READING WOMEN

LITERARY FIGURES AND CULTURAL ICONS (

FROM THE VICTORIAN AGE TO THE PRESENT

Literary and popular culture has often focused its attention on women
readers, particularly since early Victorian times. In Reading Women, an
esteemed group of new and established scholars provides a close study
of the evolution of the woman reader by examining a wide range of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century media, including Antebellum scien-
tific treatises, Victorian paintings, and Oprah Winfrey's televised book
club, as well as the writings of Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
and Zora Neale Hurston.
Attending especially to what, how, and why women read, Reading
Women brings together a rich array of subjects that sheds light on the
defining role the woman reader has played in the formation not only of
literary history, but of British and American culture. The contributors
break new ground by focusing on the impact representations of women
readers have had on understandings of literacy and certain reading
practices, the development of book and print culture, and the categori-
zation of texts into high and low cultural forms.

(Studies in Book and Print Culture)

JANET BADIA is an associate professor in the Department of English at

Marshall University.

JENNIFER PHEGLEY is an associate professor in the Department of English

at the University of Missouri - Kansas City.
This page intentionally left blank
READING WOMEN

Literary Figures and Cultural Icons

from the Victorian Age to the Present

Edited by Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2005
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada

Reprinted in paperback 2006

ISBN 0-8020-8928-3 (cloth)

ISBN 0-8020-9487-2 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Reading women : literary figures and cultural icons
from the Victorian age to the present / edited by Janet Badia
and Jennifer Phegley.
(Studies in book and print culture)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8020-8928-3 (bound). - ISBN 0-8020-9487-2 (pbk.)
I. Women in literature. 2. Reading in literature.
3. Women in art. 4. Reading in art. 5. American fiction -
Women authors - History and criticism. I. Badia, Janet
II. Phegley, Jennifer III. Series
PR830.A79R42 2005 813'.0093522 C2005-900954-3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its pub-

lishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its pub-
lishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Women Readers as Literary Figures and

Cultural Icons 3
J E N N I F E R P H E G L E Y A N D J A N E T BADIA

1 Reading Women/Reading Pictures: Textual and Visual Reading

in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction and Nineteenth-Century Painting 27
ANTONIA LOSANO

2 'Success Is Sympathy': Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 53

ELIZABETH FEKETE TRUBEY

3 Reading Mind, Reading Body: Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah and the
Physiology of Reading 77
SUZANNE M. ASHWORTH

4 'I Should No More Think of Dictating ... What Kinds of Books

She Should Read': Images of Women Readers in Victorian Family
Literary Magazines 105
JENNIFER PHEGLEY

5 The Reading Habit and The Yellow Wallpaper' 129

BARBARA HOCHMAN
vi Contents

6 Social Reading, Social Work, and the Social Function of Literacy in

Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 149
SARAH A. WADSWORTH

7 'A Thought in the Huge Bald Forehead': Depictions of Women in

the British Museum Reading Room, 1857-1929 168
RUTH H O B E R M A N

8 'Luxuriat[ing] in Milton's Syllables': Writer as Reader in Zora Neale

Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 192
TUIRE VALKEAKARI

9 Poor Lutie's Almanac: Reading and Social Critique in Ann Perry's

The Street 215
MICHELE CRESCENZO

10 'One of Those People Like Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath': The

Pathologized Woman Reader in Literary and Popular Culture 236
JANET BADIA

11 The Talking Life' of Books: Women Readers in Oprah's

Book Club 255
MARY R. LAMB

Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 281

KATE FLINT

Contributors 295
Illustrations

Introduction: Women Readers as Literary Figures and Cultural Icons

Fig. 0.1. The Maid with the Golden Hair, Frederick Leigh ton (c. 1895) 8
Fig. 0.2. Elegant Women in a Library, Edouard Gelhay (c. late 1800s) 9
Fig. 0.3. The House Maid, William McGregor Paxton (1910) 23

Reading Women/Reading Pictures: Textual and Visual Reading in

Charlotte Bronte's Fiction and Nineteenth-Century Painting

Fig. 1.1. La Lecture (Reading), Berthe Morisot, 1888 36

Fig. 1.2. 7^he Artist's Studio,]ean-P>2iptiste-C2imilleCorot(c. 1868) 42
Fig. 1.3. Mary Cassat at the Louvre, Edgar Degas, 1885 47

'I Should No More Think of Dictating... What Kinds of Books She Should
Read': Images of Women Readers in Victorian Family Literary Magazines

Fig. 4.1. 'The Blind Scholar and His Daughter,' Cornhill Magazine
(July 1862) 113
Fig. 4.2. 'Cousin Phillis and Her Book,' Cornhill Magazine (December
1863) 116
Fig. 4.3. 'In the Firelight,' Belgravia Magazine (March 1868) 122
Fig. 4.4. 'One Summer Month,' Belgravia Magazine (August 1871) 124

Social Reading, Social Work, and the Social Function of Literacy in

Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers'

Fig. 6.1. A Garland for Girls (Grosset & Dunlap, 1908), title page
vignette 153
viii Illustrations

'A Thought in the Huge Bald Forehead': Depictions of Women in the

British Museum Reading Room, 1857-1929

Fig. 7.1. 'Plan of the New [1857] Reading Room'; reprinted from British
Museum: New Reading Room and Libraries (London, 1857) 173
Fig. 7.2. 'Valuable Collection in the Reading Room, British Museum,' from
Punch (28 March 1885) 176
Fig. 7.3. Illustration by Ernest Goodwin, from an article entitled The
Horrors of London. XI. The British Museum,' Idler (January
1897) 177

