Week Six: True Women's Narratives- Jacobs, Wilson, and Keckley
Perhaps the greatest delusion of the Cult of True Womanhood was the misconceived notion that a woman’s status was dependent on her actions. In fact, since the founding of our country, the fate of women had been dependent on men. From the early Puritan men who espoused submission as a means of developing virtue, to the slave owners who raped their slaves without consideration, through the businessmen of the industrial revolution who provided the financial means for middle class women to stay home, men controlled the fate and status of women until long after women’s suffrage. Naturally, women sought the means to become the masters of their own destiny, and the popular slave narratives and the domestic novels became first steps to this end. While similar in some aspects, the difference between the slave narrative and domestic novel involved the chastity of women, a component over which slave women had no control. While the revelations of rape or immorality tainted the womanhood of African-American narrative writers, they in fact aided the early women’s rights movement and changed our world. Real women writing about real life led the way to female emancipation.
As soon as the first settlers in Jamestown realized they had made a mistake not bringing women with them, the role of women in America became a debated issue. The thoughts and hopes of the first women settlers were largely unrecorded until English born Puritan Anne Bradstreet published her works. Naturally, she also became the first female American author criticized for her work The Tenth Muse (Schweitzer 3). She refuted the leadership of her town who felt that she was spending too much time writing and neglecting her family in the “Quarternios” prologue by angrily acknowledging the male opinion “the needle better fits” her hand for work than a pen (Schweitzer 5). Undeterred, Bradstreet continued to write for the rest of her life. Later Mary Rowlandson provided her “The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”. A “thoroughly indoctrinated Puritan woman married to a minister”, Mary Rowlandson provided through her narrative the pious, pure, submissive, domestic model of American womanhood, which became the foundation for the Cult of True Womanhood (Davis 51). Puritan virtues of piety, purity, submission and domesticity were important then, and continued to be the standard for American woman into the 20th century. In the first decade of our nation, America experienced both political and economic revolutions that triggered two more major events in American history: the Civil War and emancipation of the slaves. Although all these events had significant effects on the lives of American men, women still struggled with their role in this land.
Sentimental Womanhood or the Cult of True Womanhood extolled the virtuous biblical female idealized by the Puritans that resurfaced as a byproduct of the Second Great Awakening (Bunkle 14). The piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity championed by Bradstreet and Rowlandson, became the foundation of the new female ideal that was a “direct outcome of the effects of industrialization on the family structure and sex roles” as middle class women were no longer required to work to meet the needs of the family (Lavender, Bunkle 13). While the ideal “provided women with supreme domestic powers through religious influence and education of their children” focusing of piety and domesticity, it also became an obstacle to the development of women, particularly African American women (Bunkle 13). Submissiveness prevented women from standing against societal wrongs, and purity became an unreachable standard for slave women. In the end, the new domesticated role of women during the Industrial Revolution created in women a thirst for control in their own lives.
While the Cult of True Womanhood sought to extol the Puritan-like religious ideal in the industrial world, the domestic novel became an outlet for real women with real struggles vicariously to experience the victory of a fictional woman like herself. While the Hawthorne may not have cared for the work of the “scribbling women”, these women writers performed a vital role encouraging women that did not have an ideal life of the possibility of a “happily ever after” (Wallace 201). Much like today’s romance novels, domestic novels were similar in that the main character was usually an angelic, religious, practical woman who by gaining self-mastery and education, overcame obstacles (Micheletti). She confronted and reformed a non-angelic man, which demonstrated the still subservient life of the women (Micheletti). While the novels usually ended with marriage, the result was the same. Through tears and struggles, the heroine took some degree of control of her life. In this control, our heroine provides an alternative to the “cult” ideal and “spoke to the women of that time period and their yearnings to define themselves” realizing the possibility of something more in life (Micheletti).This fictional example provided an encouragement to many real women.
The slave narratives by contrast provided real examples of real woman that overcame real struggles. This is perhaps the greatest difference; reality is not as clean and clear-cut as fiction. The female main characters of the slave narratives were doctrinally as pious as the best Puritan. They desired to please God and live according to His standards. Whether a Douglass recalling how his mother walked through the night to see him, or a Jacobs straining to see her children through a hole in the attic roof, these were women who loved their children as much as the best “cult” member (Douglass 396, Jacobs 298). Like the women in domestic fiction, they sought education and self-control as a means of improving themselves. Additionally, the slave of the narratives demonstrated resilience in the face of oppression replacing submission with self-determination when necessary. Unfortunately, the best know narratives, Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Keckley’s Behind the Scenes, also provide real examples of real crimes against humanity slave women faced.
