized by their own passivity. Elizabeth Tilton, kept silent during the trial, was represented as an icon of female spiritual purity and worldly incompetence—images manipulated by both the prosecution and the defense. Rather than direct her anger at the men who exploited Tilton, Stoddard reserved her rage for the woman who allowed it —the “lying weak fool Elizabeth Tilton.”3 While the trial of Henry Ward Beecher and his indeterminate relationship with Elizabeth Tilton were clearly “real” events, they could just as easily have been the subject of one of the dozens of short stories Stoddard wrote in the 1860s. In these early stories she built on her vision of rebellious womanhood and made explicit the troubles awaiting women who failed to articulate and gratify their desires. These women lived half-lives, like Cass’s sister, Veronica. Neither alive nor dead, they remained committed to Victorian ideals of female submission and voicelessness, enduring male dishonesty and domestic discontent. Stoddard was not alone in her literary exploration of these themes. Prominent among her predecessors were Fanny Fern and E.D.E.N. Southworth—both of whom had written bestsellers about virtuous women victimized by greedy, selfish men. The first part of this chapter reads Stoddard’s representation of the problem of female passivity alongside the popular novels Ruth Hall and The Hidden Hand. Stoddard was familiar with the works of Fern and Southworth, as her earlier columns in the Daily Alta California demonstrated. She repeatedly disparaged their fiction. The author of The Morgesons agreed with these writers that bourgeois women were vulnerable to fraud and danger, but her response to the Victorian cult of true womanhood differed dramatically. Southworth’s novel of a rebellious young woman who thwarts convention, assumes masculine identities and powers and is rewarded for it, concludes with an affirmation of Victorian womanhood and a celebration of feminized masculinity. Fern’s novel, much more critical of bourgeois institutions than Southworth’s, follows the struggles of a cast-off widow to achieve self-sufficiency and closes with an ambivalent endorsement of female autonomy and a half-hearted affirmation of benign paternalism. Stoddard’s short stories of the 1860s, as well as her earlier novel, were far less ambivalent in their embrace of an assertive model of womanhood. Castigating women who allowed themselves to be deceived by men, she contended that women must confront bourgeois institutions and engage in journeys of self-discovery, ultimately achieving a form of romantic selfhood usually reserved for men. Stoddard’s reinvention of femininity placed her at the margins of Victorian culture, and, like another dissenting voice from the nineteenth-century, Margaret Fuller, she earned the respect of some and the fear of a great many others.4


The second part of this chapter turns to male literary examinations of midcentury gender relations, particularly Hannah Thurston, Bayard Taylor’s response to the strong-minded Cassandra Morgeson. While Taylor shared Stoddard’s contempt for unequal marriages, he feared the kind of women Stoddard celebrated, and instead forged his own model of the ideal bourgeois wife—an intelligent and cosmopolitan female, who, chastened by the sacredness of motherhood, voluntarily submits to an enlightened man. Taylor’s reconstruction of the strong-minded woman into an obedient wife and mother found parallels in much mid-century fiction by men, but the dilemma he addressed—male fears of unreconstructed womanhood—was best articulated by Nathaniel Hawthorne, most notably in “The Birth-Mark.” Written in 1843, it dramatizes masculine fears of female sexuality and power, and the destructive consequences of male efforts at reconfiguring women. Where Taylor celebrated the success of his hero’s project, Hawthorne’s protagonist is punished for his labors and doomed to a lifetime of unhappiness.5 Stoddard’s stories of female victimization and rebellious heroines, when read against the works of these disparate authors—Fern, Southworth, Taylor, and Hawthorne—demonstrate the breadth of popular inquiry into bourgeois gender relations, as well as further illuminating Stoddard’s iconoclastic stance on questions of femininity, sexuality, and identity. All of these authors shared to some extent an understanding of the inherent tensions and contradictions in the unequal gender relations that underlay middle-class life in the nineteenth-century. But none, with the exception of Hawthorne, went as far as Stoddard did in suggesting that the answer lay in further destabilizing gender ideals. Stoddard lacked Hawthorne’s ambivalence about omnipotent women. She created rebellious heroines who were not anomalies, but models of female development, and she forcefully condemned women who chose submission over self-assertion. She had little patience with weak or foolish women whom she believed allowed themselves to be victimized or even represented as victims. Stoddard’s fictional inquiries into contested notions of masculinity and femininity were part of a much broader discussion of gender and sexuality—a dialogue which included journalists, authors of prescriptive literature, ministers, doctors, lawyers, and educators, as well as novelists. The transformations that accompanied the industrialization of the United States and the reorganization of its social structure included the rearticulation of cultural ideals of femininity and masculinity. The psychic and social uncertainties generated by an expanding capitalist economy led middle-class Americans to glorify and worship images of pure womanhood and the moral family. Eighteenth-century notions of “communal manhood” were replaced by idealizations of nineteenth-century “self-made manhood.” Victorian visions of women as pious and pure succeeded revolutionary calls for republican mothers. Assertions of sexual difference became commonplace, filling medical textbooks and advice literature, as well as novels. Women were portrayed as innately different from men, whose struggles with self-control were exacerbated by contact with a world governed by


commercial self-interest. Prominent members of a growing bourgeoisie articulated, defined, and redefined the system of gender difference upon which Victorianism was based. Where Ann Douglas saw a pervasive hostility between the sexes in nineteenth-century America, more recently scholars have contended that this “system of differences” represented an attempt by middle-class producers of culture to “maintain cultural coherence” in the face of economic and social change. Composed of ostensibly harmonious images (self-made men and virtuous women), the ideological systems they created were inherently unstable. Victorian representations of men, women, and relations between the two were contested and reshaped from the very moment of their conception.6 No single ideal was as hotly debated as the nature of women. Were middleclass women exemplars of passionless Victorian womanhood, or were they demons? Was the seemingly angelic Victorian wife really a “household fiend”? Historian Anthony Rotundo contends that the tendency of nineteenth-century men to see women as angels or devils reflected deep male ambivalence towards women, a fluctuation rooted in masculine fears of dependency. Middle-class men were torn between competing desires to dominate women and be nurtured by them. G.J.Barker-Benfield’s study of gynecologists during this period links narratives of male control over female bodies to invasive and destructive gynecological procedures, which passive women submitted to as demonstrations of their own true womanhood. These efforts by men, Barker-Benfield argues, were rooted in insecurities generated by the tenets of self-made manhood, particularly the tension between its emphasis on autonomy and fears of dependency and female influence. By vesting women with moral authority and control, the cult of true womanhood exacerbated masculine fears of female power and female sexuality—producing symbiotic images of angel-women and serpent-women.7 Victorian women, subject to many of the same anxieties as men, created, in turn, competing visions of manhood. In the fictional worlds invented by female authors, swarthy villains and greedy, selfish guardians coexist with paternalistic protectors, gentle brothers, and feminized husbands. The financial dependency and political disfranchisement of women generated profound anxieties for middle-class women. And, similar to their male counterparts, female writers composed fantasies of “domestic magic” to assuage their apprehensions. Creating symbolic solutions to social and cultural problems of dependency, women writers constructed feminized models of manhood. These idealized men, guided by feminine influences, protected and cherished their pure women. Fictional accounts of the female reconstruction of masculinity found their social counterparts in associations like the “Female Moral Reform Society,” which attempted to control male sexuality by converting prostitutes to evangelical Protestantism. Female-guided reform efforts represented attempts by women to use their power as agents of moral change to define and alter male behavior, to impose female values on manhood. In mid-century woman’s fiction these exertions most often resulted in the figurative reconstruction of manhood—the


reconstitution of masculinity along feminine lines—as a solution to social problems and cultural anxieties, specifically the threat unreconstructed men posed to dependent women.8 The mutually-constructed problems of female passivity and unrestrained masculinity made their way onto the pages of much mid-century fiction, but found particularly prominent places in two best-selling novels—Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall and E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand, Ruth Hall, published in 1855, was the thinly veiled autobiographical account of the struggles Fern had faced as a victimized widow. Fern, a pseudonym for Sara Payson Willis, married Charles Eldredge in 1837. Her marriage was followed closely by the deaths of her mother and sister, and several years later by the successive deaths of her eldest child and husband. Griefstricken and alone, Fern received neither solace nor financial support from her family or her husbands. In 1849 she married Samuel Farrington for financial security. The marriage proved disastrous, and the couple divorced in 1853. Fern was plunged back into poverty. Unable to support her family, she reluctantly sent her eldest daughter to live with her paternal grandparents, the Eldredges. Fern struggled to achieve financial independence by writing for publication, receiving no help from her famous brother, N.P.Willis, editor of the Home Journal. In the early 1850s, despite the brutal criticisms of her brother, she achieved fame as a columnist, and her future was secured with the publication of a volume of her columns, Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio, in 1853. Fern became one of the most popular and well-paid female columnists in the United States. Satirical and biting, her columns were tremendously popular. In 1855 she went to work for Robert Bonner’s New York Ledger, earning the princely sum of one hundred dollars a column. Fern recounted her long and sorrowful journey to success and independence in Ruth Hall. Her arduous path still fresh in her mind, she ferociously attacked those who had failed to help her and bitterly rejected conventional sources of aid for bourgeois women. Her novel was harshly critical of bourgeois institutions, particularly the patriarchal family and dependent womanhood. Fern illuminated the horrors awaiting women stripped of the protection of kind and generous men and demonstrated that salvation for at least one woman lay in financial sovereignty.9 In The Hidden Hand, E.D. E.N. Southworth approached the problem of female passivity differently. Raised in Washington, DC, by her mother and stepfather, she married Frederick Southworth in 1840. The marriage broke up four years later, leaving Southworth with the care of two small children. She supported herself and her family by teaching, supplementing her meager income by publishing short stories. Southworth, like Fern, suffered tremendously before achieving success as a writer. She too knew the dangers dependency posed to women. The Hidden Hand, first serialized in 1859 in the New York Ledger, detailed the adventures of a flamboyant and independent young heroine who flouts convention to protect herself and her friends, and whose subversive behavior is rewarded with marriage to a fine man.


Obsessed with questions about female passivity and male deviance, Fern and Southworth solved the dilemma of female victimization by projecting the problem onto lapsed manhood—if men behaved as they should, female submissiveness would not be a problem. Fern was far less confident of this solution than Southworth. She went farther and articulated the need for female economic self-sufficiency, but shrouded that challenge in the sacred garb of moral motherhood, reaffirming some aspects of middle-class faiths in motherhood and evangelical submission, and falling short of Stoddard’s unambiguous assault on Victorian femininity in The Morgesons. These novels and Stoddard’s subsequent short stories suggest a continuum of responses to the problem of female passivity, ranging from clearcut affirmations of true womanhood to the restructuring of femininity and/or masculinity. Faced with a common cultural concern, Fern, Southworth, and Stoddard forged unique negotiations with nineteenth-century patriarchal culture and demonstrated the breadth of popular challenges to conventional images of womanhood.10 RUTH HALL AND VICTIMIZED WOMEN Fern’s satirical humor and straightforward prose disturbed many of her contemporaries. A few, particularly admirers of her brother, N.P. Willis, went so far as to call her work vulgar. Ruth Hall garnered popular approval, but some reviewers criticized it as “unfeminine” and attacked Fern’s character. To a certain extent, Fern anticipated this response, informing her readers from the very beginning of her novel that it would be unconventional, disregarding the niceties of most sentimental fiction. She warned them that her novel stripped the bourgeois home of its walls and doors and exposed its weaknesses and blemishes to the world. Appealing to those whose hearts had been “tried,” Fern, in many ways, foresaw, perhaps even hoped for, the violent response of male critics, thus ensuring the popularity of her fictionalized account of the problem of female dependency.11 Unlike much mid-century fiction for women, which concludes with the hero ine’s marriage, Ruth Hall opens on the eve of Ruth Ellet’s wedding to Harry Hall. Ruth wonders if she will be happy as a wife—will her marriage generate happiness and security or fear and discontent? Ruth’s marriage brings her great happiness. Widowed several years later, however, by the premature death of her husband, Ruth Hall is abruptly cast out upon an uncaring world. She receives neither emotional comfort nor financial support from her family or her husband’s, and is forced to search for work, a clear violation of Victorian womanhood. Ruth approaches a local shopkeeper and asks for work as a seamstress. The appalled shopkeeper tells his wife that Harry would be outraged if he knew “‘his little pet of a wife would have to come begging me for employment.’” The shopkeepers response suggests the great love Harry had for Ruth, but also insinuates the problem Ruth faces—as a well-cared-for “pet” she does not have the skills to


take care of herself. Hall finds herself abandoned by her family and ostracized by her friends. She is forced to send one of her daughters to live with her cruel grandparents, the Halls, and, thus, sets in motion Ruth’s transformation into a self-sufficient woman. Ruth, driven by her desire to reunite her family and protect her daughters, endures hardship after hardship. She works furiously at creating a career as a professional writer and emerges financially sound and wildly successful. She learns to navigate the world of manipulative editors and earns enough to rescue her daughter from the Halls and build a new life for herself and her girls.12 On one level, Ruth Hall can be read as a manifesto of female self-sufficiency and financial independence, particularly when assessed in combination with Fern’s biography. Two subplots further support this reading of Fern’s novel. Before her husband’s death, Ruth befriends a woman staying in the same hotel, Mrs. Mary Leon, a beautiful women with a cruel and domineering husband. Obsessed with physical beauty, Mr. Leon loves his wife for her value as a “toy” to be outfitted and shown off. Years later, Ruth stumbles upon her old friend in an insane asylum, where the selfish and vain Mr. Leon has abandoned her. The sane Mrs. Leon dies a tragic death, alone and miserable. Fern contrasted Mrs. Leon’s story with the experience of Mrs. Skiddy. Angered by her husband’s repeated threats to run off to California, Mrs. Skiddy takes it upon herself to run away first. She returns a week later to assert her authority over her hopefully chastened husband. “‘When a woman is married,’” Mrs. Skiddy informs Ruth, “‘she must make up her mind either to manage, or be managed; I prefer to manage.’” Despite her strict supervision, Mr. Skiddy runs off to California anyway. Mrs. Skiddy quickly takes control of her life, and within half an hour converts their boarding house into a successful lodging house. A year later, a recalcitrant Mr. Skiddy writes home, begging to return and asking his wife to send him money for the return trip, a notion the newly independent Mrs. Skiddy violently resists, hissing, “‘N-e-v-e-r!’”13 Mrs. Leon’s passive death follows quickly upon the heels of Mrs. Skiddy’s triumph, and read together the two indicate Fern’s commitment to female autonomy. An alternative reading, however, suggests the limits of Fern’s challenge. When Mrs. Skiddy runs away to teach her husband a lesson, she leaves with him their nursing baby, taking only the older children with her. Only Ruth, with her “maternal mag netism,” can comfort the hungry and grieving baby. Returning a week later, Mrs. Skiddy immediately nurses the child, but memories of her lapsed maternalism linger, hindering her potential as a heroic model of womanhood. Fern also described Mrs. Skiddy as serpent-like, not an appealing image for most nineteenth-century women. She hisses her refusal to help her husband “like ten thousand serpents.” Manifesting images of independent womanhood and female monstrosity, Mrs. Skiddy embodied in some ways Fern’s reluctant embrace of independence.14 Fern’s commitment to female autonomy was also undermined by her ambivalent posture toward other Victorian feminine ideals. Originally quiet and


submissive, Ruth becomes assertive out of necessity. She, unlike Cassandra Morgeson, does not choose this stance. Early in her marriage, she suffered persistent ridicule at the hands of her mother-in-law, but she “kept her wise, little mouth shut; moving amidst these discordant elements, as if she were deaf, dumb, and blind.” Harry’s death forces Ruth to acquire eyes and a voice, but she never fails to remember that being a wife is far superior to being a widow. For her daughters, she prays that “‘God grant their names be not written, widow.’” Widowhood, according to Fern, exposes women to all sorts of dangers and forces them to take care of themselves, a charge Hall takes up successfully, but irresolutely. Ruth’s youngest daughter admires the beauty of her mother’s bound novel and enthusiastically proclaims that she, too, will write books when she becomes a woman. Her mothers response is far from enthusiastic: “‘God Forbid,’ murmured Ruth,‘…no happy woman ever writes. From Harry’s grave sprang “Floy.”’”15 While Ruth Hall is in many ways a savage critique of the evils inherent in dependent womanhood and a ringing call for feminine self-sufficiency, Fanny Fern muted her challenge by backing away from a full-fledged assault on Victorian femininity. At the same time that Ruth struggles to gain autonomy, she wonders how to inculcate submission in her daughters. While she fears that her older daughter, Katy, will need encouragement to “blossom” into “self-reliance,” she also wonders how to teach Katy and Nettie to submit to God’s authority. Ruth marvels at her new found “power” to care for her children, while simultaneously placing “their future with Him who doeth all things well.” She knows that it will be difficult to inculcate both submission and self-sovereignty in her children. Fern’s novel implicitly acknowledges the tension between Ruth’s evangelical faith in submission and her growing recognition that security lay only in independence. Fern also reassured her readers that Ruth Hall wrote for the sake of her children and not out of masculine ambition. Her work was a form of maternal duty. In fact, when Ruth remains subdued after her literary triumph and her reunion with Katy, her publisher explains her behavior in terms of Hall’s continued commitment to her role as a wife. Ruth’s happiness is tempered because “‘the loved voice is silent. The laurel crown indeed is won, but the feet at which she fain would cast it have finished their toilsome earth-march.’” Even in her heroine’s moment of triumph, Fern reminded readers of Ruth’s happier identity as Harry’s wife.16 If her commitment to female autonomy was limited by her own ambivalence, what then did Fern suggest was a better solution to the problems of female dependency? Talking to her new and fair-minded publisher, John Walters, Ruth confesses that if she were a man she would commit herself to protecting the defenseless and vows that she would never use her masculine “power” against women. Ruth’s vision of benign paternalism manifests itself in Walters himself. He is a “real, warm-hearted, brotherly brother” the “‘impersonation of all that was manly and chivalrous.’” He takes her family “under” his “charge,” leaving Ruth feeling free and comforted, just as she felt upon her marriage to Harry.17


But Fern’s retreat to paternalism did not negate her earlier dedication to Ruth’s new power as an independent author. Ruth gains cultural authority through her writing, specifically the ability to redeem men. A grateful male reader writes Ruth, confessing “‘I am a better son, a better brother, a better husband and a better father, than I was before I commenced reading your articles. May God bless you.’” In addition to self-sufficiency (Ruth has $10,000 in the bank), her hard work and faith are rewarded with a protective male and the promise of reforming other men, making them better men and precluding the need for most women to become financially independent. Fern’s ambivalent position on Victorian gender ideals left Ruth Hall a mix of critique and affirmation. The novel exposes the dangers of female dependency, but also endorses some dimensions of the cult of true womanhood—maternal duty, female influence, and benign paternalism.18 THE HIDDEN HAND AND FEMINIZED MEN Serialized four years after Ruth Hall was published, E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand was far less conflicted, portraying autonomous womanhood as an anomaly and quite consciously endorsing ideals of true womanhood and feminized manhood. The Hidden Hand tells the story of a young female adventurer, Capitola Black, who violates bourgeois gender convention in the name of protecting women and womanhood. Southworth contrasted the independent Capitola with three pious and submissive women—Marah Rocke, Clara Day, and Mrs. Le Noir (Capitola’s widowed, imprisoned mother). These women suffer repeated injuries and indignities at the hands of the novels villains, the evil Captain Le Noir and his son Craven, Capitola’s uncle and cousin. The dastardly schemes and greedy machinations of the Le Noir men diverge from the altruistic and noble actions of the novel’s feminized heroes, Herbert Greyson and Traverse Rocke. Though centering on Capitola’s heroic acts, the narrative concludes with a ringing endorsement of Victorian womanhood, safe from harm and protected by feminized men—masculine, self-sufficient men with the feminine values of purity and piety. Capitola was born into a wealthy southern family. But her uncle murders her father and imprisons her mother to protect his inheritance. Rescued at birth by a caring midwife, Capitola grows up in poverty in New York City, raised by the midwife, Nancy Grewell. Nancy, sensing her death is near, returns to Virginia to find Cap’s true parents. While “Granny” is gone, Capitola is forced out of their home and onto the street. Penniless, hungry, and “‘in danger from bad boys and bad men,’” she dresses as a boy to protect herself. Southworth’s young heroine, unable to earn any money as a girl, quickly makes a living as a boy, selling newspapers and carrying bags. A shocked policeman soon discovers her disguise and arrests her. The jailed girl is rescued by Ira Warfield, a neighbor of the Le Noirs’. Granny found him in Virginia and revealed Cap’s whereabouts. A longtime enemy of Captain Le Noir, Warfield retrieves Cap and hopes to use her


to destroy his enemy. Capitola defends her outrageous costume to her new protector. She remains unapologetic: “‘…the only thing that made me feel sorry, was to see what a fool I had been, not to turn to a boy before, when it was so easy!’” But, later, the “blushing” Cap begs her new guardian, Ira Warfield, not to tell her friend (and future husband), Herbert Greyson, about the boy’s clothes.19 Herbert, an old friend of Cap’s, turns out to be Warfield’s long-lost nephew. Respectable and devoted to the image of his deceased mother, he is Southworth’s ideal man. A non-drinker, Herbert explains to Warfield he cannot drink because he promised his dying mother he would not. Warfield offers to help him get into West Point, but Herbert proves himself selfless and asks instead that the rich Warfield help some friends of his, a poor widow and her son who cared for him after the death of his mother. The son, Traverse Rocke, is another model of the feminized man. Selfless and caring, Traverse lives to serve his mother. The two young men were raised together by their mothers in a “loving, contented and cheerful little household.” This female-dominated home produced exemplary men. Traverse and Herbert are clear contrasts to the motherless Craven Le Noir, who, licentious and dissipated, turns out as corrupt as his father.20 In a series of humorous adventures, Capitola rescues herself from Craven, protects her home from the novel’s other villain, Black Donald, and frees Clara Day from subjection to the Le Noir men. She is confident, intelligent, and fearless. And, in true republican fashion, Capitola refuses to yield to arbitrary authority—be it the greedy demands of Craven or the strident orders of her guardian. After a particularly spectacular temper tantrum by Warfield, Capitola rejects his authority over her and insists he never speak so cruelly to her again. She informs him she would return to life in the streets of New York rather than suffer his abuse, declaring: Sir, if you were really my uncle, or my father, or my legal guardian, I should have no choice but to obey you; but the fate that made me desolate made me free! a freedom that I would not exchange for any gilded slavery!21 Capitola simultaneously rejects male tyranny and affirms the legal obligations of women to institutionalized forms of male authority. “‘Untamable,’” she confesses the source of her anti-authoritarianism and divulges the secret of her anomalous independence—she was not raised in a bourgeois home. She is “‘not used to being ordered about’” and does not “‘know how to submit.’” Socialized on urban streets, without the guiding hand of a moral mother, Capitola is free to experience life in ways antithetical to Victorian girlhood.22 The novel’s other prominent female characters represent far more closely the ideals of true womanhood. Marah Rocke and Clara Day are stereotypical middleclass angels-in-the-house. Herbert believes Marah “as pure as an angel,” and the house she and Clara create for Traverse and Clara’s father appears a “paradise” of “angels.” Traverse loves Clara, his “fair, golden-haired, blue-eyed, white robed angel.” Ever the obedient daughter, Clara, engaged to marry Traverse, vows to


be a dutiful daughter to Marah. “‘Tell me—tell me to get what you want, just as if I were your child, and you will make me feel so well,” she implores her future mother-in-law. The fulfillment of bourgeois feminine ideals, Clara defines duty as pleasure, clearly diverging from Capitola’s boredom with the “‘monotony’” of female life. These middle-class angels are exploited by men and subjected to trial after trial, but their piety and faith remain unshaken. Mrs. Le Noir, after years of being locked away, finds solace in her Bible and preserves her sanity by submitting to God’s will. Marah and Clara also face great afflictions and surrender themselves to God, praying for strength. They remind themselves that nothing in Gods plan for them is “‘really evil.’”23 Estranged from Warfield, her long-lost husband, through the machinations of Captain Le Noir, the impoverished Marah Rocke struggles to raise her son. She confesses the sordid tale to Herbert, who immediately realizes both Marah and Warfield have been deceived by Le Noir. Marah, however, insists on accepting responsibility for her failed marriage. The immoral Captain was able to trick Warfield because the passive Marah could not articulate her great love for her husband. “‘Tongue-tied,’” her passive feminine nature kept her from “‘proving the deep love I bore my husband except by the most perfect self-abandonment to his will.’” Warfield failed to recognize her selflessness as an expression of devotion, and instead interpreted it as “‘mere passive obedience void of love.’” If Marah had had the “‘power of utterance,’” Le Noir’s evil plans might have been thwarted.24 This implicit challenge to female passivity, however, is quickly followed by an affirmation of Victorian gender ideals. Heartbroken by Marah’s story, Herbert wonders why she did not employ others, specifically protective men, to convince Warfield of her innocence. “‘If my wifehood and motherhood, my affection and my helplessness, were not advocates strong enough to win my cause,’” she tells Herbert, “‘I could not have borne to employ others.’” Despite her misuse by Le Noir and her renunciation by Warfield, Marah’s faith in conventional sources of female power remains steadfast. And, if things are never corrected on earth, so be it, she assures Herbert, all will be resolved and forgiven “‘beyond the grave !’”25 Clara Day, Southworth’s model of a young woman striving to fulfill the ideals of true womanhood, must suffer before she can attain the angelic stature of Marah. Innately good, Clara labors to achieve Marah’s faith. Her first trial comes shortly after the death of her father, when she is compelled to live with her legal guardian, the dastardly Captain Le Noir. Clara objects to her loss of “‘liberty'” and refuses to become Le Noir’s “‘slave.’” A family friend, Dr. Williams, is shocked at Clara’s behavior. “‘This impatience and rebellion is so unlike your gentle nature,’” he chastises her, “‘I can scarcely recognize you for the mild and dignified daughter of my old friend!’” And, invoking her daughterly duty to her father, he reminds her, “‘I should think your dear father would be grieved to see you thus!’” Chastened, Clara vows to accept her fate and be a dutiful ward.26 On the surface, a narrative affirming female duty and submission, Clara’s exchange with Dr. Williams has heightened meaning for readers aware of Le


Noir’s low character. Readers understand the grave dangers Clara will face at the Le Noir home. But just as Marah’s implicit critique of female voicelessness is contained by her avowal of Victorian womanhood, so is Clara’s questioning stance. When Le Noir arrives to take possession of Clara, Traverse is heartbroken. She implores him to “‘bend gracefully to a decree we cannot annul.’” “‘I have been trying all night and day to school my heart to submission,’” she reveals to Traverse, assuring him she has “‘succeeded.’” Clara is rewarded for her compliance and becomes Traverse’s “‘own dear angel.’”27 Clara’s angelic behavior, however, does not preclude the kind of selfexpression Marah lacked as a young wife. Southworth condoned, even encouraged, self-assertion in defense of bourgeois gender ideals. Having vowed to “‘yield’” herself to Le Noir’s custody, Clara affirms her duty to Traverse as his “‘sacredly betrothed wife.’” She will accede to male legal authority, but she announces to the judge that she considers herself “‘bound’” to correspond with and receive visits from Traverse. Clara will fulfill her obligations to Traverse until she turns twenty-one, “‘when I and all that I possess will become his own.’” She insists on executing her duty as Traverse’s future wife. Clara’s key moment of assertiveness is couched not as an assertion of individual rights or liberty, but as an obligation of Victorian womanhood. A clear contrast to the republican Capitola, Clara defines her life by her dutiful relationships to men. A devoted daughter, she will be an obedient wife. The difference between the two girls becomes apparent when they meet for the first time. Cap’s “bright, frank, honest” face differed from Clara’s “pure, grave, and gentle” countenance. But, having assured her readers of Clara’s submissiveness, Southworth now revealed Clara’s goodness as a source of power. Cap, not moved by Warfield’s ravings or Black Donald’s murderous reputation, pauses when faced with Clara’s innate purity. Clara “so deeply impressed Capitola that almost for the first time in her life she hesitated, from a feeling of diffidence.” Clara, like other middle-class angels, is infused with the power of female influence, the ability to affect and redeem others.28 While Southworth explicitly professed commitment to Victorian ideals of female obedience, she also illustrated the potential for pure women to be exploited by ruthless men. One obvious way for women to escape harm was for them to achieve Cap’s strength and independence. But, according to Southworth, the model of womanhood Capitola represents was not possible, or even desirable, for most middle-class girls raised in the confines of the Victorian family. Rather, Cap serves as a titillating anomaly, almost more male than female. Warfield, frustrated with Cap’s excursions outside of appropriate feminine behavior, exclaims, “‘Demmy, you New York newsboy, will you never be a woman?’” When Capitola saves Clara from ruin at the hands of the Le Noirs, Clara praises her in masculine terms—Cap is “‘brave,’” “‘noble,’” and “‘heroic.’” And, the narrator divulges that in a later era, “when women have their rights,” Cap will be “lieutenant-colonel” in the army. Praised as exceptional, Southworth’s heroine is one of Stoddard’s hated “learned-pigs”—strong and


intelligent women marginalized as extraordinary. But, if Cap is not the solution to the problems inherent in female dependency, who is?29 Southworth, like Fern, turned toward models of reconstructed manhood—men whose masculinity was tempered by feminine characteristics inculcated at the hands of virtuous women. These men, represented by Herbert and Traverse, possess a “good deal of manly strength of mind,” along with a “mother’s tenderness of heart.” Simultaneously brave and gentle, they demonstrate selfcontrol and self-sufficiency. Traverse suffers greatly as a young soldier in the Mexican War, tormented by his superior officer, the evil Le Noir. Traverse meekly submits to the abusive authority of his superior officer. He makes it clear, however, that he acquiesces to his Captain’s unrelenting demands for the sake of his “‘dear mother and Clara.’” After a period of unbearable abuse by Le Noir, Traverse denounces himself for bearing Le Noir’s mistreatment with the “‘servility of a slave'” and believes he has done “‘violence’” to his own “‘natural manhood.” Herbert quickly admonishes him, commending Traverse for complying “‘with the submission of a saint.’” In so doing, Traverse not only follows his mother’s martyred example, but emulates the “‘divine precept and example of Our Saviour.’” Traverse, feminine and Christ-like, should be proud of his suffering and his unshakable obedience. Court-martialed for dereliction of duty—a neglect engineered by Le Noir—Traverse is rescued by Herbert, now an officer in the army. Herbert pleads his friend’s claim before the court. He articulately depicts the case as one about abuses of power and arbitrary authority, two popular republican themes. Gallant and noble, compassionate and pious, Herbert is not only a dutiful son and a faithful friend, but will one day be a great leader of a free republic.30 A contrast to the villains who exploit women and abuse their power, feminized men protect virtuous womanhood and preserve political liberty. Ideal manhood, as constructed by Southworth, welded feminine values of piety, self-control, and sub missiveness to masculine traits of bravery and self-sufficiency. Traverse is tender, pure, and loving, and, as he becomes a man, he acquires feminine patience and manly independence. He closes his failing medical practice only to discover that had he waited a matter of days an infusion of money from his mother and an anonymous friend would have saved his career. Chastened by this experience, he vows to be more forbearing. “‘I will be as patient as Job, meek as Moses, and long-suffering as—my own sweet mother!’” he promises Herbert.31 Traverse masters his impatience and embarks on the last stage of his maturation towards bourgeois manhood—financial independence. Arriving in New Orleans at the height of a yellow fever epidemic, he works hard and lives frugally, eventually achieving success. Traverse attains a prominent position at a mental asylum after saving the owners life. He soon meets Cap’s long-lost mother who has been confined there by the malevolent Le Noir. Unaware of who she is, but recognizing her innate goodness, he pledges to rescue her and bring her to live with his family. Traverse assures Mrs. Le Noir that nothing would make him happier than to be able to help her:


Oh, Madam, I myself owe so much to the Lord, and to his instruments, the benevolent of this world, for all that has been done for me, I seize with gratitude the chance to serve in my turn any of His suffering children!32 Here now is Traverse’s chance to demonstrate the rewards that reconstructed men can yield. Having been trained by his mother, one of the “‘benevolent of this world,’” to be virtuous and tender, the newly self-sufficient Traverse can in turn deliver forsaken women from ignominy and safeguard virtuous womanhood, making females like Cap unnecessary. But even Cap has the makings of a true woman, a woman with the power to reform unregenerate men. Capitola discovers Craven has spoken loosely of her and feels compelled to defend her own honor. She challenges him to a duel and shoots him in the face with a pistol loaded with split peas. Craven, believing himself to be dying, admits all, restores Cap’s good name, and is reformed. While unconventional in her strategy, Capitola shares with other women the ability to redeem men. The “‘brave and tender’” Capitola also demonstrates the forgiving heart and compassion of Clara and Marah. Having captured the law-breaking Black Donald, she fears he will be executed. She considers hanging to be “uncivilized” and frees the fugitive in a carefully crafted plot. She is the first female to visit him since his incarceration and soon becomes the agent of his rehabilitation. She pleads with him to “‘lead a good life’” and gives him money and a pony to aid in his escape. Black Donald, now a “reformed robber,” surreptitiously returns the pony, takes Warfield’s horse, and, demonstrating his newfound honesty, leaves three hundred dollars for it. While Cap’s intervention in both Black Donald’s and Craven’s cases was unortho dox, she brings about the redemption of two bad men. She, like Marah and Clara, may have what it takes to be a true woman.33 In a conventionally happy ending, Southworth reunited Capitola with her mother and married off the two young couples. Marah is rewarded for her fortitude by a renewal of her marriage vows to Warfield. Warfield, now a husband, is subdued by his contact with his wife. His temper tamed, he acquires patience. Never as critical of female dependency as Fanny Fern, Southworth retreated from her story’s implicitly subversive message—the inherent flaws of Victorian ideals of femininity. She exposed the dangers dependency posed for virtuous, ethereal women, but shied away from endorsing models of autonomous womanhood, focusing instead on the reconstruction of manhood to resolve the dilemmas posed by female passivity. Southworth was less ambivalent than Fern in her embrace of paternalism. She fashioned a prototype of bourgeois manhood which melded feminine attributes to prevailing notions of self-made masculinity. The paradigm of feminized masculinity Southworth and, to some extent, Fern depicted, reaffirmed the culturally powerful position of women by further legitimizing idealized images of maternal authority and female influence. On the one hand, the mutual production of masculinity and femininity that they promoted held out the promise of


authority to middle-class women ensnared in a patriarchal culture. On the other hand, as scholars have repeatedly noted, it also ensured the perpetuation of that culture by affirming women’s exclusion from the powerful arenas of politics and the economy.34 The reconfiguration of gender relations depicted in these works by Fern and Southworth diverged significantly from Elizabeth Stoddard’s fictional accounts of rebellious heroines. Stoddard established a prototype of assertive womanhood, best represented by Cassandra Morgeson, and explicitly rejected feminized manhood as a solution to female dependency. The solution, she suggested, lay not in the reconstruction of manhood, but in the reinvention of bourgeois femininity and the creation of more equitable gender relations. In her assault on true womanhood, she imagined an articulate and assertive stance for women, a vision women could potentially use to gain economic and political equality, as well as the sexual and creative parity for which Stoddard strove in her own life. PASSIVITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS Following the completion of The Morgesons, Stoddard returned to crafting short stories. She wrote many of them quickly, for money. Stoddard always felt driven to add to the unsteady income her husband derived from his literary work. These varied tales ranged from conventional accounts of courtship and marriage to early regionalist sketches of New England life. Buried amidst these stories are several that demonstrate Stoddard’s evolving critical perspective on Victorian womanhood. “Eros and Anteros” appeared in the New York Leader in February of 1862. The story of an orphaned young woman living in New York City with her brother, it describes in vivid detail the fate awaiting women who fail to assert themselves and articulate their desires. Sue Bartlett, the archetypal dependent woman, denies her own sexuality and submits to a man who cherishes her only as the embodiment of Victorian passionlessness. Obedient and pure, Stoddard’s protagonist is not rewarded for her faithfulness, but, instead, is sentenced to a half-life of loneliness and unhappiness, while her would-be lover remains free to pursue his passions. Stoddard’s story differs significantly from the tales by Fern and Southworth. It castigates women who allow themselves to be victimized and suggests that their failure to assert themselves is more disturbing than male efforts to subjugate them. After the death of her mother, twenty-two-year old Sue moves to New York to live with her beloved older brother John, an ambitious young clerk. Stoddard immediately highlighted Sue’s utter dependence on her brother. Without any financial resources, she brings “nothing” to her new life, except a few unwieldy pieces of her mother’s furniture. The two happily embark on housekeeping together, vowing to live together always. Sue cheerfully submits to all John’s decisions. When he decorates her bedroom darkly and somberly, Sue finds it “gory” and “not picturesque,” but, in typical fashion, learns to admire the unpleasant and “soon” comes to “like the room.” While John fraternizes with


friends and improves his position at work, his sister remains dutifully at home, venturing out only to go to church or to the market. Sue observes the “merriment” of John and his friends, but contents herself with just being “useful.” She dresses somberly and carries herself gravely, and is repeatedly mistaken for John’s elder sister, an image she accedes to, referring to herself as an “elderly appendage” and an “old maid.” John, annoyed at her demeanor, insists she go and buy herself some pretty dresses. At his urging, Sue, as usual, complies.35 In her new dress, Sue arouses the interest of John’s friend, Ned King. She observes him looking at her with curiosity and recognizes some “latent power” in him she has not “stirred” before. Sue comes to look forward to King’s evening visits, and is disappointed when her brother suggests they leave the city for a vacation. “Contented at home” and experiencing a “vague regret” at not seeing King, Sue “acquiesced, of course.” She quickly realizes that her brother has “sprung a trap” for her, inviting her to Glencove to meet King’s sister, Alice, with whom he has fallen in love. Despite her regard for Alice, Sue is clearly stunned by this development and struggles to keep from breaking down. She exercises tremendous self-control and buries her own unhappiness, forcing herself to celebrate John’s good fortune. The lonely young woman survives on the “crumbs which might fall from the feast of his happiness.” For a moment it appears Sue might succumb to her emotions and express herself to John. Seeing the tears in her eyes, he gives her an opportunity to divulge her feelings, but a “sudden shyness” comes over Sue and she finds she has “nothing…to say.” Passive and compliant, she cannot articulate her emotions or express her own needs. This voicelessness will cause her great pain.36 Overhearing a conversation between King and John, Sue learns that King loves her, but not in the way she desires. King confesses to John that there are “‘two types of women’” he likes and “‘your sister represents one.’” Sue, according to King, is “‘good, clear-minded—her perceptions sharp, ready to be acted upon, yet always so beautifully reticent.’” The other variety of woman he admires is “‘represented by an animal—a leopard, say; a creature of pure instincts, and no more answerable for what she is, and what she does, than an animal is.’” King wonders which type of woman he loves more; he is “‘bound to specimens of each.’” Made uneasy by this confession, John laughs King’s disclosure away, accusing him of being “damnably sophisticated.” Realizing she too loves King, Sue’s “heart beat painfully.” She loves him in a different way, however, desiring him “as he loved my antipodal type—the leopardess!” King discovers she has heard his confession, and asks her “‘Can you understand me?’” Sue understands that to keep King’s love she must conform to his cherished image of her. “To hold him, I must maintain the bounds he had marked out.” Affirming her faith in her own self-control, Sue trusts that a “principle higher and stronger than my passion would rule me.” Her suppression of her desires does not “assuage [her] pain, nor [her] longing to be able to create in him” the passion which exists within herself. She tries to express herself to King, but