'One of Those People Like Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath': The Patholo-
gized Woman Reader in Literary and Popular Culture

Fig. 10.1. Kat Stratford reading Plath's The BellJar, from the film 10 Things
I Hate About You (1999) 237
Acknowledgments

We are indebted to many friends and colleagues who have helped shape
this collection. We would like to thank those who offered encourage-
ment at the project's inception, including the Ohio State University
English Department's First Draft Group, and those who have exchanged
ideas with us at various conferences over the years. We are especially
grateful to our friends who have kindly read and offered insightful feed-
back on portions of the manuscript, including Kim Banks, Kellie Bean,
Beth Dolan, Laurie Ellinghausen, Jane Greer, Daniella Mallinick,
Michael Pritchett, Sherri Smith, George Williams, Lara Vetter, Lachlan
Whalen, and John Young. We also wish to thank Lorna Condit for her
assistance with the proofs and our editor, Jill McConkey, at the Univer-
sity of Toronto Press for her patience, support, and enthusiasm.
We are grateful for the research awards and grants we received from
Marshall University and the College of Arts and Sciences and the
Department of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Both
universities supported us generously by granting the time and funds
that allowed us to complete this project.
Finally, we would like to dedicate this collection to all the reading
women in our lives who continually inspire our admiration for and
interest in this subject.

Ruth Hoberman, '"A Thought in the Huge Bald Forehead": Depictions

of Women in the British Museum Reading Room, 1857-1929,' first
appeared in Feminist Studies 28:3 (Fall 2002), 489-512, and is used by
permission of the publisher, Feminist Studies, Inc. Barbara Hochman,
The Reading Habit and "The Yellow Wallpaper,"' first appeared in
American Literature 74:1, 89-110. Copyright 2002, Duke University Press.
x Acknowledgments

All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher. Jennifer Pheg-

ley, '"I Should No More Think of Dictating ... What Kinds of Books She
Should Read": Images of Women Readers in Victorian Family Literary
Magazines,' first appeared in a different form in Educating the Proper
Woman Reader: Victorian Family Literary Magazines and the Cultural Health
of the Nation. Copyright 2004, Ohio State University Press. Used by per-
mission of the publisher.
READING WOMEN
LITERARY FIGURES AND CULTURAL ICONS
FROM THE VICTORIAN AGE TO THE PRESENT
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction: Women Readers as
Literary Figures and Cultural Icons

JENNIFER PHEGLEY AND JANET BADIA

The images in this magnificent book of postcards capture the tranquil

sanctuary and sublime beauty of women deeply immersed in the pages of a
book. Just as the reading woman submits to her imagination and becomes
absorbed in a story, so does the viewer briefly leave her own life and enter
that of the painting. There lie the boundless horizons of possibility, the
opportunity for enlightenment, and the seductive retreat from the burdens
of everyday life.
- from Pomegranate's The Reading Woman: A Book of Postcards

She is absorbed, content, perhaps quietly thrilled. She may be stealing a

moment from her daily routine to take comfort in a book. Or she could be
searching its pages for a means to transform her life. The reading woman,
as she is elegantly depicted in this calendar's superb paintings, is a beauti-
ful enigma: she is herself an untold tale, a moment in time, set free of its
long, complex story ... Just as the reading woman is lost in a story and
separated from her life's narrative, so can the viewer briefly leave her own
life and enter that of the painting.
- from Pomegranate's The Reading Woman: 2001 Calendar

A painting of a woman reading - completely absorbed in the pages of any-

thing from a loved novel to a fascinating documentary - tells its own story:
the woman is peaceful, contented, or perhaps silently thrilled and awak-
ened by the words on the page. Is she stealing a moment from her daily
routine to indulge in the comfort of a book? Or, is she searching the pages
studiously for answers to private questions? Is reading the vehicle by which
she will change her life? Each of the beautiful paintings included in this
4 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

folio of notecards portrays the reading woman as admirable - perhaps even

enviable in her enjoyment of the printed page.
- from Pomegranate's The Reading Woman: Notecards

If you're what the literary novelty company Bas Blue calls a 'modern
bluestocking,' you may well recognize the text of our epigraphs. You
may even own at least one of the products that make up Pomegranate's
stationary line The Reading Woman, which includes not only the calen-
dar, postcards, and note cards cited above but also a lavishly illustrated
journal. Each of these products reproduces a series of paintings of
women readers, primarily from the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies. Promoted in mail order catalogues like Bas Blue and often sold
alongside other literary products, Pomegranate's line joins a larger
trend within consumer culture to market images of women readers to
educated, professional women. Taking this trend as a starting point, we
open our collection of essays with an examination of Pomegranate's
marketing of these images that emphasizes both the continued popular-
ity of the figure of the woman reader throughout the past two centuries
and the provocative rhetoric that often surrounds her. Our examination
of Pomegranate's marketing of such images indicates that the woman
reader is a multivalent symbol that, on the one hand, reflects nostalgia
for an idealized past of middle-class leisure and clearly defined gender
roles, and on the other hand, serves as an icon of early feminism and
intellectual independence for professional women.
While Pomegranate is not the only recent distributor of images of read-
ing women, we have chosen to focus on their series of products because
we think that they raise many of the same issues about women and read-
ing that preoccupy the contributors to our collection and thus serve as a
fitting introduction to the essays that follow, each of which examines the
visual and textual construction of women readers.1 More specifically, we
hope that our investigation of these products serves as a framework for
thinking about what is perhaps the largest issue raised by the essays in this
collection: why representations of women reading matter. That is, why
are consumers so interested in images of women reading? What is it
about the images that continues to hold our attention and compels
women today, the two of us included, to shell out fifteen dollars for a few
postcards that, because of email, are almost superfluous? More broadly,
what do the images, their messages, and their consumption say about
women readers, their reading practices, and the ways both have been
 Introduction 5