Harriet Jacobs, a black woman living in a white controlled world, had numerous disadvantages against her when we she wrote her autobiography. At the time, neither blacks nor women had many rights. She then dared to tell her story in detail. Published at the beginning of the Civil War, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first female written slave narrative. Male slave narratives had contained accounts of rape and injustice committed against female slaves, but it was different reading the dreadfulness described by a woman. Jacob’s detailed how she had hoped to remain true to the pious “pure principles” of her grandmother while subjected to her master’s vulgarity (Jacobs 287, 288). In an attempt to escape this horror, she finally enters a relationship and becomes pregnant by a white gentleman. She tells the reader it “is less degrading to give one’s self” and pleads the reader’s pity (Jacobs 291). While stating a “slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standards as others” the reality was that her narrative crossed a social line (Jacobs 291). No matter how much she may have desired to live up to the standards of The Cult of Womanhood, slavery made this impossible. Similar to the domestic novels in many ways, Jacob’s chooses to highlight the difference at the end of her narrative penning “my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage” (Jacobs 315). For a slave woman, freedom was the “happily ever after”. While it was not easy for Jacobs to write and to publish her novel, it was an important achievement.
Elizabeth Keckley had the benefit of Jacob’s example when she wrote her autobiography and a different motive. Unlike Jacob’s, Keckley refrained from telling all that she was forced to endure as a “persecuted” slave woman, and she simply acknowledges that she “became a mother” allowing the reader to fill in the blanks (Keckley 374). At the beginning of Keckley’s work, she attempts to draw a parallel between her work and domestic fiction depicting her life as “so full of romance”, but then she quickly departs discussing “solemn truth” and “moral laws” that would necessitate the end of slavery more like the male writers (Keckley 366). She vacillates between submission and self-determination as she details standing up to her master and refusing to “take down her dress” which caused him to back down (Keckley 373). Reminiscent of Douglass’s subduing Mr. Covey, Keckley demonstrates a woman’s power to stand against oppression (Douglass 427). Like a true domestic novel heroine, Keckley “subdued his hard heart” and he became a changed man (Keckley 374). Like Jacobs, Keckley is pious and domestic, and she appears purer by refusing to detail her abuse. However, as an independent woman purchasing her freedom, Keckley achieves her goal and exemplifies the identity of a free independent black womanhood.
By writing their narratives, these two women challenged the very core values of the cult of True Womanhood and helped define the role of women in America. Perhaps because they had already lost so much, it was easier for them to challenge the female ideal. Lawson claims that by revealing her story Jacobs proposes a new feminine “cult of True Sisterhood, which asks women to take into account each of the reversals that she offers in her subversion of the cult of True Womanhood” (755). A unified sisterhood would then be able to challenge the male powers (Lawson 755). Indeed, after emancipation, African American women led women in emancipation from the cult of True Womanhood because “the black community did not regard intelligence and femininity as conflicting values” (Carlson 69). Ahead of their time, Jacobs and Keckley redefined real women in the image of a liberated domestic novel heroine. This new, real female woman, through education and with self-determination, began to write her own history and changed our world.
Works Cited
Bunkle, Phillida.“Sentimental Womanhood and Domestic Education, 1830-1870.” History of Education Quarterly. 14.1 (1974). 13-30. Print.
Carlson, Shirley. “Black Ideals of Womanhood.” Journal of Negro History. 77. 2 (1992). 61-74 Print.
Davis, Margaret. “Mary White Rowlandson’s Self-Fashioning as Puritan Goodwife. “Early American Literature. 27.1 (1992). 49-61. Print.
Douglass, Frederick. “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed.Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay. 2nd ed.New York:W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004. 385-450. Print.
Jacobs, Harriett. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed.Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay. 2nd ed.New York:W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004. 279-315. Print.
Keckley, Elizabeth. “Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.” 1868. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. 365- 84. Print.
Lavender, Catherine. "The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood." College of Staten Island- CUNY. Web. 09 Feb. 2012.
Lawson, Jennifer. “Converting Passive Womanhood to Active Sisterhood: Agency, Power, and Subversion in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Women’s Studies. 35.8 (2006) 739-56. Print.
