Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics

319 Pages·2008·0.96 MB·English

by  Renee Bergland

ma r i a m i t c h e l l a n d
t h e s e x i n g o f s c i e n c e

Maria Mitchell
and the
Sexing of Science
An Astronomer among the
American Romantics
re née be rgland
Beacon Press
boston
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108–2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2008 by Renée Bergland
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
11 10 09 08 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper
ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bergland, Renée L.
Maria Mitchell and the sexing of science : an astronomer among the
American romantics / Renée Bergland.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8070-2142-2 (acid-free paper)
1. Mitchell, Maria, 1818–1889. 2. Women astronomers—United States—
Biography. 3. Astronomers—United States—Biography. I. Title.
QB36.M7B47 2008
520.92—dc22
[B] 2007035133
Frontispiece of Maria Mitchell from a photo by William Summerhayes,
circa 1855. Courtesy of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association.
de dicate d to anne l ise

c o n t e n t s
introduction: Venus in the Sunshine ix
chapter 1 Urania’s Island 1
chapter 2 Nantucket Athena 21
chapter 3 The Sexes of Science 42
chapter 4 Miss Mitchell’s Comet 53
chapter 5 “A Center of Rude Eyes and Tongues” 72
chapter 6 The Shoulders of Giants 91
chapter 7 The Yankee Corinnes 115
chapter 8 A Mentor in Florence 137
chapter 9 The War Years 153
chapter 10 Vassar Female College 166
chapter 11 No Miserable Bluestocking 177
chapter 12 “Good Woman That She Is” 192
chapter 13 The Undevout Astronomer 211
chapter 14 Retrograde Motion 224
chapter 15 Urania’s Inversion 239
epilogue 250
acknowledgments 260
notes 265
index 284
i n t r o duc t i o n : v e n u s i n t h e su n s h i n e
By 1879, Maria Mitchell was such a celebrity that people who sat
next to her at a meal or glimpsed her across a train platform often
wrote to their hometown newspapers to report the sightings. That
year, Lilla Barnard saw the famous astronomer at a large public din-
ner in New York City. Barnard was from Mitchell’s home, the island
of Nantucket, and she remembered that Mitchell had been very kind
to her when she was a girl. She presented the sixty-year-old with a
rose and then hurried home to write an article for The Woman’s Jour-
nal about her brush with the national heroine. In the article, Lilla
Barnard remembered that back in 1861, “our astronomer, even then
known to the whole world,” had welcomed her into her private ob-
servatory with a flashing smile.
In the summer of 1861, Nantucket was empty. A few disused
whaling ships clanked against the piers in the harbor, but no sailors
roamed the streets, and many of the houses and shops were shuttered.
Lilla Barnard trudged up Nantucket’s sandy Main Street, looked
restlessly into shop windows, and listened to the gulls shrieking and
the flags flapping in the endless breeze; the hours after the library
closed felt infinitely long. Lilla spent mornings at the Nantucket
Atheneum, a grand and welcoming Parthenon of a place with heavy,
creaking wooden doors between its soaring white wooden columns.
When Lilla was learning to read, the Nantucket Atheneum had
seemed like a temple, and the librarian at that time, Miss Mitchell,
had seemed almost like a goddess. As a very young girl, Barnard
ix