“tongue…tied,” she obediently acquiesces to his demands, and King triumphantly declares, “‘You are mine!’”37 Their courtship is quiet and dull, interrupted only by moments when Sue’s self-control threatens to crumble, revealing her great passion for King. Consumed by a “wild longing” to “lift” King in her “arms and cover him with kisses,” she nonetheless regains her self-control and remains a “formal, decent statue.” King is unaware of the conflict brewing within his future bride, “no play of the lip, no flash of the eye betrayed” her. In fact, she even comes to half-enjoy playing this “role.” Forever on her guard against any revelation of her passionate nature, Sue becomes adept at the “art” of “living two lives, one for him, one for myself.” King dominates every aspect of her life, distancing her from her friends and even her brother. Most assume the two are deeply in love and do not delve into their relationship. Sue’s unhappiness remains a secret. Sue notices the affectionate relationship between John and Alice and momentarily yields to her pain. The “mask” she “habitually wore before him dropped for an instant.” But King’s “manner compelled [her] to resume it.” His idealization of her as a paragon of Victorian purity will not allow for any display of base emotions. King’s Sue must exemplify passionless. When she wonders what their future will be like, he assures it will be “‘serene as saints, and as blessed.’” Casting Sue as a middle-class angel-in-the-house, he reveals to her, “‘You have so perfect a disposition that I shall always find with you a heaven of repose.’” King’s angel, however, lacks the redemptive abilities of Southworth’s martyred heroines. Instead of reforming King, Sue is completely dominated by him. He controls her actions and her thoughts. Despite her misgivings that there must be more to love than this, she continues to succumb to King’s will, “too great a coward to speak the truth.”38 Sue stumbles upon him talking privately with her laundress, the beautiful and magnetic Garcia. The swarthy Cuban servant is “dirty, vulgar” and overtly sexual. She represents an image of sexualized womanhood common in midcentury fiction—the projection of female sexuality away from white middleclass women and on to immigrants and women of color. Garcia both attracts and repels Sue. While Garcia clearly embodies a racist and classist stereotype, Stoddard complicated the issue by demonstrating Sue’s unwilling admiration for the exotic beauty. Sue is mesmerized by both Garcia’s beauty and her “independence.” Garcia, removed from Victorian prescriptions by her class and ethnicity, seems free to the repressed Sue. Sue observes King’s physical response to the dark beauty and realizes, “the leopardess was before me.” Garcia’s sexuality arouses from King the kind of response that Sue wishes she could evoke. Garcia is not handicapped by his idealizations of passionless women and has a power Sue envies—the power of unchecked female sexuality.39 Sue soon notices John behaving strangely towards King and guesses it has something to do with Garcia. John, furious with his licentious friend, discloses King’s affair with Garcia. He asks his sister: “‘What will you do—how will you act?’” Empowered by John’s “expectation that I would act for myself,” Sue


determines to uncover the truth and spies on King. She follows Garcia up to King’s room one night and confronts the lovers. King worries that someone saw Sue entering his room. “‘If you were seen,’” he informs her, “‘you are ruined.’” Sue haughtily announces that, in fact, his friends saw her arrive. His ideal woman besmirched, King turns as “pale as death” and asks Sue to leave. Garcia begins coughing up blood, and the self-centered King refuses to help her. Sue gets her a glass of wine which Garcia throws at King in anger, causing her shawl to fall from her bare shoulders. Even now the haughty and dynamic Garcia arouses King, and Sue sees “his eyes drink in her surpassing beauty.” The story concludes two years later with John and Alice happily married and Sue living alone in the apartment she once shared with her brother. Her “engagement was never annulled,” dooming the voiceless Sue to a life of loneliness, dependent on her brother for her survival. She failed to acknowledge her sexuality and vocalize her desires, trapping herself in a living death—capable only of witnessing the great love between her brother and his wife.40 In a later story Stoddard again censured women for allowing themselves to be victimized by men. Appearing in Harper’s in March of 1863, “Lemorne vs. Huell” recounts the betrayal of a docile young women by her rich aunt and her greedy husband. Margaret Huell, a respectable pauper, agrees to her mother’s desire that she cater to her rich Aunt Eliza. Mrs. Huell hopes the childless Aunt Eliza will leave her money to the penniless Margaret. Ever the dutiful daughter, Margaret complies. She vacations with her domineering aunt in Newport and yields to all her demands. Margaret appears lifeless. Despite the beautiful surroundings of wealthy Newport, she realizes, “Nothing in the life around me stirred me, nothing in nature attracted me.” Her inanimate existence is interrupted by a chance meeting with a young lawyer, Edward Uxbridge, son of a prominent and affluent family. She spies Uxbridge one afternoon, riding past her carriage on horseback. The innocent young woman is seized by an “irresistible impulse” to lay her “ungloved hand” upon the horses mane—a gesture symbolic of her awakening sexuality. The composed and quiet Margaret becomes “chaotic” when Uxbridge sits next to her at a concert. She wonders if his “magnetism” is “stealing into her.” Literally revived by Uxbridge’s interest in her, Margaret begins to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings and even ventures to defy her aunt—setting out to the beach instead of to church as her aunt supposes.41 But Margaret shares Sue Bartlett’s obedience and passivity, and will ultimately suffer a similarly tragic fate. Sensing her lovers “domineering disposition” and believing that his powerful hands “might pinch like steel,” she rarely questions Uxbridge’s motives in courting her. The plain and poor Margaret catches the attention of the popular bachelor who also happens to be the attorney of her aunt’s foe, Lemorne. Aunt Eliza has been entangled for years in a lawsuit with Lemorne over some land, and she refuses to surrender, even though all recognize Lemorne’s superior case. Margaret believes she is defying her aunt by allowing Uxbridge to court her. The unquestioning Margaret,


however, fails to see that Aunt Eliza has engineered her relationship with Uxbridge in order to win her suit against Lemorne. Rich and unmarried, Eliza Huell is powerful, manipulating the dependent and passive Margaret according to her own needs.42 Margaret acknowledges her own passivity and briefly wonders about Uxbridge’s motives in courting her: But for my life-long habit of never calling in question the behavior of those I came into contact with, and of never expecting any thing different from that I received, I might have wondered over his visit.43 Uxbridge falls in love with Margaret’s “courage, fidelity, and patience.” Despite her protestations that he does not know the real Margaret—a poor but respectable music teacher—he vows to marry her. Margaret wonders at her good fortune, but avoids questioning it on any significant level, realizing she is somehow Uxbridge’s “slave.” She also notices that Uxbridge never asks her if she loves him, he just assumes it. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Margaret comprehends, “‘I was not allowed to give myself—I was taken.”44 Margaret’s “eager soul longed to leap out into the dark and demand of him his heart, soul, life.” But in keeping with her submissive nature, she resists and pliantly listens while her aunt and Uxbridge plan her future. Aunt Eliza blatantly announces to Uxbridge, who needs money for his fledgling law practice, that if she wins her suit against Lemorne, “‘Margaret will be rich.’” Margaret misses the import of this con versation and assures Uxbridge she does not need money to be happy. The two marry that fall, and, according to Uxbridge’s plan, Margaret returns to her mother’s house until they can set up their own home the following spring. “I acquiesced in all his plans,” Margaret confesses, “Indeed I was not consulted.” Margaret is initially happy with her role as a dutiful wife. She soon receives a letter from her aunt, who against all odds has won her suit against Lemorne. Even Aunt Eliza’s attorney is shocked. Asleep later that night, Margaret dreams of the conversation her aunt had with Uxbridge. “I heard Aunt Eliza saying, ‘If I gain, Margaret will be rich.’” The story concludes with Margaret, waking up with a start, declaring, “‘My husband is a scoundrel’” She awakens to her own passivity and recognizes that her idle acceptance of people and events has lead to her betrayal by her husband. Like Sue Bartlett, Margaret’s failure to assert herself and her blind faithfulness to Victorian female roles damns her to a loveless match, based on greed and false assumptions. Female passivity, according to Stoddard, precluded the fulfillment of romantic love.45 Romantic fulfillment, Stoddard suggested, rested not in the reformation of male rogues by chaste women, but in a reenvisioning of womanhood as an empowered state of self-awareness and assertiveness. While Cassandra Morgeson remained Stoddard’s most powerful heroine, she crafted other stories suggesting that the solutions to the intrinsic defects of Victorian femininity lay in women themselves—in the self-reformation of submissive women. In the May


1864 issue of Harper’s she published “The Prescription.” It describes one young woman’s discovery of her individuality and her subsequent refusal to be dominated by her abusive husband. Gerard Fuller, disturbed by his wife’s chronic ill-health, calls a locally-renowned doctor to his house. Doctor Brown quickly surmises that Caroline’s problems stem from her unhappy marriage to a domineering older man. Just prior to the arrival of the doctor, Gerard has ripped a jacket off Caroline, declaring its flashy gilt buttons suitable only for “fast women.” The astute doctor asks her if she is ever left “alone” to pursue “individual tastes or employments,” and divines that Caroline is “hemmed in by circumstances” and suffers from dyspepsia. Her health, he tells her irate husband, depends upon her going away, the “farther…from home the better.” The submissive Caroline quietly consents to the doctor’s orders, and placidly tolerates the verbal abuse of her husband as she prepares to leave. When she fails to respond to his taunts, he announces, “‘It is a pity we are married.’”46 Caroline escapes to the coastal New England home of an old friend of Dr. Brown, John Bowman, a salty retired mariner. Under the watchful gaze of Bowman and his wife, she quickly recovers her health, experiencing new sensations of liberty. She revels in a newfound sense of self-possession, marveling: “My clothes seemed to belong to me more than they had for a long time, and a strange sense of freedom stole over me.” She is in control of her own life for the first time (before her early marriage, Caroline lived with her strongwilled grandmother). The young woman finally learns “‘what it is to live.’”47 Settled in her new room, Caroline opens the sealed prescription her doctor gave her: Comprehend yourself, then you will be able to comprehend others; to do this is necessary in your case.48 Caroline realizes that she must develop herself before she can commit to a relationship with anyone and sets out on a journey of self-discovery, a superficial and truncated version of Cassandra Morgeson’s experiences. Her unhappy marriage stemmed in part from her own passivity, from her acquiescence to Gerard’s version of her as an “automaton”: “I never retaliated, never showed anger, never remonstrated.” In frustration, Gerard heightened the demands he made of his wife, almost daring her to resist. She, of course, never did, but instead complied, no matter how ridiculous the request, until at last she became ill. Caroline starts a diary as a record of her pursuit of self-discovery. She finds her lack of literary skills frustrating, but exults in the opportunity to express herself. “How delightful it is to be able to express one’s thoughts freely,” she exclaims.49 Gerard disturbs Caroline’s stay with the Bowmans by arriving unexpectedly. She quickly demonstrates her newfound strength and, refusing to be ruffled by him, quietly asserts herself in ways she would not have dared weeks earlier. When Gerard insists she shut the window, she willfully ignores him. She disregards his command a second time, and he surprises her by letting the matter


drop. Later she refuses to share her bedroom with him and prepares to leave. He stops her, asking, “‘You are my wife; why shouldn’t I compel you to stay?’” Caroline refuses to be cowed. She stands up to him yet again, vowing to “fight” and “conquer” Gerard. Agitated, he yields to his wife, leaving the room to her. Caroline reveals her doctor’s prescription, disclosing, “‘Doctor Brown sent me from under your tyranny’” Gerard contends that it was a “‘tyranny of love.’” Apprising him that his kind of love “nearly extinguished” her, she wishes he had let her love him in her own way. The newly assertive Caroline comes to see her husband in a different light. She comes to realize the source of Gerard’s previous cruel behavior. He interpreted her submissiveness as lifelessness and heartlessly tried to provoke her into a passionate response. Respectful of the self-assured woman Caroline has become, Gerard’s barrages stop, and the two reunite in a brief and contrived conclusion.50 While not nearly as well drawn nor as interesting as The Morgesons, Stoddard’s construction of Caroline in “The Prescription” further implied her deep distrust of Victorian ideals of passivity and passionlessness and her belief in alternative models of female independence. She created instead a reconstructed image of womanhood, one that included female sexuality and self-awareness. Stoddard was unpersuaded by distinctions between the mind and the body, and found idealizations which shielded women from their own physical natures particularly offensive. She called for an integrated model of middle-class womanhood. She believed women capable of the “balanced” character promoted for men by nineteenth-century philosophers. Stoddard and other romantic writers concluded that this balance needed to be altered, giving more weight to the emotive and intuitive and stressing the importance of self-realization. Stoddard’s heroines, like the masculine protagonists of romantic fiction, achieve selfawareness, intellectually, emotionally and sexually, on their way to developing independent selves. Just as The Morgesons elicited ambivalent responses from critics and friends, so too did Stoddard’s short fiction. George Henry Boker, the Philadelphia poet and playwright, read “Eros and Anteros” with “great interest” because it touched on “topics commonly avoided by women.” Surprised by her attempt to tackle the subject of male sexuality, he warned her that her abilities were limited by her perspective—her gender circumscribed her vision. “How you would like to understand some things, which you never will thoroughly understand until you are able to change your sex,” he wrote in the spring of 1862. He noted also that her writing suffered from stylistic constraints, finding her quick dialogues “broken” and “snappy.” Boker encouraged her instead to practice composing passages of “pure description.” “Try…your hand at landscape, or at a man’s or woman’s face,” he recommended, explicitly directing her away from fiction that delved beneath the surface of Victorian gender relations Boker’s response to Stoddard tacitly affirmed her conviction that middle-class gender ideals rested on a bifurcated vision of femininity, one that divested bourgeois white women of sexual desire. Boker was particularly struck by the character of King. He


confessed that he knew men “terribly like him,” in fact, “one of them is now sitting in my chair.” Boker, who was famous for his sexual appetite and extramarital relations, believed himself to be one of those “men whose souls go one way and their senses another.” Like his fellow genteel poets, he worshipped at the altar of true womanhood, but, like King, he gratified his physical needs with women unlike his wife.51 Stoddard immediately responded to Boker, defending her aptitude for exploring sexuality, male and female. If she could not understand men, then male authors like himself were incapable of writing about women. He wrote back suggesting she had misunderstood his comments. “Gosling, I said thus,” he patronizingly corrected her, “that in your story you strove to understand something about men, which you could never understand” unless you changed your sex and belonged to a “peculiar class of men.” Male authors, he believed, suffered no such restriction. Gender was not an “insuperable barrier” to the male “understanding of women.” “Look at Shakespeare,” he directed Stoddard, “Why he could create a woman out of nothing, as easily as God can out of dust.” Appropriating female reproductive abilities, Boker claimed for all male writers the ability to beget women “out of nothing.” He teasingly hoped that Stoddard would reveal to him some secrets of female sexuality, something which would give him a “new power wherewith to destroy your sex.” While the tone of Boker’s letter was humorous, he inadvertently stumbled onto one of Stoddard’s greatest concerns—efforts by male authors to define femininity and constrain women.52 Stoddard’s friend, Bayard Taylor, responded even more stridently to her fiction. both “most pleased” and “vexed” by The Morgesons, Taylor found her heroine, the “possessed” Cassandra Morgeson, disappointing: You feel a strong interest in Cassandra without much liking for, or sympathy with her. You follow her with a moral curiosity, neither concerned with her grief nor rejoicing in her happiness.53 Taylor also found her sister Veronica “disagreeable,” and, unable to overcome his “first repellent impression,” came to like her only marginally better “towards the end”—when she is married off to the drunkard Ben and consigned to a tragic future. He focused instead on two minor characters. Taylor confessed that “none of the characters are attractive except Temperance and Aunt Mercy,” women who restricted themselves to domestic roles. Celebrating female virtues of mercy and temperance, Taylor was unsure how to respond to Stoddard’s autonomous heroine. “If the book had either been more lawless or tamer, it would have been better,” he wrote. “If Cassandra had sinned with Charles,” Taylor would have understood her. Instead, he believed, Cassandra “outrages conventionality to no purpose,” and he was relieved to see her “married and out of the way.” Unsettled by Cassandra’s individualistic stance towards convention, he would have been


comforted if she had simply rejected bourgeois standards. Her attempt to redefine gender relations left him, at best, uneasy, and, at worst, infuriated.54 Stoddard rejected his critique as “stupid” and “ridiculous.” She attacked Taylor on a variety of levels, personal and professional, and recounted to him criticisms other friends had made of him. Recognizing her “passion for saying disagreeable things,” Taylor admonished her, “I expect to hear, sometimes, words pleasant to the heart, not a transmission of all the petty, nasty things that can be picked up.” He accepted Stoddard’s “hard and imperious…nature,” but hoped her future missives would be “gentler.” Stoddard’s rejoinder apparently satisfied him. He wrote her again six weeks later, thanking her for the friendly note, and promising to “pass over certain signs of the unconquered Satan which break through here and there.” But clearly Taylor was still upset, both by Stoddard’s unpleasant letters and by her novel. He had mulled over the cause of her “disagreeable” behavior and discovered its cause. Her letter had “revealed” to him “the intensely feminine character of [her] mind.” “With all your power and daring—with an intimate knowledge of the nature of men which few women ever attain—you are woman to the smallest fibre of your brain,” he charged. Just as reviewers minimized the threat her fiction portended by feminizing its author, so too did Taylor. He reassured himself that Stoddard, despite her “power and daring,” was in fact womanly.55 In both Stoddard and Cassandra Morgeson, Taylor faced his greatest fear—the menace posed by “strong-minded” women. He attempted to contain the danger Stoddard posed first by affirming her femininity, and when that failed, by casting her as a female monstrosity—a “devil” in the shape of a serpent. While Taylor’s efforts at demonizing Stoddard failed to subdue the iconoclastic author, he found reconstructing the irrepressible Cassandra Morgeson a much easier project.56 In the midst of his heated exchange with Stoddard about The Morgesons, Taylor, a travel writer and poet, admitted that he was in the process of writing a novel, Hannah Thurston. “She has neither the temper nor the genius of a devil,” he informed Stoddard, “and, therefore Cassandra Morgeson will make short work of her.” The story of the reformation of a women’s rights activist by a representative of Victorian manhood, Hannah Thurston appeared in 1864 and won Taylor accolades from reviewers and friends. Lorimer Graham, a mutual friend, wrote Stoddard, confirming Taylor’s belief in Cass’s superior power. “The Morgesons will scratch Hannah Thurston’s eyes out,” he informed Elizabeth in August of 1864. In fact, all ofTaylor’s “unfinished and unnamed” novels “will probably have black eyes, by going in the muss.” Graham had no idea how close to the truth he was.57 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN A love story, Hannah Thurston recounts the growing attachment between a smalltown Quaker, Hannah Thurston, and an urbane newcomer to her native


Ptolemy, Maxwell Woodbury. The citizens of Ptolemy abstain from all vice and devote themselves to evangelically-inspired efforts at self-improvement. Woodbury, an educated urbanite, is stunned that “‘such delusions are held by intelligent persons.’” He vows to “study the characteristics of this little community, however strange or repellant [sic] they seem.” Sharing Stoddard’s disgust with evangelical reform efforts, Taylor demonstrated throughout the novel the short-sighted and superficial nature of these reformers. One woman, however, stands out from this crowd of zealots, the reticent and sensitive Hannah. Woodbury is struck by her “pure, sweet, and strong” voice, and is disappointed to find that she is a women’s rights activist. Most Ptolemites do not share Hannah’s advocacy of women’s rights, and instead affirm “woman’s authority,” both domestic and moral.58 Thrown together repeatedly, Hannah and Maxwell become antagonists—he clearly critical of her convictions and she shaken by his evident superiority. Hannah, a dutiful daughter and a determined advocate of female equality, has relinquished her “girlish dreams” of marriage and family, devoting her life to her mother and promoting female education. Her commitment to women stems not from personal ambition, but from a sense of duty. Her pleas for female equality are made “timidly” and emotionally. Intelligent, as well as kind and virtuous, Hannah is clearly depicted as superior to most other women, and, in fact, to most of Ptolemy’s men. When Woodbury jumps into a raging river to save a young girl’s life, Hannah alone keeps her head and quickly devises a plan to save them both. “Excitement gave Hannah firmness of nerve, when other women trembled.”59 Woodbury ‘s arrival in Ptolemy sets in motion a series of events which undermine Hannah’s faith in her chosen destiny. She senses that he is her opposite and her superior. Guided by “her feelings and sympathies,” Hannah believes Woodbury is “controlled and directed by some cool faculty in the brain, which she felt she did not possess.” Woodbury represents the balance between reason and intuition nineteenth-century philosophers promoted as the basis of selfhood. Taylor’s heroine, on the other hand, affirms her feminine spiritualism and emotionalism, implicitly endorsing the mind/body dualism that Stoddard rejected. Taylor’s vision of Victorian selfhood, while liberal in the sense that it rejected puritan representations of the self as innately corrupt, remained mired in gendered divisions of human abilities.60 Seth Wattles, the town’s most priggish reformer, proposes to Hannah. She rejects him, informing him that she has “‘renounced the idea of marriage’” because of her “‘duties’” and her age (she is about to turn thirty). “‘My habits of thought,’” she continues, ‘will never attract to me the man, unselfish enough to be just to my sex, equally pure in his aspirations, equally tender in his affections, and wiser in the richness of his experiences, whom my heart would demand.’


Within her denial, Hannah uncovers a suppressed truth—she would marry if such a man could be found. The selfish and arrogant Seth is clearly not that man. Acknowledging “she had not renounced the dream of her younger years,” Hannah castigates herself for divulging her secret longing to Wattles. Hannah rushes home and, when alone, bursts into tears—marking the first chink in her armor.61 Woodbury finds his life disturbed by Hannah’s presence, particularly by the emotions she arouses within him. “Conscious of a restless stirring of [his] blood,” he slowly comes to admit he desires her. And, at the mercy of a hard, tyrannical housekeeper, he knows he needs a wife—a “legitimate mistress” for his home. He has remained single because he cannot find the ideal mate. His future bride must combine “noble feminine character” with “intellectual culture.” She must be intelligent and refined, as well as virtuous and pure. He casts himself as a “protector” of the “more tender” sex and finds “the idea of an independent strength, existing side by side with his, yet without requiring its support, …unnatural and repulsive.” He senses that in Hannah he has found at last the “intellectual culture” he so admires, but, because of her “morbid notions of right,” “a union with her would be a perpetual torment.” Appreciating Hannah as “true, earnest, and pure,” he loathes her for being “narrow and bigoted.”62 Woodbury is attracted to her against his will and rails against the injustice of it: What a splendid creature she might have become, under other circumstances! But here she is hopelessly warped and distorted. Nature intended her for a woman and a wife, and the role of a man and an apostle is a monstrous perversion.63 Unsure whether “she most attracts me through what she might have been, or repels me through what she is,” Woodbury swears to forget her. He repeatedly describes her as a “‘perversion of a fine woman.’” He is angered “‘not by any thing she said, but simply by what she is’”—“‘a strong-minded woman.’” Hannah Thurston personifies a version of the deviance Taylor found troubling in Stoddard and in her heroines. Outspoken and assertive, these females are perversions of “fine” womanhood—aberrations in need of reformation.64 Hannah slowly acknowledges her womanly desires for a husband and a family. She is on the road to redemption—a journey that will be guided by Maxwell Woodbury. He finds her faith in women’s rights weakened after a naive wife runs off with a fraudulent spiritualist. Distraught by the death of all her children, Mrs. Merryfield turns to a variety of evangelical reforms and mid-century fads to ease her pain. She falls prey to the deceitful machinations of a confidence man, Mr. Dyce, gratefully accepting his claim that he can communicate with her deceased children. Her husband remembers the happier days of their marriage— before the reform spirit took hold of their lives and changed his wife into a “sallow, fretful woman” who saw the years she had devoted to her loving


husband as a “period of servitude.” Under Dyce’s “evil influence,” Mrs. Merryfield runs off to the “Community,” a “perfect Society.” Mr. Merryfield hopes to save his wife from dishonor and follows her, bringing with him Mr. Waldo, Ptolemy’s “common-sense” minister. The distraught husband blames himself for her desertion; having “‘given way to her so long,’” he had “‘lost [his] rightful influence over her.’” Declining to exercise his masculine authority over her, Merryfield failed to protect his wife’s virtuous womanhood.65 At Mrs. Waldo’s behest, Hannah joins the rescue party. Mrs. Waldo explains to the bewildered Hannah how such a tragedy occurred. The “‘weak and foolish’” Mrs. Merryfield was the perfect victim for an “‘unscrupulous man.’” Corrupt men, Mrs. Waldo instructs Hannah, have “‘a vast power which most women do not understand.’”66 He surprises us at times when our judgement is clouded, his superior reason runs in advance of our thoughts—and we don’t think very hard, you know—and will surely bind us hand and foot, unless some new personality comes in to interrupt him.67 Women can be protected from tyranny only by the intervention of a benign masculine authority—paternalistic men like Mr. Woodbury. Mrs. Waldo agrees that there are “‘superior women,’” such as Hannah, whom other woman can look up to, but these extraordinary women “‘never impress us with the same sense of power, of protecting capacity, that we feel in the presence of almost any man.’” Hannah, of course, rejects Mrs. Waldo’s defense of patriarchy and contends that with equal education women can overcome these constraints of “‘habit and tradition!’” Mrs. Waldo, realizing her sermon has fallen on deaf ears, characterizes Hannah as an “‘exception among women,’” with “‘nerves…like a man.’”Like Southworth’s Cap, Hannah is an aberration, Stoddard’s loathed “learned-pig.”68 Finding Mrs. Merryfield at a hotel in Tiberius, the group, coincidentally joined by Woodbury, quickly realizes she has not sinned with Mr. Dyce. She is running away with him to the “Community” in hopes that her husband, inspired by her example, will join her later. Mr. Waldo uses her obligations as a wife to persuade her to return to Ptolemy, reminding her that she has God-given “‘duties to perform.’” Weakly claiming her “‘rights,’” she ignores the minister. Dyce affirms that Mrs. Merryfield is free to follow her own desires—including any sexual ones she might have. Mr. Woodbury, enraged at this desecration of womanhood, threatens Dyce physically, and the cowardly villain slinks off. Mr. Merryfield now tries his hand at convincing his wife to return home. Proclaiming his faith in her, he implores her to return, before she brings “‘shame’” to herself. “‘I’ve defended you, Sarah, and will defend you against all the world; but if you go on, you’ll take the power of doing it away from me,’” he warns her. Sarah must recant or lose the protection of her loyal husband. “The deluded wife” turns to Hannah for support. After all, she is merely demanding the liberties Hannah


professed rightfully belonged to her. Pained to think that her advocacy of “‘natural justice for women’” caused Mrs. Merryfield to leave her husband, she counsels the distraught wife to return to her husband. Hannah never intended to speak against men or to insinuate that women’s rights should come at the expense of marriage and family. Mrs. Merryfield realizes she has forsaken the love and protection of her husband in a misguided stand for freedom. “The conquered and penitent wife” reunites with her husband and returns to her home, leaving Hannah to further question her devotion to women’s rights. Full of “doubts” and “disturbing influences,” Hannah dwells on the “natural” place of marriage and motherhood in a woman’s life, and moves closer to embracing the companionate marriage as a feminine ideal.69 Despite his vow to forget about Hannah, Woodbury is increasingly consumed by thoughts of her. He awakens from a dream in which he was embracing and kissing her, and shudders, “‘What was I thinking of? Pshaw—a strong-minded woman!’” He consoles himself that while masculine, Hannah is still a woman: “‘Well—the very strongest-minded of them all is still very far from being a man.’” Woodbury accepts prevailing Victorian ideals of separate spheres and female moral superiority. He contends that allowing women into the worlds of commerce and politics would degrade womanhood; women would be “‘brought down to the same level’” as base men.70 Hannah’s faith in the “possible perfection of human nature” forces her to reject this. She argues that contact with virtuous women will elevate men. Appropriating the authority writers as varied as Southworth, Fern, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Catherine Beecher claimed for women, Hannah argues for an extension of female responsibilities, maintaining that female virtuousness can create the basis for a more perfect community by reforming all aspects of society. But, in the face of Woodbury’s cool rebuttal, Hannah increasingly comes to think that human perfectibility may be an “illusion.” His words linger in her mind, creating a “strange, disturbing effect.” She becomes aware of “a weird, dangerous power in his nature” which threatens “the very props on which her life rested.” Unlike the novels of Southworth and Fern, in which corrupt men are feminized by angelic women, Taylor ‘s tale is a narrative of female redemption, in which a strong-minded woman is saved from a lonely, unfulfilled future by a superior and rational male.71 Woodbury despairs of ever finding happiness with Hannah and takes a trip, renewing by accident the acquaintance of a cultivated woman he knew as a youth. Married and a mother, Mrs. Blake is refined, intelligent, and a “true woman.” She embodies in many ways Woodbury’s ideal wife and represents the woman Hannah might have become had she grown up in the city and not in the prudish atmosphere of Ptolemy. Woodbury confesses his admiration for Hannah to Mrs. Blake. He describes Hannah as noble, intelligent, “‘pure as a saint,’” and “‘bold and brave.’” He discloses that she has “‘one exceptional feature which neutralizes all the others’”—“‘She is strong-minded.’”72 Just as appalled by this as Woodbury, Mrs. Blake suggests a way he might change Hannah:


If the strong-minded woman should come to love you, in spite of her strength, it will make short work of her theories of women’s rights. Our instincts are stronger than our ideas, and the brains of some of us run wild only because our hearts are unsatisfied.73 Woodbury will redeem Hannah much as Southworth’s female characters reformed men—with the power of love. Once the ache in Hannah’s heart has been eased, she will no longer feel the need to embrace fanatical theories of equality and independence. Taylor also used this passage to once again reject feminist claims to Victorian selfhood. Women were incapable of balanced character; their emotions often overcame their intellect. Skeptical at first, Woodbury’s resolve is strengthened when he sees the effect that the love of his noble farmhand, Bute, has on the flighty and affected Carrie Dillworth. Carrie repeatedly rejects the upstanding young farmer. She wants to marry one of the towns great reformers. Desperately ill, Bute nears death and Carrie nurses him back to health. She soon realizes she loves him and relinquishes her “old ambition,” devoting herself to Bute, giving up her “little affectations” and tying up her curls. Woodbury, jealous of the contentment Bute and Carrie find, realizes a good man can reform a misguided woman. The stalwart Bute saves Carrie from a shallow and unhappy alliance with one of Ptolemy’s ‘s effeminate reformers. Bute demands that Carrie never return to her “‘coquettin’ ways.’” She must remain a dutiful and obedient wife. Carrie joyfully agrees, and the two marry. Marriage fills Bute with “courage and activity,” while Carrie takes on the “form of a willing and happy submission.” Her former ambitions for herself find an outlet in her desires for her future offspring, and she contents herself with dreams “of the future reformers or legislators whom it might be her fortunate lot to cradle.”74 Woodbury congratulates Bute on his impending marriage, but wonders if he will ever find his own ideal wife. She must combine “‘goodness, tenderness, [and] fidelity’” with “‘grace, beauty, refinement, [and] intellect.’” He realizes that there is “‘one woman in whom it would be nearly fulfilled,’” but for the “‘strange delusion’” she is under. His home is also suffering from the lack of a mistress. Woodbury’s household has succumbed to anarchy since the death of his domineering house-keeper. He almost wishes the old “tyrant” back, remarking: “‘A despotism is better than no government at all.’” Mrs. Waldo, always hoping that the good Mr. Woodbury will settle down and find a wife, reminds him, “‘Ah, but a republic is better than despotism!’” The companionate marriage, like a republic, is the natural and most harmonious state for humans. The Waldo marriage in many ways exemplifies this ideal. While Mrs. Waldo clearly asserts a lot of authority in their home, her husband remains in charge, unlike the malleable Mr. Merryfield, who allowed his wife to dictate their lives. But neither is Mrs. Waldo meekly submissive. She is bound to her husband by love, not subjugation. Affectionate and comfortable with one another, the


Waldos fulfill prevailing idealizations of the companionate marriage—an ideal which, as Mrs. Waldo recognizes, accords with republican tenets of authority.75 Mrs. Blake and her family visit Woodbury and make the acquaintance of the Waldos. Mrs. Waldo concurs with Woodbury’s guest—the love of a wise man would correct Hannah’s vision. Both women agree that the “‘principal mistakes’” of women’s rights activists stem from “‘their not being married, or of having moral and intellectual milksops for husbands.’” Mrs. Waldo remains hopeful that Hannah will come to this “‘true knowledge.’” Mrs. Blake directly challenges Hannah, asserting that women are “‘incapacitated…by sex’” to achieve equality and exercise power. “Saddened” by Mrs. Blake’s lack of faith in female abilities, Hannah remains committed to enhancing female education and women’s rights as a way to “‘transform the world.'" Mrs. Blake believes that while the exceptional Hannah may have the qualities necessary for equality, she will achieve it at a great cost: “‘…you must sacrifice your destiny as a woman— you must seal up the wells from which a woman draws her purest happiness.’” Mrs. Blake contends that women cannot raise children and wrestle with worldly concerns simultaneously. Strong-minded women must choose between the two. And, of course, no “true” woman would choose the latter because a “‘true woman…feels at her bosom the yearning for a baby’s lips.’” Sensing “truth in these words,” Hannah’s convictions are again shaken, and, blushing, she betrays her womanly “secret” to Mrs. Blake. Hannah returns home to mull over Mrs. Blake’s words, and her maturation into a feminine woman continues. “The passionate yearning of the woman, not the ambition of the man” now “had entire possession of her heart.”76 Mrs. Blake divulges to Woodbury what she has learned of Hannah and assures him that he could “‘restore her to the true faith.’” Hannah’s “‘moral rigidity’” is not “‘entirely natural to her,’” and thus can be rooted out by Woodbury. Mrs. Blake proposes he engage in battle with Hannah’s false beliefs. A “‘strong woman can only be overcome by superior strength.’” At Bute’s wedding to Carrie, Mrs. Waldo announces that “‘all men of sense’” admire women for their “‘affection’” and not their “‘intellect.’” Mr. Woodbury denies this “‘sentiment,’” asserting, “‘I esteem both affection and intellect in woman, but the first quality must be predominant.’” Taylor clearly intended for Woodbury to represent the balanced Victorian self. He appreciates female intelligence, as long as it is subordinate to other more feminine characteristics. But Woodbury’s ideal wife is not a model of Victorian passionlessness. Taylor broadened the parameters of the cult of true womanhood, allowing that women were passionate and had yearnings similar to those of men. Hannah experiences fervent emotions and longings. Woodbury rejected, however, notions that women could achieve an equilibrium between the heart and the mind; their emotions always predominate. They are incapable of the balanced selfhood Woodbury exemplifies.77 Listening to Woodbury’s speech and witnessing the happy couples around her, Hannah is seized with a “wild, desperate feeling in her heart.” She yearns for a man to call her his “‘good wife.’” Woodbury slowly convinces Hannah to forsake her


ideals and embrace in their stead the companionate marriage as the fulfillment of female identity. He does not attempt to tame or conquer her, rather he (and others) consistently display the superior advantages feminine selfhood has over the life Hannah originally espoused. Eschewing coercive means of reforming Hannah, Woodbury employs “another form of strength”—“a conquering magnetism of presence, a force of longing which supplants will, a warmth of passion which disarms resistance.” He will teach Hannah to love him, and in her love, she will forsake her “false nature.”78 He ignores her “masculine aspirations” and concentrates on her feminine characteristics, especially her devotion to her mother. Mrs. Thurston, old and infirm, is clearly dying. Woodbury makes frequent visits to the old widow, bringing books to Hannah and entertaining Mrs. Thurston with descriptions of his travels. Courting Hannah’s mind, he asks her opinion of various books, and Hannah soon comes to look forward to his visits. She becomes conscious of a “new power” emanating from Woodbury. “It was a warm, seductive, indefinable magnetism,” and Hannah slowly succumbs to it. “An insidious and corrosive doubt seemed to have crept over the foundations of her mental life,” and the “pillars” of her convictions start to crumble. Images of her “sad, solitary future” keep her awake at night. Aware that her struggle for female equality cannot sustain her, she concedes that “the arm which alone could stay her must have firmer muscle than a woman’s; it must uphold as well as clasp.” Hannah yearns for the love of a man.79 Hannah’s ideal relationship is based on “‘mutual” knowledge and affection, not on subjugation. Woodbury could never subjugate a woman, he tells Hannah, “‘because I hold her so high, because I seek to set her side by side with me in love and duty and confidence.’” His words assuage Hannah’s anxieties about marriage, despite their implicit assertion of masculine authority. Hannah acknowledges her own “true nature” and stands ready to be won by Woodbury. One last impediment stands in their way. Woodbury feels compelled to confess a past sin. Hannah must accept him faults and all. She must cast away not just her commitment to women’s rights but all her moral certitudes. As a young man, he discloses, he fell in love with a married woman. The wife of a “hard, selfish, and tyrannical” man, she met Woodbury while traveling. Woodbury, consumed by love for her, was “‘base enough'” to propose she run away with him. She implored him not to tempt her, and he honorably overcame “‘the selfishness of [his] sex.’” Woodbury cherished womanhood too highly to debase a lady with an unholy alliance. They renounced their love and shared their one and only kiss, “the kiss of repentance, not of triumph.” An explicit contrast to Cassandra Morgesons hunger for Charles’s kiss and her unrepentant confession to his widow, Woodbury and his beloved behaved honorably and selflessly. They did not challenge convention; they submitted to it and conquered their desires.80 Woodbury writes all this to Hannah in order to ask her if a man who has thus sinned is worthy of the love of a pure woman. Torn between “indignation and pity,” Hannah struggles to make sense of a “love forbidden by the world, yet


justifying itself to the heart.” She concludes that the suppression of their desires mitigated the wrong they almost committed, and that their “passion, having been purified by self-abnegation,” was not an insurmountable barrier to Woodbury’s future happiness. Woodbury’s confession makes clear to Hannah that he desires to marry her, and forces her to confront her conflicting dreams. Her “‘womanly purity and gentleness'” prevails and she agrees to marry him. Subdued by “the inherent power of his manhood,” she acknowledges that “the strong soul of manhood met and conquered the woman.” Taylor, still trying to present Woodbury as the voice of moderation, reminded his readers that the tempered Hannah was “no tame, insipid, feminine creature.”81 Rather, as a reflection of Taylor’s Victorian idealizations of women, Hannah gains through marriage and feminine womanhood, becoming: A full-blown woman, splendid in her powers, splendid in her faults, and unapproachable in…truth and tenderness.82 While both appear happy and content with married life, Hannah is still somewhatconfused; not until the birth of her son will her reformation be complete. Woodbury does not press his wife to declare her love for him. He respects her need for independence and resists the temptation to assert “his new claim upon her.” Hannah, however, is achieving the state of voluntary submission Carrie discovered upon marrying Bute. Falling deeply in love with Woodbury, she questions her earlier commitments and acknowledges that a “restless mind is easily cradled to sleep on the beatings of a happy heart.” She even becomes more feminine in appearance. Hannah gradually renounces her “‘rebellious'” past and yearns to surrender her “‘unworthy’” self to her husband. She rejects the independence he offers her, wishing to sacrifice a portion of herself to him.83 Her impending motherhood further softens Hannah. “A power not her own, yet inseparable from both, …had usurped her life, and the remembrance of the most hardly-won triumphs which her mind had ever achieved grew colorless and vain.” Over the cradle of her newborn son, she implores her husband to assert himself over her. Her “duty” as a wife and the “dignity” conveyed by motherhood has given her a new strength. The formerly strong-minded Hannah finds the “courage” to demand Woodbury allow her “‘the willing submission of love.’” Woodbury’s patience and reticence has “‘denied [her] the holiest joy of love—the joy of sacrifice.’” Woodbury solemnly accepts her devotion, and vows, over the head of his child, to be worthy of “‘all that you give.’” In the last line of the novel, Hannah affirms her surrender, assuring him that her duty as a mother “‘will forever lead me back to the true path, if I should sometimes wander from it.’” Taylor’s novel concludes with the successful transformation of a strongminded woman into a submissive wife and mother. Having renounced her masculine ambitions, Hannah becomes an angel in Woodbury’s house.84


