The image on the left is a daguerreotype of a
Gertrude Hubbard and her daughter from
1858
The image on the left is a daguerreotype of a
Gertrude Hubbard and her daughter from
1858
The mother writes the character of the future man; the sister bends
the fibres that hereafter are the forest tree; the wife sways the heart,
whose energies may turn for good or for evil the destinies of the nation.
Let the women of a country be made virtuous and intelligent, and the men
will certainly be the same. The proper education of a man decides the welfare
of an individual; but educate a woman, and the interests of a whole family
are secured.
-Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841)
Women's roles in early 19th-century America, Catharine Beecher and others
argued, were limited to what they could do within the home. Although
Beecher pleaded that women "be made virtuous and intelligent," she affirmed
that their main responsibility was as a moral force behind children and men,
preparing them for a world in which she herself would not be an active
participant. Within their role as "moral mothers," furthermore,
women were expected to maintain the attributes of True Womanhood--piety,
purity, and submissiveness. If they failed to live up to these ideals,
they were considered deviant or, at worst, "fallen" women, and they were
ostracized from mainstream society.
Whitman was certainly aware of the ideology that confined
women into such a restricted role and punished them for any desire for
independence, and at first glance, he seems to be resisting that ideology.
He claims at various times in his poetry that "it is as great to be woman
as to be man" and that women "are not one jot less than I am." In
his own life, he befriended Abby Price, a women's rights advocate, who was
publically challenging the restricted role for women in speeches at the first
three women's rights conventions (1850-1852) and in a series of newspaper
articles.
As we read his poetry closely, however, his claims for
"equality" for women appear more ambiguous. By reading Whitman's poetry
in relation to a variety of texts both for and against women assuming a more
active role in society, we can begin the process of interpreting his
representations of women.
A good place to start is to read Whitman's "Unfolded Out of the Folds", a poem he previously entitled "Poem of Women." How is Whitman defining the role of women in the poem? What is their relationship to the role of men? You might compare Whitman's "Poem of Women" to his poems of men in the his "Calamus" cluster, which are discussed in Representations of Men section.
Some of biggest promoters
of the domestic role of women during this period were the many extremely
popular women's magazines--such as The Ladies' Wreath, The Ladies'
Companion, The Ladies' Repository, and Godey's
Lady's Book.
These texts glorified domesticity with flattering illustrations of women
in the home, with countless pages of instruction on how to be a proper mother
and housewife, and with fictional stories of women's contentment in
their subordinate position. Click on the image
(on the right) of Godey's Lady's Book to see
the variety of ways they helped to construct the domestic role of
women.
Next to these popular magazines in many homes was Coventry
Patmore's Angel in the House, one of the most popular "tea-table"
books of his time. Published in 1854 (one year before Whitman
published
his first edition of Leaves of Grass), Angel in the House
portrays--in epic verse--an idealized wife and mother.
Click on the title page of the book (on the left)
to find more about Patmore and his writings.
In addition to the the
magazines and popular "tea-table" books, other texts that were even
more explicitly instructing young women in proper conduct were proliferating
at this time. Catharine Beecher's A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the
Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School was probably the most influential,
going through fifteen editions after it was first published in 1841.
It was one of the first works to deal with all facets of domestic life,
and it helped standardize domestic practices
and reinforce domestic values. Click on the
1853 daguerreotype of a woman sewing (on the right) to read more from Stowe's
book and from another popular conduct book, Lydia Sigourney's Letter to
Young Ladies.
Along with these conduct books for young women, books
from physicians instructing mothers how to feed and care for their young
children were appearing for the first time in the early 19th century. According
to historian Ruth Bloch, these books, with titles such as The Maternal
Physician, "urged mothers to tend closely to their small children--not
just to nurse them competently when sick, but to clothe them loosely rather
than swaddle them, to keep them meticulously clean, to exercise them regularly
outdoors, to keep them on a special diet for years, and (some texts said)
to feed them on demand rather than on schedule." William Buchan, author
of the manual Advice to Mothers, wrote:
Everything great or good in future life, must be the effect of early impressions; and by whom are those impressions to be made but by mothers, who are most interested in the consequences? Their instructions and example will have a lasting influence and of course, will go farther to form the morals, than all the eloquence fo the pulpit, the efforts of schoolmasters, or the corrective power of the civil magistrate, who may, indeed, punish crimes, but cannot implant the seeds of virtue.