understood and valued culturally over the past two hundred years? How
exactly did the figure of the woman reader become transformed from a
subject represented in art and literature - and very often from the
perspective of the male gaze - to an image venerated by women today?2
Perhaps one cause of this veneration, and thus the desirability and circu-
lation of her image, is the fact of her survival: often the object of society's
and literary culture's fears, she has overcome their efforts at repression
and containment, and importantly, with her book still in hand.
By analysing the appeal of Pomegranate's products, we can begin to
explain how images of women readers function in our own lives. At
the same time, Pomegranate's use of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-
century images allows us to consider how these visual depictions of
women reading may have been received in the past. Paying attention to
both the contemporary and historical contexts for these images, then,
provides us with the opportunity to trace the significance of the woman
reader throughout the past two centuries and enriches our understand-
ing of women readers as both literary figures and cultural icons. While
Pomegranate markets these images today by focusing on their expres-
sion of qualities such as tranquility, retreat, and serenity, the original
audiences for many of these images would likely have viewed them as
somewhat subversive and dangerous. Moreover, when Pomegranate
acknowledges the anxious undertones contained within these images it
does so in order to empower women today, to join them with the sup-
posedly rebellious women readers of the past. For example, in the intro-
duction to The Reading Woman journal, Maxine Rose Schur describes the
nineteenth-century woman reader as 'a new heroine in direct conflict
with traditional conventions' (n.p.). This new heroine, seen as self-
absorbed or overly intellectual, imperiled 'a world whose economy, gov-
ernment and culture were dominated by men.' Thus, this mysterious
woman of the past is packaged as an inspiration to those who would buy
the journal in order to allow their 'hearts to beat not only a little more
quickly but also in rhythm with the hearts of others.'
Despite the competing views of women readers these images may
offer different audiences, we hope to show that there is at least one
important idea that remains constant from one period to the next. That
is that the act of reading for women is often an assertion of individuality,
a separation from societal restrictions and expectations, of to use Janice
Radway's words, a 'declaration of independence' (7). While historiciz-
ing women as literary figures and cultural icons is crucial to understand-
ing the nuances of reading at various times and places, attending to the
6 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

transhistorical links between women's reading and female subjectivity

is also important to understanding how reading can be constructed as
both a potentially rewarding and potentially dangerous act.

As our epigraphs illustrate, Pomegranate's rhetoric targets contempo-

rary women by appealing to their apparently competing personal and
professional responsibilities, and indeed to the sense of inner conflict
that, according to the cultural script, has left today's working women
nostalgic for the apparent leisure of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries so often portrayed in their images. The idea of lost leisure is
most apparent in Pomegranate's use of the phrases 'tranquil sanctuary'
and 'seductive retreat,' which are evoked by what seem to be depictions
of peaceful, content, and enlightened women of the past. In adopting
language that idealizes the past in order to sell its reproduced image,
Pomegranate participates in a commercialized longing for the nine-
teenth century that, as John Kucich and Dianne Sadoff argue, charac-
terizes much of contemporary consumer culture. Kucich and Sadoff
note, for example, that recent home decorating books and magazines
hearken back to the Victorian period by teaching us 'how to load a man-
tel with curios and kitsch, people a wall with sepia-toned family photos,
and choose for the drawing room a patterned wallpaper or chintz' and
thus 'to aestheticize contemporary reality' (xii). Like the kitsch that may
decorate our homes, Pomegranate's pleasing note cards and calendars
aesthetically package not only the nineteenth century but also the act of
leisurely reading. The result of their efforts is the romanticization of the
very idea of the reading woman. The message Pomegranate sends to
women today is that in the midst of the chaos of their working women's
world, they too can become 'deeply immersed' and 'quietly thrilled' by
'the boundless horizons of possibility' that reading offers. Pomegranate
thus packages a kind of intellectual retreat that invites women to dis-
cover themselves through reading as well as to transform their lived
experience into art, or at least into journal entries or old-fashioned
letters written to friends on note cards. In other words, viewing Pome-
granate's images offers today's woman the opportunity to leave her own
hectic life and enter an idealized past of bourgeois leisure defined by its
opportunities for daily reading and - because the products are station-
ary, after all - daily writing.
This possibility of tranquil retreat is perhaps best exemplified in the
image that opens Pomegranate's 2001 calendar and is featured in both
the note cards and the book of postcards, Frederick Leighton's The Maid
 Introduction 7