Hannah Thurston found favor with reviewers and with Taylor’s literary friends. The Stoddards alone criticized it. Believing Taylor to have failed as a novelist, Elizabeth remained stonily silent about all his subsequent attempts at prose. And, finding Hannah Thurston “dull,” Richard Stoddard implored his closest friend, “I hope you will not try another novel.” Taylor was particularly hurt by Richard’s commentary, but focused his anger at Elizabeth instead. He claimed she was to blame for Richard’s words, and the two again exchanged angry letters. In 1865, she wrote to Edmund Stedman complaining that Taylor “has hurt me so with his stupid, malignant accusations.” He had accused her of ruling over Richard Stoddard “with [a] devilish implacability.” Taylor believed, Elizabeth informed Stedman, “that but for me, Stod would be all right.”85 Stoddard denied she had any excessive authority over her husband, and realized instead that the root of her antagonism with Taylor lay in their literary conflict, divulging to Stedman: All that I ever did against him was to decry his immense vanity—to say that he was not a great writer—worse than that—to say in prose he was without merit.86 Years later, as Taylor lay dying in Germany, Stoddard remembered the early warmth of their friendship and blamed her “want of charity” for some of their heated arguments. But even here she denied him any reputation as a prose writer, memorializing him as a poetic genius. She wrote another friend that the problems she and Richard had with Taylor “all began with me, because I could not tell him that I thought he had succeeded in a novel.” Other friends confirmed Stoddard’s appraisal. Boker, forever trying to mend the broken relations between his friends, wrote to Richard Stoddard after the publication ofTaylor’s second novel. He feared that if the Stoddards did not “like ‘John’ better than [they] did ‘Hannah,’… Bayard’s feelings will be hurt.” Taylor, Boker revealed, had taken “to heart the opinion which you and Lizzie expressed regarding ‘Hannah.’”87 Denying Taylor’s right to dismiss her as “womanly,” or demonize her as devilish, Elizabeth embarked on a decade-long feud with him, a battle which drew in and divided their close knit group of poets. Taylor and the Stoddards quarreled intermittently for the next fifteen years. Elizabeth refused to allow Taylor’s “male vanity” “to crush her.” By the 1870s, she came to believe that Taylor was actually “afraid” of her. His fear, she contended, manifested itself in his violent condemnations of her as devilish and serpent-like. In fact, his anxieties gave birth to an even greater horror—his image of Stoddard as an omnipotent woman, casting spells on the men around her and leading them to ruin. While perhaps fearful of Stoddard, Taylor certainly rejected the assertive, combative model of womanhood Stoddard both embodied and promoted in her fiction—a prototype he repudiated and reconfigured in Hannah Thurston.88 Taylor was not alone in his qualms about empowered womanhood. While the works of many mid-century authors (as well as writers of advice literature and


medical doctors) addressed male phobias of powerful and sexual women, none were as self-reflexive as the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne shared Taylor’s fears of unnatural women, but his fiction exposed the destructive consequences of male efforts to redefine womanhood. Where Taylor’s hero emerges from his undertaking victorious, Hawthorne’s men suffer for their efforts. Hawthorne, along with many of his contemporaries, believed in the redemptive possibilities of middle-class domesticity, but much of his fiction illuminated the darker side of these domestic heavens—the unrelenting efforts of men to construct a womanhood devoid of power, particularly sexual potency. He developed this theme most explicitly in “The Birth-Mark,” in which his male protagonist assumes female powers of reproduction and attempts to beget the perfect woman. But, unlike the exemplary Maxwell Woodbury, Hawthorne’s protagonist fails, destroying his wife and dooming himself to the kind of half-life Stoddard’s repressed female characters endure.89 “The Birth-Mark,” published in 1843, depicts the growing obsession of an alchemist with his bride’s ‘s birthmark, a “crimson stain” in the shape of a hand on her left cheek. Shocked by this slight “‘defect,’” Aylmer, who sees it as “‘the visible mark of earthly imperfection,’” vows to remove it. He is appalled by this “‘taint of imperfection’” on Georgiana’s “spirit,” and wants to make her “‘sensible frame…all perfect.’” A clear indication of Georgiana’s sexuality, the birthmark brings men to their knees: “Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege pressing his lips to the mysterious hand.” Alymer’s spiritual nature shrinks from the mark. His barely-human assistant, Aminadab, free of Victorian constraints, warms to its power, declaring, “‘If she were my wife, I’d never part with that birth-mark.’” Georgiana, saddened that her birth-mark so upsets her husband, consents to an experiment to remove it. She dutifully acquiesces to her husband’s ministrations, willing to surrender her life, if that is what it takes, to be rid of the mark. Confident of his “‘power’” to correct “‘what Nature left imperfect,’” Aylmer performs a series of experiments to remove the hand. As one test after another fails, he becomes even more determined to conquer nature and create his own perfect woman. The dying Georgiana implores him, “‘Do not repent that, with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best that earth could offer.’” In his drive to make her body as “angelic” as her “spirit,” Aylmer kills his wife. He expects and demands female purity, and destroys the object of his devotions, dooming himself to perpetual unhappiness. 90 The same author who composed this tale of domestic woe wrote Bayard Taylor praising Hannah Thurston. Hawthorne liked Taylor’s tale and looked forward to a “series of works” in which Taylor would “translate our country to ourselves.” Three years earlier, Hawthorne had also written to Taylor’s nemesis, Elizabeth Stoddard, commending The Morgesons. In a letter to Richard Stoddard, Hawthorne described The Morgesons as “a remarkable and powerful book.” A few weeks later the famous author wrote to Elizabeth herself. His letter to her, while much longer than his note to Taylor, was also more critical. Hawthorne,


like many reviewers, liked the first half of the novel much better than the second part. Struck by her “genuine and lifelike” description of Cassandra’s childhood, he was happiest with Stoddard’s regionalist portrait of New England life. He was less impressed with the second half of the novel, where Cass develops from an impish child into a sexualized woman, dismissing it as “neither so new or so true.” Taylor and, to a different extent, Hawthorne shared a dread of deviant women—a perversion Taylor found embodied in Elizabeth Stoddard and Cassandra Morgeson.91 While most of Stoddard’s critics shared Taylor’s and Hawthorne’s misgivings about The Morgesons, oneclose friend and critic, Edmund Clarence Stedman did not. Stedman, though fearful of the excesses of self-expression, was also the most wide-ranging representative of the genteel tradition. He was committed to Victorian gender ideals, but remained a lifelong advocate for women authors and poets, regu larly including their works in his anthologies. Stedman was not as threatened by female creative power as Taylor. He admired The Morgesons and respected Stoddard’s heroine, whom he saw not as an anomaly, but as a response to evangelical New England. Stedman, like Stoddard, was a product of postPuritan New England. He believed his life “‘injured’” by “‘repression and atrophy.’” Stedman was the eldest son of a prominent New England family. His father’s death, when Edmund was two, brought great unhappiness to the small boy. His paternal grandfather, a cold and stern patriarch, refused his mother financial support unless she sent her sons to live with an uncle in Norwich, Connecticut. Mrs. Stedman initially tried to support her family by writing. Unable to earn enough she reluctantly agreed to her father-in-law’s plan. Separated from his beloved mother and living in a rigidly puritanical household, Stedman suffered a miserable childhood. Like other more prominent writers, Stedman’s religious and cultural experiences growing up in New England haunted him for the rest of his life. He found in Stoddard’s fiction a similar sense of alienation and responded to it warmly.92 In his review of Elizabeth’s novel, he expressed the unusual opinion of preferring the second half of the novel to its early regionalist chapters, observing: “As the tale progresses, and Cassandra makes her first appearance as a woman, the author feels her wings, and both style and story” soar, securing “the eager interest of the reader.” “A novel of unusual and very original power,” its main characters, the Morgeson sisters and the Desmond brothers, were not random aberrations but products of a particularly oppressive culture. Their passionate natures stemmed from decades of emotional repression, and break “out all the more impetuously for the pressure which strives to keep them down.” Unafraid of Cassandra Morgeson, Stedman followed her journey to womanhood with great interest and encouraged readers to follow suit.93 Stoddard, hurt and angered by the responses of other friends and reviewers, thought Stedman’s review “terrific.” But “I felt myself a monster when I read it,” she told him. Reading his critique, she came to understand the response she evoked in men such as Taylor. “I have a reputation now,” she informed


Stedman, “but it is one that makes every body cock their heads to one side when I am mentioned.”94 Stedman comprehended, to a certain extent, the significance of Stoddard’s heroine. Cassandra was not a “learned-pig.” He contextualized her within northeastern post-puritan culture and suggested that Cassandra’s erotic nature was real and genuine. Her form of womanhood, as constructed by Elizabeth Stoddard, illuminated the multiple possibilities for women in nineteenth-century America— if they dared to express themselves. Aware of the dramatic potential of her model of independent womanhood, Stoddard understood the fears she generated in men like Taylor. She wondered how with these “terrific qualities” she still inspired “love as a woman”? In July of 1863 Stoddard announced to Stedman she was writing another novel, “the history of a man this time.” Less than a year after George Henry Boker had denied her the ability to understand male sexuality and create male characters, Stoddard picked up the gauntlet and composed a novel about a man’s struggle for self-awareness and individuality amidst a domineering New England family, suggesting again that conceptions of selfhood need not be gendered.95 Hawthorne, apologizing for his “crude criticism” of The Morgesons, was “very glad” to hear that Stoddard was writing another novel, but did not live to see its publication. Taylor, however, did. In fact, he lived to read both of Stoddard’s subsequent novels, and became even more disturbed by her work. When Stoddard failed to heed the warnings of critics such as himself, Taylor resoundingly condemned her. After reading Temple House, Stoddard’s third novel, published in 1867, he wrote to Stedman. “Since I have read ‘Temple House,’ I see that Lizzie’s case is hopeless.” Assailing the gendered faiths which lent stability to her friend’s existence, she continued to create prototypes for a different world—a society of sexually expressive and assertive individuals. 96

Chapter Four “Shall I dare tell the truth about men and women?” Reconstructing the Victorian Self

IN NOVEMBER 1870 STODDARD ASKED EDMUND STEDMAN TO READ HER LATEST short story, “Collected by a Valetudinarian,” in the December issue of Harper’s. Stoddard believed this piece “good” and “unique.” “Collected by a Valetudinarian” tells the story of two old women who are spending the summer in an old New England seatown. One of the women shares with her friend the story of her talented niece, Alicia Raymond, a brilliant author whose career was cut short by her premature death. The two women pass the summer reading Alicia’s diary and manuscript and debate how best to preserve her literary legacy. Stoddard patterned the young female author after herself in many ways. Alicia’s novel tackles potentially controversial themes, and its author worries that they may be too unconventional. Alicia discerns “that behind or back of all beauty is the black, rough, coarse structure,” but fears that her truths will scare people not interested in the “ugly root” of reality. She understands that her work challenges conventional beliefs about the nature of selfhood, particularly the carefully crafted Victorian balance between reason and emotion. “Can any wild invention excuse me for bringing to light that which exists with reason and with passion?” she asks herself. Should she “dare tell the truth about men and women?” But she fears silence even more. “Who may speak if I can not?”1 Alicia’s novel illuminates the “life of love, enjoyment, and suffering which, frankly expressed and described, should teach timid and ignorant hearts their capacities and their limits.” Her book embraces the romantic self-expression Stoddard promoted in The Morgesons and in her short fiction. Alicia reads several chapters of her book to her future sister-in-law, Julia, who listens raptly in stunned silence. Julia reacts strongly, but positively. Unlike the response Stoddard received from friends and reviewers, Julia understands Alicia’s work. She does not view Alicia as a monster. Julia admires her for daring to “‘tell the truth about us women.’” Alicia never publishes her novel, in fact, she never publishes any of her work. Independently wealthy and plagued by ill health (she suffers from consumption through most of the story and dies at the end of the summer), she is content just to write. She self-consciously divorces herself from the literary marketplace and becomes the kind of author Stoddard longed to be— brave, truthful, and unconcerned with reputation or financial success.2


At the conclusion of the tale the two old women contemplate Alicia’s literary future. Should they publish her works? They decide Alicia’s manuscript and diary are best left unpublished. Superior to most American literature, their publication—and the publics response to them—might damage Alicia’s memory, perhaps even besmirching her lofty literary endeavor. They refuse to subject their exalted image of Alicia to criticism. “Collected by a Valetudinarian” reflected to a large extent Stoddard’s own frustration with the literary marketplace. In the mid-1860s Stoddard published two more novels, Two Men and Temple House. In these books she broadened her focus and challenged prevailing perceptions of masculine self-development, as well as feminine. Men, like women, formed their identities within the home. Family structure and cultural constraints determined male identity to the same degree they did female identity. The pursuit of romantic selfhood was equally important for men and women. In Two Men and Temple House, Stoddard created families that were tensionridden, eccentric, and full of iconoclastic individuals. Living in decaying houses and fighting among themselves, her protagonists struggled to understand and assert themselves in ways Cassandra Morgeson would have appreciated. And, like Cassandra, they failed to inspire the admiration of Stoddard’s ‘s friends and readers. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, after his now-famous visit with Emily Dickinson in 1870, wrote to his wife describing his first impression—an understanding heightened by his reading of Elizabeth Stoddard’s long fiction. “‘I shan’t sit up tonight to write you all about E.D., dearest,’” he scribbled, “‘but, if you had read Mrs. Stoddard’s novels you could understand a house where each member runs his or her own selves.’” Higginson expanded on this comment years later, remembering the Dickinson home as “‘abnormal’” and marked by an “excess of tension.” Higginson, like other contemporary readers of Stoddard’s novels, implied that her families (and her heroines) were not representative, but aberrant.3 Caroline Dall, an acquaintance of Stoddard’s, wrote her after the publication of Temple House in 1867 and suggested much the same thing. Dall, a noted writer and reformer, found the main characters unnatural. She was unswayed by any character in the book. Mrs. Dall’s letter saddened Stoddard, who protested that Dall had misread her characters. She believed that amidst the “mean, isolated…conditions” of Temple House could be found examples of beauty and passion. More importantly, Stoddard contended, the Gateses were more genuine than the lifeless representations of American families prevalent in much Victorian fiction. Her families were neither abnormal nor representative, but, she informed Dall, she could find “more than one family in our New England whose life resembles that of the Gates family.”4 Her long exposes of eccentric families were critical, she believed, because “these family histories…are handed down—impressing following generations.” After chronicling Cassandra’s flights from home, Stoddard concluded The Morgesons with the married Cass ensconced once again in the family home.

“SHALL I DARE TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT MEN AND WOMEN?” 87

Stoddard’s subsequent heroes, Jason Auster and Argus Gates, never leave home in their journeys toward fulfilled selfhood, rather their identities emerge from their domestic settings. Stoddard’s male protagonists, however, are not molded by virtuous women (as Caroline Dall would have preferred), but by vivid, conflicted, and ever-changing families. Their identities are effected by the members of their particular families and by the weight of familial inheritances, financial and genetic. Stoddard’s last novels suggest a more sophisticated understanding of nineteenth-century Victorian selfhood as a self both seeking sovereignty and deeply embedded in domesticity.5 In The Morgesons Stoddard demonstrated the myriad ways in which the Victorian cult of true womanhood constrained Cassandra and offered one example of a young woman’s negotiation with her patriarchal culture. In her subsequent novels she focused on the connection, for good and ill, between the bourgeois family and masculine and feminine self-development. Men, as well as young women, suffered from confining ideologies of gender and familial roles. But, like Cassandra Morgeson, they could break free, not by fleeing domesticity but by confronting and transforming it. In Two Men, Stoddard stressed the constraints an old and respected New England family places on the identity of Jason Auster and traced his transformation into an independent, but not autonomous adult. Temple House charts the maturation of two main characters, Argus Gates and Virginia Brande, and explores the differences between the Gateses, an eccentric family of former seafarers, and the Brandes, a stereotypical bourgeois family. Ironically, it is the Brandes who suffer from the comparison. While the Gates home, decrepit Temple House, allows for the development of interesting and independent individuals, who are voluntarily bound to one another, the Brande home is truly, in the words of historian Steven Mintz, a “prison of expectations.” Mrs. Brande is virtually destroyed by her role as the proper wife of a respectable entrepreneur, and Virginia narrowly escapes a similar fate. These different homes dramatically affect the development of their inhabitants. Argus must wrestle with his own demons (particularly his repression of his passionate, emotive nature) to achieve fulfillment; Virginia must grapple with social convention and internalized gender roles to attain maturity. Both, however, wage their battles within the domestic sphere. Argus is as influenced by Temple House as Virginia is by her home, neither achieving the kind of autonomous individualism Maxwell Woodbury embodied in Hannah Thurston. Both men and women had to struggle against social and familial institutions in the pursuit of self-expression.6 Elevating self-expression over issues of control and discipline, Stoddard again earned the fear and ridicule of friends and reviewers. In late 1863, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, poet and future editor of The Atlantic Monthly, wrote his wife with the news that their friend Lizzie Stoddard had given birth to a baby boy, Lorimer Edwin Stoddard (Lorry). Aldrich hoped that motherhood would have a feminizing effect on Stoddard, just as it had for Hannah Thurston. He would


rather see Stoddard, he wrote, “‘holding [the baby] to her bosom than have her write the most superb American novel ever dreamed of.’” “‘It will be better for her,’” he explained, “‘She needed the softening influences which the cares of a fragil [sic] life will entail upon her.’” Lorry’s birth apparently failed to soften Stoddard. Unlike the chastened Hannah Thurston, she refused to put down her pen, and, pausing only briefly when her son was born, continued to create fiction the sentinels of genteel culture found disturbing.7 TWO MEN AND THE IMPRISONING POWER OF FAMILY INHERITANCE The years following the publication of The Morgesons were difficult ones for Elizabeth Stoddard. Shortly before the official release of her first novel, in December of 1861, the Stoddards’ six-year-old son Willy died suddenly from scarlet fever. Grief-stricken, Stoddard suffered bouts of prolonged illness for the next several years, and not until 1863 did she attempt another novel, this time about the life of a man. She paused for several months before and after the birth of her third son, Lorry, in December of 1863, and Two Men was finally published in October of 1865. Having written about the dangers inherent in ideals of Victorian womanhood, Stoddard turned her attention to masculine selfdevelopment. Two Men tells the story of a father and son, one constrained by an ill-fated marriage and the other by the weight of his inheritances, familial and financial. The novel opens with the accidental arrival of young Jason Auster in the New England coastal town of Crest. A carpenter and a socialist, Jason immediately makes a place for himself among the town’s artisanal and laboring classes, but finds himself attracted to Sarah Parke, granddaughter of the wealthy Squire Parke. A friend warns Jason that Sarah does not “look at carpenters.” The egalitarian Jason is appalled to find that the Parkes do not understand the “correct balance between Man and Wealth,” and he sets out to reform the snobbish Sarah.8 Much to the surprise of Crest’s inhabitants, the two soon become engaged. All assume Sarah is “bewitched” by Jason, and he by her money. Spurred to court and marry Sarah by his visions of equality, Jason quickly learns the impossibility of his position. He is awed by Sarah’s authority as the manager of her grandfather’s home and stunned by the “absolute” power the Squire wields. “He felt the impotence of his crude ideas, and his individual isolation.” Sarah’s class prejudices are unchanged by her marriage to the young carpenter, and she demands he give up his trade. He refuses, explaining it was “better to be a carpenter than to live by the extortions of commerce, or an undue portion of land,” and earns the ridicule of his harsh wife:9 …whereat she laughed so loud he discovered that some of her teeth were as sharp-pointed as needles, and that they gave her a tigerish look.10


Sarah’s fierceness combine with the Squire’s domination to “deprive” Jason of his “natural demeanor” and make him feel “unfinished, awkward, incapable.” The ferocious and domineering Sarah quickly asserts herself over the bewildered carpenter, and Jason obligingly accommodates “his actions according to the circumstances he was placed in.” Having embarked on a journey of discovery, Jason’s accidental choice of Crest will have profound consequences. His “clay” is being “kneaded” by the Squire and his granddaughter, his own efforts at selfdevelopment come to a halt.11 Sarah is in many ways the villain of this novel. Bolstered by her patriarchal inheritance, she represses and abuses Jason. But Sarah is much more complicated than this—her cold manner cloaks many complexities. She embodies the intricate relationship between family history and individualism. Sarah’s only male relative, her ne’er-do-well cousin, Osmond Luce, has run off to South America to find freedom and adventure. It falls to Sarah, a woman, to carry the Parke mantle. Despite her authority within the Parke home, she is as much an outsider as Jason. When Jason asks her if she considers herself a Parke, she replies sharply: “‘I am like my mother.’” Her gender keeps her from enjoying the Parke heritage fully. Sarah envies her male relatives and rages against the limits imposed upon her by her womanhood. She craves the self-indulgence allowed men. The frustrated young woman loves to gaze upon her grandfather when he smokes: “The serenity of his mien, the result of a wonderful selfishness, was always her envy and admiration” [emphasis mine].12 The death of the Squire marks a particularly tragic moment for Sarah: Suddenly she recollected that there were no more Parkes, and she felt a pang because she was a woman, and had been obliged to change her name.13 For Jason, however, the Squire’s death provides a moment of potential liberation. Jason assumes control of the family finances. He manages beautifully and increases Sarah’s holdings, making her a very wealthy woman. Sarah expresses some fear that Jason, as her husband, may assume ownership of her assets. He acidly assures her that they are hers. He is managing them for the sake of their son, Parke Auster. Sarah rails against Parke’s paternal inheritance, angry that Parke is an Auster and not a Parke. While Sarah’s anger results from Victorian gender ideals which have forced her to give up her identity as a Parke, Jason, with some justification, interprets her rage as a rejection of him and further isolates himself from his family. “From that time he was proud enough never to interpose his paternal feelings between her and his child.”14 Sarah’s anger dates back to her early adulthood when her cousin Osmond left. As a girl, Sarah formed an intense attachment to her cousin, but, as he approached adulthood, he resisted the boundaries set for him by his grandfather and family position. Yearning for “freedom,” he “transferred” his family “duty” to Sarah and left. She violently resisted his leaving. “A conflict took place which


left both torn, bleeding, breathless,” but from which Osmond emerged the “conqueror, for he went away in spite of it.” Her womanly influence failed to help her, and she was forced to assume all family responsibility. But this responsibility did not carry the power it would have conveyed to a male heir.15 After many years away, Osmond suddenly returns to Crest, bringing with him his young daughter, Philippa. Osmond has brought his daughter to Crest in hopes that Sarah will apply the same “‘paring-the-heels-and-toes system’” of childrearing that the Squire had applied to them.16 Having escaped it, he now wants his daughter to experience it. Philippa will be allowed no more freedom than Sarah. Like most of Stoddard’s flawed female protagonists, Sarah has never confronted the cultural constraints that enrage her and instead blindly affirms and replicates them. She employs the same oppressive techniques her grandfather used when she was a child: All the indulgences she lacked at Philippa’s age, Philippa was to lack; she should be taught to be useful, not to enjoy herself after any fashion her own.17 Philippa “must be taught a sense of duty, and the practice of it.” For Philippa, the Auster home becomes a “penitentiary,” and her only freedom, the “liberty to associate with Parke and share his pleasures as he saw fit.” Philippa’s imprisonment diverges dramatically from the liberties allowed the overindulged Parke.18 Osmond confesses to Jason he has really brought Philippa to Crest because “‘she is an obstacle in [his] way of life. He “‘has never felt a strong interest in her.’”19 Osmond sounds much like the selfish Squire, his grandfather. They share the Parke self-centeredness, a trait that Jason’s son will also exhibit. Parke is funloving and friendly, but, petted and catered to all his young life, he can also be imperious and rude. Osmond, a grown version of Parke, is also selfish and has gained little through his travels. Osmond serves as a foil to the unassuming Jason, who is ultimately superior to the Parke men. Osmond wonders what has become of the Parke money since the Squire died, and he is assured by Cuth, a longtime family servant, that Jason has accomplished “‘what you would never have done, if you had stayed here a hundred years.’” Stoddard inverted traditional tales of male exploits in the wilderness. Osmond has gained little from his experiences, while Jason achieves quite a bit without leaving Crest. Osmond senses Jason’s superiority and defensively announces: “‘I might have been a magnate here, if my grandfather had not treated me as a boy.’” Jason sympathizes with Osmond, “‘I was a man when I entered the family, and yet he never trusted any thing to me.’” But, without fleeing from his prison as Osmond did, Jason gains control of the circumstances which at first restrained him. Jason’s quiet, capable handling of the Parke money reveals the extent to which he has matured despite his oppressive wife. Osmond, very impressed by the quiet Jason, names him


Philippa’s guardian and leaves Crest confident that Philippa’s future is in the best possible hands.20 The thoughtful and responsible Jason, while clearly superior to the selfish Parke men, remains overshadowed by his domineering wife and charming son. He leaves Philippa’s care to Sarah, managing only her fortune. Left on her own, Sarah makes clear her dislike for Philippa, while indulging Parke’s every wish. The happy and fun-loving Parke is the only source of warmth in Philippa’s unhappy life. She adores him: The reflection of Parke’s serene, joyous life spread over Philippa’s, and prevented her from being miserable…her devotion to him was an unqualified as his mother’s.21 “His good-humor, his facility to discover means of enjoyment” were “delightful” to Philippa. Parke’s pursuit of “self-gratification” deviated from Sarah’s, and later Philippa’s, avowed “abnegation of pleasure.” Ostensibly affectionate and fun, there lay “hidden” within Parke’s “soul the capacity for a terrible abandonment to the passions.” Parke Auster will become a selfish man, strikingly different from his father.22 Philippa leaves home to attend boarding school and returns to Crest a young woman. Sarah likes her no better and relations between the two are cold. A few days later, Philippa falls ill, “either the rain chilled Philippa, or her reception at home.” Parke returns home from college to visit his dying cousin. To save her life, the doctor cuts off her hair, an act which touches the sensitive Jason and causes him to cry. Parke’s response to his sick and shorn cousin varies significantly from his father’s. Parke is “touched” by her wan appearance, “but he felt a painful repugnance at the sight of her.” Where Jason watches over her constantly at the height of her illness and is “assiduously attentive,” Parke visits her reluctantly, and he shudders every time he enters the room. Once Philippa recovers, however, Jason withdraws again into his self-imposed exile, and “her life was absorbed into Parke’s.”23 Parke refuses to return to college. He devotes his days instead to his youthful preoccupation—the pursuit of self-gratification. The family housekeeper, Elsa, chastises him, telling him to return to school or risk becoming “‘shiftless’” like other Parke men. He haughtily dismisses her: “‘Old woman, I know when I want a thing, and how I want it, better than anybody else does.’” Parke’s selfcenteredness, an inheritance from his maternal forefathers, will ultimately change his life.24 Life in the Auster house is interrupted by the visit of an old school friend of Philippa’s, Theresa Bond, a character patterned after Cassandra Morgeson. Beautiful and self-possessed, Theresa competes with Philippa for Parke’s attention. Theresa shares his “amiable vivacity” and brings light and fun into their gloomy home. She also plays the role of enlightened outsider, expressing many of Stoddard’s implied points about the development of her characters.


Theresa quickly grasps the signifi cance of Parke’s and Philippa’s dissimilar childhoods. Parke remembers a time when he and Philippa were both engaged in reading a book on the American Revolution. Sarah interrupted them and took the book from Philippa, forcing her to go to church. Theresa asks him why he was not compelled to attend church as well. Parke has no answer; it is a question he has never posed to himself. Philippa remains silent, and Theresa, sensing Jason’s discomfort, changes the subject. Troubled by Philippa’s silence, Jason goes off into the woods to ponder his family, particularly Philippa. Theresa, like Osmond Luce, recognizes Jason’s complex character. She wonders at his silence and lack of power over his family until she realizes that his “position…is inferior to his wife’s, his son’s,” and his ward’s. The “individual independence of the family” strikes Theresa as remarkable. She discerns that “in spite of their different idiosyncrasies, they were much together, and all the rooms were occupied in common.” For good and ill, these individuals, to differing degrees, are groping towards self-understanding within the constraints of their family ties and relationships, creating what Theresa describes as a “tribe of originals.”25 Theresa’s visit provokes a crisis for Sarah, who remains quietly in the background during Theresa’s stay with them. For the first time, frequent mention is made of a future mate for Parke. Most think Theresa will fit the bill. They seem made for each other—both are fun-loving and passionate and share “animal” appetites, like lust and hunger. Sarah resists the idea strongly, resenting any intrusion in her relationship with her son. Parke is the only “beautiful” thing in her life. He represents the one thing that truly belongs to her. As a woman, she sees her financial inheritance as something she is simply maintaining until Parke is old enough to take control of it. As a mother, however, she believes she has a genuine claim to Parke. Any reminders that he will ultimately take a wife, who will demand Sarah relinquish her position in his life, only serve to increase her fury at the limits of Victorian womanhood.26 Philippa is equally unhappy with the prospect of Parke marrying Theresa. She confronts her friend, asserting her prior claim to Parke. “‘You must not marry him,’” she informs Theresa, “‘I am willing for you to understand my devotion to him; it will allow nothing to stand in its way.’” Theresa meets her challenge calmly, asking Philippa if she will allow her devotion to Parke to stand in “‘his way.’” Philippa counters in a seemingly sentimental fashion, arguing that she could “‘do more for him than any person in the world.’” And, more importantly, she could provide for him in ways the assertive Theresa never could: I mean something which your capacity does not include—the care and watchfulness of slow years, without reward—the patience to endure all weakness, indulgence, selfishness—the bond which begins with a white veil, and ends with a shroud. She promises Parke lifelong selflessness and believes that this will “compel him” to marry her. Theresa, sounding very much like Cassandra Morgeson, counters:


“‘And for this, you would deprive him of the passion, which is the glory, the exaltation of life.’” Theresa doubts that the passionate Parke would long be satisfied with Philippa’s selfless devotion and warns her that tragedy will result from any union between the cousins. “‘No assimilation with Parke’s tendencies, no dovetailing with his habits, no devotion, ever so absolute, will avail a moment when the inclination seizes him for something different,’” Theresa cautions Philippa. A much better judge of character than Philippa, she recognizes the dangers inherent in unequal marriages. Only a woman as passionate and assertive as Parke can fulfill him, not a sentimental and devoted possessive wife.27 Theresa broaches the issue with Parke, who remains completely unaware of his cousin’s love. He blindly accepts her silent devotion and never questions its source, seeing her, instead, as “‘wonderfully single-minded.’” Theresa presses him to compare her to Philippa. Would he prefer Philippa’s “‘clear, pure, calm life’” to all that Theresa has to offer him? Parke confesses, “‘The comparison does not interest me much.’” Theresa and Parke become even closer, and Philippa’s jealousy mounts. Out one evening at a political rally, the two girls are nearly injured when the balcony above them gives way. They are saved by Jason’s intervention, and Theresa falls weeping into Parke’s waiting arms, leaving Jason to comfort a scared and jealous Philippa. Philippa falls asleep with her head resting on Jason’s chest—the same chest that has long entombed his slumbering heart. As Jason gazes upon his sleeping ward, “his heart stopped beating, then bounded forward, and dragged every nerve into the terrible development which made him a man.” “One by one his savage instincts were revealed to him; he knew that he was a natural, free, powerful creature.” Jason inches towards manhood, despite Sarah. He finally comprehends the importance of his physical senses—the sleeping Philippa awakens in him long-dormant passions.28 That evening he turns to his wife for understanding. “Eager” and “thirsting,” he yearns to have her appreciate his nature. Sarah remains obtuse and uninterested, and Jason sadly confronts his loveless marriage. He remembers his wedding day and wonders what ever became of his wedding-coat. The housekeeper informs him that “‘Sarah cut it up the other day,’” and Jason interprets this as yet another attempt by Sarah to destroy him. He fails to discern the pain and rage behind Sarah’s actions. Despite “all her prestige, all her influence,” she is neither “loved…nor envied.” “Her want of softness, her shrill laugh, her cold words, the restless expression in her black eyes and thin lips, and her repellant [sic] manner, made people afraid of her.” An object of dread, Sarah is both unloved and powerless. She is in many ways more miserable than the oppressed Jason.29 Theresa returns home, leaving Parke to sort out his emotions. Most expect he will eventually follow her and propose. Philippa continues to harbor deep feelings for Parke, and Jason finds himself falling in love with his ward. And, just as Parke fails to divine Philippa’s feeling for him, Philippa is blind to Jason’s growing attachment to her. Jason hides his discontent and keeps busy managing


the Parke money. He can only express himself when alone and in the woods. Stoddard directed her reader’s attention to the solitary man, “lying in the depths of the woods…so sad that the leaves were moistened with his tears.”30 Life in the Auster’s household proceeds undisturbed until Parke and a friend, Sam Rogers, decide to sponsor a series of cotillions at a local hall. Sam and Parke invite the young people of the village. All are surprised when two newcomers to Crest appear, Charlotte and Clarice Lang, the mixed-race daughters of a light-skinned ex-slave. The racist townspeople refuse to associate with the Langs: Some, calling her “nigger,” wondered if she expected that anybody would associate with her and her daughters, if she did, she would find herself mistaken, and kept in a repellant [sic] attitude.31 “A lively curiosity,” however, draws the people of Crest to the Langs, who rebuff them “with the coldest response.” The girls and their mother live at the edge of town and self-consciously distance themselves from the community. Until the night of the cotillion, the Langs have rejected any attempt at interaction. Sam is as surprised as everyone else when Charlotte and Clarice appear. Parke has invited them, without anyone’s knowledge, because of Charlotte’s great beauty. He refuses to allow Philippa to mix with them and declines to dance with either girl, but he does speak with them several times. Catching Charlotte’s eye, “he felt that a sure, irresistible, slow current was setting towards her.” He recognizes, however, “one fatal dower between them!” Charlotte’s maternal legacy—her race—places her out of Parke’s reach, and, like Sarah, her personal happiness and identity is circumscribed by this maternal inheritance. Clarice, the more suspicious of the two sisters, wonders why they were invited and tells Charlotte neither will dance unless the managers of the event, Parke or Sam, ask them first. Of course, neither do, and the girls return home.32 Parke cannot keep his mind off Charlotte, and, under the pretext of walking his dog, he wanders past her cabin the next evening. He catches sight of a curtain moving in the window, and “it made his heart knock against his breast.” Despite his best intentions, “he felt his will rising imperiously,” a will the self-indulgent Parke is incapable of conquering. When the Lang girls fail to attend the next dance, Parke rides to their home, wondering where they are. Clarice icily dismisses him, but Charlotte remains at the door, chatting warmly. To Clarice’s disgust, and to their ultimate detriment, Parke and Charlotte agree to go riding one evening. The older, wiser, and less beautiful Clarice has a clear sense of the costs of their maternal endowment. Their beauty and race are a “curse” they must live with, engaged in a perpetual struggle to keep it from destroying them. Charlotte and Parke begin seeing one another, secretly, after dark, and manage to keep their relationship hidden for months.33