In light of these views of the role of women at this time, how do we interpret representations of women in Whitman's following poems:
"A Woman Waits for Me"
"I Sing the Body Electric"
Notice especially how Whitman contrasts the body of woman with his own body and the body of other men in these poems. How does his representations of their bodies and desires connect with the roles they might be expected to play in society?
At the same time that women's domestic
role was being defined so forcefully in the variety of texts we have looked
at, anxieties over female sexuality were also emerging. In some sense,
these anxieties were similiar to the anxieties over male
sexuality during the same period. Pamphlets and books warning
against excessive sexual behavior, such as masturbation, attempted to
limit and control women's relationship to their own bodies. These
texts reiterated the benefits of a confined domestic lifestyle, advising
young women to avoid unnecessary outside stimulation such as "stimulating
Food and Drinks" and "Novel Reading."
Click on the title page to Samuel Gregory's
"Facts and Important Information for Young Women on the Subject of Masturbation;
with its Causes, Prevention, and Cure" (on the right) to take a closer look
at one of these texts.
Section 11 of "Song of Myself"
Section 6 of "The Sleepers"
How does the expression of women's desires in these poems support or
contradict the expressions of women's desires not only in Gregory's text
but in all the texts about women we have been discussing?
Although Gregory purported
to "cure" young women who have indulged in excessive sexual behavior, society
at large was not so forgiving. A woman who had sex out of wedlock
or who otherwise lost her "purity" was considered "fallen"; she lost any
respected position she might have maintained within her family and within
her community. The best-selling novels of this time, such as
Susan Warner's The Wide Wide World, expressed an intense anxiety over
the potential of even the most innocent of women to be seduced and become
a "fallen" woman.
In this context, it is worth comparing Whitman's
representations of "fallen" women--prostitutes, in particular--with other
representations of those women during this time period. The
painting on the left, entitled "Found," is by Dante Rossetti, a
pre-Raphaelite artist and poet in England who was acquainted with Whitman.
Dante's brother, William, in fact, published the first British edition
of Leaves of Grass in 1868. The pre-Raphaelites in England
were known for their conservative Victorian sensibilities, and Dante Rossetti's
impression of Whitman's poetry was that is was "crude" and "indecent."
Click on the painting to link to a site that will tell your more about
the painting's composition and history.
In light of the representation of the prostitute in the painting, read the following poems from Whitman's "Autumn Rivulets" cluster, the same cluster in which he would eventually put "Unfolded Out of the Folds," his "Poem of Women" that we looked at earlier:
"The City Dead-House"
"To a Common Prostitute"
Notice, among other things, how Whitman uses the metaphor of the house to
discuss the woman's "ruin" in the "The City Dead-House." How might
the use of the house connect the woman's "fall" to a failure of her domestic
responsibilities?
We would not want
to conclude a discussion of representations of women at this time without
mentioning that this period also saw the emergence of a women's rights movement
that fought against the ideology that restricted women to a domestic role.
For their persevering work, the women of this movement were persecuted
in a way not dissimilar from "fallen" women. In the Ladies'
Companion, Rev. Henry Harrington wrote of women's rights advocates: "They
are semi-women, mental hermaphrodites." Whitman, as was mentioned
above, befriended Abby Price, one of founding members of the women's rights
movement. Click on the photographic portrait
(on the right) of a close friend of Price's and another pioneer of the women's
right's movement, Lucy Stone, to see the full text of Stone's and Price's
speeches at the first women's rights conventions.
Whitman himself wrote a passage on women's rights in his prose work, Democratic Vistas:
Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not of literature and art only--not of men only, but of women. The idea of the women of America, (extricated from this dazed, this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about the word lady,) develop'd, raised to become the robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and political deciders with the men--greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical attribute--but great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent, story life.
As a final exercise, compare this prose passage of Whitman's and the speeches
of Price and Stone to the poetry of Whitman we have read. What
is Whitman's "idea of the women of America"? How does portrayal of
women in this prose passage as "workers" and "political deciders" compare
or contrast with this portrayal of women as mothers, prostitutes, etc, in
his poetry?