with the Golden Hair (c. 1895). In this popular Pre-Raphaelite painting
(fig. 0.1), the 'maid' epitomizes the escapism promised by Pomegran-
ate: she is relaxed, seated comfortably in her nightdress, and completely
absorbed in her book within a setting that is decidedly absent of all
markers of everyday life. By featuring the woman against a dark back-
ground while simultaneously bathing her in warm light and golden
tones, the image further heightens the feeling that the woman has a
space of her own she's able to retreat to without interruption. In fact,
many of Pomegranate's images emphasize this kind of aestheticized
tranquility, including Winslow Homer's The New Novel (1877) and Henry
Wilson Watrous's/Msf a Couple of Girls (1915), both included in the series
of note cards. In these paintings the women readers languidly peruse
their books while lying stretched out on a bed of grass or sitting com-
fortably on a chaise lounge covered by sumptuous pillows.
But if Pomegranate's images are any indication, the desire for tran-
quility is not the only thing that motivates the reading woman. Just as
often, it would seem, she is as much in need of a space for intellectual
inquiry and enrichment as she is a space for escape from her daily life, a
possibility suggested in those images from Pomegranate's collection that
feature women reading in libraries, including Sir William Rothenstein's
The Browning Readers (1900) and Edouard Gelhay's Elegant Women in a
Library (c. late 1800s). In the latter (fig. 0.2), two women are clearly
engrossed in scholarly pursuits in what appears to be the family library.
Whereas many of the company's images draw on reading as a simple
pleasure, here the emphasis seems to be on excited intellectual inquiry
and educational advancement, as the studious expression on the
woman's face, the number of books, their size, and their scattered place-
ment across the table together indicate. Still, while the aim of reading
may be different here, the corollary is much the same: elevated and
idealized by the very act of reading and its implication of leisure, the
reading woman is, as Pomegranate puts it, 'admirable - even enviable in
her enjoyment of the printed page.'
When considered alongside the company's promotional rhetoric,
then, Gelhay's Elegant Women in a Library and Leigh ton's The Maid with
the Golden Hair together suggest that Pomegranate hopes to appeal to
contemporary women by selling products that facilitate both retreat and
enrichment. Just like the women in the images who are lost in books,
the woman purchasing The Reading Woman products now has an intellec-
tual space of her own, whether note card or journal, in which to lose
herself or, alternatively, discover or express her own thoughts. Also
8 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

Fig. 0.1. The Maid with the Golden Hair, Frederick Leighton (c. 1895). Christie's
Images, London, U.K/Bridgeman Art Library.
 Introduction 9

Fig. 0.2. Elegant Women in a Library, Edouard Gelhay (c. late 1800s). Waterhouse
and Dodd, London, U.K./Bridgeman Art Library.
10 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

worth noting is that the images and their promotional text further imply
that the acts of both viewing the images and using the products - writing
letters to friends in the note cards or reflecting on one's day in a journal
- connect today's woman to her literary foremothers and feminist fore-
runners, providing her in turn the opportunity to become her own
reading (and writing) woman. A compelling sell, indeed, and a story
many consumers, including us, have no doubt embraced.
However, this interpretation tells only one side of the reading
woman's story, which, as the essays in this collection demonstrate, is
complex, multivalent, and at times even contradictory. Pomegranate's
promotional rhetoric suggests some of these historical complexities,
though they may be less obvious to current audiences. While the pack-
aging of The Reading Woman line constructs the act of reading for
women as one of opportunity, enlightenment, and self-transformation,
it also hints at the potential dangers of reading and the cultural anxi-
eties those dangers have often produced. It does so in its reference to
the woman reader as an 'enigma' who is not only 'silently thrilled and
awakened' but also 'lost in a story and separated from her life's narra-
tive.' Certainly, the depiction of the woman reader as 'lost' and 'sepa-
rated' casts a cloud over the appearance of serenity offered in the
images. Indeed, when one historicizes the images, the element of peril
present in the paintings but only implied in Pomegranate's packaging
becomes difficult to ignore.
In Leighton's The Maid with the Golden Hair, for example, the erotic dis-
play of the woman's loose hair and flowing nightgown, together with the
darkness that envelops her, operates to undermine the peacefulness
present on the surface of the image. Furthermore, the gaze of the male
painter on the private act of reading places this self-absorbed woman in
a vulnerable and sexualized position that is somewhat discomforting.
Similarly, in Gelhay's Elegant Women in a Library, the suggestion of an ide-
alized intellectual pursuit is diminished by the title itself: these women
are first and foremost 'elegant' ladies who apparently do not belong in
the library they occupy and who are valued not for their minds but for
their representation of their family's class status. Additionally, the pos-
ture of the woman in the foreground, who leans rather awkwardly over
the table instead of being comfortably seated, suggests her misplacement
in the library, or at the very least her tentativeness in using the space in
the first place. Read in this light, then, the strewn books, previously inter-
preted as a sign of the women's intellectual engagement, might just as
well signal their hurriedness and fear of interruption. Such menacing
 Introduction 11