At first conflicted and guilty, Parke nonetheless conceals his secret well. Charlotte’s pregnancy, however, brings his world crashing down around him. Proud and excited about the anticipated birth of his child, he vows to marry the ex-slave. He does not worry how this will affect his mother. “Of his mother” the self-centered boy “did not think.” He is used to getting his own way and takes her “compliance for granted.” The terrible injury he will inflict upon his family seems inconsequential when compared to the knowledge “he had gained Charlotte.”34 Some young men from a neighboring town reveal Parke’s clandestine relationship. Overwhelmed by “self-disgust” and infused with “dogged daring,” Parke announces he will marry Charlotte. The egalitarian Jason, although appalled by his son’s behavior, accepts and supports his decision, and, as Parke expected, his mother quickly forgives him. But his marriage is forestalled by the death of Sarah, who has quietly been failing for some time. Right on the heels of his mother’s funeral, Parke receives word that Charlotte, struggling to give birth to their son, is also dying. He rushes to her bedside and comforts her until she dies. He buries her beside their infant in the Parke family plot. Osmond Luce returns from South America, and Parke resolves to leave Crest with him. He casts his fortune with his older cousin and follows Osmond’s unimpressive footsteps southward.35 Friends and relatives wonder how Parke’s life could have taken such a turn. Rather than explaining away Parke’s infatuation with the beautiful Charlotte as a misguided youthful dalliance, Stoddard revealed its source within Parke’s inheritances. “Taking after one or two of his relatives,” Parke’s “riches” and his inherited selfishness have kept him from developing into a thoughtful adult. Parke’s behavior, like his mother’s, is shaped by his family legacies—the “family histories that are handed down—impressing following generations, while everybody else has died well and smoothly and all forgot.” From the moment Sarah declared her baby a Parke, his fate was determined by a heritage he fails to confront. Where Cassandra Morgeson was constrained by Victorian gender ideologies, Parke is limited by the imprisoning power of family inheritance. He lacks Cassandra Morgeson’s self-awareness and never fathoms the forces mediating his identity and actions. He cheats himself by failing to challenge and understand the institutions around him. Mindlessly pursuing selfgratification, he remains undeveloped, a wandering boy-man, entirely at the mercy of circumstance.36 Charlotte is also trapped by an inheritance she cannot challenge. She is not a seductress, like the swarthy Garcia in “Eros and Anteros.” Charlotte embodies “lovely Innocence” and shares with Parke a “sweet, kind, tender love.” Tapping into representations of the “tragic mulatto,” Stoddard added Charlotte’s name to a growing list of mixed-race fictional characters (predominantly female) tragically destroyed by racialist ideologies. But Stoddard’s creation of the tragic Charlotte also contributes to her tale of intricate, overlapping family histories. Charlotte is imprisoned by both her gender and her race. As her sister makes


clear, Charlotte, despite her love for Parke and his for her, cannot escape her slave past. The field songs their mother perpetually sings reminds both girls that the past has followed them to Crest. After her sister’s death, Clarice begs to move away. Her mother refuses, reminding her daughter: “‘We should have to take what we are with us, wherever we went.’” While both young lovers suffer from their maternal bequests, Stoddard acknowledged the far more destructive potential of the inheritance which destroys Charlotte. Clarice, recognizing the “curse” nineteenth-century American culture has put upon them, is saved from Charlotte’s fate, but may actually come to suffer more. Clarice and her mother remain in Crest, continually punished for Charlotte’s transgression: “‘True, we will stay, and rub in our humiliation, and keep the brand bright.’” Clarice perceives the ideologies working to determine her identity, but, unlike the white and affluent Parke or Cassandra Morgeson, she cannot challenge or change them. Stoddard discerned the depths of northern racism, recognizing that the “pity and protection” northerners offered slaves were transformed into a “contemptuous coldness” when these former slaves made their way to freedom. True to other accounts of the “tragic mulatto,” the Langs suffer from racialist ideologies, whether they are destroyed like Charlotte or tormented for life like Clarice.37 Parke’s affair with Charlotte also destroys Philippa’s world, forcing her to accept his true nature. Both disgusted and envious, she glimpses, through Parke’s love for Charlotte, the “abyss of passion” and discerns her “utter separation” from Parke. “An acute vision of Parke’s abandonment to a wild, isolated happiness, such as she knew he could enjoy,” passes before her eyes. Aware for the first time how similar Parke and her father are, she wonders how she could have been “so infatuated as to imagine she could bend and subdue Parke.” In Stoddard’s hands, Philippa’s failure to win Parke through sentimental selflessness illustrates the flaws inherent in dominant representations of sentimental courtship. Selflessness, neither an alternative nor an antidote to lustful yearnings, was as illusory as the passionless women Stoddard examined in her fiction. Philippa’s comprehension of her “infatuation” and her rejection of that form of love heralds a potential rebirth for her, a rebirth made more profound by the simultaneous death of Sarah.38 Despite years of suffering at Sarah’s hands, Jason worries that upon her death “chaos and night” will overtake his home. Sarah’s death dramatically alters the Auster house, “something was gone from every nook and cranny.” Stoddard avoided sentimentalizing Sarah’s death and reminded her readers, “no sweet, gracious, lovely spirit had vanished therefrom, but a dominant, exacting, forcible presence.” Even Osmond wonders what will become of his family now. “‘Have I come to see the old ship go down?’” he asks Elsa shortly after his return. Elsa realizes the extent to which Sarah’s death has unsettled the family, but assures Osmond life will continue. “‘We must lash the helm down, and let the craft drift into smooth water again; it will, you know, in time.’” Elsa comprehends, in a way neither Sarah nor Osmond can, the adaptability of family. In the wake of


Sarah’s death, Elsa expects the survivors to cre ate something rooted in the Parke past, but also subtly their own. Osmond refuses to participate in the reconstruction of the Parke family. “‘If I can’t die, I can move,’” he informs Elsa. Parke, too, will relocate, incapable of seeing beyond his own fixed faiths in his family. “Link by link the family chain was parting.”39 Jason toys briefly with the idea of leaving Crest as well. But, sensing that a voyage would imply more of a retreat than a journey, he resolves to remain in Crest. Philippa, too, entertains thoughts of flight. Osmond invites his daughter to come with him, without revealing Parke’s decision to join him. “For an instant she was seized with his nomadic spirit, and set her foot forward as if to enter upon his free, salient, purposeless life.” But a “feeling of resistance …compelled her to struggle with the phantoms of Liberty and Pleasure.” Declining his invitation, Philippa remains in Crest to wrestle with her ghosts.40 Sarah’s death and her realization of Parke’s nature have freed Philippa. She realizes now that she has “within” her the ability to “rise.” She must remain in Crest to accomplish this. Going to South America would be running away, rather than journeying toward something. Philippa chooses to remain at home, where she will become a woman. Coming upon Philippa gazing out past the coast, Jason assumes she is contemplating the sea. “‘I never look there,’” she advises him. She confides she is contemplating herself. While clearly very different from the sea-loving and turbulent Cass Morgeson, Philippa’s self-reflection marks an important first step for the still undeveloped young woman, a step Jason clearly notes. Osmond once again asks Jason to care for Philippa in his absence. Having gracefully accepted ten years earlier, Jason’s current answer surprises Osmond. He refuses, prophetically remarking, “‘She will take care of herself.’”41 Much as The Morgesons lost momentum towards the end, Stoddard’s concluding chapters of Two Men seem hastily conceived and executed. Jason and Philippa retreat into isolation, each working towards a better understanding of themselves and of one another. Safe within their home, both express a desire to remain entombed if their old rotten roof should fall on them. Philippa spends her time recreating herself: She said of herself, that the threads of her being were ravelled, because that which had knit them together into a consistent web had vanished, and could nowhere be found. She quietly rebuilds her life, but fails to notice that Jason too has changed. Jason, who has returned to carpentry, hopes that Parke’s absence will let Philippa see him clearly for the first time. His love for Philippa had matured, and he trusts she will come to love him as well.42 Jason finally confesses his love to the shocked Philippa after they have been alone for several months. She violently rebuffs his confession. Content with their peaceful coexistence, she sees no need to complicate it. Jason, however, after years of self-suppression, refuses to settle for this. He has been a husband, a


father, and a guardian, but he has been “‘nothing’” to himself. He asserts himself as a “free man” and proposes to a still resistant Philippa. She cannot imagine life without Jason, but, not in love with him, she rejects him. Philippa slowly comes to see the “honor and generosity of his nature” and realizes that Jason’s “fire was put out by the Parke sun.” She gains an appreciation of Jason obscured during Sarah’s lifetime. All that remains now is for the two to unite, reforging the “links” of the family chain in a new configuration. In quick succession, Jason is injured in a hunting accident, and, losing a hand, is nursed back to health by a warmer and more loving Philippa. After one final separation, the two sentimentally declare their mutual love.43 This banal ending is offset, however, by a final look at Osmond and Parke. Unlike Philippa and Jason, who have changed and matured since Sarah died, the Parke men remain unchanged. The concluding chapter finds them living on a cattle-farm in South America, wondering about life back home. Parke, quite confident of the depth of his charms, imagines Philippa is still grief-stricken over his departure. Osmond suspects she has recovered and suggests that when they next return to Crest, they will find she has married Jason. The novel concludes with Parke declaring, “‘Never! It is impossible.’”44 Finishing here, Stoddard redirected the attention of her readers away from the love affair between Jason and Philippa, and back to her earlier emphasis on individual development and family history. Parke remains unchanged, despite earlier hints that Charlotte’s death may have matured him. The structure of the conclusion suggests Stoddard’s own dissatisfaction with Philippa’s quick acceptance of Jason. Like the hastily drawn denouement of The Morgesons, the last sections of Two Men fails to reach the level, both in style and content, that earlier chapters attained. While some critics cited this as a failure of authorship, others have suggested more recently it may have been due to Stoddard’s vision of what the reading public wanted.45 In a letter to Stedman, written while she was in the midst of finishing Two Men, she lamented her chronic lack of money, complaining she and Lorry were in Mattapoisett with her family because Richard could not afford their provisions in New York. She suffered from loneliness and boredom. “For refreshment and solace I am going to attack…my…novel, and dock and drug it for the market.” Desperate for money and well aware of criticisms of her previous work, Stoddard’s addition of romantic fulfillment for Jason and Philippa may have represented her efforts at increasing the sale of her novel. Her conclusion, however, refocused attention on Parke and Osmond and demonstrated her stronger attachment to issues of individual development and family inheritance.46 Upon completing Two Men Stoddard sent a copy to Stedman for his criticisms and suggestions. He apparently liked it; Stoddard wrote back thanking him for his “good opinion.” She found “more blemishes” in the novel than Stedman. She complained that there was an “abruptness and a clinging mannerism to all I touch.” Richard Stoddard, she told her friend, had little faith in Two Men. Despite her misgivings, she still believed in the ultimate power of her novel.


“Good or bad, I never shall forget some of the scenes as I saw them while writing,” she apprised Stedman. Richard’s problem, she surmised, was that he had “no sympathy” with her work—“human life is less to him than human mind.” Stoddard admitted, nevertheless, Two Men was “an imperfect book.” “My idea was to make the two characters different to each other, harmonious to themselves,” she wrote to Stedman shortly before the publication of the novel. “My faith,” she reminded him, “is…that men and women cannot violate temperament.” Temperament, the product of inheritance, could be just as debilitating as social convention. But she feared she had failed to illustrate this. “I have not done my work like an artist because I can’t” she confided to Stedman. Stoddard’s concerns about her novel proved correct. Just as reviewers in 1862 had confirmed her qualms that The Morgesons would be misunderstood, critics again gave her novel mixed, even contradictory, reviews.47 Published responses to Two Men diverged little from patterns established in the wake of The Morgesons. Most critics resoundingly condemned the tone and seeming immorality of the book, reserving praise for Stoddard’s regionalist descriptions of New England life. Even an advance notice written by Richard Stoddard for the Round Table harkened back to the regionalist pieces in The Morgesons. “For fidelity to the localities described, and as a delineation of certain phases of American life and manners, it was pronounced without equal,” he reminded new and old readers, hoping to whet their appetites for Two Men. A month later, Charles Sweetser followed with a full-length review of Two Men in the Round Table. He described the plot as “unattractive.” The story was “neither interesting nor natural.” The characters were “unreal” and “disagreeable.” Sweetser hoped “never to meet such persons as figure in this book; they are all so cold and heartless.” Like reviewers in 1862, he only liked the minor regionalist characters, particularly the Parke’s housekeeper. Sweetser confessed, however, he had been unable to put Two Men down, “one reads page after page, half fascinated, half disgusted with the strange persons whom he meets face to face.” He acknowledged Stoddard’s superior power at “delineation of character,” but he was disturbed by her lack of didacticism, particularly because the author was a “lady.” He agreed that novels need not be sermons, but confessed, “We had reason to expect something better than this from so gifted a writer—and a lady, besides.”48 George Ripley’s review appeared in the New York Tribune in mid-November. Once again, Ripley noted Stoddard’s original style, observing she had “no prototype in her peculiar line of composition.” In fact, he argued, Stoddard’s novel “betrays a rare independence of the usual traditions of literary art.” She had, in particular, ignored the more customary interests of women writers—kindness, purity, morality, and spirituality. He found that “no weak womanly sentiment impairs the effect of the keen, merciless dissection of passion.” Stoddard’s “handling” of the “mysteries of passion” was “bold, vigorous” and sharply “incisive.” He commended her apti tude for “word-painting.” But, like Sweetser, he dwelled on the “unlovely” aspects of Two Men and its characters. Faithfully


reproducing images “her fancy…created, instead of beguiling the soul of the reader by suggestions of enchanting excellence or seductive grace,” Stoddard constructed a style which deviated from dominant norms of literary representation. “The novel is peculiar,” Ripley continued. He was particularly struck by “the subtle power with which ungracious and unlovely, indeed often repulsive materials, are wrought up into a dramatic story of intense, if not fascinating interest.” Unsure, perhaps, of his own response to Two Men, the reform-minded critic congratulated Stoddard for avoiding the “exuberant demonstration and reckless imagery” common to “popular female authors,” while simultaneously condemning her characters as “specimens of a morbid intellectual growth.” His ostensibly laudatory review of Two Men most likely scared off more readers than it attracted. The destructive potential of Ripley‘s review was not lost on Stoddard, who complained to Stedman, “I never read any so eminently calculated to mislead one as to the character of the book, and damage it.”49 Once again, Stedman came to Stoddard’s rescue with a flattering and prescient reading of Two Men. Struck by her attempt to discern “masculine character,” Stedman immediately uncovered the central focus of the novel: To show her men and women as they really are—to divide the real from the seeming—to mark the perpetual triumph of kind and individuality in their unending contest with conventional life...this is her chosen and accomplished task. Stoddard explored the “real motive forces of common life,” according to Stedman. She exposed the conflicted basis of New England middle-class life— all was not order and harmony. He also recognized Stoddard’s affinity to Hawthorne, particularly “in removing the rigid veil which hides the inner New England life.” He believed Stoddard’s novel exposed the “fervid and turbulent under-currents of soul and sense” and “the smouldering instincts of passion and race” which lay beneath generations of “New England repression.” Stoddard’s style, however, differed significantly from Hawthorne’s. Where Hawthorne had used “cloudy masses” and “weird superstitions,” “his successor studies the instincts of her modern personages, as involved with the experiences of family and social life.” While this was perhaps an unfair reading of Hawthorne, Stedman ‘s reading of Two Men recognized Stoddard’s development between her first and second novels. She had moved on to a greater understanding of the intricacies of Victorian identity—particularly its domestic grounding. Unfortunately, according to Stoddard, Stedman’s review appeared too late, after Ripley’s review had already done its “damage.” “Other papers…followed his canting lead trash.”50 Stedman, while appreciating the larger significance of Two Men, implicitly recognized that its merit may not have been enough for the buying public. After devot ing the bulk of his review to the clarity and strength of Stoddard’s


challenge to convention, Stedman appeared to backpedal, softening his presentation of her novel. Two Men, though brilliant and critical, was lighter than The Morgesons and an easier read. “A sunnier atmosphere lightens the pages of Two Men and the story has days that are even joyous,” Stedman informed his readers. He suggested Stoddard’s fiction needed leavening to make it more palatable to readers. Thinking, most likely, of Jason and Philippa, he assured readers that, in this novel, Stoddard had sweetened the “morcels [sic] of bitterness” with the “bread of consolation.” He believed Two Men would be a “popular success” and urged them to buy the novel. Familiar with the literary marketplace of the 1860s, Stedman attempted, like Stoddard herself, to “drug” her novel for sale, promising readers, that despite its weighty subject material, it was a fun read—an observation with which both Sweetser and Ripley would have disagreed.51 “THE CHIMNEYS” Stoddard’s short fiction was also misconstrued by readers. In November of 1865 she published “The Chimneys” in Harper’s. “The Chimneys,” a tale about the reconciliation of the producing classes, recounts the story of a young farmer, Ezra Clark, and his growing love for Ruth Bowen, the daughter of a poor but respectable widow living in the town of Repton. Widowed when Ruth was a child, Mrs. Bowen has survived largely due to the generosity of her neighbors, who encourage her efforts at self-support by sending their children to her “infantschool.” Ruth, despite her humble background, absorbs the pretensions of the town’s wealthier inhabitants, and believes herself superior to most of the town’s young people. Ruth “flourished…and grew even more genteel than her mother.” After Ruth grows up, the two women earn their living by doing fine sewing for their wealthy and generous neighbors. Ruth yearns for more than her provincial town can offer and hopes to move away to live with a well-to-do aunt. Her mother, aware of their precarious position and fearful of downward mobility, warns her daughter that “‘this is our place.’” Ruth refuses to heed her mother’s warning. She pores over her aunt’s luxurious and impractical gifts “with curiosity and satisfaction,” while her wiser mother receives them with “a sneer or a sarcasm.” Ruth cannot see the tenuous nature of her relationship to the town’s bourgeoisie and refuses any association with its laboring classes. 52 On the outskirts of town, Ezra, a man much like Jason Auster, has turned the debt-ridden land he inherited from his father into a successful farm, but there is “nothing picturesque about the premises.” It lacks any markings of gentility. “Its buildings were without paint or white-wash,” and its crumbling stonewalls serve only functional purposes, dividing “cornfields” from “potato patches.” Ezra owns nothing “fancy.” He is exactly what he purports to be—a hard-working farmer. His home, run by his mother, the “‘Widow Nabby,’” also lacks any signs of bourgeois respectability. Disorderly and slovenly, Mrs. Clark self-consciously rejects any advice about household management, preferring her home’s rough


simplicity to the refined establishments of the town’s gentility. Ezra and Ruth occupy considerably different worlds, and see one another only at church, where her beauty and breeding attract him. Dismissing Ezra as a “common” farmer, Ruth and her mother take little notice of the Clarks, except to poke fun at the “‘Widow Nabby’ and her wardrobe.” Ezra falls deeper into love with Ruth with each passing month. Thinking him “foolish” and hoping to dissuade him from any pursuit of Ruth, his mother “depicted the horrors of gentility to him.” He dismisses his mother’s complaints with a laugh. “The truth was, that it was Ruth’s elegant precision that had fascinated him.” The opposite of the “disorder and confusion” his mother embodies, Ruth’s respectability and bourgeois ways appeal to Ezra. The shy farmer immerses himself in Repton’s social life and sets about courting and winning Ruth.53 Ruth, still aspiring to gentility, rejects Ezra’s attentions. Despite testimonials by one of the towns most eligible bachelors, Joel Barnes, about Ezra’s character and substantial qualities, Ruth remains disdainful. Ezra, still hopeful, invites a group of friends to his home for the evening. He buys extra chairs for the occasion, and his scornful mother wonders why he does not just burn down their shabby house and build a more appropriate one for Ruth. Ezra quietly rebuffs his mother, telling her he will do no such a thing, “and you know why.” The perspicacious widow realizes Ezra wants Ruth, but on his own terms. He will not deny who he is, rather, as his mother observes, the “‘mountain is a coming to Mohammed.’” Unlike the young Jason Auster, Ezra refuses to compromise himself. Ruth must accept him for the laborer he is. Struck by the shabbiness of Ezra’s home, Ruth struggles to be civil, but Ezra discerns her “scornful expression” and angrily confronts her. “‘Old as it is, poor, mean, filthy,’” he announces, “‘I intend to bring my wife here.’” He shocks the already pale Ruth by declaring: “‘Yes, and I am going to ask you to be my wife.’” Ruth quickly declines “the honor,” and Ezra presses his suit, reminding her that her social position is the same as his. “‘I am,’ continued Ezra, between his teeth, ‘a suitable husband for you. We both earn our living. Our mothers have to labor.’” Furious with him, Ruth refuses to accept the glass of cider he offers her. The enraged Ezra demands “‘her respect’” and insists she take it from his hand. The two part acrimoniously, both “mortified” at the indignities suffered at the other’s hand.54 Despite Ruth’s coldness, Ezra keeps up his pursuit. Ruth realizes marriage is her only escape and hopes Joel will propose to her. A “clerk in a dry-goods store,” Joel suits Ruth because “his hands were white” and “his clothes always fashionable.” But he is not interested in Ruth. He quietly endorses Ezra’s claim. Ezra’s unrequited love fuels his development into a mature adult. It adds patience to the “dignity” his “farming instincts and his love of labor” bestow upon him. “But farming and labor blinded Ruth’s eyes still.” Happening upon one another, their two mothers enter the fray. Mrs. Bowen wonders why the Widow Nabby does not keep Ezra from bother ing Ruth. Ezra’s mother reminds Mrs. Bowen that Ezra and Ruth are adults. She disavows any control over Ezra, “‘I gave up Ezry some time ago.’” And, anyway, the disgusted Widow


continues, “‘If your Ruth’s disposition and behavior won’t drive him away nothing will.’”55 Shortly thereafter, the frustrated Ezra gives up his quest and retreats to his farm. Ruth happily returns to her former socializing, “but she missed something —her persecution. A sting, an expectation, a flavor was gone; dullness took their place.” Circumstances also collude on behalf of Ezra, keeping references to his increased material wealth before the impoverished Ruth. “Fancies of a wellregulated house for [Ezra] flitted through [Ruth’s] mind.” Ruth realizes “how much she might accomplish with her ability, industry, and neatness toward making him a prosperous man.” Drawn to Ezra’s home, she finds the farmer hard at work in his fields, and she succumbs to his advances. “His short-sleeves were rolled up, and barley straws were sticking in his hat, but she returned his kiss.” Despite her notions that she will refine the farmer, she embraces him on his terms as a laborer. The tale rapidly concludes with their wedding, and the narrator’s observation that “it was a very unequal match, and nobody knew it so well as Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Bowen, though they had entirely different reasons for thinking so.”56 On one level, “The Chimneys” can be read as a postbellum tale of the fragmentation of the producing classes, where a union between the laboring Ezra and the refined Ruth will benefit both. Ezra will gain the domestic and social order he craves, and Ruth will learn the value of labor. Stoddard clearly intended to demonstrate Ezra’s superiority over the shallow Ruth. Even at the end, Ruth’s surrender to Ezra is mostly motivated by her longing for material comfort, signified by his possession of some fine quilts, far superior to the Bowens’ threadbare bedding. Stoddard certainly preferred the unpretentious Ezra and his cantankerous mother to the prissy Ruth and delicate Mrs. Bowen. Despite Mrs. Bowen’s belief that Ezra gained more than Ruth in this marriage, it is clearly Ruth who will profit, both materially and personally, from marriage to the hardworking and principled farmer. One reader reached a very different conclusion after reading “The Chimneys.” In July of 1866, Mrs. Pope informed Stoddard she had liked “The Chimneys” very much, though she understood why “a critic might say the characters were unnatural.” Mrs. Pope disagreed with those critics, arguing that as a New Englander she recognized a “natural discription [sic] of subjects” that an urban literary reviewer might not comprehend. Mrs. Pope read Stoddard’s story as a straightforward tale of regional interest. “The young lady wants Ezra,” she remembered, “but, she wants him educated up to the standard of which she thought him susceptible.” Ezra, Mrs. Pope believed, “felt there was a standard of education above him—exhibited in her and that he might attain to it if he but knew the path by which it might be reached.” Held back by a “fear of ridicule,” he ultimately yields to Ruth’s influence, and, Pope contended, will be better off for it.57 “Should you give a second picture of the same pair of chimneys,” Pope predicted, “you will probably find the farm and Ezra alike improved.” She


imagined the couple at dinner: “He supping with his shirt-sleeves buttoned at the wrist. . . a man of energy whom the eyes of his wife follow with affection.” Ruth, too, will be transformed, her “pride” cast in a “new direction.” Like Hannah Thurston and Carrie Dilworth, Ruth, redeemed by wifehood, will shed her pretensions and become a true woman. No longer “the subsidized seamstress whose patrons wished as their employee merely,” the wifely Ruth now has the “social power” which eluded her as the daughter of a poor widow. She is a “woman asserting the dignity of her sex.” Reading “The Chimneys” as one more story affirming the feminizing power of women, this reader theorized that bourgeois feminization worked its magic on both men and women—leaving men more refined and women more womanly and powerful. While Stoddard’s reply to Mrs. Pope, if there was one, no longer exists, her persistent suspicions that few readers understood her fiction were presumably confirmed. Like many reviewers of her long fiction, Mrs. Pope literally rewrote Stoddard’s story failing to see, or refusing to acknowledge, its potentially contradictory meanings, opting instead to see it as an affirmation of prevailing narratives of femininity.58 Disappointed, perhaps, by the response of readers and critics, Stoddard persevered nonetheless. She wrote Louise Chandler Moulton in May of 1866, announcing “I have begun another of them ere [sic] novels.” This novel would “make the iron enter” Moulton’s “soul.” After all, she satirically observed, it was her “genius” which interested readers. Stoddard told Edmund Stedman her third novel would “prove to you males that I am your comrade.” Despite evidence that reviewers either misunderstood her work or dismissed it as dark or immoral, she once again tried to compose a novel which built on the themes of her earlier books. Temple House, published in October of 1867, united the related themes of The Morgesons and Two Men—feminine and masculine self-development within the constraints of nineteenth-century Victorian culture.59 In Temple House, Stoddard surveyed the cultural and psychological impediments to individualism for both men and women, further examining the relationship between cultural ideals, familial inheritance, and selfhood. Contrasting the Victorian certitudes which held bourgeois families like the Brandes together with the fluidity and openness of the iconoclastic Gateses, her story follows Virginia Brande and Argus Gates as they struggle to understand and assert themselves. Both must confront middle-class institutions and Victorian cultural values and construct their own visions of individualism and family. Temple House combined the best of the feminist assault on nineteenth-century idealizations of femininity in The Morgesons and the sharpest insights into masculine self-deveiopment and family legacies from Two Men. Stoddard continued to explore the gendered foundations of American Victorian thought and romantic selfhood. For Stoddard, Temple House was both her greatest achievement and her greatest failure. It contained her “truest work.” But, published by a “well-known


house,” its poor sales and lack of popularity made it her “worst failure.” It was a failure she would be hard-pressed to overcome.60 TEMPLE HOUSE AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE VICTORIAN SELF Temple House opens with its central character, Argus Gates, surveying the landscape of his home and his family. Appraising the autumnal scene before him, Argus’s “imagination was not touched, nor his heart elevated,” only his “animal” “sensibilities” respond to the beauty surrounding him. “Perhaps,” the narrator mused, “he was devoid of both.” Like Sue Bartlett in “Eros and Anteros,” Argus is an incomplete person. Argus must be awakened to his nature before achieving the wholeness which eluded Sue. Argus, a retired sea captain, resides in a decaying seaport, Kent, in a decrepit mansion, willed to him by a distant and unknown relative. He entombs himself within Temple House, repairing its walls and roofs to make it “suitable for solitary confinement.” Townsfolk describe him as an “enigma.” He eschews their company and enjoys “his own atmosphere.”61 The sudden appearance of Argus’s ne’er-do-well brother, George Gates, disrupts his quiet life. Despite his disregard for his dandyish sibling, Argus, compelled by a sense of a family, visits George, questioning his motives along the way. “Had he really a desire to meet the only member of his family alive, except himself?” Or, “was the voice of the Temple blood, thin as it might be, crying out in behalf of this reprobate brother…?”62 George shares his brother’s belief in the Temple legacy. He has named his only daughter Temple, though all call her Tempe. Like the Parkes in Two Men, the Gateses are absorbed, for good and ill, with their familial inheritances. Argus’s niece, “beautiful” like her father, also bears a resemblance to her uncle, “her hand…was…exactly shaped like his own.” Argus is also drawn to George’s wife. Very different from her restless husband, the “self-possessed” Roxalana contents herself with daily living, neither asking nor receiving much from those around her. Argus yields to the blood ties which connect him to George and invites his brother and his family to return to Kent with him.63 Roxalana immediately feels at home at Temple House, and Argus realizes she will never leave. Roxalana “grew to the place…its space and substantiality suited her silence-loving soul” just as it did Argus’s. Abstemious and undemanding, she is the perfect housekeeper for the widowed Argus. Argus, too, is pleased. “He believed he had found the woman whose personalities would not prove a nuisance.” George, on the other hand, finds Temple House and its inhabitants irritating. Exasperated by Roxalana’s parsimonious management and Arguss regularity, he spends most of his time away from Temple House, spending Argus’s money, drinking and gambling. George soon resolves to leave, returning to his pre-marriage nomadic ways. He casu ally bids farewell to his wife and brother. He pauses only to say good-bye to his daughter. Tearfully confessing,


“‘I am a wretch,’” he advises Tempe, “‘Be sure that you can live without the cursed fillip my nerves require.’” He casts a backward glance at the house where Argus and Roxalana stand watching him and hopes his child will “define and settle” her “wants as the souls behind us do.” Somewhat like Osmond Luce, George understands he is running away and hopes his daughter will avoid a similar fate. Tempe, however, is far more like her father than her mother and uncle. Her “lawlessness” contrasts strikingly with their regularity.64 George never returns. Argus and Roxalana, relieved that he will no longer upset their untroubled lives, create their own family and their own rituals. They observe few formalities and disregard most bourgeois niceties. Argus takes solitary walks around his property, Roxalana confines herself to the house, and Tempe discovers a titillating escape from Temple House—a doorway onto an adjoining alley. Here she “made herself happy with constant visits and rompings among the children there…much absorbed with its hearty, vulgar life.” Years go by without incident, the “enjoyments and afflictions” of the inhabitants ofTemple House “do not range higher than those of the savage.” Rox and Argus are content, and, happy to be left on her own, Tempe grows into a wild adolescent.65 The story leaps ahead several years; Roxalana and Argus are discussing Tempe’s future. On the verge of womanhood, the beautiful Tempe dislikes Temple House and yearns for the money and material possessions of the town’s wealthier girls. Tempe’s “‘romping days will soon be over,’” her mother observes. She wonders what will become of the irrepressible girl. Roxalana rejects the idea of managing her daughter, not out of a lack of love, but because “it is useless— the attempt to govern children, just as useless as the attempt is—to govern men and women.” People, Stoddard believed, ruled themselves, and popular beliefs in control and influence were illusions. Tempe counters her mother’s concern in her usual flippant way. “‘What am I now?’ she asked; ‘a child, a jade, a witch, or a hussy?’” Tempe, like Cassandra Morgeson, stands at an important threshold, her adult identity undetermined. Argus wonders why Roxalana has not thought of marrying Tempe off, sarcastically observing, “‘marriage puts an end to the antics of your sex, and begins ours.’” Tempe rejects her uncle’s mocking suggestion that marriage would help her. She revels in her indeterminacy. Like her father, she does not want to grow up.66 Tempe’s friendship with two local families broadens the circle at Temple House. Mat Sutcliffe, second mate on Argus’s voyages, lives in a run-down house in the alley behind Temple House. Fiercely loyal to Argus, Mat declares himself Tempe’s guardian, watching over her as she grows up unsupervised in the alley. The “bustle and confusion” of Mat’s “hut” and “the careless, gay spirits of [his] whole family were highly attractive to Tempe.” Tempe’s other close friend, Virginia Brande, is the daughter of the town’s wealthiest entrepreneur, Cyrus Brande. The Brande house bears no resemblance to the Sutcliffe “hut.” It also differs substantially from Temple House, “as different as pound cake was to molasses gingerbread.” As much as the grandeur of the Brande House seduces Tempe, the “charm” ofTemple House entices Virginia. Whereas Tempe admires


Virginia’s fine clothes, Virginia is struck by the people of Temple House. “The sensible, unworldly sincerity of Roxalana; the conduct of Argus, which absolutely denied the influence of opinion, and yet was so calm, orderly, and cheerful without it,” lure the unhappy rich girl to Temple House. Surrounded by evidence of her father’s avariciousness, Virginia respects Argus’s “indifference to money.” And, significantly, she envies Tempe’s “wildness and her freedom from all control.” Temple House calls to Virginia precisely because it “made up a different world” from the constraints of her respectable home.67 Ostensibly a model of bourgeois propriety, the Brandes appear the perfect family. Cyrus Brande is “a great financier, a powerful man in his church,” with “an irreproachable character.” Brande is married to a woman from a fine family and is proud of his beautiful and finely bedecked daughter. Behind this facade, however, lays a tragic, even terrifying, reality. Rhoda Brande, oppressed by her role as a bourgeois housewife, is “indolent, whining, uneasy.” She “endeavored by drugs and stimulants to deaden herself against the torments of her position.” Though “patient” with her, Cyrus “excused her from none of the religious and secular duties which he had imposed on himself.” Mrs. Brande is forced to maintain her role to keep up appearances. Miserable, she wreaks her revenge on her dutiful daughter. Virginia is a prisoner in her home, at the beck and call of her destructive mother. Rhoda and Virginia are not alone in their misery—Cyrus Brande is also role-playing. He “lived between two masks; one faced the world, and the other faced—himself.” Before the world, “he appeared austere, pious, and reserved.” He is also “genial, sensual, and cowardly.” “These masks” hide a “violent, passionate, inconsistent man.” Brande, like some of the female protagonists of Stoddard’s short fiction, recognizes the bifurcated nature of the bourgeois self and is complicit in its perpetuation. While not suffering to the degree his wife does, Brande, too, is an unhappy man. The Brandes are entrapped in a “prison of expectations.” They all suffer because of their tacit endorsement of bourgeois gender and social roles.68 Failing to see behind the front the Brandes create, Tempe admires their wealth and all its trappings. She is tired of her “shabby, mean life” at Temple house and vows to marry John Drake, son of a prominent and affluent local family. While she knows she does not love him, she covets the objects his wealth can buy for her. The two marry despite his family’s initial opposition. Setting the iconoclastic Gateses alongside the ever-respectable Drakes, Stoddard contrasted the sincerity of Roxalana’s and Argus’s responses to the superficial sentiments of the Drake family, particularly their reactions to Tempe’s hasty, shallow wedding ritual. John’s sister gushes over the “‘beautiful ceremony’”; Roxalana declares it “‘sad'” and like a “‘funeral service.’” The well-dressed Drake women accentuate the shabbiness of Roxalana’s dress. Well aware of her “‘hideous dress,’” Rox defends its practicality. Her dress, unlike Tempe’s marriage, will “‘last a lifetime.’” Virginia, unconcerned with Roxalana’s appearance, is embarrassed far more by her whining, selfish mother. Virginia also dislikes the new Tempe—Tempe Drake


—”it seemed as if she had fallen apart from Temple House—dropping what she had probably borrowed in its atmosphere—…its vigorous simplicity.” In its place, Tempe had assumed “the character of a parasite upon the Drakes.” Virginia adds Tempe’s name to “that list of the weak and erratic to whom must be owed duty and endurance.” She is particularly saddened to learn that John and Tempe will be living at Temple House, fearing that “‘the intrusion of a stranger may be a check to its freedom.’” She dreads the incursion of bourgeois modes of behavior and hopes Temple House can resist the forces which have shaped the Brande home.69 Virginia need not have worried. Writing her mother while on an extended honeymoon to the West, Tempe demonstrates how little she has changed. She loves John’s gifts, but misses “home” and her family. She vows she will rarely visit the stuffy Drake family after her return. And, further demonstrating her continued affinity to Temple House, she signs the note, “Temple Gates,” avoiding the use of her married name. Roxalana and Argus, relieved by the letter, declare Tempe still “‘herself.’”70 Tempe’s missive is followed quickly by word that the newlyweds have been in a train wreck. Tempe is stranded out West with her mortally injured husband. Argus departs immediately to retrieve them. Virginia, hearing the news, yearns to go to Temple House to comfort Roxalana, but is detained at home by the petty needs of her mother. Finding John dead upon his arrival, Argus brings back the young widow and the body of her husband. He and Tempe speak candidly of her marriage on the trip back home. Tempe married John for the wrong reasons, and she wonders if his death is her punishment. Left penniless, she resumes her old life at Temple House, less restless and more appreciative of its inhabitants. She comprehended now why they seemed superior to the persons she had lately been intimate with; their outside possessions weighed nothing in comparison to that instinct of self-possession so well-developed!71 Retreating into the “absolute” “silence” of Temple House, Tempe begins to heal.72 Virginia, meanwhile, maintains her friendship with the Gateses, the disparities between her horrific home and theirs becoming more apparent daily. When her servant Chloe wonders how the Gateses keep that old, drafty house warm, Virginia informs her, “‘It is warmer than our house, and the heat is more pleasant.’” Virginia, isolated by her mother’s disease, finds her closest relationship is with Chloe, an African American servant with Indian ancestry. Chloe alone comprehends Virginia’s suffering and is outraged by her “‘damn worthless mother.’”73 Despite the constant demands of her mother, or, more likely because of them, Virginia spends more and more time at Temple House. She passes the night there caring for a shipwreck victim Argus rescued. As she leaves, “a mist, faint and chilly, settled round Virginia’s brain.” She casts a “yearning, dispirited glance”


at Temple House and reluctantly returns to her role as a dutiful daughter. She surrenders herself to the comforts of her beautiful home and despises herself “for thinking it comfortable,” especially when compared to the drafty, shabby “barnlike” Temple House. As much as she admires Argus and his family, she perceives her own attachment to the material abundance of the Brande life.74 She forces herself to measure the difference between the two homes. Temple House, she realizes, “seemed preferable…for freedom was there.” Despite this understanding, Virginia continues to play her part, refusing to challenge the role she has been brought up to fill. She resumes her disguise at breakfast the following morning: She went down, attired in the morning dress her father’s taste dictated at present, and with the manners he always expected her to serve him with.75 A change meanwhile is taking place within Virginia. With a “new air of selfcommand,” she begins to demonstrate “the capacity for opposition.” Virginia is like the “cracked china cup” that appears at the fastidious Brande table that morning. Her cracks will become more obvious, until unable to hold her life together, she will break apart.76 Life at the Brande house continues to deteriorate. Consumed by drug addiction, Mrs. Brande becomes increasingly unstable, no longer able to maintain the appearances her husband demands. She arrives at the table with her “cap awry” and her clothes mismatched, irritating her husband’s “inmost soul.” He becomes visibly angered when Chloe must assume Mrs. Brande’s role as hostess because his wife’s hands are shaking too much to pour tea. “Speculating on the appearance and condition of his wife,” he briefly flirts with the idea of running away, and business interests in London provide a reasonable excuse. Freedom unleashes “a hundred dreams …in his mind,” but “the doubts of a coward” hold him back.77 Away from the restraints of family, society, and the church—something in himself would hold him back from the indulgence, the desire for which gnawed into his life like a worm!78 Constrained by his bourgeois socialization, Brande lacks the will to break free. He assiduously protects Victorian ideals of masculinity and family and is complicit in his own torment, as well as perpetuating his wife’s anguish who brightens only “with the departure of her husband.” Despite the horrors of his own home, he is appalled by Virginia’s intimacy with the Gateses. He calls Argus a “‘heathen’” and describes Roxalana as “‘grotesque.’” He wishes Virginia would not go to Temple House. Virginia’s “self-command” increases, and she declares that her “’friendship’” with the Gateses “‘never can be broken.’” Despite his best efforts, Mr. Brande’s family is imploding.79