Micheletti, Ellen.“Popular Fiction in the 19th Century” All About Romance. n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2012.
Schweitzer, Ivy. “Anne Bradstreet Wrestles with the Renaissance.”Early American Literature. 23.3 (1988) 291-312. Print.
Wallace, James. “Hawthorne and the Scribbling Women Reconsidered.” American Literature. 62.2. (1990) 201-22. Print.
As soon as the first settlers in Jamestown realized they had made a mistake not bringing women with them, the role of women in America became a debated issue. The thoughts and hopes of the first women settlers were largely unrecorded until English born Puritan Anne Bradstreet published her works. Naturally, she also became the first female American author criticized for her work The Tenth Muse (Schweitzer 3). She refuted the leadership of her town who felt that she was spending too much time writing and neglecting her family in the “Quarternios” prologue by angrily acknowledging the male opinion “the needle better fits” her hand for work than a pen (Schweitzer 5). Undeterred, Bradstreet continued to write for the rest of her life. Later Mary Rowlandson provided her “The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”. A “thoroughly indoctrinated Puritan woman married to a minister”, Mary Rowlandson provided through her narrative the pious, pure, submissive, domestic model of American womanhood, which became the foundation for the Cult of True Womanhood (Davis 51). Puritan virtues of piety, purity, submission and domesticity were important then, and continued to be the standard for American woman into the 20th century. In the first decade of our nation, America experienced both political and economic revolutions that triggered two more major events in American history: the Civil War and emancipation of the slaves. Although all these events had significant effects on the lives of American men, women still struggled with their role in this land.
Sentimental Womanhood or the Cult of True Womanhood extolled the virtuous biblical female idealized by the Puritans that resurfaced as a byproduct of the Second Great Awakening (Bunkle 14). The piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity championed by Bradstreet and Rowlandson, became the foundation of the new female ideal that was a “direct outcome of the effects of industrialization on the family structure and sex roles” as middle class women were no longer required to work to meet the needs of the family (Lavender, Bunkle 13). While the ideal “provided women with supreme domestic powers through religious influence and education of their children” focusing of piety and domesticity, it also became an obstacle to the development of women, particularly African American women (Bunkle 13). Submissiveness prevented women from standing against societal wrongs, and purity became an unreachable standard for slave women. In the end, the new domesticated role of women during the Industrial Revolution created in women a thirst for control in their own lives.
While the Cult of True Womanhood sought to extol the Puritan-like religious ideal in the industrial world, the domestic novel became an outlet for real women with real struggles vicariously to experience the victory of a fictional woman like herself. While the Hawthorne may not have cared for the work of the “scribbling women”, these women writers performed a vital role encouraging women that did not have an ideal life of the possibility of a “happily ever after” (Wallace 201). Much like today’s romance novels, domestic novels were similar in that the main character was usually an angelic, religious, practical woman who by gaining self-mastery and education, overcame obstacles (Micheletti). She confronted and reformed a non-angelic man, which demonstrated the still subservient life of the women (Micheletti). While the novels usually ended with marriage, the result was the same. Through tears and struggles, the heroine took some degree of control of her life. In this control, our heroine provides an alternative to the “cult” ideal and “spoke to the women of that time period and their yearnings to define themselves” realizing the possibility of something more in life (Micheletti).This fictional example provided an encouragement to many real women.
The slave narratives by contrast provided real examples of real woman that overcame real struggles. This is perhaps the greatest difference; reality is not as clean and clear-cut as fiction. The female main characters of the slave narratives were doctrinally as pious as the best Puritan. They desired to please God and live according to His standards. Whether a Douglass recalling how his mother walked through the night to see him, or a Jacobs straining to see her children through a hole in the attic roof, these were women who loved their children as much as the best “cult” member (Douglass 396, Jacobs 298). Like the women in domestic fiction, they sought education and self-control as a means of improving themselves. Additionally, the slave of the narratives demonstrated resilience in the face of oppression replacing submission with self-determination when necessary. Unfortunately, the best know narratives, Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Keckley’s Behind the Scenes, also provide real examples of real crimes against humanity slave women faced.