overtones would certainly have been apparent to nineteenth-century

viewers given the negative discourse that surrounded women readers and
saturated popular and literary culture at the time.
Further indicating the differences between past and present concep-
tions of women readers are the many Pomegranate images that depict
women who are supposedly enjoying their reading experiences despite
their uncomfortable and awkward reading positions: they are often sit-
ting on the edges of seats, lying down, propped on elbows (with pillows
to support them if they're lucky), strolling, or standing. For example,
Frank Dicey's The Novel (c. late nineteenth century) features a woman
awkwardly propped on her elbow as she lies on a blanket reading, while
Lovis Corinth's A Woman Reading Near a Goldfish Tank (c. turn of the cen-
tury) depicts a particularly uncomfortable looking woman perched on
the very edge of her seat, apparently ready to run and attend to her
duties whenever called. Similarly, the unattributed painting Woman
Reading in the Garden (c. 1920) shows a woman lingering over a chair in
the garden as she reads, while Edmund Blair Leighton's Sweet Solitude
(1919) displays a woman who reads as she strolls through a garden.
Insofar as all of these images feature women in the act of reading while
walking, standing, or sitting precariously and, importantly, in places
often outside the home, they surely suggest a conflict between women's
desire to read and any number of competing demands, including the
tentative and fleeting nature of the act of reading itself for women, their
need to be elsewhere, and their lack of privacy within the home.
Indeed, Pomegranate's use of the phrase 'seductive retreat from the
burdens of everyday life' implies the ways women's reading has been,
and perhaps still is, believed to disrupt family life and the functions of
society. In this way, Pomegranate certainly does capture the woman
reader as a threatening figure. However, for contemporary audiences,
this 'threat' can be construed as empowering for women who insist on
taking time for themselves. What may have threatened the social order
of the nineteenth century is recast in Pomegranate's packaging as an act
of self-assertion. This is reinforced by Pomegranate's juxtaposition of
the very nineteenth-century idea of reading as a 'seductive' retreat (one
that might dangerously seduce the woman into antisocial behaviour or
draw her away from proper conduct and responsibilities) against the
contemporary concept of escaping the 'burdens of everyday life.' This
juxtaposition allows us all to feel more comfortable, since the act of
reading can now be understood as one that involves a needed escape
from 'burdens' rather than a dangerous shirking of responsibilities.
12 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

We have selected the Victorian age as the starting point for Reading
Women because it was during this period that the figure of the secular
woman reader and discourses about her began to pervade Anglo-Ameri-
can mass culture. The importance of these discourses in the nineteenth
century has been the subject of a number of recent studies, most nota-
bly Kate Flint's The Woman Reader 1837-1914 (1993), Jacqueline Pear-
son's Women's Reading in Britain, 1150-1835 (1999), and Catherine
Golden's Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fic-
tion (2003).3 As Pearson's study indicates, what is most surprising about
the image of the woman reader just prior to the Victorian era is simply
its 'ubiquity ... in discourses of all kinds - of gender and sexuality, educa-
tion, economics, class, "race," social stability and revolution, science, his-
tory, and so on' (219-20). Furthermore, such preoccupations with the
woman reader only increased as literacy rates rose and the publishing
industry grew dramatically throughout the nineteenth century. As Flint
argues, despite the widespread interest in images of women readers
throughout history, 'it is difficult to reconstruct a coherent body of the-
ory concerning women and reading before the eighteenth century, or
even to observe the persistent recurrence of stereotypes. It is still harder
to collect accounts by women of their reading experiences' (24). By the
1830s, this material is much more readily available. Indeed, the advent
of mass production and mass readership transformed literate society
and increased interest in reading practices. While much of the discourse
surrounding reading addressed the reading practices of men and of
working-class readers,4 the vast majority of discussions and images
focused on the effects of reading on middle-class women. Since middle-
class women represented the well-being of the family and of the nation
itself, their reading practices became the subject of great concern
among writers, critics, and artists in both American and European con-
texts. Thus, the Victorian period marks the pinnacle of society's con-
cern with women readers, who perhaps inevitably became objects not
only of beauty and desire but of intense anxiety.
As one of the first scholars to examine women readers during this
critical period, Kate Flint introduces the very terms by which our col-
lection seeks to understand the figure of the woman reader. In the
introduction to her book, she argues that '"woman as reader" is a fash-
ionable topic in feminist criticism, but ... with a few notable excep-
tions, most of the current debate has either focused on the practice of
women reading today, or has looked at the construction of the woman
reader primarily as a textual phenomenon divorced from a fuller socio-
 Introduction 13

historical context' (16). In suggesting we consider the figure of the

woman reader not simply for her reading practices but for her signifi-
cance as a cultural phenomenon, Flint moves beyond reader-response
approaches like Janice Radway's Reading the Romance (1984), Elizabeth
Flynn and Patrocinio Schweickart's Gender and Reading (1986), and
Sarah Mills's Gendering the Reader (1994), all of which focus on the ways
readers respond to texts rather than on the ways readers are con-
structed within them at a particular historical moment. In its study of
the figure of the woman reader, Reading Women similarly hopes to
expand current theories of reader-response criticism and reading prac-
tices to include the rhetorical and visual construction of readers within
their socio-historical contexts, and thus addresses the gap Flint identi-
fied in 1993. At the same time, our collection does what Flint's work
does not: it traces the trajectory of the figure of the woman reader
through two centuries and, in turn, examines the relationship between
past and present literary and cultural preoccupations with women as
readers. By doing so through a combination of essays that consider
representations of women readers in both traditional and nontradi-
tional, even surprising, contexts, Reading Women enriches current con-
versations about readers in history.
Thus, Reading Women is situated within the growing field of 'book his-
tory,' which encompasses the interdisciplinary study of the economics
and technology of book production, marketing, and distribution as well
as the socio-historical aspects of authorship, literacy, readership, and
reading practices. The landmark works The English Common Reader by
Richard Altick and The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt — both published in
1957 - and a series of studies by Roger Chartier, William Charvat, Rob-
ert Darn ton, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Carlo Ginzburg, and Natalie Zemon
Davis established what by the late 1980s emerged as an official discipline
accompanied by its own scholarly society, SHARP (the Society for the
History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing). The proliferation of
university press series in book history, print culture studies, and reader-
ship studies further indicates the growing interest in the field. In
response to all of this activity, several important collections have been
published over the past decade or so, including Cathy Davidson's Read-
ing in America (1989), James L. Machor's Readers in History (1993), James
Raven, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor's The Practice and Representation
of Reading in England (1996), Roger Chartier and Gugliemo Cavallo's
History of Reading in the West (1999), and Barbara Ryan and Amy Tho-
mas's Reading Acts: Readers' Interactions with Literature, 1800-1950 (2002).
14 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