While the Brande home is shaken and torn, life at Temple House continues much the same. Argus describes his days as “‘peace and laziness…days without desire.’” He and Roxalana “‘dwell in the slow mornings and long evenings which bring us nothing but tranquility.’”80 There are hints, however, that beneath Argus’s composed exterior lies a turbulent soul. Rescuing a young man in a shipwreck, Argus finds the near-drowned Sebastian Ford wrapped in the arms of his dead lover. Argus removes Sebastian and buries the woman in the sandbar, wrapping her tenderly in his own cloak. He hopes the unconscious Sebastian will have no memory of her death. Let him not see chose open lips—no longer the crimson gates to the fiery hours of his enjoyment—nor let him…remember the last hour of this woman’s passion, despair, and sacrifice!81 The supposedly passionless Argus emerges as a man of great emotion, revealing depths to him previously kept hidden. Recovering from his near-death experience, Sebastian comes to love Argus and Temple House and vows to remain. They develop a “friendship of feeling, not of ideas.” They, like nineteenth-century women, enjoy an intense friendship based on emotion, not reason. Argus demonstrates his passionate temperament, loving his new friend with an intensity which surprises all, including himself. He is on his way to becoming a whole man.82 As Argus moves toward accepting his passionate self, Virginia, too, creeps toward self-understanding, constrained, however, by her continued loyalty to her role of obedient daughter—a role made increasingly difficult by her mother’s addiction and growing mental illness. Virginia’s “days were hideous, her nights hateful.” Virginia’s submission does not make her beautiful. “There was nothing sweet, sensuous, lovely about her; nothing pure, peaceful, holy, in her atmosphere.” The “crucifixion of personality” and the “self-denial” of sentimental heroines is “not possible” for Virginia. Virginia manifests the potential for “happiness and pleasure,” and, unlike Mr. Brande, she will not run from them, once “the compression forced upon them should be removed.” Her mother also yearns for something different, asking Virginia to make paper dolls for her, a “‘row of gentlemen and ladies who don’t have to wind their watches and wear clothes.’” Addicted to opium and victim to mental illness, Mrs. Brande has little hope of attaining freedom. She attacks her husband in a rage, driving a pair of scissors “through his cheek.” Mr. Brande finally loses control and pulls her hair with “fury.” The tension-ridden Brandes erupt. Virginia, wishing her mother dead, defies her fathers orders, revealing her secret likeness to him—both are consumed by “dreams” and “wishes.” But, where Virginia will ultimately secure freedom, Mr. Brande consistently exercises self-repression, hiding his desires behind a facade of respectability.83 Virginia seeks solace at Temple House and learns Sebastian will be remaining there. “‘It is not strange to me that anybody should choose to live here,’” she


tells Argus, unintentionally revealing her attachment to him and his home. Witnessing Virginia’s exchange with her brother-in-law, Roxalana perceives that Virginia is in love with Argus, a sentiment Argus neither realizes nor returns. At home later that evening, Virginia contemplates the beauty of the bay by moonlight and wishes she could share it with Argus. “The bright, piercing sweetness of the hour touched her lips with a fire which should be kindled on his lips also.” Her love, Virginia believed, would “melt” his “icy, stern, unyielding” exterior.84 Mr. Brande suffers some severe financial losses, and he fears the facade he has so carefully crafted is collapsing. The demands of his position, financial and social, press upon him. The “effect of the …walls, decorations, and furniture of his house was imprisonment.” Mr. Brande confides his problems to Argus, who presciently comprehends “that the fabric of Cyrus’s life was dropping to pieces all at once.” Resolutely respectable, Brande “carried high his smooth-shaven, long chin,” refusing to allow friends and family alike to see the chinks in his existence. He resolves to save his business and makes an extended trip to an old friend, looking for an infusion of capital. Unwilling to leave Virginia alone with her “mad” mother, he commits his wife to an asylum. But her mother’s absence does not immediately free Virginia. “‘I must still be a dutiful daughter,’” she tells her father “‘I rebel against the service, though; it hurts, and stains, and tears.’” And, in a very candid moment, she confesses, “‘The family tie so binds my feet that I can not advance one step in any path where my soul should take its pride and pleasure.’” Her admission initially astounds her father. He “paused an instant, with the thought that she did not astonish him, except in speaking so recklessly of treasures never to be spent.” “‘We are in the world for other reasons than to live, and move, and have our being,’” Mr. Brande instructs his daughter. Very much alike, father and daughter understand the bifurcated nature of Victorian selfhood, but where Mr. Brande assiduously represses himself, Virginia vocalizes the conflict, explicitly articulating its costs. And, while she continues to play the role of Virginia Brande, she is capable of much more. 85 Lonely without her father, Virginia visits Temple House. She finds Argus in the summer house, and, impulsively taking his hands, she commands him to look at her. “She looked so sweet, so sincere and womanly, that a mingled pang of longing and regret seized and shook him terribly.” Argus recognizes Virginia’s passion for him, but resists it, unwilling to let go of his quiet, desireless days. Her feelings hurt, Virginia leaves, allowing Argus to “regain composure” and to “forget it had been disturbed.” Roxalana, who is hoping for a match between the two, confronts him, angered by his refusal to accept Virginia. Argus defends his action as a defense of their placid life. He loves his uncomplicated life and, “having made a pretty job of it mending sundry fissures,” refuses to “allow anybody to drop the frail article in pieces before” him. Unconvinced, Roxalana throws George’s memory in his face. The reprobate George at least embraced life, whereas Argus’s seclusion now appears to Rox as a retreat. Argus refuses to change. He recommences his


“solitary,” restful life, but “his dominion was shaken,” his “habits…breaking under a hand, whose pressure he could not control.” A “vague chaos threatening his horizon,” Argus struggles to suppress the “wingless desires” lodged within him. But, unable to deny his growing feelings for Virginia, he, like his literary predecessors Cassandra Morgeson and Jason Auster, has embarked on a journey of self-discovery, a voyage which will culminate in self-fulfillment.86 Self-realization will be easier for Argus to attain than it will be for Virginia. Without the cumulative weight of Godliness, social expectation, and familial pressure, Argus’s self-development differs significantly from Virginia’s experiences. Virginia, confined within the bourgeois home and constrained by Victorian gender ideals, must not only challenge her father, but reject the role she has been socialized to perform. Argus, on the other hand, must yield to his desires, forsaking the self-repression he has practiced for years, a task easier to accomplish at Temple House than the Brande home. Prior to his wife’s commitment to an asylum, Mr. Brande sent Chloe to live with the Gateses, believing her presence exacerbated Mrs. Brande’s illness. Chloe is initially distrustful of the eccentric Gates family. Their idiosyncratic ways put her off, especially when compared to Mr. Brande’s ritualized existence. Chloe describes the Gateses as “Indians…in spite of white skins and learning.” Chloe, who is part Native-American, comes to find the freedoms of Temple House appealing. “‘It’s the Indian in me that loves the God-forsaken independence in this house,’” she admits to Virginia after living there several months. Virginia’s bourgeois socialization does not afford her the liberties that Temple House encourages. She has so internalized her fathers dictates she remains committed to them even after the death of her mother liberates her.87 Mr. Brande returns from his trip, ready to salvage his company. He brings with him the son of a business associate, Mr. Carfield. Ostensibly there to protect his father’s investment, Mr. Carfield expects to marry Virginia, an expectation her father has endorsed. Carfield is patterned after Charles Morgeson. He is a man of animal appetites. He proposes to the stunned Virginia, but wonders if she understands men. “‘We are procreators, providers, protectors, but we are lustful, acute, selfish,’” he informs her. He yearns to make her his wife, and his expressions suggest the sexual fulfillment he anticipates in marrying the beautiful Virginia. While not repelled by his overt sexuality, Virginia spurns his offer. “To her, in spite of his sincere vehemence, in spite of his beauty, sense, and fitness, he was merely the representative of money.” Realizing “she despised the signs of wealth about her,” she rejects the trappings of affluence and protests her own lack of wealth. All purchased by her father, “none of it” was “hers!” She is disgusted by her dependence and furious with her father because he wants her to marry Carfield. She longs to repudiate her fathers authority, but “her respect and submission” keep her silent. “It was reasonable and natural for him to suppose and expect such a marriage possible and probable.” “Like her father indomitable in her passions,” Virginia remains “pious and timid in character." 88


Argus inadvertently arrives in the midst of Virginia’s exchange with Carfield and is drawn into her problems. He urges her to marry the young man. “‘It is the best thing you can do, my girl,’” he tells her, “‘Its propriety is most eviden’” “Confused and uncertain,” Virginia confronts him, begging him, “‘take me from my dreadful position, else I shall die.’” She faints into his arms, and Argus’s “impassive heart began to beat with terror, and his strength was shaken.” Able to resist the imploring Virginia, he is “defenceless” [sic] against the “faint Virginia.” But, still, he struggles against his own desires. “With her dead oppressive weight in his arms, there came a vision to his mind of his untrammeled life at Temple House. Even its rains and gales were full of repose!” Carfield, discovering his would-be lover adores the “rusty” Argus, confronts his rival, who finally admits that he too loves Virginia. Argus yields to a recovering Virginia, placing his life in her care, and the two share their first kiss. Argus learns for the first time what a torment her love for him has been. “‘I have thwarted my education at every point, and kept out of sight the moral and social principles instilled in my mind from childhood,’” she confesses, “‘for the sake of preserving the only genuine, happy emotion I ever felt.’” Touched deeply by the depth of Virginia’s commitment, Argus hesitates to ask her to marry him, unsure she can give up her moneyed lifestyle and still alarmed by the prospect of altering his sedate life. He leaves, disclosing, “‘If I dared,—I would ask you to marry me. I don’t dare.’” Virginia shares Argus’s trepidation. She clings to her identity as a submissive daughter, unsure she can do without the trappings of the Brande home.89 Argus gradually realizes that Virginia, who has always loved Temple House, will not disrupt the harmonious spirit of his home, but, instead, will enrich it. Virginia struggles with her own obstacles, confessing to Roxalana that her lack of will stands between her and Argus. “‘I am a slave,’” she admits, “‘and have the blood and spirit of a slave.’” “Afraid” of her father, she “‘can not, dare not, follow even the imperious dictates’” of her “‘wishes.’” Roxalana dismisses her worries. She assures her that “‘the time has passed’” when fathers dictated their daughters’ lives. But, Virginia discloses, “‘my own principles interfere with my wishes.’” Well socialized, she “‘cannot help believing just as he does.’” “‘How can I disunite myself from his well-knit, reasonable plans?’” she beseeches her friend. The self-governing Roxalana, unimpressed “‘with principle or reason,’” forces Virginia to challenge the social mores holding her back. The miserable young woman contrasts her “‘interior life’” which “‘rises and rolls like a flood’” with “‘the thick and purposeless darkness of [her] outward life.’” To marry Argus “‘would be to renounce terrors …[and] the evil of [her] odious and enforced existence.’” Ready to repudiate her father’s program for her, she stops abruptly, impressed by Roxalana’s one objection. Could Virginia ’”endure’” the frugal Gateses? Virginia regards Roxalana’s “‘old gowns’” and discerns “she would not look as well in them as Roxalana.” And, as Rox quickly points out, Virginia cannot bring money and luxury to Temple House, “‘it might unsettle us terribly.’” Affluence would be particularly disturbing to Argus who “‘dislikes the


cares of property.’” Despite her misgivings, Virginia continues to be seduced by the freeness of Temple House, drifting “entirely from the Brande world,” wafting “like a feather through the currents of the atmosphere, filling her with serene pleasure.” Chloe hopes that Virginia will overcome her reservations. She understands that Argus and Temple House will bring Virginia “peace, freedom, and indulgence.”90 Argus, too, wonders if Virginia could give up all her possessions. He fears unsettling the balance he has created within Temple House. “‘She belongs in her place, and I in mine,’” he tells Sebastian. The scared lovers retreat into their distinct domains, miserable, but unwilling to embark on the last leg of their journeys toward self-fulfillment. Months go by with little change. Virginia remains a prisoner in her home with Carfield her “‘jailor.’” Argus wanders his property, interacting only with Roxalana and Sebastian. Several months later, Temple House is rocked by tragedy. Tempe’s little son Georgey Drake (born several months after his father’s death) dies suddenly of consumption. Georgey’s death scarcely affects Argus. Having had nothing to do with the young Drake, he does not grieve. The boy’s death, however, shatters his grandmother. The selfcentered Tempe has allowed her mother to raise Georgey, and his premature death precipitates a crisis within Roxalana, with profound consequences for all the inhabitants of Temple House. Buried alive by her pain, “Roxalana repelled every interest which might aid her to drive it away.” She “no longer ruled the house,” depriving Temple House of “its contented and comfort-dispensing spirit.” She loses her “self-possession,” and the members of her family find themselves adrift. Sebastian begs Roxalana to return “‘from that dark underworld'” and restore the “‘anchors of Temple House.’” Lost in her grief, even comforted by it, Roxalana initially rebuffs all efforts at cheering her up, but, several months later, she emerges from her despair, subdued but herself again.91 Roxalana’s depression and its unsettling effect on Temple House force Argus to reappraise his life. Roxalana “was the prop of his obvious life, and…her lethargic, obdurate grief had destroyed it.” His old life “was breaking up and melting away.” “The change in Roxalana,” Argus comes to believes, “revealed the shifting possibilities of every circumstance about him.” He discovers that Temple House is not a static idol of solitude and tranquility, but a living construct, capable of injury and repair. Just as his family recovered from the death of Georgey and Roxalana’s withdrawal, so too can it be transformed to include Virginia, and, while it may change, its spirit will remain unaltered, enduring as a “‘catholic, tranquil, refined’” “‘refuge.’” And, within its sanctity, Argus will enjoy both individual fulfillment and romantic happiness.92 He resolves to marry Virginia, and he sends her a written proposal. Glancing at the letter, she quickly puts it away, hoping her father has not noticed her reaction. Carfield, however, has, and informs Mr. Brande that Argus intends to marry his daughter. Mr. Brande declares such a thing “‘impossible.’” He insists that


Virginia accept Carfield’s proposal immediately. In fact, he asserts, “‘the voice of nature demands it.’” In a clearly defiant gesture, Virginia glares at Carfield, refusing his offer and defying him to retrieve Argus’s note which she has “thrust… inside her bodice.” To her father, however, she continues to accede, retiring to her room to “‘consider’” his “‘wishes.’” Brande assures his business associate Virginia will come around, confident “‘she is an obedient girl, and…her nature is a pliable one.’” After all, he continues, she has all any girl could want—a “‘placid, prosperous life.’” Despite his increasing awareness that Carfield may be a “scoundrel,” Brande pressures his daughter to marry him, almost envious of Carfield’s passionate determination. Virginia remains steadfastly opposed to marrying Carfield, but she cannot entirely disregard her father’s wishes. She resolves to give up Argus and remain a devoted daughter. “To the end would she live with her father; their household should not be divided because of her conduct.” The knowledge she is doing the right thing soothes the disappointed Virginia, and she anticipates the future calmly, embracing the choice she has made.93 Carfield unknowingly hastens Virginia’s rejection of her submissive stance, forcing her to embrace a different life, free of the Victorian constraints of the Brande home. Carfield enters her bedroom at night in an attempt to compromise her reputation. He believes she cannot “endure” even “the servants knowing about his shameful behavior,” and will assent to marry him to save her good name. He revels in his “‘power’” over her and anticipates his victory. One of Virginia’s gossiping servants spreads the news through the town, but Carfield’s plan backfires. Virginia realizes that the part she has played all her life has been compromised. She now feels free to follow her desires and marry Argus. She is even ready to renounce her material wealth. Tempe visits Virginia after this and admires Virginia’s clothes and furniture. She mistakes Virginia’s comforts with self-possession, telling her old friend,’” You are rich, and your own mistress.’” “‘Stupid, blind friend,’” Virginia informs her, “‘I am neither.’”94 Tempe remains oblivious to Virginia’s plight. She yearns for the trappings of wealth. The last chapters of Temple House open up the possibility of a union between Brande and Tempe, both seeing in the other the satisfaction of longdenied desires. “Possessed” like Cassandra Morgeson, Tempe resists any efforts at self-development, remaining, in spite of her experiences, the same selfish and insubstantial young woman she appeared at the novel’s opening. She fails to understand the people and institutions around her and anticipates marriage to a man like Brande enthusiastically. He can provide all the things she lacks at Temple House. The volatile Tempe appears to Brande as the fulfillment of his wildest dreams. Brande, aware of his passionate nature and envious of Carfield’s outspoken sexuality, desires the spirited young woman. But it is unlikely the “cowardly” Brande will yield to this desire, or that Tempe will find life as Mrs. Brande as comfortable as she thinks. Unused to the rigidities of bourgeois life, Tempe will be even more disturbed by the role than the first Mrs. Brande. While Virginia may lack Tempe’s innate spiritedness, she struggles to achieve self-


understanding and saves herself from Tempe’s potential fate—a loveless and confining marriage.95 With Virginia resolved to marry Argus, the novel moves quickly to its conclusion. Argus recognizes the danger Virginia is in, and he wonders how best to remove her from the Brande house. Half in love with Virginia himself, Sebastian forsakes his own happiness to repay the man who saved his life and bursts into Virginia’s home, forcing Carfield to write a confession absolving Virginia of all guilt. Argus “dreamily” thinks of his future marriage, and, happy that the “melodrama” is over, looks forward to a restoration of Temple House’s peaceful ways. He vows to maintain the tranquility of the place, especially its anti-Victorian freedoms. Temple House, a haven for those running from Victorian gender identities (like Virginia) and for those excluded from bourgeois respectability (like Mat Sutcliffe), embodies openness and possibility, a counterweight to the Brande home and other bourgeois prisons of expectations.96 Reactions to Temple House, while disappointing to Stoddard, were not unfamiliar and followed much the same lines as reviews of her previous novels. Some, such as Henry Sedley in the Round Table, praised it for its realistic depiction of people and place. He realized, however, the strength of her story lay in character delineation. By “gradually permitting their true nature to develop itself according to the exigencies of the story,” Stoddard bypassed “all tedious explanations as to their motives and aims,” instead, “letting them appear as the occasion requires.”97 The anonymous reviewer for The Nation was far less kind. Her male characters were sentimental stereotypes, and he disliked the story as well. Hoping to avoid any “possible disappointment” readers may experience, he warned them, “Temple House is a story that has no end. Properly enough, too, for it has no plot.” The reviewer snidely suggested that perhaps Stoddard thought the ending “perfectly intelligible, though we make nothing of it.” Though we pay her the compliment of always thinking she was saying something worth hearing and of trying to comprehend what it was, yet sometimes we understood her neither fully nor partly, neither clearly nor obscurely, but simply not at all. He vehemently disliked her characters, especially the “coarse” and “indifferent” Argus, whom he believed could kill his own grandmother while calmly discussing life and smoking a cigar. He lumped Stoddard with other “female producers of fiction” and lamented that she had succumbed to the female trait of constructing a “hero who is a sad fool.” Giving no indication he had read Temple House thought fully and carefully, this critic denied even her ability to “paint” character. Stoddard was slow to recover from this reviewers assault.98 Writing to Mr. Sedley of the Round Table the day after The Nation appeared, Stoddard thanked him for his review, which seemed even better now. She appreciated his notice of her latest novel, but confessed that “I am but a ‘fallen tower’—since the review of Temple House in The Nation.” George Ripley’s


review in the New York Tribune, appearing a few days later, probably did nothing to soothe her battered ego. He stressed Stoddard’s originality, especially her morbid characterizations of life and people. She created characters unswayed by “any scruples of taste, moralism or social conventionality.” They failed to “awaken” the reader’s “sympathy.” Ripley commended “the mental integrity with which she sticks to her text,” but noted that readers had to accept “the coarseness, wrongheadedness, and…brutality, which she takes a fantastic pleasure in displaying.”99 Stoddard’s friends disappointed her as well. Caroline Dall’s response to Temple House disheartened its author. “Your letter saddens me,” Stoddard wrote, “because like some other readers, you are led to my personality.” Following up on this a few weeks later, she explained, “you have followed the exact track of Ripley in the Tribune who is possessed to analyse my mind instead of my books.” “I hoped that you would see the truth of my book, but you don’t,” she continued, “How can you though—you never will.” Familiar with Dall’s book about prostitution reform, Stoddard recognized how far she and her friend were from understanding one another. Dall devoted much of her life to eradicating prostitution. She fervently believed in evangelically inspired efforts at reform, most of which Stoddard rejected as wrongheaded. Stoddard regarded the elimination of human passion and indul-gence as an impossible task. “Excess is inherent to the race,” she informed Dall, “it is narrow nonsense to make systems that do not contain this fact.” Stoddard’s fictional worlds, far removed from these “narrow” “systems,” were full of the passion and excess she believed Dall incapable of understanding. Despite her faith in her own work, Stoddard found it increasingly difficult to withstand such criticism.100 “The compensations I have do not always atone for these disappointments,” she wrote Caroline Dall, and confided that recently a reader, touched by Temple House, had come to see her, [she] told me with tears and kisses, that no book ever came so near her as that book. That Virginia, so beautiful, so real, so faithful was the most dear to her.101 ‘But,’ Stoddard continued, ‘her feelings did not quite pay off The Nation’s score.’ Another reader, ‘one of our best critics,’ approached her to praise Temple House. He also attested to its veracity. “‘There is nothing more powerful in literature than some of the chapters in Temple House.’” “But,” she apprised Dall, “this does not quite pay off your incredible question—Are there really women like Virginia and Tempe?”102 Deeply disturbed by the critical, as well financial, disappointment of her latest novel, Stoddard wondered what to do next: “defend the structure of my novel and …assert the truth of my experience” or just give up. Her husband, she suggested, thought she should give up her prose career. She lamented her inability to get people to see life as she saw it. “My theory,” she confided, “is to


know all the dark, doubtful, mysterious—and then like the family in Temple House let us sustain each other, live for each other, and die together.” Worn down by criticisms of her novel and in need of money, Stoddard focused all her attention on short stories, publishing frequently in Putnam’s, Appleton’s Journal, and The Aldine. Stories by the frustrated novelist also appeared in the Public Spirit, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Hearth and Home, and, less frequently, in Harper’s. For the most part, Cinderella-like tales of young women finding romantic fulfillment, these stories failed to inspire Stoddard, who dismissed them as “bread” articles.103 Her personal life fared little better during this period. Plagued by ill health and recurrent financial woes, both Stoddards expressed anger and disappointment at their lack of success. Richard Stoddard, released from his duties at the Customs House and suffering from excruciating wrist pain, supported his family with a variety of literary positions, or “hack work,” as he referred to it. In late 1867, he confessed to his oldest friend, Bayard Taylor: “Every year I am growing worse off, and, of course, have to scribble more and worse.” “It is months, if not years,” he admitted, “since I have written a line of verse (the only thing I am by nature fitted for).” “Entre nous, I am a failure,” the heartbroken poet concluded.104 Neither was Elizabeth immune from these feelings, divulging to Edmund Stedman, “My and Stod’s incessant want of intellectual and material success is killing us by inches.” Referring to herself as “a dead self,” she complained, “I cannot write, my brain is soft.” She was disillusioned by her lack of critical acclaim and consumed by self-doubt. “I never had any real intellect—but a sort of enamel surface of one, caused by contact with you superior men of genius,” she wrote to Stedman. Even this fragile “enamel” was now “cracked and worn.” Adding to Stoddard’s problems, her husband suffered some sort of mental collapse in the 1870s, brought on by ill health, professional discontent, and, some thought, by alcoholism. In 1872, she divulged to Stedman, “I am very unhappy, broken at heart.” “Would that I could tone up my will,” she mourned, and “restore the powers which seem vanished for ever.”105 Stoddard, despite her qualms, took on one last full-length project. A series of tales by Stoddard appeared regularly throughout 1872 in The Aldine, a literary journal Richard Stoddard edited from 1871–1875. Following the exploits of Lolly Dinks, a selfish, cunning, and mischievous young boy, these stories described Lolly’s attempts to thwart his mothers efforts at civilizing him.106 Lolly is bright and creative. He rewrites the moralistic tales his mother imparts to him, limiting their didactic potential. In “Mouse Shoes,” published in October of 1872, Mrs. Dinks, hoping to teach Lolly the evils inherent in envy and excessive materialism, tells him a story about a mouse who steals a pair of satin slippers for her daughter to wear at a ball. Belonging to a young female (and human) friend of Lolly’s, they are far too large for the mouse, Micena. Micena’s mother alters one shoe to fit her daughter, who, despite great discomfort, wears it because it is so “‘becoming.’” She is unable to dance in the ill-gotten slipper and finds herself ignored by the boy mice. She forlornly observes the fun others are


having from her spot against the wall. The weight of the large shoe becomes too much for the little mouse. She faints and has to be removed from the ball by friends. Recovering, she and mother realize that their envy and their subsequent theft of the slippers caused Micena great unhappiness, and they vow never to yield to such a temptation again.107 Ostensibly a moralistic tale meant to discourage Lolly from coveting his friend Ally’s slippers, the tale leaves the youngster untouched. He ignores its moral and wonders instead why Micena would want to go to such a boring ball in the first place. And, he asks his mother, “‘why didn’t the mother mouse wear the other shoe to the ball, and so make herself look young, like her daughter?’” Mrs. Dinks, frustrated by her son’s amoral response, concedes defeat: “I could not touch his moral sense.”108 Stoddard’s Lolly Dinks stories inverted the moralism of conventional fiction for children which reified middle-class efforts at inculcating respectability. Stoddard was quite proud of her Lolly Dinks pieces and collected them for publication in a bound volume. Years later she remembered Lolly Dinks’ Doings, published in 1874 by William F.Gill, as one of her best works. She described it as “the cleverest children’s book written” and quoted a critic who believed it “‘equal to Alice in Wonderland.’” But the appearance of Lolly Dink’s Doings only intensified Stoddard’s unhappiness. When she received her copy of the book, she discovered that the publisher had tacked on some short stories for children by Gail Hamilton, an author Stoddard had previously declared a “literary fraud.” Hamilton’s “Sketches of Little Folk Life” shared the humor of Stoddard’s stories, but were far more edifying. Hamilton’s children, while sprightly and witty, learn a great deal from their mother’s subtle and humorous lessons. Very disturbed by the inclusion of Hamilton’s works, Stoddard wrote her friend Julia Dorr that “my own little book was a great mistake,” and, attributing it to her chronic literary misadventures, she told Elizabeth Akers Allen, “it is all part of my luck.”109 Where years of candid, and often unfair, criticism had failed to discourage Stoddard, this debacle seemingly finished her. She had failed to make others see life as she did. Readers and reviewers insisted on rewriting her iconoclastic pieces into sentimental or regionalist tales and her latest project had been ruined by the unapproved inclusion of stories by a writer she did not respect. In the wake of this humiliation, Stoddard finally surrendered. Between 1873 and 1889, she published less than half-a-dozen short stories, becoming the angry and embittered woman Bayard Taylor had portended. While in the short run an apparent victory for the censorious voices who condemned her fiction, Stoddard’s reputation would outlast most of her literary contemporaries, ensuring that her vision of Victorian America as ridden with passion and conflict would ultimately prevail over dominant images of domestic harmony. Daring to “tell the truth about men and women,” her message about the possibilities of Victorian selfhood, while unheard by most of her peers, has caught the attention of


contemporary scholars interested in broadening current interpretations of Victorianism to include voices “near the edge.”110

Chapter Five Rewriting Region The Postbellum Celebration of New England

ELIZABETH STODDARD “is IN NO SENSE CONVENTIONAL; SHE HAS NO MODELS; she paints human nature as she has seen it, as it really is.” Literary critic Junius Browne applauded Stoddard’s early fiction in the San Francisco Chronicle in September 1887 and championed Stoddard as the “strongest and most individual” author of the nineteenth century. But, he continued, her “flesh and blood creation[s]” are “regarded with suspicion” by the readers of “milk-and-water tales and sugared commonplace characters.” “No author…in the whole republic is so unappreciated today as she is.” Browne hoped that newer reading audiences would appreciate Stoddard’s work as only the “discerning few” had a generation earlier. If her novels “could be read now, with the imprint of a leading house,” he believed she would achieve the success— critical as well as financial—which had eluded her in the 1860s.1 Browne’s words heartened Elizabeth Stoddard. His letter, the disappointed novelist believed, was a “true…account of [her] non–success.”2 Edmund Stedman, inspired by the public praise of his long neglected friend, sought out a publisher interested in reprinting Stoddard’s ‘s three novels. Cassell, a wellknown British firm, took on the task, and Two Men was re-released in June 1888, with a preface written by Stedman. Temple House followed in October, and The Morgesons appeared in September 1889. Browne’s faith in late-nineteenthcentury readers proved well founded; all three novels attained the critical esteem, if not the sales, that Stoddard craved. Stedman explained in his preface why Stoddard’s fiction was virtually unknown. “Essentially modern,” her novels, read again in the late 1880s, were “in keeping with the choicest types of recent fiction.” A novelist ahead of her time, she treated “men and women…as they were,” and was “among the first to break away from a prevailing false sentiment, to paint ‘things seen’ as they are—to suggest the unseen as it must be.” Stedman noted her “strong original style,” but warned read ers she expressed “an individuality” so “distinct” that “blind” midcentury readers had misunderstood her fiction. Sophisticated modern readers “will like it,” he predicted.3 Quoting Parke Auster in Two Men, Stedman divulged the impetus behind all of Stoddard’s fiction:


‘Such revelations come so unexpectedly from those who are the nearest to us! There is something appalling behind the screen of every-day life, countenance, custom, clothes. What is it?’4 Mid-century reviewers and readers found Stoddard’s iconoclastic plots and characters disturbing, Stedman contended, preferring agreeable heroines and conventional story lines. He correctly intuited that modern readers would appreciate Stoddard’s fiction, which did not appear so peculiar when read alongside newer literary forms. Late nineteenth-century writers and literary critics, particularly William Dean Howells, the widely-regarded “dean” of American letters, criticized sentimental literary constructions and wanted American fiction to confront the unpleasant, often ugly, realities of modern American society. Howells and his acolytes championed newer forms of fiction, especially realism and, later, naturalism. But just as woman’s fiction and genteel literature had been constrained by prevailing social norms, so too was realism. Although literary realism challenged superficial representations of American life, it remained in many ways mired in the ideals of the Victorian middle class. This very tension enhanced its appeal for a people in the throes of change, yearning to embrace something new, but filled with longing for an idealized past. As “reluctant” modernists, Howells and others created a vision of America’s future which synthesized traditional Victorian ideals with the promises of modernism. In this context, Stoddard’s novels about the possibilities of self-development and the constraints of Victorian culture found new audiences. Readers and reviewers alike responded enthusiastically, and the freshly inspired writer resumed her career.5 When Elizabeth Stoddard returned to writing in the late 1880s, regionalism was the primary point of access to the literary marketplace for both male and female authors. With the notable exceptions of Howells and Henry James, virtually all American authors in this period appeared in print, at least initially, as writers of regionalist tales.6 Stoddard devoted her renewed literary energies to sketches of life in antebellum New England. Going over the same ground prominent female regionalists such as Mary Wilkins Freeman and Sarah Orne Jewett explored, she constructed tales which memorialized preindustrial folkways, explored tensions between urban and rural life in modern America, and surveyed the consequences of change. In these stories, change, defined as masculine and urban, prevails over matriarchal village life, leaving death and destruction in its wake. In pieces like “A Day in an Old Country House” and “A Study for a Heroine,” Stoddard followed the conventions of female regionalist fiction and commemorated antebellum matriarchy as it gave way to patriarchal market relations. She echoed the complaints of authors such as Jewett and Freeman who, profoundly disturbed by the consequences of industrial transformation, created texts that challenged prevailing definitions of progress and constructed female worlds of empathy and community as antidotes to the centrifugal forces of modernization.7

REWRITING REGION 123

In other pieces, however, Stoddard challenged gendered perceptions of change and modernity. Just as her early fiction rejected facile cultural faiths, so too did her later short stories. Jewett’s antebellum matriarchs, most notably Mrs. Todd in Country of the Pointed Firs, are warm and compassionate, integral members of their communities and models of behavior for young women, Stoddard’s antebellum matriarchs are cold and unyielding New England housekeepers; they are not satisfying role models for the next generation of American girls. And while female regionalists generally defined innovation as alien, masculine, and destructive, Stoddard saw harbingers of change everywhere: in cities, in villages, in men and women. Idealizations of antebellum femininity neither assuaged the ills of industrial society nor served the needs of women searching for productive roles in society. But an unexamined commitment to modern society did not offer all the answers either. Uncritical celebrations of modernity often held out the same false promises as idealizations of pastoral life.8 Like Howells and others, Stoddard created in her last short stories a vision of America’s future that synthesized older mores with new ways of being. She believed that some older values needed to be preserved in modern American culture, particularly in her configuration of the late nineteenth-century male. Stoddard’s synthetic vision of the future gained her the admiration of the reigning realist of her day, Howells, whose parable of the risks of modernity, The Rise of Silas Lapham, also suggested a synthesis of old and new as a way out of the malaise of modern American culture. The two authors embraced, in particular, a faith in the restorative effects of producers’ culture. As an antidote to the feminized masculinity E.D.E.N. Southworth promoted in The Hidden Hand, Stoddard constructed producer-entrepreneur heroes—ambitious men who embrace republican simplicity and the honor of labor. Tom Corey, Howells’s hero, embodies many of these traits as well, sharing neither his father’s aristocratic aloofness from the productive world nor Silas Lapham’s complete immersion in it. Stoddard’s heroes, like Tom, embody the best elements of proprietary capitalism, especially its vigor and simplicity.9 In June of 1895 Howells published “First Impressions of Literary New York” in Harper’s, recollecting his early friendship with both Stoddards and endorsing Elizabeth’s literary work. The two authors shared a common stance toward modernity. They expressed neither horror nor unbridled enthusiasm at the changes taking place in their midst. Instead they fashioned ways of seeing which embraced the best of the new—fluidity and possibility—while preserving whatever they thought best about the old—especially republican heroism.10 In the last years of her career, Stoddard devoted herself to writing short stories and travel pieces. While she replicated to a certain extent the regionalist celebration of New England women, most of her work at least gestured toward her early dissatisfaction with gender inequities and false idealizations of femininity. Stoddard’s antebellum women are not the warm figures of regionalist fiction, but are obsessively orderly and practical—an exaggerated version of Catharine Beecher’s model woman. Her youngest heroines reject the domestic


world of the New England matriarch and search out their futures with cosmopolitan strangers or, in some instances, flee their villages, looking for promise in America’s cities. Stoddard hoped that the dawning of the twentieth century would herald new opportunities for women. The reign of Catharine Beecher was over. American women could now redefine themselves—just what they would become Stoddard could not yet imagine. DISAPPOINTMENT AND DECLINE Publishing little between the mid 1870s and the late 1880s, Stoddard succumbed to a variety of problems which had long plagued her. Chronic ill-health, the gradual erosion of Richard Stoddard’s mental and physical health, and concerns for her surviving son, Lorry, weighed heavily on her mind. Stoddard felt much like the “melancholy” postbellum New England coast she had described in “Collected by a Valetudinarian” in 1870. The docks were empty, the wharves fallen to decay, …and…the houses looked as if life and thought had gone away.11 The once ambitious author suffered from the same decline which plagued her home region. Gravely ill (Stoddard’s biographer, James Matlack, contends Stoddard nearly died in mid-1878 from an undisclosed illness) and bothered once again by financial woes, Stoddard was further disheartened by news of Bayard Taylor’s death in 1878. Taylor, who had earned a reputation in Germany for his translation of Faust, moved to Berlin in 1878 as minister to Germany. He died suddenly several months later from liver disease. His death pained Elizabeth terribly. She had enjoyed cordial relationships with him and his wife prior to their departure, hosting their farewell party in April 1878. His loss made her early days in literary New York seem all the more poignant. She yearned to rekindle the fiery ambition which had fueled her in the 1860s. Stoddard finally recovered from her own illness and returned to writing, but confided to fellowwriter Julia Dorr that it was not going well: “I am now able to write and have my stories refused.” She complained that her “desperate effort” to write was going unrewarded. After laboring over a story for Scribner’s, she was informed by its editor he could not find anyone willing to publish it. A sketch she had written for Harper’s suffered a similar fate that year. “Why won’t somebody give me work,” she protested to Edmund Stedman, “I ought with my ability earn something.”12 Richard Stoddard suffered equally. In 1877, he was appointed the Librarian of the City of New York, a post which paid a $ 1,000 a year. Covering “a little more than rent,” it promised the Stoddards a modicum of stability. But, like most of his city appointments, this one did not last long. Richard lost his job two years later, plunging the Stoddards into uncertainty again and forcing them to rely on


Richard’s sporadic literary income. During the 1870s, the struggling poet also suffered from mental health problems, experiencing several nervous breakdowns which some friends thought were exacerbated by excessive drinking. At the same time, he also lost the use of his right hand and began to lose his eyesight (he would have several cataract surgeries over the next two decades to improve his vision). In 1880, Elizabeth wrote to Stedman, her sole confidant about Richard’s problems, that things were improving. “He is as clear as a bell at present,” she informed their old friend, “and if he could only be kept at that altitude, things would [be] all right.” Unfortunately, Elizabeth found it impossible to keep Richard at “that altitude.” She confessed to Elizabeth Akers Allen just how hard life was for her husband, an aging man of letters. “I, his wife, admire and venerate him,” because, she revealed, he labored so despite his “want of success.” “He has kept intellectually cheerful and healthy—nothing has soured and embittered his nature.” “But,” Elizabeth concluded, “he must be a disappointed man at heart.” “To state the case in a bald manner, he is a one-eyed, one-handed broken elderly man, who is obliged to daily drudgery on newspapers to pay his weekly bills.”13 “We have one gleam across this dark constantly flowing ocean,” she informed Allen, “our son—a good clever boy.” In his mid-twenties, Lorry was enjoying his first successes on the stage. Stoddard, eschewing any hope for herself or Richard, believed Lorry would succeed. Referring to luck or perhaps talent, she apprised Allen, Lorry “happens to have the quality his parents lack.” The frustrated and bored author railed against her lack of success. In 1880 she complained to Allen: “I live a lazy busy life, time flies, I feel I live, but what do I do. What help am I to anybody—there is no power of usefulness in me.” “I can’t write anymore, if I try such poor stuff stares me in the face I destroy it,” she confessed. Several months later she asked Stedman to look over a poem she had written. “I feel so doubtful of my old mind, rusted so long that my judgement is not to be trusted,” she cautioned him.14 The little public recognition she received for her earlier work also depressed Stoddard. Late in 1880 she reported her latest woes to Julia Dorr, complaining, “I am growing madder and more ‘unreconciled’ everyday.” Stoddard was particularly galled by a recent literary dinner she had attended. Seated with Helen Hunt [Jackson] and other noted writers, the embittered author found that no one remembered her work. “As for myself it is almost absurd,” she wrote Dorr, “I find myself among the successful and satisfied and utterly forgotten.” Engaged in conversation about children’s fiction, “no one there thought of” Stoddard’s Lolly Dinks’s Doings. Stoddard believed that it was “the cleverest child’s book written,” but remained “mum.”15 Elizabeth, described by early friends as embarrassingly outspoken, now found her tongue as silent as her pen. On the back of a New Year’s card to Stedman four years later she wrote: She is now a little owl