Harriet Jacobs, a black woman living in a white controlled world, had numerous disadvantages against her when we she wrote her autobiography. At the time, neither blacks nor women had many rights. She then dared to tell her story in detail. Published at the beginning of the Civil War, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first female written slave narrative. Male slave narratives had contained accounts of rape and injustice committed against female slaves, but it was different reading the dreadfulness described by a woman. Jacob’s detailed how she had hoped to remain true to the pious “pure principles” of her grandmother while subjected to her master’s vulgarity (Jacobs 287, 288). In an attempt to escape this horror, she finally enters a relationship and becomes pregnant by a white gentleman. She tells the reader it “is less degrading to give one’s self” and pleads the reader’s pity (Jacobs 291). While stating a “slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standards as others” the reality was that her narrative crossed a social line (Jacobs 291). No matter how much she may have desired to live up to the standards of The Cult of Womanhood, slavery made this impossible. Similar to the domestic novels in many ways, Jacob’s chooses to highlight the difference at the end of her narrative penning “my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage” (Jacobs 315). For a slave woman, freedom was the “happily ever after”. While it was not easy for Jacobs to write and to publish her novel, it was an important achievement.
Elizabeth Keckley had the benefit of Jacob’s example when she wrote her autobiography and a different motive. Unlike Jacob’s, Keckley refrained from telling all that she was forced to endure as a “persecuted” slave woman, and she simply acknowledges that she “became a mother” allowing the reader to fill in the blanks (Keckley 374). At the beginning of Keckley’s work, she attempts to draw a parallel between her work and domestic fiction depicting her life as “so full of romance”, but then she quickly departs discussing “solemn truth” and “moral laws” that would necessitate the end of slavery more like the male writers (Keckley 366). She vacillates between submission and self-determination as she details standing up to her master and refusing to “take down her dress” which caused him to back down (Keckley 373). Reminiscent of Douglass’s subduing Mr. Covey, Keckley demonstrates a woman’s power to stand against oppression (Douglass 427). Like a true domestic novel heroine, Keckley “subdued his hard heart” and he became a changed man (Keckley 374). Like Jacobs, Keckley is pious and domestic, and she appears purer by refusing to detail her abuse. However, as an independent woman purchasing her freedom, Keckley achieves her goal and exemplifies the identity of a free independent black womanhood.
By writing their narratives, these two women challenged the very core values of the cult of True Womanhood and helped define the role of women in America. Perhaps because they had already lost so much, it was easier for them to challenge the female ideal. Lawson claims that by revealing her story Jacobs proposes a new feminine “cult of True Sisterhood, which asks women to take into account each of the reversals that she offers in her subversion of the cult of True Womanhood” (755). A unified sisterhood would then be able to challenge the male powers (Lawson 755). Indeed, after emancipation, African American women led women in emancipation from the cult of True Womanhood because “the black community did not regard intelligence and femininity as conflicting values” (Carlson 69). Ahead of their time, Jacobs and Keckley redefined real women in the image of a liberated domestic novel heroine. This new, real female woman, through education and with self-determination, began to write her own history and changed our world.
Works Cited
Bunkle, Phillida.“Sentimental Womanhood and Domestic Education, 1830-1870.” History of Education Quarterly. 14.1 (1974). 13-30. Print.
Carlson, Shirley. “Black Ideals of Womanhood.” Journal of Negro History. 77. 2 (1992). 61-74 Print.
Davis, Margaret. “Mary White Rowlandson’s Self-Fashioning as Puritan Goodwife. “Early American Literature. 27.1 (1992). 49-61. Print.
Douglass, Frederick. “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed.Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay. 2nd ed.New York:W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004. 385-450. Print.
Jacobs, Harriett. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed.Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay. 2nd ed.New York:W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004. 279-315. Print.
Keckley, Elizabeth. “Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.” 1868. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. 365- 84. Print.
Lavender, Catherine. "The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood." College of Staten Island- CUNY. Web. 09 Feb. 2012.
Lawson, Jennifer. “Converting Passive Womanhood to Active Sisterhood: Agency, Power, and Subversion in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Women’s Studies. 35.8 (2006) 739-56. Print.
Micheletti, Ellen.“Popular Fiction in the 19th Century” All About Romance. n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2012.
Schweitzer, Ivy. “Anne Bradstreet Wrestles with the Renaissance.”Early American Literature. 23.3 (1988) 291-312. Print.
Wallace, James. “Hawthorne and the Scribbling Women Reconsidered.” American Literature. 62.2. (1990) 201-22. Print.