Exploring readers in American, British, and world history, these collec-

tions each seek to uncover the impact that actual reading practices and
ideas about reading in society have had on the literature, culture, eco-
nomics, and politics of the Western world. In doing so, they have effec-
tively formed a cross-disciplinary field of study focused not only on 'the
objects of reading' and 'the changing readerships' indicated by 'devel-
opments in the production and distribution of texts' (Raven, Small, &
Tadmore 4), but also on the more nuanced relationships among readers
and socio-historical contexts that James Machor describes as

(1) the exploration of ... readers as members of historically specific - and

historiographically specified - interpretive communities; and (2) the analy-
sis of the way literary texts construct the reader's role through strategies
necessitated and even produced by particular historical conditions, (xi)

Our collection seeks to continue the tradition set forth in these stud-
ies as it follows Flint's and Machor's calls for a more historicist literary
analysis of reading. Reading Women heeds this call while also breaking
new ground by focusing on the impact both written and visual represen-
tations of women readers have had on understandings of literacy and
certain reading practices, the development of books and print culture,
and the categorization of texts into high and low cultural forms. For, as
Cathy Davidson points out in the introduction to her collection, 'Read-
ers (both general and professional) play a crucial role as judges who, on
some level, also help to determine what kinds of books will be pub-
lished' (20). We would, of course, add to Davidson's formulation that
public and professional perceptions of readers necessarily influence
how books already published are further valued, marketed, and dis-
cussed within their historically situated contexts. We would also insist on
the centrality of gender to that influence. After all, it is the image of the
woman reader one encounters again and again in the consumer culture
we discuss at the start of this introduction. It is also the image of the
woman reader that seems to incite the greatest degree of anxiety and
unease in literary culture. Thus, while critical attention within book his-
tory and print culture studies has focused on readers, we would argue
that ideas about women readers have shaped literary and popular cul-
ture to a greater degree than past and current trends within literary
studies suggest. The essays in this collection, then, focus on specific rep-
resentations of women readers, their evolution over the past two centu-
ries, and their cultural currency today in order to demonstrate the
 Introduction 15

critically important role such representations have played in defining

literacy, literature, and even women's roles within society over the past
two hundred years.
Bringing together a rich array of subjects, the essays included look at
representations of women readers in a wide range of media, from ante-
bellum American book reviews, letters, and scientific treatises; to Victo-
rian magazines, novels, and paintings; to turn-of-the-century cartoons,
library plans, and accounts of women's reading clubs; to twentieth-cen-
tury reception histories, autobiographies, films, and television shows. In
the process, they provide a close study of the evolution of the figure of
the woman reader from 1837 to the present day, and shed light on the
defining role she has played in the formation not only of literary history
but of Anglo-American culture. Indeed, the essays collectively argue that
women readers - and our assumptions about them - have been instru-
mental in the development of literary aesthetics, gender roles, and the
very foundations of our current cultural and literary establishments.
We have arranged the essays in this collection chronologically both to
emphasize the continuities as well as the changes in images of women
readers over time and to avoid reducing these rich, multilayered essays
to any specific heading or catch-phrase. However, it is clear that the
essays resonate with common themes, including the ones we have
addressed in our analysis of Pomegranate's images of women readers:
the perceived dangers of women's uncritical and unregulated reading
practices; the fear of the effects of reading on women's bodies; the plea-
surable escape from everyday life and the personal - and even social -
transformation that reading provides; and the intellectual empower-
ment and progress that reading enables. Departing from the book's
chronological order, we would like to introduce each essay by highlight-
ing these common themes and suggesting possible avenues of inquiry
that connect the diverse approaches presented in Reading Women.
The regulation of the content and practice of women's reading is an
important and prevalent theme in both the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The characterization of women's reading as inherently dan-
gerous, as we show in our reading of Pomegranate's products, is often a
subtle and even insidious subtext of many images of women readers.
Several essays in this collection address this concern, including those by
Janet Badia, Michele Crescenzo, and Barbara Hochman. Badia's '"One
of Those People Like Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath": The Pathologized
Woman Reader in Literary and Popular Culture' assesses the apparent
threat women's reading sometimes poses to literary culture, as well as to
16 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