The smallest of her kin Who sits within her midnight cowl And makes no din—16 Convinced she had nothing worth uttering to express, Stoddard reconciled herself to smallness and silence. The Pythoness had lost her force. She settled instead for helping Richard with his work and supporting Lorry as he embarked on his career, but she suffered from the same restlessness which had plagued her during the early years of her marriage. In 1887, she complained to Stedman’s daughter-in-law, Ellen Douglas Stedman:”! am gloomy and restless in mind, stupid in body.”17 Stoddard wrote to Stedman’s wife, Laura, later that summer commiserating on their unhappy golden years. We understand each other very well in some ways, and sympathize with each other, for here is the fact in our lives, there is a place unfulfilled, we lack something to suit us.18 “Perhaps everybody feels so,” she continued, “but I don’t think so.” By the late 1880s Stoddard found herself “bored, not interested enough where I should be” and unable “to forget and go out of myself.” Stedman, away on vacation, wrote to her suggesting that she consider putting together a volume of her poems. She wrote back from Sag Harbor, Long Island, where the Stoddards now vacationed every summer. “You speak of my poems,” she scrawled, “I doubt whether it would be an advantage to me to print—if I were a beginner it would be different.” “A good publisher would be hard to find” because “there’s no money in them.” And, besides, few would value her poetry. “The few minds that would appreciate my individuality do not belong to the public,” she reminded Stedman.”19 Stedman was not alone in his desire to see Elizabeth Stoddard in print again. In 1883 she received a letter from Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. While Julian had known the Stoddards for several years, he had just read Temple House for the first time and was so struck by the novel he paused to write Elizabeth a long letter. He shared some of the misgivings of earlier reviewers, but found much to admire in the novel. “A profound and grave analysis of the springs of inner life,” Temple House addressed “the reality instead of the surface” of bourgeois life. Stoddard, Hawthorne believed, presented “character” as it was, “instead of what [it] appears to be.” “Your book has charmed as well as impressed me, greatly,” he continued, “as I have felt in it, what is rarely felt now adays (or in any other day for that matter)—the touch of feminine passion.” Temple House is a “great book,” he informed Stoddard. “It will be a loss to literature if you do not write again.”20 Despite Julian’s enthusiastic endorsement of her talent, things continued to go poorly for Stoddard throughout the 1880s. Richard’s health continued to deteriorate, and Elizabeth was increasingly infuriated by her inability to help him,


either physically or financially. Again, she turned to Laura Stedman. Laura found it difficult to write letters, and Stoddard felt the much same “about taking my pen for literary work.” “I dread it,” she disclosed, “I feel as if I could not do it, and yet I feel as if I must” Desperate to help ease the burdens on her husband, Stoddard wished to earn money at writing “to save him something.”21 Stoddard still seethed at the reception her novels had received decades earlier and felt that her publishers had not done much to ensure their success. She savagely criticized Bunce & Huntington, the original publishers of Two Men. Paying Richard Stoddard only one hundred dollars for the rights to his wife’s novel and for an edition of his own The King’s Bell, Bunce and Huntington had never had any faith in the potential success of Two Men. “Bunce told me about that time that he knew it was to fail,” she confided to Stedman. “Two Men met with a violent death.”22 The Morgesons, she believed, had been a victim of the Civil War. “The Morgesons was published ten days before Bull Run, it was selling but from that day stopped.” The limited sales of her first novel struck Stoddard as a tragic failure. “The Morgesons was my Bull Run.” She consoled herself by remembering “it had a success of esteem.” Fanny Fern, she recollected, had bought a copy of the novel. “She and her family, she said, literally read it to pieces, and then she bought another.” The admiration of others did not quite compensate for the lack of interest Stoddard’s own family had felt in her work. “Wilson never liked my novels,” and, she recalled, “Dick was unmoved” as well. The two most important men in her life, her beloved younger brother and her husband, failed to appreciate her fiction. Her greatest failure, however, lay in Temple House. “Published by a good house” and set fairly before the “Public,” she considered it her “worst failure.” In retrospect, the embittered author believed she had little of which to be proud.23 REDEMPTION After Junius Browne’s praise renewed public discussions of her fiction in 1887, Stoddard was thrilled to have the opportunity to redeem her novels. Stedman, much to her delight, offered to write a preface for the new edition of Two Men. She believed “it would be an immense help.” Reviewers and friends picked up where Stedman’s preface left off and acclaimed Stoddard’s literary prowess. Stoddard’s friend Lilian Whiting reviewed Two Men for the Boston Evening Traveller, describing it as “simply and wholly a work of genius.”24 An unidentified reviewer for The Critic raved about Two Men two days later. Initially skeptical of Stedman’s preface, this reviewer now believed Stedman had not praised the novel enough. He found its power comparable only to that found in Wuthering Heights.25 Other critics agreed, declaring it “original, powerful and distinctively American.”26 Stoddard also received personal affirmations of the novel’s success. George Lathrop wrote her a particularly laudatory letter in early August. Long


acquainted with both Stoddards, Lathrop, a literary critic, had never read any of Stoddard’s ‘s books, interpreting her silence on the subject as a desire to forget about them. “But now I am reproaching myself & fate & especially the dull world,” he wrote, “at the neglect in which these books have lain.” “Oh, why did you not just curse the world & go on writing,” he asked Stoddard. He appreciated the “primative [sic], racy, natural force” in Stoddard’s writing and hoped she would resume writing again. He looked forward to anything issued from her pen. Julian Hawthorne, reviewing Two Men for the Book-Mail, declared it “‘among the best women’s novels ever written.’” Stoddard felt she had “reaped an intellectual” harvest and was sincerely grateful for the “wonderful” reception Two Men had received. Confident now of the novel’s value, she repudiated any criticism it received. Recently, she had been told of a “literary woman who said she could not endorse the favorable impression Two Men had made on account of its immorality!” “God in heaven,” Stoddard complained, “what can be the nature of a person who feels so?” The fault, she clearly believed, lay not in her novel, but in intolerant readers.27 Mid-century readers had “misunderstood” her fiction, particularly Temple House, she wrote Stedman. She agreed that her portraits of Sebastian and Tempe were not as strong as they could be, but firmly believed that Virginia was “a noble creature,” while Roxalana was “a true creation.” I meant to show that passion, power, strength, can exist, be developed under the most sordid conditions, the most impassive exteriors. 28 And, as Stedman and Browne had predicted, recent readers appreciated Stoddard’s efforts. A friend and fellow writer, Mary Bradley, claimed that the novel had “‘awakened’” her more than any other. Bradley, according to Stoddard, believed the novel would be “‘read, studied, referred to by the…intellectuals of our day as one of the most remarkable ever produced by a woman.’”29 Late nineteenth-century reviewers read Stoddard’s novels as precursors to the realism Howells was championing. They praised them as “life-like.” The disagreeable underside of life did not disturb these critics as it had earlier readers. Her characters seemed “peculiar” in much the same way all strangers do. By the conclusion, readers “know them…thoroughly” and yearn to see more of them. “For, after the book has been closed, we imagine them as still living; and we think not only of their past, but of what they will likely do in the future,” concluded George Lathrop in The Epoch. Lathrop believed that Stoddard’s fiction, particularly Temple House, embodied the best of antebellum romantic literature fused with the then-popular fiction of realism. While the inhabitants of Temple House express “touches of imagination and philosophy” unlikely in everyday life, they also seem “real in the highest sense—they do not jar.”30 A later review, written by William Walsh for Lippincott’s Magazine, echoed Lathrop’s estimate. “Essentially realistic,” Stoddard’s novels were far from


commonplace. “Everything is as ordinary as a sunset, and as original, and the charm of poetical imagination suffuses the whole with glory.”31 Less than a year later a new edition of The Morgesons appeared, also to a good deal of fanfare. Some questioned its morality, but most appreciated her characters within the context of newer forms of fiction. Magazines such as the Critic used this as an opportunity to remind their readers of the strength of all of Stoddard’s fiction. Many hoped to see more by Stoddard in the near future. After years of feeling neglected and frustrated, Elizabeth finally felt acknowledged. In a letter to Julia Dorr, she remarked on the profound effect her new success had had on Richard. Despite his diminished vision, Richard Stoddard was “more cheerful.” “My surprising success has made a difference,” she confided, “he is very much pleased.” Elizabeth herself was also quite gratified. “I could laugh bitterly when I think how I have been ignored,” she confessed, “how often in the presence of those who have been lionized, who I knew were not my superiors, I have been passed over and unnoticed.” Her recent triumphs meant all the more to her in light of her recent despair and frustration. “I have been almost crushed,” she continued, “and at last gave up hope in my ability.” “Now I could get a publisher anywhere for anything!” she triumphantly declared.32 “RELUCTANT” MODERNISTS Stoddard returned to writing in a society that differed profoundly from the America from which her fiction had first emerged. In the decades following the Civil War, Americans witnessed an acceleration of the industrial changes which had transformed the antebellum United States, fueled now by legal and financial innovations encouraging economic combination and growth on a scale unimagined earlier in the century. Heralding tremendous opportunities for many, the emergence of corporate capitalism also created new problems and aroused profound anxieties. Class conflict intensified as workers and capitalists clashed over changes in the work process and the tangible rewards of labor. The collapse of free labor ideology ensured the emergence of a distinct business class at odds with a permanent wage labor class, whom capitalists and their managers viewed as alien and inferior. Seemingly unrestrained urban growth, fed by immigration and migration, fostered pervasive fears of urban decay, which were affirmed by evidence of increasing poverty, crime and filth. Metropolitan elites fled cities for wealthy residential enclaves, and the urban middle class became increasingly uneasy, disturbed by the foreign elements which seemed to dominate urban life, but determined to reform them.33 By the late 1880s, many Americans realized that the world around them had been and was in the process of being reshaped. While some like Andrew Carnegie embraced change and progress, others such as Henry Adams rejected it, believing instead that America was on the road to ruin. Most, however, remained deeply ambivalent, embracing some aspects of change and shrinking


from others. Many members of the urban middle class saw this period as an opportunity to overhaul Victorian culture and transform bourgeois life, which now seemed closed and stifling. College-educated urban professionals, in particular, railed against the suffocating rigidity of bourgeois culture and advocated new ways of seeing and behaving. Selfhood, they contended, was far more complicated than early nineteenth-century intellectuals had realized. The balanced self which Henry Ward Beecher and Bayard Taylor advocated no longer seemed attainable. The self-expression feared by midcentury moralists became increasingly important, and late nineteenth-century intellectuals, such as William James, advocated an active, engaged posture toward modernity, rather than passivity and stasis. Individuals, shaped by society, were immersed in an ongoing process of self-discovery. Autonomy was an illusion. But if society acted upon the individual, it was also possible for individuals to act upon society. Like Cass Morgeson, they wrestled with cultural ideals, reshaping them in the process. Broadening prevailing notions of selfhood, these intellectuals looked to the twentieth century for change and possibility. But even those who benefited from these cultural transformations often viewed their consequences suspiciously. Some feared their potential excesses and expressed concern that America was suffering from a cultural crisis. These Americans hoped to find their way out of the cultural malaise of the late nineteenth century by creating a new cultural synthesis, one which combined, in the words of historian George Cotkin, “the traditions and ideals of Victorianism with the challenges and possibilities of modernist streams of thought.” In the waning days of Victorianism, the urban middle classes entertained new ideas and articulated ways of seeing which minimized the threat modernity seemed to pose. While not sharing in the wholescale modernist assault on Victorianism, these “reluctant modernists” examined and confronted the more confining aspects of Victorian culture, hoping to create something new out of the old.34 Women, some thought, had the most to gain from the reconstruction of Victorian ideologies. A small minority, such as the National Women’s Party, hoped to dismantle Victorian gender ideologies and anticipated greater equality between the sexes. Most Americans, however, faithfully subscribed to midnineteenth century ideals of female exceptionalism. Many female reformers advocated increased responsibility for women on the basis of their innate goodness. By the 1880s, the vision Stoddard had so strenuously rejected in the 1860s had won out; the “cult of true womanhood” had prevailed. But it was now a more assertive force, inspiring widespread activity in the public sphere and ultimately creating a justification for female suffrage. Even within the private sphere it appeared in a more assertive guise, embodied, for example, by the interest among middle-class women in “voluntary motherhood,” the right to reject the sexual demands of their husbands and limit sexual activities to procreation.35 These two paths of historical debate, the discourse of “reluctant” modernism and the ideologies of sexual difference, converged in the postbellum writings of


women. Many women writers—from Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman to Kate Chopin—explored alternative female realms and constructed matriarchal “counterworlds” to offset the evils of industrial capitalism, which they associated with men.36 Long dismissed as feminine nostalgia, American women’s regionalism, reinterpreted by contemporary feminist critics, was more than a last look backward; it was a “search for alternative values and forms to express American identity.”37 Jewett and her fellow writers imagined a female world that was an alternative to the centralizing and homogenizing forces of capitalism. They championed feminine values of empathy and community over market values of excessive individualism and acquisitiveness. Regionalists, as “reluctant” modernists, composed fiction about both recovery and reconstruction. They looked backward to articulate distinctive visions of America’s future. The fiction of women’s regionalism, while an attempt to re-envision America’s future, mapped out the transition from antebellum ideals of matriarchy to twentieth-century notions of a heterosocial world based on male cultural institutions. Gender conflict filled the pages of later women’s regionalism; men, consciously and unconsciously, invaded these fictional spaces, bringing chaos, change, and even death.38 Beginning as early as the 1850s authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Alice Cary developed themes which later female regionalists expanded on. Their regionalist sketches celebrated female experiences and imbued community and region with the virtues of nurturance and empathy. As imagined space, these regions exalted female power and suggested the utopian possibilities of a world where female attributes reigned supreme. In the years after the Civil War, as urban-industrial values of rationality, efficiency, and acquisitiveness increasingly dominated the cultural landscape, women regionalists assumed the task of chronicling the demise of the matriarchal worlds Stowe and Cary had created.39 Rose Terry Cooke, in pieces such as “Miss Beulah’s Bonnet” (1880) and “How Celia Changed Her Mind” (1891), described the alien worlds inhabited by New England men and women. In these tales she demonstrated the inability of men to understand women and female experience. The innate goodness of women is not readily apparent to men, who have substantially different values. In many of Rose Terry Cooke’s tales male incursions into female worlds are repelled and female values protected.40 In the fiction of Mary Wilkins Freeman masculine assaults on female space and feminine values succeed, destroying women in the way.41 Freeman’s heroines in “A Village Singer” (1889) and “A Poetess” (1891) resist masculine change, only to submit grudgingly and die, their worlds destroyed by masculine values and imperatives.42 In “A Poetess,” Betsey, “the very genius of gentle, old-fashioned, sentimental poetry,” composes a poignant poem to commemorate the death of her neighbor’s beloved son. Betsey’s world—and her sentimental poetry—are destroyed by masculine aesthetic values. Mr. White, her minister, thinks Betsey’s poetry…jest as poor as it could be.’” And a neighbor informs her that “‘the minister said that you never wrote anything that could be called poetry, an’ it was a dreadful waste


of time.’” Betsey concludes her life has been spent falsely and burns all her poems: “she was burning all the love-letters that had passed between her and life.” Her life’s work destroyed, Betsey’s life ends, and she dies of consumption several weeks later. Shortly before her death, she asks the minister, who remains ignorant of his part in her demise, to bury the ashes of her poetry with her and to write a memorial poem for her after her death. In this gesture Betsey yields to urbane masculine aesthetics and, in death, becomes the subject rather than the creator of culture, a surrender the minister graciously accepts.43 In the work of the most prominent female regionalist, Sarah Orne Jewett, the relationship between the masculine and feminine, as well as the urban and the rural, is more complicated, and alludes to the kind of active accommodation to modernity advocated by William James.44 After contact, neither the city nor the town remain the same. In “A White Heron,” written in 1886, the efforts of a male hunter to kill a white heron are thwarted by a young girl, Sylvia. His whistle, described as “determined, and somewhat aggressive,” warns Sylvia of his alien presence. “The enemy had discovered her.” Sylvia is simultaneously unnerved and enticed by the masculine/urban demeanor of “the handsome stranger.” The young ornithologist—note the aura of expertise—yearns to add a white heron to his collection. Sensing she knows the whereabouts of the elusive heron, he offers her ten dollars to she show him where the bird nests. “No amount of thought, that night, could decide how many wished-for treasures ten dollars, so lightly spoken of, would buy.” The urban hunter represents in many ways the promises inherent in modern capitalism—material abundance and the fulfillment of desire. The “charming and delightful” stranger wins Sylvia’s “loving admiration,” and her repressed desires slowly awaken. 45 Sneaking out alone, Sylvia finds the heron’s nest, revels in his beauty and freedom and joyfully discovers he has a mate. She excitedly anticipates the stranger’s reaction when she leads him to the nest, but back at home she becomes silent. Sylvia cannot fathom his acquisitive relationship to nature. She is put off by his gun; “she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much.”46 Despite the promise of money and her own desire to make the man happy, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away.47 But where Rose Terry Cooke’s heroines renounced married life unambivalently, Sylvia remembers the man longingly. She suffers “a sharp pang” when the disappointed ornithologist leaves later that day, and, haunted by the “echo of his whistle,” she forgets “even her sorrow at the sharp report of his gun and the piteous sight” of the bloody and silent birds dead on the ground. In Jewett’s story, the male aggressor is repelled, but the young heroine remains uncertain. “Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been,—who can tell?”48


The protagonists of these regional sketches, all written in the 1880s and early 1890s, suffer to differing degrees the tumult wreaked by masculine encroachments into their worlds and form a continuum of responses to social and cultural change. Where Cooke’s women unambivalently preserve their female worlds, Jewett’s Sylvia remembers the male stranger longingly. And where Cooke’s characters successfully resist, Freeman’s heroines often die in the attempt. All these authors, however, envisioned change as masculine and destructive. They hoped to affect the course of change by embracing and promoting feminine values such as compassion and nurturance. In Jewett’s famous longer piece, The Country of the Pointed Firs, the narrator, an urban woman writer seeking seclusion, finds herself more and more drawn into the life of her landlord, Mrs. Todd. Mrs. Todd, an herbalist with long roots in her New England community, exposes the narrator to a way of life she did not know existed. Country life is neither slow nor isolated. Life here is rich and full. It is more complex than life in the anonymous and hectic city from which the narrator hails. The tale concludes with the departure of the narrator at the end of the summer. While the widowed Mrs. Todd will clearly miss her company, the young narrator has been truly transformed. She will bring the values she has learned at Mrs. Todd’s side—empathy and community—back to the city with her, hopefully inculcating them there. Long read as a memorial to a passing preindustrial way of life, Jewett’s work points more to the future, suggesting the importance of matriarchal and rural ways in the reconfiguration of American culture at the century’s end.49 In 1885, on the brink of her second career, Stoddard published “A Study for a Heroine” in The Independent. The life story of Sarah Brett, a New England girl, this tale reads much like the regionalist fiction of Mary Wilkins Freeman. “A Study for a Heroine” follows Sarah’s life from her childhood as the eccentric daughter of unrespectable and outcast parents to her emergence as a respectable adult and pillar of her community. She struggles to emerge from the social shadow her parents cast over her by becoming an accomplished seamstress. Literally weaving herself into the social fabric of this intolerant New England community, Sarah quietly becomes its most virtuous citizen, devoting her life (and the money she inherits after her hus band’s death) to helping the towns sick and unfortunate. Unimpressed with the hypocritical Congregationalism of her father, she is thoughtful and generous without any thought to reward in this life or the next, embodying the spirit of the Social Gospel. “She don’t pray with her tongue, as he did, but with the head and hands,” one old woman observes. The narrator, a childhood friend, marvels at the woman Sarah has become. Selfless and kind, Sarah is “not ‘goody’ at all, or strict in her views.” The narrator looks for the source of her friends goodness, but cannot fathom Sarah’s motivations. “‘I never shall find you out wholly,” she confesses to Sarah. But, Sarah replies, “‘I can’t always find myself out.’” “‘What you look for does not exist,’” she informs her old friend, “‘a text does not promise a sermon alway’” Sarah’s selflessness exists not as a lesson to others, but is simply her. Unlike a


conventional sentimental heroine, she is not a vehicle for didacticism; she helps many people without explicitly fostering their redemption.50 Shortly after this conversation Sarah falls ill, but allows few to know it. Suffering from cancer, she keeps her illness secret, continuing her good works. She resolves to “live, if possible” because “she loved life.” Like other late nineteenthcentury liberal Protestants, she is more concerned with experience in the temporal world than with the promise of the afterlife. After two years, she grows quite sick and is forced to seek help from a city doctor. He discovers her illness is “a unique one” and wants her to return to the city with him so that “his students could make the necessary observations.” These observations, he tells her, would “greatly” advance the “interests of science” and also “benefit…future sufferers.” Sarah, deeply pained at the thought of leaving her community, gives him a “look of anguish,” but consents. “The next day,” the narrator concludes, “Sarah Hamon, my heroine, was taken to the hospital accompanied by the Doctor.” Sarah gives the world the last thing she has to offer—herself. Even when faced with the horrifying prospect of being wrenched from her place, Sarah yields to a greater good—helping others. Just as the demise of other regionalist heroines was connected to an urban and masculine presence, so too was Sarah’s —the Doctor, an embodiment of urban expertise. Sarah resists surrendering control over her life. She gains nothing through unquestioned obedience. But, like Freeman’s heroines, she eventually succumbs and dies.51 In another explicitly regionalist piece written in 1894, “A Day in an Old Country House,” Stoddard memorialized antebellum matriarchy.52 Elinor Barton, daughter of a “rising” family, visits the home of Lucy Barron, a childhood friend, and marvels at the differences between her own house and Lucy’s. The oldest house in the coastal town of Datchett, the Barron home is large and well maintained. Its residents, four generations of Barrons, date back to the founding of the community in the seventeenth century. The soul of this home emanates from the kitchen, where the women cook, tend to family matters, and gossip. The lone male, Lucy’s feeble great-grandfather, is an ineffectual patriarch, whiling away his last days in virtual solitude. This matriarchal family is compassionate, clean, and orderly, representing the best of antebellum New England. Domesticity is natural to them; all is “deftly and easily done.”53 In the context of late nineteenth-century America, however, they also seem oldfashioned, observing antiquated rituals and fearing ancient superstitions. Upon her arrival, Elinor finds the front door wide open and wonders why. Lucy’s mother explains that their owl has died and “‘Superstition is alive here.’” Remembering “that old belief of the doors being ajar for the spirit of the dying to escape,” Lucy’s aunt “‘gave the owl that proper and respectable chance.’” Listening to their stories and eating “a well-ordered dinner” with the Barrons, Elinor is struck by her hosts. I realized that they and their setting were as unique as harmonious, and that they were quite unaware of the difference of the outside world.


They live their lives as they have for most of the century, but are not as unaware of external change as Elinor believes. The eldest Mr. Barron and his wife keep themselves sequestered in the living room, surrounded by portraits and mementoes from the past. Still active in the community, Mrs. Phrony, Lucy’s grandmother, envies them. “‘I wish I could forget the world as they do,’” she confesses to Elinor. Forced into employment (all the Barron women engage in “genteel employment”), Mrs. Phrony painfully discerns their declining status in a community which once venerated them. “The ‘has-been’ of the Barrons was everything to them.” Their “present was a devotion to their past, and their determination to maintain the old prestige, at least in appearance, was invincible.”54 Elinor Barton’s home, on the other end of town, is “entirely different” from Lucy’s. Mr. Barton, “a rising man,” believes in “progress.” He is unimpressed by “a respectability which belonged to the past, a position upheld by a name merely did not, in his opinion, amount to much.” Success and prestige are measured by a man’s place in the market economy, not by his family’s position in society. The Barron home, according to Mr. Barton, is a relic of a premodern past, while his home is a symbol of the entrepreneurial future.55 But life in the home of the future is not all that alluring. The domesticity and competence of the Barron house has been replaced by disorder. Returning home, Elinor finds her house noisy and chaotic. Doors were open from room to room—the clatter of dishes in one, boys and dogs in another, a carpenter finishing a job, the housekeeper roaming where she was not needed …and my gentle mother, her head turning this way and that, lost in the confusion. The women have no place here. They are “roaming” and confused, without any apparent productive role. The warmth of the Barton world, despite its superstitions, seems more appealing. The very evening she returns from her visit to the Barrons, Elinor is “sent from home almost immediately to some relatives in a distant city.” There she meets her “fate” and returns “no more to Datchett.”56 On one level, “A Day in an Old Country House” followed the conventions of female regionalist fiction. The matriarchal world of the Barrons, though declining, is warm and orderly. The entrepreneurial, market-driven world of the Bartons is disorderly and unappealing. This bustling patriarchal world does not hold much promise for Elinor. Elinor is “sent” from home, seemingly without choice, subject to the whims of her domineering father. But the Barron world of matriarchal decline does not offer the young woman much hope either. Though sent from home, Elinor embraces change and willingly seeks her unknown fate, a fate which hopefully heralds more possibilities than either the Barron’s fabled matriarchy or the Barton’s market-driven patriarchy. Stoddard’s ambivalent embrace of idealized images of New England ‘s domestic past, implicit in this tale, emerged more concretely in later stories,


where she challenged regionalist faiths in the gendered foundations of modern transformations. Change, she suggested, was not necessarily masculine. New England villages were not oases of harmony and contentment; they could be just as destructive and patriarchal as some regionalist authors believed cities to be. Stoddard found evidence of transformation everywhere: in the city in which she lived and in the fictional New England towns she created in her later short stories. And agents of transformation were just as likely to be feminine as masculine. REWRITING REGION While her subject matter and stories such as “A Study for a Heroine” clearly connected Stoddard to prominent female regionalists, her tales diverged from theirs in significant ways. She looked to antebellum producers’ culture for heroic masculine values (which she perceived as an antidote to sentimental feminized masculinity), but she rejected the antebellum matriarch as the foundation for a modern feminine identity. For Jewett, Freeman, and Cooke change always arrived in the guise of a man: the minister, the ornithologist, the husband. In Stoddard’s stories innovation manifested itself in men and women, but was especially prominent among the younger women of New England. In a series of regionalist sketches published between 1889 and 1891, Stoddard created a New England which resembled Jewett’s and Freeman’s superficially. These towns seem unaffected by changes taking hold in the cities, their rhythms determined by the season and their homes and society ruled by strong matriarchs. But subtle signs of change can be found, especially in the youngest generation of women. In these later tales, Stoddard contrasted two types of New England women: the antebellum matriarch and a new generation of young women who were cultivated, intelligent and seemingly out-of-place in rural New England. The future, she suggested, lay with these female harbingers of innovation.57 In November of 1889 Stoddard published “The Threads Leading to Thanksgiving” in The Independent. The narrator, Cynthia Josselyn, an impressionable fifteen year old, spends the days prior to Thanksgiving observing her family. She is most struck by the differences between two female cousins, Liza and Anne. The picture of “authority,” Liza “belonged to the governing class, and to rule was her ambition.” The practical and competent Liza embodies the virtues of the New England housekeeper. But, where Jewett’s matriarchal world was nurturing and empathetic, Stoddard’s vision of antebellum matriarchal culture was sharp and hard. Liza can be warm and caring, but she can also be “grasping and jealous.” Her house is orderly and well appointed but without any luxuries or comforts.58 Cynthia’s cousin Anne is “different…from the rest of [her] tribe.” Uninterested in housekeeping, Anne loves finery. But she is not self-centered or impractical. She demonstrates a heightened sensitivity to the emotional needs of


those around her. While Liza caters to their physical needs (she works tirelessly), Anne, who “never lifted her finger to please anybody,” interacts with her friends and relatives on a complex emotional and intellectual level. In an age where selfdevelopment is critical, Anne will be the more useful mother-figure. While the bourgeois-evangelical ideal of selfhood required self-development, late nineteenth-century models of selfhood emphasized the psychological components of nurturing, as opposed to the earlier emphasis on moral education and development. In this world, Anne will better fulfill the psychological needs of children, encouraging the kind of self-expression Cassandra Morgeson’s mother feared in 1862.59 Liza, unsympathetic to Anne’s distinctiveness and determined to control the lives of her family, decides Anne will marry a boring and priggish young seminary student, James Merritt. Anne, meanwhile, finds herself drawn to a newcomer to Pembroke, Milo Dunbar. Milo, the Canadian nephew of the governor’s wife, settles in Pembroke, intending to make it his home. He differs strikingly from the other men in town. He is a cosmopolitan world traveler. Where the homegrown James Merritt is puritanical and narrow-minded, Milo is open-minded and sophisticated. Novelty is not simply embodied through the urban and masculine presence of Milo; the rural born-and-bred Anne is also different. She seems out of place in her own hometown. In many ways, Anne and Milo are both outsiders, and they immediately sense a connection between themselves. Cynthia also notices how similar they are, even their hands are alike: “white” and “slender.” The two, it appears, are destined for one another. Angered that her plans for Anne may be thwarted, Liza mounts an orchestrated campaign to keep Milo and Anne apart and thrusts Merritt before Anne. The contest comes to a head at the Thanksgiving dance when a fire erupts trapping the young people inside a burning house. Milo and Anne keep calm, and all are rescued thanks to their combined efforts. After their brush with death, the two proclaim their love and settle down in Pembroke. These outsiders do not flee the village for city life, but stay, perhaps inculcating their ways in small-town New England. While Milo, the bona fide outsider, is essential to making Anne’s life complete and ensuring that change— embodied in their children—occurs, Anne demonstrates that the materials for change are also indigenous to these towns. She finds her fate in an urbane outsider, and it is a fate Cynthia watches closely. Liza, while competent and efficient, is not a role model for the teenager who finds her middle-aged cousin hard and “colorless.” For Cynthia and the next generation of young women, the intelligent Anne will replace the Beecheresque housekeeper Liza as the prototype for American womanhood. Or at least Stoddard hoped so.60 “Polly Dossett’s Rule,” in the January 1890 issue of Harper’s, reaffirmed Stoddard’s rejection of the New England housekeeper and again suggested that change, already present in New England communities, could be fostered by contact with cosmopolitan outsiders. This story recounts Isabel’s girlhood in the home of her aunt Polly, a rigid housekeeper. Responsible for a child’s “soul,”


Polly devises “a system…which she called Rules.” Isabel, inspired by the verse of the Romantic poets, “denied her system and contradicted her rules constantly.” The bulk of the story involves Isabel’s romantic yearnings for her cousin Tom. Once a reprobate, Tom has returned home after many years at sea. Once a “‘coarse, undeveloped animal,’” he is now a “‘self-made man, with plenty of rocks in [his] pocket.’”61 His relationship with Isabel is threatened by the arrival of a dashing outsider, Philip Comines, a captain in the Union Army. It is apparent that Isabel and Tom are not really suited. Tom likes life in Chicksdale; Isabel itches to leave it. Tom is comfortable on his uncle’s farm; Isabel is clearly not made for farm life. Her “‘mite of a hand’” seems out of place on a farm. Isabel also differs in dramatic ways from the roughly competent Polly, similar to the contrast between Anne and Liza in Stoddard’s ‘s earlier story. And, just as Anne met her fate with a cultivated outsider, so too must Isabel. Though it becomes increasingly obvious that Isabel will pick Captain Comines, she is saved from having to choose by Tom’s tragic death in a horse accident. Despite Polly’s best efforts, life cannot be controlled. Change, Stoddard suggested, was often unanticipated and ungovernable. Several months later Isabel and Philip marry. For Isabel, Tom’s death signals the beginning of a new life, a cultivated and exciting life she had only dared dream about before. Tom’s death allows for her development; his life may have held her back. Polly also changes after Tom’s death, suggesting the passing of an older way of life. At Isabel’s wedding the guests note how different Polly is. People shook their heads and said that she was growing old, for she did not mind Isabel’s slipping from under her thumb, and nobody heard of her rules nowadays.62 In a new age Polly’s rules have no place, and she has no power. At this party she is just the mother of the bride. On many levels Isabel makes for a dissatisfying heroine, particularly when compared to the strong and independent Cassandra Morgeson of Stoddard’s ‘s early career. But she is not the weak-willed victim of an urban seducer. Like Anne, Isabel is ripe for change; she is bored and restless with small-town life. Stoddard’s depictions of the next generation of American middle-class women remained murky, and their fates even more so. More clear to Stoddard was what needed to be replaced—the methodical New England housekeeper as a prototype for American womanhood. Angular and austere, these women held out no hope for American girls. These tales also implied the limits of provincial manhood as a model of masculinity. The uncles and other male relatives in “The Threads Leading to Thanksgiving” and “Polly Dosset’s Rules” are plodding farmers. They fulfill their agricultural duties in the same ways their fathers and grandfathers did before them. They do not share with Stoddard’s earlier heroic farmer, Ezra Clark in “The Chimneys” the ambitions of the nineteenth-century self-made man.


While Stoddard rejected the antebellum matriarch as a model of modern femininity, she harkened back to antebellum idealizations of the producerentrepreneur for prototypes of modern masculinity.63 In an early piece, “Young Martin and Old Martin,” published in The Aldine in 1873, Stoddard recounted the love affair between an upwardly mobile blacksmith, Martin, and Matilda Northwood, the daughter of a wealthy landowning family. An amalgamation of the best of antebellum producerism and the promise of entrepreneurial capitalism, Young Martin is a true hero, capable of great strength and bravery, as well as proprietary success. Matilda and Martin must confront the class prejudices which divide the town and keep them apart. In a climactic conclusion, Matilda self-consciously chooses Martin over the dandyish son of a wealthy merchant and rejects the fragmented class structure of her town.64 In Stoddard’s prose, the producer-entrepreneur hero triumphs without succumbing to the feminized manhood that authors such as Fanny Fern and E.D.E.N. Southworth celebrated. Unlike Traverse and Herbert in The Hidden Hand, his strength and goodness do not emanate from a virtuous mother-figure. Nor does his heroic masculinity result from education and travel as it did for Bayard Taylor’s Maxwell Woodbury. Martin ‘s strength derives from the virtues of productive labor, enhanced by the imperatives of entrepreneurial capitalism.65 In “A Wheat-Field Idyl,” which appeared in Harper’s in 1891, Stoddard returned to the producer-entrepreneur hero. She also questioned the pastoral ideals of regionalist fiction. Mrs. Jones and her cosmopolitan twenty-five-yearold niece, Lucy, visit the small town Mrs. Jones grew up in. They spy a family picnicking in a clearing in the woods. Both women are struck by the idyllic scene: “a sleeping baby on a sheaf, a young woman in a sun-bonnet watching beside it; against the tree a small impish-looking girl stood; near her a young man,…was leisurely eating… They are captivated by this idyllic “‘picture of happy rural life.'" But beneath this facade lies a much more complex reality.66 Several years earlier, the town’s doctrinaire minister had “resigned his pulpit, let his farm, and went West” after his daughter Julia had run off with a patentmedicine peddler. His youngest son, George Shirley, returned a short time later and quietly took to farming his father’s land. Working hard, the golden-haired young man quickly turned the unprofitable land into a thriving farm. But he is no country bumpkin. George cultivates prize-winning orchids, as well as agricultural products, and sings in the church choir. And the young woman Lucy spied at the picnic is not the devoted mother of George’s children, but his sister, Julia, who returned a few years after running off, husbandless and with a baby. Julia, desperate to ensure her place at George’s side as he climbs up Syncliff’s social ladder, is conniving and manipulative. Country folk, Lucy begins to realize, are not as simple as she had perceived.67 Lucy’s vision of the ideal pastoral family is offset by her belief that country life is static and dull. She complains that “a sentiment of the monotonous prevails here.”


