Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States PDF
Preview Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States
Imagining Rhetoric Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture David Bartholomae and Jean Ferguson Carr, Editors Imagining Rhetoric Composing Women of the Early United States Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen University of Pittsburgh Press Published by the University ofPittsburgh Press,Pittsburgh,Pa., Copyright © ,University ofPittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica Printed on acid-free paper --- Eldred,Janet Carey. mmImagining rhetoric :composing women ofthe early United States / mJanet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen. mmmp.mcm.— (Pittsburgh series in composition,literacy,and culture) mmIncludes bibliographical references and index. mm---(alk.paper) mm.English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—United States—History. m.English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—Sex differences.m\ m.American prose literature—Women authors—History andcriticism.m m.Women—Education—United States—History—th century.m m.Women teachers—United States.m.Forten,Charlotte L.Journal.m m.Rhetoric—Sex differences.m.Mortensen,Peter,–m.Title.m.Series. m. m'.'–dc Contents Preface vii . Introduction The Tradition of Female Civic Rhetoric . Schooling Fictions . A Commonplace Rhetoric Judith Sargent Murray’s Margaretta Narrative . Sketching Rhetorical Change Mrs. A. J. Graves on Girlhood and Womanhood . The Commonsense Romanticism of Louisa Caroline Tuthill . Independent Studies Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps and the Composition of Democratic Teachers . Conclusion Rhetorical Limits in the Schooling and Teaching Journals of Charlotte Forten : Chronologies : From Hannah Webster Foster’s The Boarding School() : From Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner() : From Louisa Caroline Tuthill’s The Young Lady’s Home() : From Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps’s Lectures to Young Ladies() Notes Bibliography Index v Preface (cid:2) This book grew out ofwork on literacy narrativesand civic rheto- ric that we began together about a decade ago. While doing back- ground reading on Hannah Webster Foster’s Coquette (), we stumbled onto her Boarding School(),which,we were surprised to find, not only scripts literacy narratives, but also lays out a full morning’s lesson on “Writing and Arithmetic”in the course of ad- vancing its story.At about the same time, we read Patricia Bizzell’s provocative article in Rhetoric Reviewurging scholars to look for in- stances of women’s rhetorical theory in places other than the acad- emy.1 Given this start,our project diverges somewhat from recent schol- arship on women’s rhetoric in that it focuses primarily not on oral performance,but on composition pedagogy and practice,and not ex- clusively on theoretical texts and syllabi,but on fiction,practical writ- ing texts,and anthologies for young writers.It is,of course,difficult to untangle women’s writing from women’s public speaking;the two phenomena share some common ground when we think of them in terms of purpose and audience.Categorical distinctions along these lines abounded in the early nineteenth century.Women’s public ad- dress to women’s groups signified something different than women’s public address to mixed-gender or “promiscuous”audiences;scripted and extemporaneous address signified differently,too,as did standing and seated delivery. Likewise, women’s writing out of private need meant something quite apart from writing to reach a mass market, and both motivations were understood to differ from writing with a civic aim. Adding further complication, all of these distinctions played out in both nonfiction treatises and in fiction of varying length.Out of necessity,then,our commentary periodically touches vii viii Preface on the aesthetics and politics oforal presentation,even when the gist ofour argument has to do with written composition. Cathy Davidson’s Revolution and the Wordreadied us to find discussions ofeducation in early national fiction,but we were unprepared to encounter such explicit pedagogical advice—down to the choreography of particular lessons—often offered under the heading of“rhetoric”or “composition”or even “composition and rhetoric”together.Foster’s Boarding School, which Davidson discusses briefly, put us on the trail of additional works in the “novel textbook”genre. Early on, Donald Ringe, longtime member of the University of Kentucky’s English Department, helped point the way. His kindly instruction,along with Nina Baym’s invaluable mapping ofthe nine- teenth-century novel by women2and the Schomburg Library ofNineteenth Century Black Women Writers,edited by Henry Louis Gates,Jr.,enabled us to identify a substantial array oftexts from which we could chose a manage- able number ofexemplars. With exemplars decided, we proceeded by letting the texts themselves suggest theoretical frames for their interpretation.Debates about domestic- ity and “separate spheres”in our primary sources—as well as in twentieth- century scholarship—led us to hypothesize that women must have been in- volved as speakers and writers in discussing pressing issues of the day, which is to say,involved in speaking and writing about the very issues that preoccupied men. Thus, for example, Judith Sargent Murray’s Gleaner () invited us to contemplate what she made of Republican Mother- hood, early national language politics, the rise of female academies, and problems defining copyright and authorship.Donald Fraser’s textbooks for young women and Foster’s Boarding Schooldrew us into scrutiny ofthe de- veloping market for women’s instructional texts, and the place of fiction, including epistolary narrative,in those textbooks.And all ofthese works al- lowed us to glimpse how composition came to be situated in the lives of women in the new nation. After Murray and Foster published their novel texts,thirty years passed before another cluster ofschooling fictions emerged,this time not in the af- terglow ofrevolution but rather in a moment saturated with anxiety about civic rupture.Against the backdrop ofimpending civil war,Louisa Tuthill’s numerous guides,readers,histories,and novels made commonsense philos- Preface ix ophy and Romantic aesthetics salient for us.Almira Phelps’s work took us straight to the question of who should teach and how they should be pre- pared,and to the controversy surrounding home versus public schooling. Finally,Charlotte Forten’s journals,though composed of discourses made popular in nineteenth-century fiction,allowed us to compare the imagined world ofnovels and textbooks with an account oflived experience as a pub- lic school student and teacher.The journals prompted us to consider the in- fluence of neoclassical rhetorical forms on abolitionist speech and writing and to gauge the way that educators (female and male alike) adopted bel- letrism to create space for reading and writing exempt from the worries of abolitionism.Crucially,Forten’s journals remind us that the schooling fic- tion genre was established by white, Protestant, middling-class women, a culturally homogenous group that tried to bracket out the factionalism that so marked U.S.culture at mid-century. We had originally planned to write about another genre emergent later in the nineteenth century: memoirs of early national and antebellum women’s schooling. These texts, such as Catharine Beecher’s Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions () and Julia Ann Tevis’s Sixty Years in a School-room (), are feasts of sweet detail. Moreover, the very fact of their publication indicates that the profound changes in women’s schooling that we take up were ofdeep interest to the women who lived through those changes.But this,as it turns out,is a project for another day. (cid:2) It’s hard to date the origin ofthis project,but it’s easy to recall when its full shape came into view.Working in the old University of Kentucky li- brary nine years ago,we chanced to meet our senior colleague Don Ringe, who asked us what trouble we were making together.We explained as best we could—an article on gender and writing instruction in early America— and Don pointed us to an enormous set ofmicrocards he thought might be useful.Useful? Early American Imprintsin microform has proven an indis- pensable (if eye-straining) resource over the years.More good advice fol- lowed,and all the while Don was kind enough not to wonder aloud how we planned to get anywhere,say anything,without the trove of primary texts he helped us amass.And so first thanks go to Don for his sincere interest and uncommon generosity.
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