society more generally. Focusing specifically on a recent film image of a

young woman reading Plath's work, Badia traces what she identifies as
the figure of the Plath-Sexton reader within literary and popular cul-
ture. Of particular interest to her is the way both establishments have
pathologized the Plath-Sexton reader, turning her into a woman whose
reading practices are defined symptomatically, which is to say, as either a
sign of her illness or a potential cause of it. To demonstrate this, Badia
juxtaposes her discussion of the pathologized reader within popular cul-
ture with an examination of several key moments in the reception of
Plath's and Sexton's work in which critics, while ostensibly evaluating
the poets' work, reveal a troubling preoccupation with women readers
and their perceived subliterary reading practices. In fact, Badia's exami-
nation demonstrates that the Plath-Sexton reader has from the early
reception of both poets' work been largely gendered female, diagnosed
as sick and depressed, and assessed as an uncritical consumer of bad lit-
erature. Underscoring the significance of this particular construction of
women readers, Badia concludes her essay with an examination of the
larger cultural anxieties about the relationship between women's intel-
lects and their pathologies that are clearly embedded in the image of
the Plath-Sexton reader.
While Badia's essay challenges unfounded concerns over women's
reading, Michele Crescenzo's 'Poor Lutie's Almanac: Reading and
Social Critique in Ann Perry's The Street' explores women's mis-reading
and how it can in fact be dangerous to women's personal identities.
Lutie Johnson, the protagonist of Perry's 1946 novel, is a single mother
and a working-class black woman living in 1940s Harlem, yet she insists
that 'if Ben Franklin could live on a little bit of money and could pros-
per, then so could she' (64). Through her examination of Lutie as an
uncritical and naive reader, Crescenzo argues that Perry's novel suggests
ways in which literacy simultaneously functions as liberation and limita-
tion for black women. As a reader, Lutie contends with literal narratives
of the 'American dream,' including Benjamin Franklin's autobiography,
as well as the texts of subway advertising and her wealthy white
employer's 'country living' magazines. The novel contrasts these print
media with traditional African-American ways of knowing - folk wisdom,
oral culture, and root medicine - all of which Lutie rejects. Whereas
previous criticism on The Street emphasized its protagonist's misplaced
reliance on the myth of the American dream, Crescenzo takes this anal-
ysis further by analysing how Perry uses reading as social critique, reveal-
ing the limitations of literature for realizing black female subjectivity.
 Introduction 17

Just as Crescenzo's essay shows authorial concern for women's uncrit-

ical reading practices, Barbara Hochman's essay 'The Reading Habit and
"The Yellow Wallpaper"' focuses on Charlotte Perkins Oilman's fears
about women's reading. As Hochman demonstrates, Oilman's story pro-
vides a powerful image of a reader who is temporarily exhilarated but ulti-
mately destroyed by her absorption in a mesmerizing text and thus
conveys culturally typical anxieties about certain kinds of fiction reading,
especially the practice of reading for escape. Underscoring the signifi-
cance of reading in the story, Hochman further argues that the figure of
the narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' reflects Oilman's own intensely
conflicted relationship to reading, including her inability to read at all
during the period of emotional upheaval on which the story is based.
This recognition of the story's self-reflexive concern with the dynamics of
reading elucidates not only Oilman's own reading practices but also her
effort to shape reader response. In fact, by dramatizing the social as well
as the psychic consequences of the narrator's 'reading habit' Oilman
encourages her own readers, in contrast to the reader in the story,
to approach 'The Yellow Wallpaper' in a more critical or intellectual
mode - in other words, to regulate their own reading.
Expanding this discussion of the perceived and sometimes real dan-
gers of women's reading, Suzanne Ashworth, Antonia Losano, and Ruth
Hoberman each explore the fear of women's bodies often evident in
representations of women readers. Ashworth's 'Reading Mind, Reading
Body: Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah and the Physiology of Reading' shows
how Beulah dramatizes women's reading graphically and deliberately,
illuminating the relationship between the reading body, the textual
body, and gender. Indeed, Ashworth illustrates how Beulah urges us to
think about gendered reading as an interpretive operation that is firmly
grounded in the body; she argues that Beulah's embodied reading sub-
jectivity is shaped by historical discourses that make sense of the body,
specifically by sociomedical conceptions of the relationship between
mind and body, self and sex. To demonstrate this, she turns to best-sell-
ing domestic medical manuals, as well as treatises on the science of phys-
iognomy and passion theory, that posit a relationship between reading
mind and reading body. Ashworth shows how these texts shed light on
Beulah as the psychosomatic reading subject that mainstream medical
discourses created. Beulah teaches us that because reading brings a psy-
chosomatic body into play - because it sculpts the subject from the out-
side in, and the inside out - it is a prime vehicle of gender formation
within both authoritative and popular discourses.
18 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

Looking at the importance of women readers' bodies in visual and lit-

erary texts, Antonia Losano's 'Reading Women/Reading Pictures: Tex-
tual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction and Nineteenth-
Century Painting' shows how women's privately and domestically
embodied reading practices become less threatening when compared to
women's publicly and critically embodied art-viewing practices. Specifi-
cally, Losano contrasts acts of reading texts with acts of reading images
by exploring nineteenth-century representations of women readers and
women art viewers in paintings and novels. Based on her analysis of
paintings of women reading books and paintings of women viewing art,
Losano argues that women readers are embodied as physically passive
figures who unthreateningly fade into the background, while women art
viewers are represented as bodies that are more dangerously active, pub-
lic, and on display. Pairing this visual imagery with textual imagery
found in Charlotte Bronte's novels Jane Eyre and Villette, Losano con-
tends that nineteenth-century anxieties about women readers were sig-
nificantly compounded when languid private reading was transformed
into bold public viewing.
Continuing Losano's treatment of women in public domains, Ruth
Hoberman's '"A Thought in the Huge Bald Forehead": Depictions of
Women in the British Museum Reading Room, 1857-1929' explores a
variety of reactions to women's reading bodies in one of the most intel-
lectual public spaces in London. During the late nineteenth century, as
women intent on careers in literature, journalism, and social activism
flocked to the British Museum Reading Room, fictional and journalistic
images of women reading in the room became part of an ongoing
debate about the relation of women to the public sphere. Hoberman's
examination of these images reveals that while women readers were ini-
tially depicted as comfortable if unobtrusive participants in the culture
of the domed Reading Room from its opening in 1857, they became
increasingly disruptive in late-nineteenth-century representations as
conflict over their presence in public life intensified. To emphasize the
significance of this shift in attitude towards women readers, Hoberman
also looks at the ways women writers such as Virginia Woolf and Dorothy
Richardson responded to the 1907 redecoration of the room, which
placed the names of male writers around the dome's moulding and did
away with ladies' seating. Hoberman argues that these women writers
rejected the space altogether, preferring rooms of their own to partici-
pation in a public sphere that defined them - in Virginia Woolf's
famous words - as only 'a thought in the huge bald forehead.'
 Introduction 19