Green moss oozes from every crevice in the walls, crops of mushrooms may be gathered on the front steps daily, and there is the smell of ghosts over the premises. But just as her vision of the Shirleys as an idyllic country family was wrong, so too is her fixed model of town life.68 There is also more to Lucy than her guise as a whiny city girl lets on. She can hike and run like a boy, and holds her own when fishing. Not a frail or dissipated urbanite, Lucy is strong, hardy, and has a good appetite. “‘This gal is a good fist at a knife and fork,’” her host observes. No one, it seems, is as simple as they appear.69 Stoddard rejected shallow idealizations of America’s pastoral past, represented by Lucy ‘s false vision of the picnicking Shirleys and simplistic visions of selfhood. Individuals were wrought by contradictions—Lucy both celebrates the rustic simplicity of country folk and complains about their dullness. George Shirley is an industrious farmer and a self-cultivated individual. Stoddard also resisted regionalist interpretations of change as masculine and destructive. In “Mrs. Jed and the Evolution of Our Shanghais,” published in 1891, Stoddard suggested that some small-town Americans enthusiastically embraced innovation and that the agents of change could easily be female. But, in this parodic piece, Stoddard also demonstrated the absurdities inherent in modern culture—just as idealizations of antebellum life made unrealistic promises, so too did uncritical celebrations of change. “Mrs. Jed and the Evolution of Our Shanghais” tells the story of the social transformation of a small town in the early postbellum period. A relatively poor society of small farmers, Belden’s Hole had enjoyed generations of relative equality. It had also suffered from generations of “stagnation” and “decay.” “The fashions of the outside world were of little account” to townsfolk who were disturbed only by the occasional visits of Mrs. Cragie’s “city cousin.” “It was a relief when this elegant cousin went home,” the spinster narrator of the tale recalls, “her fashionable ways disturbed our self-esteem.” Many in town sense their backwardness and realize that Belden’s Hole is quietly passing from the picturesque to the grotesque.70 One young local, Jed Buck, uninspired by farming and yearning for an education, breaks free and goes West. He returns several years later prosperous, “welldressed and refined.” He has become an engineer, a key representative of a new age, and has brought his city wife back to settle in Belden’s Hole. Mrs. Jed, as the locals call her, immediately complains “that everything here reminded her of the nap of the Sleeping Beauty, without the Beauty.” She quickly sets about reinventing Belden’s Hole, petitioning the Legislator to change the town’s name. She found “the idea of her letters being mailed for and from a Belden’s Hole insupportable.” Braganza, as Mrs. Jed christens the town, soon becomes an entirely new place. Visiting local families, her derision fuels their own dissatisfaction with their degraded community, and “it was not long before reform set in.” Houses were painted for the first time in decades and yards


landscaped and manicured. Ultimately the town is completely overhauled. “Old industries were revived and new ones established.” The town’s social life improves; “mutual interests brought us together.” And “dullness was voted out of fashion.”71 Mrs. Jed’s presence spurs Braganza’s inhabitants to embrace the cult of selfimprovement. Soon after her arrival, she pays a visit to the narrator and her sister. The two live on a decrepit farm on the outskirts of town. They have enough to get by and little else. Her visit arouses their shame. Through her eyes they “saw all that was poor and plain.” “But,” Mrs. Jed assures them, “your place has capacities…you might attempt many things.” The sisters, along with the rest of the town, soon become infected with “reform.” “We began to improve our ways and ourselves.” More is at work in this small town than the demands of a domineering woman. The town adopts Mrs. Jed’s ideas without ever embracing her. “We never could tell why she roused the spirit in us, which she did,” the narrator recalls, “We did not like her, but believed in her.”72 Earnestly participating in all the new programs being initiated in Braganza, the two spinsters wonder what to do with their “rising ambition.” They decide to try their hand at breeding chickens for sale. They fear failure and ridicule, and surreptitiously embark on this entrepreneurial plan, starting with a Shanghai cock and three hens. Initially they suffer major setbacks—the Shanghais attack their “old stock,” forcing the sisters to banish their old hens to a neighbors yard, and many of their new brood die. Chicken breeding also disrupts the spinsters’ orderly existence. The noise keeps them up at night, and the loss of their “old stock” deprives them of eggs. On the first anniversary of the birth of Braganza, all the neighbors turn out for a celebration. In keeping with tradition, the sisters are expected to bring their famous “‘pound cake doughnuts,'" which require ten eggs. The distraught and eggless sisters wonder what to do. “Sisters genius finally triumphed.” She concocts a new culinary hit—apples baked in scallop shells. “They were a success and the doughnuts not called for.” Change, while sometimes brutal (witness the conflict between the new breed and the old) and often unpredictable, could also pass unnoticed.73 Despite the early problems, the sisters’ venture proves successful quite by accident. Many of their hens and chicks die. They are left with one rooster and two hens. Fate intervenes again, however, for they are all white. Observing this, the narrator’s sister remarks: “‘My dear, behold our evolution! and our reward.’” The erratic path of evolution has played out in the sisters hen yard. By the following fall the spinsters have a thriving business and win a prize at the County Fair “for an ‘exceptionally pure breed of Shanghai.’” They become quite wealthy selling “‘Braganza Chickens.’” “‘How much better Braganza sounds than Belden’s Hole,’” they comment, and conclude: “‘We owe that much to Mrs. Jed.’”74 Stoddard’s tongue-in-cheek tale pokes fun at the superficial promises inherent in modern culture—note the implicit promotionalism of the name Braganza— while also acknowledging the inexorable triumph of modern “civilization.” It explores key questions about the nature of change. How responsible was Mrs.


Jed for all the changes which took place in this small town? Was innovation just an urban import grafted onto simple country life? Or were these communities ripe for development, as the insecurities of the narrator and the existence in earlier short stories of a younger generation set apart from older New Englanders suggest? Transformation, Stoddard concluded, was a mix of the unpredictable (evolution and “Fate”) and human agency. In this piece, which differed dramatically from most regionalist prose, innovation is neither masculine nor alien. Rather, its catalyst is female and its outcome positive. This community embraces change, although hesitantly at first, and saves itself from extinction. THE FINAL YEARS Stoddard’s return to the literary scene was relatively short-lived. The enthusiasm rekindled by the new editions of her novels waned in the face of slow sales, ill health and familial problems. In February of 1890 she apprised Stedman that she had yet to make one hundred dollars from all three novels.75 She received many commendations, “but the folks who talk of books do not buy them.” “The failure of my novels to sell,” she continued in a later letter, “is always the ‘black drop’ when they are praised, and, it chokes me into silence.” A southern friend, taken with Stoddard’s “remarkable” novels, informed her that in the South Stoddard’s “name ranked with Hawthorne.” “What could I say to her,” she asked Stedman, “except ‘Madam, my books are never bought, they are borrowed or taken from libraries.’” Instead the disappointed novelist “said nothing.” Her family failed to support her as well. Turning to Stedman yet again, she confessed that her father had told her “he had no faith in novels”—“utterly forgetting that I had ever written any.” In fact, he had loaned out his copy of The Morgesons, forgetting about it “till somebody inquired for it, and it was found at a neighbor’s, where it had been twenty years.”76 Forever discontented, Stoddard continued writing, hoping to add to her income and ease the burden on her ailing husband. In the early 1890s she penned a series of travel letters for The Independent. Some echoed her 1850s pieces for the Daily Alta California, touching on local events and literature. Most, however, described Stoddard’s summer trips to upstate New York where she regularly visited a friend of Stedman’s, Charles Dickinson, editor and publisher of the Binghamton Republican.77 Tapping into a rapidly expanding market for travel literature, Stoddard composed pieces dramatizing the vacation potential of New York State. She traveled through the upper Hudson Valley, visiting resort towns such as Saratoga, studying historical sites in Ticonderoga, and marveling at the power of Niagara Falls. She sought to entice upper- and middle-class urbanites with her vivid images of upstate New York, and she invoked the names of earlier prominent travel writers, including her long-dead friend Bayard Taylor. She challenged visions of rural America as tranquil and tried to capture its lushness and abundance, as well as its constant, frantic activity. Her self-consciously crafted vacation essays were coupled with caveats warning readers about the


inherent limits of travel writing as a genre. Nature could not be reproduced on paper or canvas; it could not be quantified. Moreover, most writers succumbed to the desire to write pastoral celebrations of nature and failed to glean the similarities between the natural world and the human world. Nature shared the uneven life of humans—beauty and tragedy coexisted with the commonplace.78 In “My June Jaunt” she recollected watching a pair of robins nesting. The male robin sings beautifully as his female mate gracefully builds their nest. A merciless predator destroys this idyllic scene, snatching the female and killing her. The distraught male flies off only to return shortly with a new mate. This new female, however, is an incompetent builder, and the male, rather than singing beautifully, grumbles and grouses. Nature could be majestic; it could be tranquil; it could be unmerciful; but it could also be mundane with its share of discontented spouses. In her last travel letter for The Independent, “An Exposition of Ignorance,” Stoddard affirmed her suspicion that this genre was inherently flawed. Appealing to, in Richard Brodhead’s words, the “sophisticatevacationer,” travel writing allowed urban elites “to appropriate experience vicariously” and fed their “habit of mental acquisitiveness.” Stoddard’s vacation pieces both satisfied this desire and called it into question. As she wrote and peddled her pieces, she insisted that nature could not be reproduced and marketed. For all their powers of observance, humans had yet to understand nature. And, more to the point, nature excited the human imagination without ever satisfying it. Implicit in the very act of acquiring nature lay the impossibility of ever truly capturing it. In her last travel letter for The Independent, she left her readers with this conundrum and closed with a tribute to the “silent motion” of seagulls in a cold, clear sky.79 Stoddard’s ‘s last piece for The Independent coincided with the release of her first volume of poetry, Poems, a collection of verses which she had written earlier in her career. In August of 1895 she revealed to Julia Dorr that Houghton Mifflin was releasing her collection in October. She already anticipated poor sales. “If my friends don’t buy the book nobody will,” she predicted, “my poems do not… appeal to the universal heart—they will be called cranky.” Poems received predominantly favorable reviews. Stedman, of course, wrote a laudatory review in the New York Tribune. Praising the volume for its sincerity and “intellectuality,” he declared it the “poetic harvest of a woman’s lifetime.” The New York Times and the Atlantic recommended the book but noted its eccentricity and melancholy. The critic for The Dial reviewed it alongside the work of popular poets such as Annie Fields and James Russell Lowell and comprehended how different it was from these other verses. “We feel that the waters have been stirred to their depths, and that peace has not yet been fully wrought out of passion.” Despite these promising notices, Stoddard’s book once again failed to attract buyers. Six months later she complained to Stedman that she had received “an account today from H & M of one dollar and five cents for Poems!” And so ended her last attempt at marketable literature.80


Tired and old, Stoddard failed to find inspiration in the commendatory notices Poems drew. “Once I should have been uplifted by such an event now it does not amount to much.” Unmentioned in an essay on American women writers, Stoddard reexamined her career and declared it a bitter disappointment. “I am attempting once more to write a story,” she wrote to Julia Dorr in 1896, “but I am so snubbed, so ignored—my name left out of every passing thing written that I haven’t much faith in myself.” In 1897 she thanked fellow author Harriet Prescott Spofford for including her in a piece that Spofford had written on writers. Stoddard described for Spofford an encounter she had had with Harriet Beecher Stowe years earlier, a meeting Stoddard thought indicative of the response she evoked from readers and reviewers alike. “After the publishing of my first novel I met Mrs. Stowe. I said to her—” ‘I hoped for a word of sympathy from you as I was creeping over the same New England ground.’ The spirit of her reply was this—…Mr. Stowe read it, and I asked him if he liked it, and he said—he didn’t— “The didn’ts have prevailed in the ranks of reviewers,” Stoddard disparagingly concluded.81 In the late 1890s Stoddard’s health deteriorated; Richard Stoddard’s declined even faster. By 1896 Richard was “crippled in his right hand, blind of one eye and purblind with the other.” But despite all this he labored “by necessity… severe as when he was thirty.” Once again, the only bright spot in their lives was Lorry. In the mid-1890s he turned his attention from acting to writing, and in 1897 enjoyed great success with his adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Three years later he gained even greater renown with his theatrical adaptation of In the Palace of the Kings. Lorry’s accomplishments coincided with a last tribute to his mother. Thanks to the efforts of an admirer, Stoddard’s three novels appeared in print one last time. A Los Angeles fan, Katherine Hooker, upon discovering the plates for the 1880s editions of Stoddard ‘s works at auction, bought them and presented them to the aged author as a gift. Richard Stoddard set about finding a publisher for them, ultimately hitting upon a Philadelphia firm, T.Coates and Company. Stedman agreed to revise his 1888 preface and enthusiastically endorsed the project. Stoddard herself composed a preface to The Morgesons, offering readers some biographical details and thanking two of her mentors, James Russell Lowell and Nathaniel Hawthorne.82 The novels appeared with little fanfare in October 1901. But Elizabeth Stoddard took little notice. In September, as the third edition of her novels made their way to booksellers, her adored son, Lorry, died from tuberculosis, delivering a blow from which his bereaved mother would never recover. “There is a curious fate in our family,” she wrote her friend Lilian Whiting, “Lorimer’s last play—‘In the Palace of the King’ is a great success,” but he could not appreciate it “shut up in a hospital.” Traveling to the Loomis Sanitarium in Liberty, New York, Elizabeth and Richard devoted themselves to Lorry’s care.


“It is heart breaking to see that clever energetic young man lying there like a child,” Stoddard wrote Whiting. “I cannot, will not, give him up till he is taken from me,” she vowed. In late August Elizabeth and Richard brought Lorry to Sag Harbor to die; he passed away a short time later. Both Stoddards were devastated. Richard, according to his wife, suffered a complete breakdown, speaking to no one, finding all references to his deceased son unbearably painful. While Stoddard’s correspondence at this time focused on Richard’s grief, she divulged the depth of her pain in the letters she hastily dashed to friends just prior to her son’s death. Writing to Laura Stedman in mid-August, she assured her that she was fine. As long as Lorry “can put his head in my arms and hold my hands I trust I shall not break down, but what am I to do afterwards?” she heartbreakingly asked her old friend. After Lorry’s funeral, the Stoddards returned to their longtime home on East Fifteenth Street. Old and grief-stricken, they slowly surrendered to the ill health which had plagued them for years. Elizabeth spent much of the following winter in bed with pneumonia, coming close to death several times before dying on August 1, 1902.83 The following day a long obituary appeared in the New York Times. The author lauded Stoddard for her original prose and for her place in American cultural histo ry, noting the parade of important writers, actors and artists which had graced her home over the years. The bulk of the obituary was devoted to “Mr. Stedman’s tribute.” One last time Stedman attempted to assure Stoddard her place in the literary canon. He marveled at her ability to continue writing in the face of personal and professional obstacles and applauded her original prose. He vowed: ‘Mrs. Stoddard will not be forgotten, nor will her books, lately published for a third time, remain unread.’ The obit also quoted the forlorn widower, Richard Stoddard. Briefly mentioning his wife’s literary career, he memorialized her as a devoted wife and mother. Her death, he believed, was hastened by the tragic loss of their son. “‘Only I am left,’” he told readers. “‘Maybe, it won’t be long before I too am gone, and I can’t say I will be very sorry.’” Elizabeth’s burial, he continued, would be in Sag Harbor “‘in a little plot we have there, that is roomy enough for three.’” He died just a few months later on May 12, 1903. For the third time in less than two years the Stoddards’ devoted friend Stedman made the trip to Sag Harbor to eulogize a Stoddard. He believed Richard’s and Elizabeth’s deaths marked the end of an era. The cultural-literary tradition the Stoddards represented, he contended, belonged to “‘the old world.’” Their like would never be seen again.84

Conclusion

STODDARD'S LAST PUBLISHED PIECES APPEARED IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST in June of 1900. Married to a semi-prominent man of letters and friends with some of the century's most noted literary figures, she penned her memories of her first days in New York City, describing at length the important men in her life: Richard Stoddard, Bayard Taylor and George Henry Boker, among others. She celebrated the lofty ambitions of this group and remembered the conviviality which marked their gatherings. Their wit and brilliance, she recollected, had reflected well upon her, and she had joined them as a junior member. She minimized her own literary abilities and achievements. Her time had been spent arranging her home, acquiring china, and managing the servants. While she recalled being lonely in her first months as a bride, she emphasized the wonderful ambiance that these high-minded poets had created in her home. Her first meeting with Bayard Taylor seemed particularly important. "I was proud, and have continued to be so through long years, of the friendship thus begun." Lighthearted and nostalgic, she lionized the grand old days.1 Stoddard, nearing the end of her life, returned to the origins of her career and reconstructed for younger audiences the noble aspirations of the architects of the genteel tradition. But just as she had been ridden with ambivalence in the 1860s, so too were her later reminiscences clouded by veiled references to her deep dissatisfaction with these men and their work. She recollected their brilliant gatherings at her home, but also noted how small a role she had been allowed to play. Then began a tournament of wit, neck-and-neck races for a ten minute poem, a parody or an ode. It was my privilege to behold them in a corner, but, unlike Jack Horner, there was no plum for me. The part of quiet observer held no reward for the outspoken Elizabeth Stoddard.2 She also intimated at the great dissatisfaction she had felt with her role as a respectable young housewife. She filled her days with reading, anticipating her husband’s arrival from the city. She looked forward most to the evenings when they could promenade through bustling city streets. The recently wed Stoddards had attempted to set up house in a small home on Sands Street in Brooklyn.

CONCLUSION 147

Limited resources forced them to give up their quaint home and return to rented rooms in Manhattan. They shared a house with a “mysterious family.” The man left every morning for work, but the wife “never went out.” “Occasionally… I caught a glimpse of her in a dark room, standing in the attitude of one listening.” The young Elizabeth knew “a tragedy was running its length,” but moved before she could witness its conclusion. She wondered, however, “how many, women especially, are shut within these curtained and shuttered houses?” Just recently, in 1900, she had seen that “gilded bars had been put before the upper windows of the house opposite,” and realized “somebody was shut in behind the bars!” Even from the distance of forty years, she still feared the imprisonment of people, “especially women,” and her affable memories of men long-dead did nothing to assuage her concerns.3 While her remembrances contained hints of the romantic rebel Stoddard had been, they also demonstrated her commitment to Victorian values and mores. She discussed the lengths to which she and Richard went to maintain bourgeois appearances on their inconsistent income. They surrounded themselves with illustrious literary and cultural figures, and filled their home with books and the trappings of the well-cultured. But, Stoddard reminded readers, she and Richard were not banally respectable. In their early days they associated with men who were bohemians “at heart.” They had been especially good friends with FitzJames O’Brien, who had taken part in the early literary revelries at the Stoddard home. Later the Stoddards had “heard sad things of him—of drunken fights, of his frequenting at Pfaff’s, where …the Bohemians ‘played at orgies.’” From that day forward, the Stoddards ceased all contact with the wayward O’Brien. Elizabeth’s early defiance, she wanted it made clear, had had its limit. A romantic rebel, she remained in other ways a Victorian lady4 Other members of Stoddard’s literary circle suffered from the same tension. Edmund Stedman, the last poet to join their group, became its most prominent and important member, given responsibility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for chronicling its ascent. Stedman edited more than half-adozen anthologies of poetry and literature in the last thirty years of his life. He became the posthumous spokesman for the genteel tradition. At his funeral in 1909 friends memorialized the benevolent poet and his set of literary friends. Colonel William Church recollected Stedman’s early days as a romantic rebel who sought to liberate poetry from morality and encourage self-expression: ”… there was something stimulating in the freedom of thought it encouraged.” But he assured those assembled that Stedman had not been a real bohemian. He had only flirted with bohemianism; “it never really touched the heart of Stedman.” “His sturdy New England character, his strong sense of duty, his faithfulness to every obligation kept him free from any possibility of sympathetic association with that side of life.” Stedman’s good friend, William Winter, affirmed Church’s analysis and consciously divorced Stedman from the more interesting and radical roots of his literary past.5

148 CONCLUSION

In the waning days of American Victorianism, its architects felt the need to shore up its porous walls and stridently defend its mission of promoting civilization, creating the static idealizations of Victorianism that modernists and later critics would assail as pedestrian. In the process these late Victorians obscured the richness and possibility which characterized early Victorian writing and thinking. They overlooked the range of literary expression which had existed at mid-century and self-consciously ignored some of American literature’s iconoclastic voices—including Elizabeth Stoddard. Stoddard, inspired by European and American romantic writers, had started with much the same aim in mind as Stedman and his friends—the liberation of self-expression from the shackles of New England puritanical culture. Especially interested in the emancipation of the female self, she created gender neutral models of self-development which elevated self-realization and self-expression over bourgeois concerns for discipline and order. She participated, along with other nineteenth-century intellectuals, in a reconfiguration of Victorian selfhood. Men, such as Stedman and Taylor, and women, like Caroline Dall, constructed images of balanced self-hood. Self-development became a crucial component of bourgeois selfhood, as long as it existed within the bounds of a moral social order. Self-discipline remained of paramount importance, constraining the potentially anarchic impulse of self-expression. In the view of men such as Taylor, this kind of balanced selfhood was unattainable for women, whose emotive side always predominated. The ideal Victorian self for them was masculine. Stoddard and other romantics, less sure of the existence of quantifiable truths, suggested the primacy of individual experience—only through individual, unmediated encounters with the world could a self develop—and opened up the possibility of Victorian selfhood for women. Stoddard suggested men and women were capable of the same sort of balanced (or, for that matter, imbalanced) character—men were just as susceptible to cultural constraints and emotive behaviors as women. Argus Gates was as confined by images of selfmade masculinity as Virginia was by the cult of true womanhood. Just as nineteenth-century women were capable of intense homosocial relationships, so too was Argus. His friendship with Sebastian was emotionally and physically charged. o be whole, Stoddard implied, involved not balanced character but a willingness to pursue self-expression at any expense—even if it meant confronting the parameters of Victorian culture. Stoddard’s fiction, as James Russell Lowell put it, neared the edge of respectable literature; it did not, however, go beyond it. Her fiction was regularly published, often appearing in prominent magazines. The parameters of Victorian culture, well-marked out by the late nineteenth century, were highly fluid at midcentury. Authors such as Stoddard appeared during their careers in bohemian magazines such as the Saturday Press and in the very respectable Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. Her work suggests the range of literary expression in the midnineteenth-century, and the variety of responses her work evoked reveals the

CONCLUSION 149

breadth of early Victorian thought. By the early twentieth century, however, Stoddard’s work lay forgotten—entombed alongside scores of novels modernist critics dismissed as “genteel.” Late Victorian literary figures including Stedman, Winter, and the elderly Elizabeth Stoddard had successfully hidden their rebellious pasts beneath the patina of Victorian respectability, and works such as The Morgesons were buried, left for future generations to uncover.6 More recent studies, building on James Matlack’s full-length study of Stoddard written in 1967, have reintroduced contemporary students to Elizabeth Stoddard and with her to the richness of early Victorian America, no longer an era of stagnant idealizations but a time of possibility and experimentation. In 1911, Emma Carleton presciently wrote to a friend, Mrs. Gutthold, raving about Stoddard’s novels. “Truly, she was our American Charlotte Bronte—was she not?” Emma believed Stoddard’s fiction “meaty,” “full of sustenance,” “delicate,” and “so discerning.” “To my mind, there is no equal to her, among American women, as novel-writers.” In fact, Emma had gone to such lengths to collect all three of Stoddard’s novels that she never loaned them out, “the risk is too great.” An unidentified woman in the twentieth century saw what Stoddard’s contemporaries had missed and what future scholars would discover: Elizabeth Stoddard—“the most strikingly original voice in the mid-nineteenth-century American novel.”7

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Lillian Woodman Aldrich, Crowding Memories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 14. 2. William Dean Howells, Literary Acquaintances: A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1900), 87. 3. For a detailed biography of Elizabeth Stoddard’s life, see James H.Matlack, “The Literary Career of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967). Brief biographies of Richard Stoddard, Bayard Taylor, George Henry Boker, and Edmund Stedman can be found in Matlack, “The Literary Career,” and in John Tomsich, The Genteel Endeavor: American Culture and Politics in the Gilded Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971). For more on these men and their relationships with one another, see Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E.Scudder, eds., Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1884); William Dean Howells, Literar`y Friends and Acquaintances; Richard Henry Stoddard, Recollections: Personal and Literary (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1903); Laura Stedman and George M.Gould, eds., Life and Letters of Edmund Stedman (New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1910); and Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Crowding Memories. See also, Robert J. Scholnick, Edmund Clarence Stedman (Boston: Twayne, 1977); and Edward Sculley, George Henry Boker, Poet and Patriot (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1927). 4. On the genteel tradition as an historically-specific literary movement, see John Tomsich, The Genteel Endeavor, 117, 120. See also Henry Nash Smith, Democracy and the Novel: Popular Resistance to Classic American Writers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); and, “Defenders of Ideality,” in Robert E.Spiller, ed., Literary History of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1946): 809–826. Often used pejoratively as a synonym for stodgy and conventional, I am using the term genteel to refer to this particular group of men and to their early radical use of romanticism. 5. For an example of Stoddard’s rebellious heroines, see Elizabeth Stoddard (hereafter EDBS), The Morgesons (New York: Carleton & Co., 1862). For an example of her critique of passive women, see EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” New York Leader v7 n8 (22 February 1862).

NOTES 151

6. On Margaret Fuller, see Jeffrey Steele’s introduction in The Essential Margaret Fuller, ed. Jeffrey Steele (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992). 7. Bayard Taylor to EDBS, 21 November 1862, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Bayard Taylor, Hannah Thurston (New York: G.P.Putnam, 1864); EDBS to Julia C. Dorr, 31 July [1870s], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. 8. Taylor to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 16 March 1866, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Taylor to Edmund Stedman, 11 December 1868, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 9. For a clear summary of the trajectory of women’s history, see Linda Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” Journal of American History v75 (June1988), 9–39. On nineteenthcentury women’s literature, see, for example, Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977), and, Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 10. Kerber, “Separate Spheres,” 23. On capitalism, women, and family formation, see Kerber, “Separate Spheres”; Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); and, Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1976). On the social history of middleclass formation, see Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Mary P.Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and, Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). On the creation of middle-class culture, see John Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1990); Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), and, Walter E.Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957). On the profound gender anxieties that accompanied industrial development in the nineteenth century, see G.J.BarkerBenfield, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Towards Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America (NY: Harper & Row, 1976). 11. For an alternate reading of Stoddard’s volatile relationship with Taylor, see Philip Allison Shelley, “The Poets and the Pythoness: A Chronicle of the Personal and Literary Relations, Including the Correspondence of Bayard and Marie Hansen Taylor and Richard and Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard,” Unpublished manuscript, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 12. See Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); and, Susan Phinney Conrad, Perish the Thought: Intellectual Women in Romantic America, 1830–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). 13. Conrad, Perish the Thought, 10. For more on Fuller’s heroic romanticism, see Howe, Making of the American Self, 212–234. 14. On Stoddard’s education and her interest in European romantic texts, see Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 76–77. 15. See Daniel Walker Howe, “American Victorianism as a Culture,” American Quarterly 27 (December 1975), 509–532. Daniel Joseph Singal, “Towards a

152

NOTES

Definition of American Modernism,” American Quarterly 39 (Spring 1987), 7–26. Quote from p.9. For an example of a more nuanced look at the relationship between Victorianism and modernism, see Suzanne Clark, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1991). 16. EDBS, “My Own Story,” Atlantic Monthly 5 (May 1860): 526–547. For an example of Stoddard’s exchange with Lowell, see EDBS to Lowell, 5 May 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Examples of this more recent historiographical focus include Gillian Brown, Domestic Individualism: Imagining the Self in Nineteenth Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Suzanne Clark, Sentimental Modernism, Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America (NY: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). For a particularly good example of the ambiguities and tensions within bourgeois ideologies, see Joel Pfister, The Production of Personal Life: Class, Gender, and the Psychological m Hawthornes Fiction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 17. EDBS, “A Literary Whim,” Appleton’s Journal 6 (14 October 1871): 440–441. Quote from p. 441.

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. Daily Alta California, 8 June 1856 (hereafter DAC); Elizabeth Stoddard (hereafter EDBS) to Richard Stoddard, November 1861, Columbia University, New York, NY. 2. DAC, 24 October 1855. 3. On the development of Massachusetts seaports in general, see Christine Heyrmann, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690–1750 (New York: Norton, 1984). On the history of Mattapoisett and the Barstows, see James H. Matlack, “The Literary Career of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967), 1–22; see also, Mary Hall Leonard, et.al., Mattapoisett and Old Rochester (Boston: Grafton Press, 1950); Charles S.Mendall, Jr., Historical Summary of Mattapoisett (Mattapoisett Historical Society, 1957); and, Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930). For an example of the shift in Stoddard’s images of maritime Massachusetts, see EDBS, “Collected by a Valetudinarian,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 42 (December 1870): 96–105. 4. James Matlack, “Literary Career,” 1–25. 5. EDBS, The Morgesons (1862, rpt., Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 96. On Stoddard’s religious experiences in Mattapoisett, see Matlack, “Literary Career,” 25–34. 6. Richard Henry Stoddard, Recollections: Personal and Literary (New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1903), 108, 108–109. 7. EDBS to Margaret Sweat, 13 January 1853, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. (hereafter ASC); EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC. See also Matlack, “Literary Career,” 34–41.

NOTES 153

8. For biographical information on Margaret Sweat, see Connie Burns, “Private Sphere/Public Sphere: Rethinking Paradigms of Victorian Womanhood through the Life and Writings of Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat, 1823–1908” (M.A. Thesis, University of Southern Maine, 1993). See also Matlack, “Literary Career,” 43–45. Stoddard’s perceptions of the isolated and alienated self were rooted in the historically specific construc tion of the image of the American intellectual as an independent critic. See T.J.Jackson Lears, “Intellectuals and the Intelligentsia,” in Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York: Scribner’s, 1993), 2447– 2464. Manifested most clearly in the life and works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, images of alienation and autonomy played a critical role in Stoddard’s writing. This will be more fully addressed in a later chapter. 9. Stoddard’s letters to Sweat were recovered by a rare book dealer in the 1960s. Their twentieth-century reader, struck by their “lesbian” content, sent them to the Kinsey Institute to be examined. Twentieth-century readers were most likely disturbed by the intensity of emotion Stoddard displayed and the yearnings she expressed for Sweat. For more on the recovery of Stoddard’s correspondence with Sweat, see Connie Burns, “Private Sphere/Public Sphere,” 106. For an historical understanding of the passionate relationships between women in the nineteenthcentury, see Carroll SmithRosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985), 53–76. EDBS to Sweat, [December, 1851], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 [June 1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 [Junel852], ASC 10. EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 1 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 1 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 1 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, [January, 1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC. 11. EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 11 July [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 11 July [1852], ASC. 12. EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 July 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 [June 1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 July 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 July 1852, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 July 1852, ASC. 13. Richard Stoddard, Recollections, 152; EDBS, “Literary Folk as They Came and Went with Ourselves,” The Saturday Evening Post 172 (2 June 1900), 1127. On Stoddard and the Lynch salon, see Matlack, “Literary Career,” 107–112. See also Vincenzo Botta, ed., Memoir of Anne C.L Botta (New York: 1893); and Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City 1840–1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981),245. On New York literary culture and salons, see Anne M. Dolan, “The Literary Salon in New York, 1830–1860” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1957). 14. For biographical information on Richard Stoddard, see Matlack, “Literary Career,” 48–67. Richard Stoddard’s poetic circle included Bayard Taylor, Fitz-James O’Brien, Thomas Buchanan Read, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, George Henry Boker, and, later, Edmund Clarence Stedman. While this group did not achieve lasting fame their historical significance is important. See Matlack, “Literary Career,” 29; and

154

15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

NOTES

“Defenders of Ideality,” Robert E. Spiller, et al., eds., Literary History of the United States (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1948), 809–826. On the genteel tradition in general, see John Tomsich, A Genteel Endeavor: American Culture and Politics in the Gilded Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971). The significant impact Richard Stoddard and the genteel poets had on Elizabeth Stoddard’s writings will be explored in chapter two. Bayard Taylor to George Boker, 26 June 1849, Olin Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Richard Stoddard, Poems (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1851). Richard Stoddard, Recollections, 112–113; Richard Stoddard, Recollections, 113. EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 June [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 August [1852], ASC. See also EDBS to Sweat, 4 August 1852, ASC; and EDBS to Sweat, 10 September [1852], ASC. EDBS to Sweat, 11 July [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 12 December [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 23 December [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 23 December [1852[, ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 13 January [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 23 December [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 23 December [1852], ASC. While the Stoddards may have delayed married life because of a lack of funds, this does not explain Elizabeth Stoddard’s failure to tell even Margaret Sweat of her marriage. EDBS to Sweat, 10 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC. I will more fully address Stoddard’s literary exploration of gender and autonomy in subsequent chapters. EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; 10 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April [1853], ASC; EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 7 June [1874], Colby College, Waterville, ME. EDBS to Sweat, 23 December [1852], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 10 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 10 February [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 1 February [1853], ASC. EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, [November 1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 19 January [1854], ASC. EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC. EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, [November, 1853], ASC EDBS to Sweat, 3 July [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 March [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 9 March [1854], ASC. EDBS to Sweat, 14 Sept. [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April [1853], ASC. Stoddard ‘s early letters frequently mention the pressures of keeping house. As her family grew and their quarters enlarged, her references to her own labor diminished. Her later letters dwelled more on the perceived inadequacies of her servants, particularly young Irish women. EDBS to Sweat, 31 August [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 14 April [1853], ASC. Chapter 3 will more fully examine Stoddard’s relationship with Richard’s circle of genteel poets.

NOTES 155

27. EDBS to Sweat, 5 May [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 5 May [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 28 July [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 9 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 9 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 March [1854], ASC. 28. EDBS to Sweat, 14 September [1853], ASC. 29. EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 24 August [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 4 October [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC. 30. EDBS to Sweat, 4 October [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 31 August [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 19 January [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 26 [April 1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 26 [April 1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 26 [April 1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 19 January [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 9 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 20 March [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 5 May [1854], ASC. 31. EDBS to Sweat, 18 May [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 28 July [1853], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 5 May [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 16 June [1854], ASC; EDBS to Sweat, 29 October [1854], ASC. 32. EDBS to Sweat, 28 June [1854], ASC; EDBS, “Literary Folk as They Came and Went with Ourselves,” The Saturday Evening Post 172 (30 June 1900), 1223. Stoddard’s belief that she was the “first female wage-earner she had ever known” was indicative of the extent to which she shared the classist assumptions of many of her literary contemporaries. Surrounded since childhood by female domestic servants, Stoddard was certainly not the first female wage earner she had ever known. 33. DAC, 19 October 1856; EDBS, “Literary Folk,” The Saturday Evening Post 172 (30 June l900), 1223. 34. DAC, 18 January 1857; DAC, 21 September 1856; DAC, 17 February 1856; DAC, 17 February 1856; DAC, 17 February 1856; Matlack, “Literary Career,” 127–128; DAC, 18 November 1855. 35. DAC, 5 May 1855. 36. DAC, 19 May 1855; DAC, 5 May 1855. 37. DAC, 29 January 1855; DAC, 3 August 1856; DAC, 22 June 1856; DAC, 3 August 1856; DAC, 3 August 1856; DAC, 3 August 1856; DAC, 19 June 1855; DAC, 3 February 1856. On bourgeois institutions and moral reform, see Mary P.Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class (New York Cambridge University Press, 1981). 38. DAC, 13 June 1855; Boker to Richard Stoddard, 11 June 1855, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. 39. DAC, 8 June 1856; DAC, 17 December 1854; DAC, 24 October 1855; DAC, 20 July 1856; DAC, 20 July 1856; DAC, 17 December 1854; DAC, 2 June 1855; DAC, 3 August 1856. 40. DAC, 17 February 1856; DAC, 10 January 1858; DAC, 10 January 1858; DAC, 10 January 1858; DAC, 31 May 1857. 41. For typical examples of Stoddard’s description of her domestic travails, see DAC, 2 June 1855; DAC, 31 May 1857; and, DAC, 29 November 1857. DAC, 2 June 1855; DAC, 31 May 1857; DAC, 23 November 1856. 42. DAC, 19 November 1854; DAC, 31 August 1856; DAC, 24 October 1855; DAC, 20 September 1855; DAC, 30 March 1856; DAC, 22 March 1857.

156

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

NOTES

DAC, 19 May 1855; DAC, 7 July 1856. DAC, 30March 1856; DAC, 30 March 1856; DAC, 18 November 1855. DAC, 8 October 1854. On woman’s fiction, see Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1993). DAC, 28 October 1854; DAC, 10 January 1858. For the most significant criticism of this tradition, see Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977). In subsequent chapters I will more fully describe this literary tradition and Stoddard’s relationship to it. DAC, 28 October 1854; DAC, 14 April 1855; DAC, 22 June 1856. DAC, 4 October 1855; DAC, 30 March 1856; DAC, 6 March 1855; DAC, 19 July 1855. DAC, 28 October 1854; DAC, 19 April 1857; DAC, 7 July 1856. The ambiguous critical response Stoddard’s own novels received in the 1860s was an example of the type of criticism she described in the DAC. Chapter two will explore this in depth. See also Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). DAC, 23 August 1857; DAC, 4 May 1856; EDBS to Julia C. Dorr, 16 November [1880], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. DAC, 2 June 1855. On the significance of different nineteenth-century female literary traditions, see Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). DAC, 19 November 1854; DAC, 22 June 1856; DAC, 24 October 1855. DAC, 8 November 1857; DAC, 8 November 1857; DAC, 18 November 1855. DAC, 8 November 1857; DAC, 8 November 1857; DAC, 28 February 1858; DAC, 19 April 1857; DAC, 21 June 1857; DAC, 9 November 1856; DAC, 28 October 1854; DAC, 28 October 1854. For examples of “B’s” columns, see DAC, 15 March 1857; DAC, 7 March 1858; DAC, 9 May 1858. DAC, 6 September 1857; DAC, 13 December 1857; DAC, 27 September 1857; DAC, 4 May 1857; Matlack, “Literary Career,” 145. DAC, 27 September 1857; RHS to James T.Field, 9 October 1854, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. EDBS to RHS, 30 June 1859, Columbia University, New York, NY. DAC, 3 August 1856; EDBS to Rufus Griswold, 21 January 1856, Ms. Griswold n995, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; DAC, 3 August 1856; DAC, 18 January 1857.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 1. EDBS, The Morgesons (New York: Carleton & Co., 1862). All citations are from Lawrence Buell and Sandra A. Zagarell, eds., The Morgesons and Other Writings, Published and Unpublished, By Elizabeth Stoddard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). 2. Bayard Taylor to EDBS, 21 November 1862, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Taylor, a poet and travel writer, was an intimate of the Stoddards for almost forty years. I will discuss him more specifically in Chapter 3. For biographical

NOTES 157

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

information, see John Tomsich, The Genteel Endeavor: American Culture and Politics in the Gilded Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 27–50. Wilson Barstow to EDBS, 24 June 1862, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Wilson Barstow to EDBS, 24 June 1862, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. For an example of this type of review, see New York World, 4 July 1862, 6. Stoddard’s biographer, James Matlack, attributed this review to the Stoddards’ friend, Manton Marble. EDBS, The Morgesons, 226. George Henry Boker to Bayard Taylor, 30 July 1874, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; James H.Matlack, “The Literary Career of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967), 448; Taylor to EDBS, 27 February 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Taylor to Boker, 27 December 1865, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Taylor to Boker, 23 September 1865, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Buell and Zagarell, The Morgesons, xi. Richard Stoddard to James R. Lowell, 7 November 1859, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Richard Stoddard to Lowell, 7 November 1859, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Richard Stoddard to Lowell, 22 December 1859, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. For a thorough study of the genteel tradition, see John Tomsich, A Genteel Endeavor. Biographical information on these men can also be found in Tomsich. See also Henry Nash Smith, Democracy and the Novel: Popular Resistance to Classic American Writers (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); and, “Defenders of Ideality,” in Robert E. Spiller, ed., Literary History of the United States, (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 809–826. See Tomsich, The Genteel Endeavor, and Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Tomsich, The Genteel Endeavor, 120. Tomsich, The Genteel Endeavor, 24, 122, 25, 125. Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels By and About Women in America, 1820–1870 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 47, 17, 21, 35, 36, 198. Some critics place Stoddard within this later “anti-Victorian” tradition, describing her as a proto-modernist. While Stoddard clearly shared a lot with later advocates of female self-expression, I think it important to study her alongside other mid-century fiction, suggesting a wider range of Victorian literary expression than some scholars allow.> EDBS to Lowell, 12 January 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 27 January 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 27 January 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. For Stoddard’s criticisms of popular fiction for women, see previous chapter, “Becoming Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard”; EDBS, “My Own Story,” Atlantic Monthly 5 (May 1860), 526–547; Richard Stoddard to Lowell, 7 November 1859, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 23 April 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 527, 526. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 528, 528, 528. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 529, 530, 531, 532. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 534.

158

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

NOTES

EDBS, “My Own Story,” 535. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 536. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 537, 537, 538. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 540. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 542. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 542, 542, 543. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 543, 544, 544, 545. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 545, 545, 546, 547. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 538, 542. EDBS, “My Own Story,” 533, 541, 541. On sentimental heroines, see Baym, Woman’s Fiction, 36. EDBS to Lowell, 23 April 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. EDBS to Lowell, 5 May 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 5 May 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 5 May 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 27 January 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. EDBS to Edmund Stedman, 21 May 1860, Duke University, Durham, NC. EDBS to Stedman, 21 May 1860, Duke University, Durham, NC; EDBS to Lowell, 27 January 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; EDBS to Lowell, 27 January 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. EDBS to Lowell, 5 May 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. EDBS to Stedman, 21 May 1860, Duke University, Durham, NC; EDBS to Stedman, 25 August 1860, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, [December, 1860], AllisonShelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. EDBS to Stedman, 22 June 1862, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, 22 June 1862, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Mrs. J.L. Graham, [1862], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; Taylor to EDBS, 21 November 1862, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Sybil Weir, “The Morgesons: A Neglected Feminist Bildungsroman,” New England Quarterly 49 (Sept. 1976), 427–439; Sandra A.Zagarell, “The Repossession of a Heritage: Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons,” Studies in American Fiction 13 (Spring 1985), 45–56. Quote from p. 50. My understanding of The Morgesons builds on these articles, as well as Ann Jerome Croce, “Phantoms from an Ancient Loom: Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard and the American Novel, 1860–1900” (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1988); and Susan K.Harris, “Stoddard’s The Morgesons: A Contextual Evaluation,” ESQ31 (1st Quarter 1985), 11–22. EDBS, The Morgesons, 6, 10, 11–12, 19. EDBS, The Morgesons, 19. Baym, Woman’s Fiction, 35. EDBS, The Morgesons, 20, 21. EDBS, The Morgesons, 6. EDBS, The Morgesons, 23, 27, 27. EDBS, The Morgesons, 28, 31. EDBS, The Morgesons, 45, 46.

NOTES 159

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

EDBS, The Morgesons, 36, 35, 41, 49. EDBS, The Morgesons, 33, 48, 47, 44, 49. See, for example, the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe. EDBS, The Morgesons, 46–47. Betsy S.Drew (pseud.), “In the Garden,” The Aldine 5 (July 1872), 138. EDBS, The Morgesons, 59. EDBS, The Morgesons, 62. EDBS, The Morgesons, 63. EDBS, The Morgesons, 73, 69, 71, 72. EDBS, The Morgesons, 74, 74, 77, 81–84. EDBS, The Morgesons, 85, 86. EDBS, The Morgesons, 92, 98. EDBS, The Morgesons, 97, 102, 109, 106. EDBS, The Morgesons, 116–118, 118. EDBS, The Morgesons, 103, 119, 120. EDBS, The Morgesons, 121, 125. EDBS, The Morgesons, 123. EDBS, The Morgesons, 131. EDBS The Morgesons, 132. EDBS, The Morgesons, 127, 129, 133, 133, EDBS, The Morgesons, 137, 143, 144. EDBS, The Morgesons, 160, 66. EDBS, The Morgesons, 160, 160, 150, 151. For more on the implications of Veronica’s anorexia, see Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Brumberg studied Stoddard’s character in the context of the historically specific emergence of anorexia. EDBS, The Morgesons, 159, 134. EDBS, The Morgesons, 165, 172. EDBS, The Morgesons, 173, 178, 190, 175, 183, 183, 184, 184. EDBS, The Morgesons, 184. EDBS, The Morgesons, 184, 186, 187. EDBS, The Morgesons, 187, 194, 202. EDBS, The Morgesons, 188, 199. Reviewers, particularly those most comfortable with Stoddard’s regionalism, pointed to the passages in which Cassandra discovers her mother dead in a chair as the most powerful in the novel. EDBS, The Morgesons, 205–206. EDBS, The Morgesons, 212. EDBS, The Morgesons, 215, 220. EDBS, The Morgesons, 231, 140, 237. EDBS, The Morgesons, 226. EDBS, The Morgesons, 226. EDBS, The Morgesons, 236. EDBS, The Morgesons, 243. EDBS, The Morgesons, 243. EDBS, The Morgesons, 243. EDBS, The Morgesons, 248. EDBS, The Morgesons, 252.

160

NOTES

89. New York Evening Post, 10 June 1862; George Henry Boker, North American and U.S. Gazette, 28 June 1862, 1. 90. New York World, 4 July 1862. Matlack attributed this review to Manton Marble. Richard Stoddard to Marble, 10 June 1862, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 91. George Ripley, New York Tribune, 19 July 1862, p. 3. For more on the Tribune, see Andie Tucher, Froth & Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). On Ripley, see Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers, 1815–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). 92. The Portland Transcript, 12 July 1862, 3; Ripley to EDBS, 22 July 1862; Marble, New York World, 4 July 1862. 93. EDBS to Lilian Whiting, 20 June [1889], Boston Public Library, Boston, MA. 94. EDBS to John Bowen, 29 October [1889], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; Bowen to EDBS, 18 October 1889, New York Public Library, New York, NY; EDBS to John Bowen, 29 October [1889], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; EDBS to John Bowen, 29 October [1889], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1. Altina L. Waller, Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 143. For more on the Beecher-Tilton affair as narrative, see Richard Wightman Fox, “Intimacy on Trial: Cultural Meanings of the Beecher-Tilton Affair,” in Richard Wightman Fox and T.J.Jackson Lears, eds., The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 2. Fox, “Intimacy on Trial,” 103; EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 6 August [1874], Colby College, Waterville, ME; EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 8 April [1875], Colby College, Waterville, ME. 3. EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 29 August [1875], Colby College, Waterville, ME. 4. E.D.E.N.Southworth, The Hidden Hand: Or, Capitola the Madcap, rpt., ed. Joanne Dobson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall, rpt., ed. Joyce W.Warren (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986); for examples of this type of Stoddard’s short fiction, see “Eros and Anteros,” New York Leader (22 February 1862), 2; “Lemorne versus Huell” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 26 (March 1863), 537–543; and “The Prescription,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine28 (May 1864), 794–800; on Margaret Fuller, see Bell Gale Chevigny, The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life and Writings, rev. and expanded ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994); Donna Dickenson, Margaret Fuller: Writing a Woman’s Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993); and Margaret Fuller, The Essential Margaret Fuller, ed. Jeffrey Steele (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992). 5. Bayard Taylor, Hannah Thurston: Story of American Life (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1864); Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birth-Mark,” in Mosses From an Old Manse, Centenary ed., ed. William Charvat, et al. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974). For more on Hawthorne’s deeply ambivalent stance towards female sexuality, see Joel Pfister, The Production of Personal Life: Class, Gender, and the

NOTES 161

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Psychological in Hawthorne’s Fiction (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); and T. Walter Herbert, Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Stephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600–1900 (London and New York: Verso, 1988); E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993): 2–7; Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977); Gillian Brown, Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 8. On the social history of separate spheres see Linda Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 9–39. On the cultural significance of separate spheres see Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). On competing images of womanhood in nineteenth-century American culture, see Karen Halttunen, “‘Domestic Differences’: Competing Narratives of Womanhood in the Murder Trial of Lucretia Chapman,” in Shirley Samuels, ed., The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 57; on mid-century masculine anxieties see Rotundo, American Manhood; and G.J.Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the HalfKnown Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). Pfister, The Production of Personal Life, 124; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman: A Case Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,” in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); for an example of midcentury fictional reconstructions of masculinity, see E.D.E.N.Southworth, The Hidden Hand. For biographical information about Fanny Fern, see Joyce Warren, “Introduction”, in Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall and Other Writings. For more information on Fanny Fern and Ruth Hall see Joyce W.Warren, Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992); for more information on Southworth and The Hidden Hand see Joanne Dobson, “Introduction,” in Dobson, ed., The Hidden Hand, xi-xlv. Joyce Warren, “Introduction,” in Warren, ed., Ruth Hall, ix- xxxix; Fern, Ruth Hall, 3. Fern, Ruth Hall, For an example of a reading of Ruth Hall as revolutionary, see Warren’s introduction in Warren, ed., Ruth Hall; Fern, Ruth Hall, 51, 106–107, 108. Fern, Ruth Hall, 93, 109. Fern, Ruth Hall 23, 96, 175. Fern, Ruth Hall, 198, 197, 198, 173, 182, 193. Fern, Ruth Hall, 172, 144, 194, 208. Fern, Ruth Hall, 183. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 45, 47, 51. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 62. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 187.

162

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

NOTES

Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 175, 187. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 99, 139, 133, 221, 213, 456, 227. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 95, 96. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 98, 99. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 248. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 254, 255, 255. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 254, 254, 282, 281. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 376, 308, 348. On several occasions Stoddard complained men viewed her as a “learned-pig,” see EDBS to Edmund Stedman, undated, [1870], Stedman Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University, NY. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 132, 407, 408. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 346. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 447. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 481, 466, 480, 484. See Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life, and, John D’Emilio and Estelle B.Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” 2. EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” 2. EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” 2. EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” 2. EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” 2. EDBS, “Eros and Anteros,” 2. For more on racial and classist representations of sexuality, see Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford, 1993). EDBS, “Lemorne versus Huell,” 538, 538, 539, 540. EDBS, “Lemorne versus Huell,” 539. EDBS, “Lemorne versus Huell,” 541. EDBS, “Lemorne versus Huell,” 542. EDBS, “Lemorne versus Huell,” 542, 543, 543. EDBS, “The Prescription,” 794, 794, 795. EDBS, “The Prescription,” 797, 797. EDBS, “The Prescription,” 797. EDBS, “The Prescription,” 798, 799. EDBS, “The Prescription,” 800. George Henry Boker to EDBS, 22 April 1862, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. George Henry Boker to EDBS, 5 May 1862, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Bayard Taylor to EDBS, 21 November 1862, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Taylor to EDBS, 21 November 1862, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Taylor to EDBS, 8 January 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Taylor to EDBS, 27 February 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Taylor to Boker, 27 December 1865, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Taylor to EDBS, 8 January 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Lorimer Graham to EDBS, 2 August 1864, New York Public Library, New York, NY. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 45, 47, 22, 24. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 59, 71, 199.

NOTES 163

60. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 86. On the shifting foundations of American selfhood, see Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 61. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 152, 154. 62. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 174, 174, 175, 62, 175, 183. 63. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 186. 64. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 187–188. 65. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 206, 209–210. 66. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 215. 67. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 215. 68. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 215–216, 216. 69. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 225, 227, 228, 228, 229, 230, 230. 70. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 250, 254. 71. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 255, 256, 257. It is interesting to note that the female exceptionalism Hannah extolled became the basis for the expansion of women’s rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 72. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 275. 73. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 276. 74. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 309, 311, 347, 348. 75. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 317, 320. 76. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 325, 329, 330, 331, 330, 332. 77. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 333, 345, 345. 78. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 345, 354, 353. 79. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 357, 359, 363, 364, 365. 80. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 376, 389, 389. 81. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 392, 401, 409, 403, 410. 82. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 410. 83. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 423, 434, 429. 84. Taylor, Hannah Thurston, 456, 463, 463, 464. 85. Richard Henry Stoddard to Taylor, 21 November 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; EDBS to Stedman, 1 May 1865, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 86. EDBS to Stedman, 1 May 1865, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 87. EDBS to Emma Lambourn, 2 December [1878], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Julia C. Dorr, 31 July [1870s], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; Boker to Richard Stoddard, 22 October 1864, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. 88. EDBS to Stedman, 1 May 1865, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Dorr, 31 July [1870s], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. 89. On Hawthorne, see Herbert, Dearest Beloved; and Pfister, The Production of Personal Life. 90. Hawthorne, “The Birth-Mark,” 38, 53, 38, 43, 55, 55. 91. Nathaniel Hawthorne to Taylor, [Spring, 1864], Yale University, New Haven, CT; Hawthorne to Richard Stoddard, 8 January 1863, New York Public Library, New York, NY; Taylor to EDBS, 8 January 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Taylor to EDBS, 8 January 1863, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. For in-depth studies of

164

92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

NOTES

Hawthorne’s deeply rooted gender anxieties, see Herbert, Dearest Beloved, and Pfister, The Production of Personal Life. Robert J.Scholnick, Edmund Clarence Stedman (Twayne Pub.: Boston, 1977), 13. Edmund Clarence Stedman, Daily Evening Bulletin (Phil.), 24 June 1862, 8. EDBS to Stedman, 12 July 1863, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. EDBS to Stedman, 12 July 1863, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Hawthorne to EDBS, 26 January 1863, New York Public Library, New York, NY; Taylor to Stedman, 11 December 1868, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 1. EDBS to Stedman, 15 November [1870], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, 30 June 1870, AllisonShelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS, “Collected by a Valetudinarian,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 4l (December 1870), 101, 101, 103, 103. 2. EDBS, “Collected by a Valetudinarian,” 104, 101. 3. Jay Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson (New Haven: Yale University, 1960), 151, 152. 4. EDBS to Caroline Dall, 27 December 1867, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. 5. EDBS to Dall, 27 December 1867. For a full-length study of domesticity and individualism, see Gillian Brown, Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 6. Steven Mintz, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian America (NY: NYU Press, 1983). 7. EDBS, Two Men; EDBS, Temple House, Mintz, A Prison of Expectations; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, quoted in Tomsich, A Genteel Endeavor, 157. For more on nineteenth-century individualism, see Michael J.Hoffman, The Subversive Vision: American Romanticism in Literature (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1972). 8. For a complete account of Stoddard’s life, see James H.Matlack, “The Literary Career of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967); EDBS, Two Men, 7, 10. 9. Ibid., 12, 18. 10. Ibid., 18. 11. Ibid., 19, 18, 19. 12. Ibid., 15, 16. 13. Ibid., 24. 14. Ibid., 29. 15. Ibid., 13, 14. 16. Ibid., 40. 17. Ibid., 46. 18. Ibid., 46. 19. Ibid., 40. 20. Ibid., 34, 39.

NOTES 165

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49.

Ibid., 47. Ibid., 47–48, 48, 48. Ibid., 61, 65, 67, 68. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 70, 77, 75, 76, 83. Ibid., 89, 80. Ibid., 94, 95. Ibid., 99, 100, 100, 103. Ibid., 104, 127, 49. Ibid., 136. Ibid., 111. Ibid., 111, 142. Ibid., 144, 144, 147. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 169. Ibid., 173; EDBS to Dall, 27 December, 1867. EDBS, Two Men, 180, 160, 209, 209, 141; on literary representations of the “tragic mulatto,” see Susan Gillman, “The Mulatto, Tragic or Triumphant? The NineteenthCentury American Race Melodrama,” in Shirley Samuels, ed., The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 221–243. During the course of the Civil War, Wilson Barstow sent a former slave, a “contraband,” to live with his sister in Mattapoisett. While no record remains of Stoddard’s experiences with her new servant, it may have informed her representation of the reception the Langs received in Crest. EDBS, Two Men, 176, 181, 189. Ibid., 192, 199, 206, 213. Ibid., 223. Ibid., 231, 236. Ibid., 240. Ibid., 259, 267. Ibid., 291. See, in particular, Ann Jerome Croce, “Phantoms from an Ancient Loom: Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard and the American Novel, 1860–1900” Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1988. EDBS to Edmund Stedman, 22 July 1864, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. EDBS to Stedman, undated [1887–1888], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, undated [1865], AllisonShelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, undated [1865], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, undated [1887–1888], AllisonShelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Richard Henry Stoddard, The Round Table (7 October 1865), 70; Charles Sweetser, The Round Table (11 November 1865), 148. George Ripley, The New York Tribune XXV n.7679 (16 November 1865), 6; EDBS to Stedman, 3 November [1866], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

166

NOTES

50. Edmund Stedman, New York Evening Post (17 October 1865), 1; EDBS to Stedman, 3 November [1866]. 51. Stedman, New York Evening Post. 52. Mrs. N.Pope to EDBS, 3 July 1866, New York Public Library, New York, NY; EDBS, “The Chimneys,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 31 (November 1865), 721–732. 53. EDBS, “The Chimneys,” 728, 729. > 54. Ibid., 730, 730, 731, 731, 731. 55. Ibid., 731, 731, 731, 732. 56. Ibid., 732. 57. Pope to EDBS, 3 July 1866. 58. Ibid. 59. EDBS to Louise Chandler Moulton, 19 May [1866], Library of Congress, Washington, DC; EDBS to Stedman, 3 November [1866], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 60. EDBS, Temple House, EDBS to Stedman, 18 November [1887], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 61. EDBS, Temple House, 1, 12, 13. 62. Ibid., 16. 63. Ibid., 19. 64. Ibid., 23, 21, 26, 27. 65. Ibid., 23. 66. Ibid., 4, 40, 4, 4. 67. Ibid., 32, 33, 33. 68. Ibid., 33–34, 34, 34, 33. 69. Ibid., 38, 50, 55, 56, 57, 59. 70. Ibid., 60, 61. 71. Ibid., 73. 72. Ibid., 75. 73. Ibid., 76, 78. 74. Ibid., 97, 98, 99. 75. Ibid., 100. 76. Ibid., 100. 77. Ibid., 100, 100, 103, 103. 78. Ibid, 103–104. 79. Ibid., 105, 104. 80. Ibid., 45, 52. 81. Ibid., 92–93. 82. Ibid., 124. 83. Ibid., 127, 127, 127, 128, 129, 132. 84. Ibid., 139, 145. 85. Ibid., 148, 155, 148, 150, 150, 151. 86. Ibid., 168, 170, 171, 172, 175. 87. Ibid., 168, 181. 88. Ibid., 196, 197–198, 198, 196, 198. 89. Ibid., 200, 201, 204, 204, 205, 209, 210. 90. Ibid., 213, 221, 221, 221, 221, 221, 222, 222, 223, 225, 226. 91. Ibid., 233, 227, 244, 244, 249, 254.

NOTES 167

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103.

104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109.

110.

Ibid., 260, 260, 228, 261. Ibid, 268, 268, 269, 269, 270, 272. Ibid., 273, 275, 279. Ibid., 323. Ibid., 333, 329. Henry Sedley, The Round Table (24 January 1868), 40–41. The Nation 134 (23 January 1868), 74–75. EDBS to Henry Sedley, 24 January 1868, New York Public Library, New York, NY; George Ripley, The New York Tribune (27 January 1868), 6. EDBS to Dall, 27 December 1867; EDBS to Dall, 11 February, 1868, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA; EDBS to Dall, 11 February, 1868, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA; EDBS to Dall, 11 February, 1868, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. EDBS to Dall, 11 February 1868. EDBS to Dall, 11 February 1868. EDBS to Dall, 11 February 1868; EDBS to Dall, 11 February 1868. For an example of one of Stoddard’s Cinderella-like tales, see “Lucy Tavish’s Journey,” Harper’s 35 (October 1867), 656–663. Richard Henry Stoddard to Bayard Taylor, 6 September 1867, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. EDBS to Stedman, 22 April 1865, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, EDBS to Stedman, [1869], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, [1872], Columbia University, New York, NY. See, for example, EDBS, “Queen’s Closet,” The Aldine 5 (January 1872), 27. EDBS, “Mouse Shoes,” The Aldine 5 (October 1872), 197, 198. EDBS, “Mouse Shoes,” The Aldine 5 (October 1872), 198. EDBS, Lolly Dinks’ Doings (Boston: William F. Gill, 1874); EDBS to Julia C. Dorr, 16 November [1880], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; EDBS to Dall, 10 June [1868], American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA; Gail Hamilton, “Sketches of Little Folk Life,” in EDBS, Lolly Dinks’ Doings, 119–128; EDBS to Dorr, 30 November [1874], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 9 November [1874–1875], Colby College, Waterville, ME. EDBS to James Russell Lowell, 5 May 1860, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1. Junius Browne, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 September 1887. 2. EDBS to Mr. Cheney, 4 Oct. 1887, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 3. Edmund Stedman, preface to Elizabeth Stoddard, Two Men (New York: Cassell, 1888), vii, viii, ix. 4. Stedman, preface to Stoddard, Two Men, xi. 5. On realism, see Daniel H. Borus, Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Amy Kaplan, The Social Construction of American Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); and Eric Sundquist, ed., American Realism: New Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). On reluctant modernism, see

168

6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

NOTES

George Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880–1900 (New York: Twayne, 1992). On regionalism, see Richard Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 107–141. Stoddard, “A Study for a Heroine,” The Independent 37 (5 May 1885), 1246–48; Stoddard, “A Day in an Old Country House,” The Independent 46 (16 August 1894), 1045–46. On American women’s regionalism, see Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse, eds., American Women Regionalists, 1850–1910 (New York: Norton, 1992). Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs, rpt. (New York: Dover, 1994). William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, rpt. (New York: Penguin, 1986); E.D. E.N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand, rpt, ed. Joanne Dobson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988). Howells, “First Impressions of Literary New York,” Harper’s (June 1895). EDBS, “Collected by a Valetudinarian,” Harper’s Monthly (December 1870), 96. For details on Stoddard’s ill health and Taylor’s death, see James H.Matlack, “The Literary Career of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967), 525–526; EDBS to Julia Dorr, 22 Jan. [1878], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 16 June [1879], Colby College, Waterville, ME; EDBS to Stedman, 9 Jan. 1880, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. EDBS to Elizabeth Akers Allen, 2 May 1877, Colby College, Waterville, ME; EDBS to Stedman, 9 Jan. 1880; EDBS to Allen, 22 March [1886], Colby College, Waterville, ME. EDBS to Allen, 22 March [1886]; EDBS to Allen, 20 Jan. 1880, Colby College, Waterville, ME; EDBS to Stedman, 9 May [1886], Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. EDBS to Julia Dorr, 16 Nov. [1880]; Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. EDBS to Stedman, 30 Dec. 1884, Pennsylvania State College, University Park, PA. EDBS to Ellen Douglas Stedman, 11 May 1887, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. EDBS to Laura Stedman, 12 July [1887], Columbia University, New York, NY. EDBS to Laura Stedman, 12 July [1887]; EDBS to Stedman, 18 August [1887], Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Laura Stedman, 12 July [1887]. Julian Hawthorne to EDBS, 7 Nov. 1883, New York Public Library, New York, NY. This letter is missing the writers signature. Stoddard’s biographer, James Matlack, identified Julian Hawthorne as its author, see Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 532. EDBS to Laura Stedman, 12 July [1887]. EDBS to Stedman, 18 Nov. [1887], Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Ibid. Lilian Whiting, Boston Evening Traveller (21 June 1888), 3. “Recent Fiction,” The Critic (23 June 1888), 305. New York Times (15 July 1888), 12; Mr. Whitney, Independent (23 August 1888), 16; New York Daily Tribune (17 June 1888), 10.

NOTES 169

27. George P.Lathrop to EDBS, 8 August 1888, New York Public Library, New York, NY; EDBS to Lilian Whiting, 15 Sept. [1888], Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; EDBS to Lilian Whiting, [1889–1890], Boston Public Library, Boston, MA. 28. EDBS to Stedman, Fall 1887. 29. EDBS to Lilian Whiting, 7 Nov. [1888], Boston Public Library, Boston, MA. 30. George Lathrop, The Epoch (23 Nov. 1888), 209. 31. William Walsh, Lippincott’s Magazine (Jan 1889), 147. 32. The Critic (5 Oct. 1889), 162; EDBS to Dorr, 5 Oct. [1888], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. 33. On the postbellum reorganization of the United States, see Hal S. Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation of the Rural North, 1870–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997); Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); George Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880–1900 (New York: Twayne, 1992); TJ. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1981); Glenn Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1910 (Arlington Heights, 111.: Harlan Davidson, 1973); Daniel T.Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850– 1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and, Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). 34. George Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, xi. On the transformation of Victorian culture, see Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, John Higham, “The Reorientation of American Culture,” in Higham, Writing American History: Essays on Modern Scholarship (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1970); and Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982). 35. See Catherine Clinton, The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984); George Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism’, Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); and John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). 36. On female regionalism, see Josephine Donovan, New England Local Color Literature: A Women’s Tradition (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983); and Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse, eds., American Women Regionalists, 1850–1910 (New York: Norton, 1992). 37. Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, xiv. 38. On the postbellum shift in woman’s fiction, see Donovan, New England Local Color Literature and Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists. 39. Ibid. 40. On Rose Terry Cooke, see Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 92– 94; Rose Terry Cooke, “Miss Beulah’s Bonnet,” in Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 122–137; Rose Terry Cooke, “How Celia Changed Her Mind,” in Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 137–153.

170

NOTES

41. On Mary Wilkins Freeman, see Leah Blatt Glasser, In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Works of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996); and Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 304–306. 42. Freeman, “A Village Singer,” in Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 333–344; Freeman, “A Poetess,” in Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 365–377. 43. Freeman, “A Poetess,” in Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 369, 373, 373, 374. 44. On Jewett, see Sarah Way Sherman, Sarah Orne Jewett: An American Persephone (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989); and Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 185–187. 45. Jewett, “A White Heron,” in Fetterley and Pryse, American Women Regionalists, 199, 201, 201, 202. 46. Ibid., 201. 47. Ibid., 205. 48. Ibid., 205. 49. Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (New York: Dover, 1994). 50. EDBS, “A Study for a Heroine,” Independent (5 May 1885), 24, 27, 27. 51. Ibid., 28. On liberal Protestantism, see Richard Wightman Fox, “The Culture of Liberal Protestant Progressivism, 1875–1925," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (Winter 1993), 639–660. 52. EDBS, “A Day in an Old Country House,” The Independent 46 (16 August 1894), 1045–1046. 53. EDBS, “A Day in an Old Country House,” 1046. 54. EDBS, “A Day in Old Country House,” 1046. 55. EDBS, “A Day in Old Country House,” 1046. 56. EDBS, “A Day in Old Country House,” 1046. 57. See, for example, “The Threads Leading to Thanksgiving,” Independent (28 Nov. 1889), 1592–1595; “Polly Dossett’s Rule,” Harper’s (January 1890), 267–278; “A Wheatfield Idyl,” Harper’s Monthly (Sept. 1891), 571–581. 58. EDBS, “The Threads Leading to Thanksgiving,” 32, 33. 59. EDBS, “The Threads Leading to Thanksgiving,” 32. 60. Ibid., 32, 33. 61. EDBS, “Polly Dossett’s Rule,” 267, 267, 269. 62. Ibid., 278. 63. Jason Auster in Two Men and Ezra Clark in ‘The Chimneys” were prototypes for Stoddard’s vision of this form of masculinity. 64. Stoddard, “Young Martin and Old Martin,” The Aldine (June 1873), 116–117. 65. Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall, rpt., ed. Joyce W.Warren (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986); E.D.E.N.Southworth, The Hidden Hand, rpt., ed. Joanne Dobson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Bayard Taylor, Hannah Thurston (New York: Putnam, 1864). 66. Stoddard, “A Wheatfield Idyl,” Harper’s Monthly (Sept. 1891), 572. 67. Ibid. 68. EDBS, “A Wheatfield Idyl,” 571. 69. Ibid., 578, 576. 70. EDBS, “Mrs. Jed and the Evolution of Our Shanghais, Independent (3 Sept. 1891), 34, 34.

NOTES 171

71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77. 78. 79.

80.

81.

82.

83.

84.

Ibid., 34. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 34, 35, 35. Ibid., 35. James Matlack, Stoddard’s biographer, believes the sum Stoddard made from the second editions of her novels was far greater than one hundred dollars. Based on some figures she jotted on the back of a letter, he speculates she may have made over fifteen hundred dollars. While the exact amount is unknown, she most likely made more from these reprintings than she had from her earlier writings. See James Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 554. EDBS to Stedman, 20 Feb. 1890, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, 21 Aug. 1891, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; EDBS to Stedman, 3 Feb. [1890], Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. On Stoddard and the Dickinson family, see James Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 579. See for example, EDBS, “Niagara Falls,” Independent (3 Oct. 1889), 1268. EDBS, “My June Jaunt,” Independent (21 July 1892), 1008; EDBS, “An Exposition of Ignorance,” Independent (11 July 1895), 922. For more on the reading cultures of the late nineteenth century, see Brodhead, Cultures of Letters. EDBS to Julia Dorr, 9 Aug. [1895], Middlebury Collage, Middlebury, VT; Edmund Stedman, New York Tribune (8 Dec. 1895), 27; New York Times (15 Dec. 1895), 31; Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 1896), 269; The Dial (16 Feb. 1896), 111; EDBS to Stedman, 1 March 1896, Columbia University, New York, NY. For an assessment of Stoddard’s poetry, see Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 557–574. EDBS to Dorr, 29 July [1896], Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; EDBS to Harriet Prescott Spofford, 5 Aug 1897, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. EDBS to Dorr, 8 July 1896, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT; Stedman to J.M. Stoddart, 28 March 1901, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. On Lorry Stoddard’s career, see Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 612–615. EDBS to Whiting, [Nov 1900], Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; EDBS to Whiting, [1901], Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; EDBS to Stedman, 29 Aug. 1901, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. For a full account of Lorry’s death and Elizabeth’s final illness, see Matlack, “The Literary Career,” 617–623. “Death of Mrs. Stoddard,” New York Times (2 August 1902), 9.

NOTES TO THE CONCLUSION 1. Elizabeth Stoddard, “Literary Folk as They Came and Went With Ourselves,” Saturday Evening Post 172 (2 June 1900), 1126–1127; and Elizabeth Stoddard, “Literary Folk as They Came and Went with Ourselves,” Saturday Evening Post 172 (30 June 1900), 1222–1223. Quote from Stoddard, “Literary Folk,” Saturday Evening Post 172 (30 June l900), 1223.

172

2. 3. 4. 5.

NOTES

Stoddard, “Literary Folk,” Saturday Evening Post 172 (June 1900), 1223. Stoddard, “Literary Folk,” Saturday Evening Post 172 (June 1900), 1222. Stoddard, “Literary Folk,” Saturday Evening Post 172 (30 June 1900), 1223. Life and Letters of Edmund Stedman, eds. Laura Stedman and George M. Gould, M.D. (New York: Moffat, Yard, and Co., 1910), 207. 6. For more on the breadth of literary opportunities in the mid-nineteenth-century, see Richard Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in NineteenthCentury America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 7. Emma Carleton to Mrs. Fred Gutthold, Allison-Shelley Collection, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; “Biographical and Critical Introduction,” in Lawrence Buell and Sandra Zagarell, eds., The Morgesons and Other Writings, Published and Unpublished by Elizabeth Stoddard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), xi.

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Index

Aldine, The, 36, 117, 167 Aldrich, Lillian Woodman, x Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, xi, 23, 87 Allen, Elizabeth Akers, 49, 124 Appleton's Journal, xvi, 117 Atlantic, The, xvi, 23–24, 25, 87, 143, 148

Chopin, Kate, 130 Church, William, 146 "Collected by a Valetudinarian," 84–85 Conrad, Susan Phinney, xiv Cooke, Rose Terry, 130, 131, 135 Cotkin, George, 129 Country of the Pointed Firs, The (Jewett) 122, 131 Critic, The, 126–127, 128 Curtis, George W., xi

Barker-Benfield, G. J., 52 Barstow, Betsey Drew (mother), 2, 3 Barstow, Jane (sister), 2, 3 Barstow, Wilson (father), 2 Barstow, Wilson (brother), 7–8 22 Baym, Nina, 25 Beecher, Catharine, 123 Beecher, Henry Ward, 5, 49–50, 129 "The Birth-Mark"(Hawthorne), 51, 81–82 Boker, George Henry, xi, xii, 6, 14, 23, 24, 46, 70, 83–84, 145 Book-Mail, 127 Booth, Edwin, 5 Boston Evening Traveler, 126 Bourgeois culture, xiv, 147–148 Bowen, John Eliot, 47–48 Bradley, Mary, 127 Broadhead, Richard, 142 Bronte, Charlotte, 17, 18 Browne, Junius, 120 Bryant, William Cullen, 5 Bushnell, Horace, xiv

Daily Alta California, 1, 12–13, 50, 142 Dall, Caroline, xiv, 85–86, 116, 147 "Day in an Old Country House, A," 121, 133-135 Dial, The, 143 Dickinson, Charles, 142 Dickinson, Emily, 85 Dorr, Julia, 123. 123, 128, 143 Douglas, Ann, xiii, 52 Ellet, Elizabeth, 18–19 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, xiv, 5 Epoch, The, 127 "Eros and Anteros," 63–68, 70 "Exposition of Ignorance, An," 142–143 Fern, Fanny, xiv, 50–51, 53, 54–57, 63, 138 Fields, Annie, 143 "First Impressions of Literary New York" (Howells), 122 Freeman, Mary Wilkins, 121, 130–131, 132, 135 Fuller, Margaret, xii, xiv–xiv, 51

Carleton, Emma, 148 Cary, Alice, 130 Century, The, 25 Cheseboro, Caroline, 19 "The Chimneys," 100–103 185

186 INDEX

Genteel tradition, xi, 24–25 Gilder, Richard Watson, xi, 25 Gill, William F., 118 Greeley, Horace, 5 Hamilton, Gail, 118 Hannah Thurston (Taylor), xii–xiii, 51, 72–84, 86 Harper's, 68, 84, 100, 117, 122, 123, 137, 148 Hawthorne, Julian, 125–126, 127 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 51, 81, 82, 84, 144 Hearth and Home, 117 Hidden Hand, The (Southworth) 50, 53, 54, 57–63, 122, 138 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 85 Hooker, Katherine, 144 Howe, Daniel Walker, xiv Howells, William Dean, x, 121, 122 "In the Garden," 36 Independent, The, 47, 49, 132, 136, 142, 143 James, Henry, 121 James, William, 129 Jewett, Sarah Orne, 121, 122, 130, 131, 135 Kerber, Linda, xiii, xiv Knickerbocker, The, 6 Lathrop, George, 127 Lerner, Gerda, xiv Lincoln, Abraham, xiv Lippincott's Magazine, 128 Lolly Dink's Doings, Dinks' Doings, 118– 119, 125 Lowell, James Russell, xvi, 23–24, 31–32, 48, 143, 144, 148 Lynch, Ann, 5–6 Marble, Manton, 46, 47 Matlack, James, 123, 148 Modernism, 129

The Morgesons, xii–xiii, 1, 2, 20, 22, 22, 32–48, 50, 82–83, 84, xvii, 98, 100, 103, 120, 128, 142, 144, 148 "Mrs. Jed and the Evolution of Our Shanghais" (1891), 139–141 Moulton, Louise Chandler, 103 "My June Jaunt," 142 "My Own Story," 25–32 Nation, The, 115 National Woman's Party, 129 New York Leader, 63 New York Ledger, 53 New York Times, 143 New York Tribune, 116, 143 New York World, 46 North American Review, 24 O'Brien, Fitz-James, 146 Poems(1895), 143 "Polly Dossett's Rule," 137 Portland Transcript, 47 Prescott, Harriet, 45 "The Prescription," 68–69 Public Spirit, 117 Putnam's, 117 Ripley, George, 46–47, 98–99, 100, 116 Rise of Silas Lapham, The (Howells), 122 Robbins, Thomas, 3 Rotundo, Anthony, 52 Round Table, 98, 115, 116 Ruth HalI (Fern), 50, 53, 54–57 San Francisco Chronicle, 120 Sand, George, 17, 18 Saturday Evening Post, 145 Saturday Press, 148 Scribner's, 123 Sedley, Henry, 115, 116 Selfhood, bourgeois, xiv–xiv, 129 Singal, Daniel, xvi Southern Literary Messenger, 10 Southworth, E. D. E. N., xiv, 50–51, 53, 57–63, 122, 138 Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 143

INDEX 187

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, xi, xii, 23, 24, 32–33, 47, 80, 82–84, 84, 97, 99–100, 103, 120–121, 124, 125, 127, 141–142, 143, 145, 145–147, 148 Stedman, Ellen Douglas, 125 Stedman, Laura, 125, 126, 144 Stephens, Ann, 18–19 Stoddard, Elizabeth: emergence as author and intellectual, x–xvi; background and childhood, 1–5; courtship and marriage to Richard Henry Stoddard, 6–7; early married life, 8–10; takes up writing, 9–11; assumes position as "Lady Correspondent" for San Francisco newspaper, 12–22; birth of son Wilson, 14; second pregnancy and death of newborn, 21; early literary career, 22–48; treatment of femininity and female self-development in The Morgesons, 51, 63–72; conflict with Bayard Taylor over Hannah Thurston, 80–84; treatment of male self-development in Two Men, 85, 87–100; death of son Wilson, 87; birth of son Lorimer, 87; exploration of individualism in Temple House, 103–115; turn to writing of short stories, 117; and "Lolly Dinks's Doings", 117–119; enjoys a measure of critical and commercial success as a regionalist, 121–123, 128, 132–141; travel writing, 142–143; family problems later in life, 123–126; final years, 141–144; reminiscences, 145–147; death 144–145 Stoddard, Lorimer Edwin (son), 87, 123, 124, 144 Stoddard, Richard Henry (husband), x, 3, 5, 6–7, 9, 11, 21, 24, 46, 80, 82, 97–98,

117, 123, 124, 126, 128, 144, 145, 145– 146 Stoddard, Wilson (son), 14 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 130 "Study for a Heroine, A," 121, 132–133 Sweat, Margaret, 3–5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Sweetser, Charles, 98, 100 Taylor, Bayard, xi, xii–xiv, 6, 15, 22–23, 24, 33, 51, 71–84, 118–119, 123, 129, 138, 142, 145–146, 147 Temple House, xiii, 84, 85, 86, 103–116, 120, 125–126 Terry, Rose, 45 Thacher, Isiah, 3 "Threads Leading to Thanksgiving, The," 136–137 Tilton, Elizabeth, 49–50 Tilton, Theodore, 49–50 Tomsich, John, xi Tompkins, Jane, xiii Two Men, xiii, 85, 86, 87–100, 103, 120, 126, 127 Union Magazine, 6 Views A-foot (Taylor), xi Walsh, William, 128 Washburne, Charles, 12 Weir, Sybil, 33 Welter, Barbara, xiii "Wheat-Field Idyll, A," 138–139 Whiting, Lillian, 126, 144 Willis, N. P., 53, 54 Winter, William, 147, 148 Womanhood, ideals of, xiii–xiv, 129–130 Women's fiction, 25, 50, 130 Woodhull, Victoria, 49 "Young Martin and Old Martin," 138 Zagarell, Sandra, 33

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Elizabeth Stoddard & the Boundaries of Bourgeois Culture (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

Reading and Mapping Hardy's Roads (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

William Dean Howells and the Ends of Realism (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

The Historical Imagination of G.K. Chesterton: Locality, Patriotism, and Nationalism (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

The Artistry and Tradition of Tennyson's Battle Poetry (Studies in Major Literary Authors, 28)

Frederick Douglass's Curious Audiences: Ethos in the Age of the Consumable Subject (Studies in Major Literary Authors, 35)

Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America

This Composite Voice: The Role of W.B. Yeats in James Merrill's Poetry (Studies in Major Literary Authors, Vol., 24)

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Sartre: The Necessity of Freedom (Major European Authors Series)

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Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy: The Piedmontese Nobility, 1861-1930 (Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture)

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Culture Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies

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