In contrast to those essays that emphasize the fears and dangers gen-
erated by women's reading, Elizabeth Fekete Trubey, Sarah Wadsworth,
and Mary Lamb each examine reading's potential for women's personal
transformation and social activism, commenting on the continuities and
tensions between the two modes of change. Trubey's '"Success Is Sympa-
thy": Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader' provides a close study of
scenes of reading within Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, as
well as first- and second-hand accounts of Northern and Southern
women's responses to the novel. In analysing both fictional construc-
tions of reading and actual readers' responses, Trubey complicates
romanticized notions of the nineteenth-century woman reader and the
cultural work performed by sentimental reading. She argues that the
hope Stowe articulates in the novel and elsewhere for the mobilization
of an army of feeling women remained unfulfilled. As the responses
Trubey examines in the essay show, sympathetic women did not engage
in the political sphere as Stowe had hoped. In fact, Trubey's analysis
reveals that beneath this lack of public action lay a self-perpetuating, pri-
vate pleasure that countered nineteenth-century ideals of the woman
reader. This pleasure was expressed in both bodily sensations and
domestic practice and indicates, contrary to popular assumptions, that
sentimental reading was not solely a means of conveying a true womanly
ideal. In showing that women sought to recreate the joys of reading as
often as possible, Trubey suggests that readerly pleasure, decried by Vic-
torian moralists, was central to nineteenth-century women's experiences
with literature.
Sarah Wadsworth's 'Social Reading, Social Work, and the Social Func-
tion of Literacy in Louisa May Alcott's "May Flowers'" examines similar
tensions between the desire to occupy one's time pleasurably and the
desire to do good works. One of Louisa May Alcott's last stories, 'May
Flowers' reflects the author's lifelong commitment to social reform as
well as her conviction that the act of reading fundamentally informs and
shapes the moral character of the individual. Wadsworth argues that
Alcott uses a series of vignettes focusing on the activities of a young
ladies' book club both to illustrate how the social functions of reading
transcend the homely middle-class sociability of the sewing circle and to
provide an intellectual context for reform as well as a means for crossing
boundaries of gender, class, and ethnicity. At the same time, she main-
tains that the story continually reminds readers of the differentials in
culture and privilege that reinforce those boundaries. Building on his-
torical research into nineteenth-century women's reading clubs, as well
20 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

as current theories of literacy and cultural consumption, Wadsworth's

essay interrogates the problematic relationship between social reading
and social work in Alcott's narrative.
Taking up similar issues in the present day, Mary Lamb's 'The "Talk-
ing Life" of Books: Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club' analyses the
rhetoric of women's reading espoused by Oprah Winfrey's televised
book club. Lamb argues that Winfrey's performance advocates a read-
ing practice consonant with a mediated, apolitical version of conscious-
ness raising, a practice that encourages women readers to read for
personal adjustment to social ills. Accordingly, Lamb argues that Win-
frey's notion of women readers perpetuates women's responsibilities for
adapting to social strictures in the form of a mediated 'pro-woman' line
that reflects some feminist discourses but offers little progressive femi-
nism. Recognizing this limitation of Winfrey's project, Lamb neverthe-
less demonstrates that the televised book club makes a cultural space
accessible for women readers that fosters the realization of the power of
narrative to work through complicated social issues, even as it only simu-
lates the barest outline of such work.
Focusing not on the strictures of women's reading but on its possibili-
ties, Jennifer Phegley and Tuire Valkeakari analyse women's attempts at
intellectual development through reading and the concomitant difficul-
ties of achieving intellectual goals in the face of public resistance. Pheg-
ley's '"I Should No More Think of Dictating ... What Kinds of Books She
Should Read": Images of Women Readers in Victorian Family Literary
Magazines' examines how family literary magazines worked towards
establishing an intellectual culture of women's reading in the nine-
teenth century. In Belgravia Magazine, Mary Elizabeth Braddon com-
bated the portrayal of improper reading as a particularly female malady
and attempted to reshape the discourse of disease surrounding women
readers by authorizing women to make their own critical judgments
about what and how to read. Phegley argues that Braddon revolution-
ized the typical critical conception of women readers as dangerous and
corruptible by comparing the illustrations and discussions of women
readers in her periodical to those contained in another popular middle-
class literary magazine, William Thackeray's the Cornhill. Like Belgravia,
the Cornhill was optimistic about the intellectual ability of women read-
ers. However, in contrast to Belgravia'?, images of solitary women who
read for their own enjoyment and edification, the Cornhill consistently
depicted women's reading as beneficial to their families. Phegley con-
cludes that while both magazines encouraged women's intellectual
 Introduction 21

development, only in the pages of Belgravia were women explicitly

shown how pleasurable and empowering reading could be if they could
make their own choices and develop their own active reading skills that
were not reliant on the regulation of the men or the critics around
them.
While Phegley focuses on the intellectual development of nineteenth-
century readers of periodicals, Tuire Valkeakari turns to the twentieth
century to look at one African-American woman writer's intellectual
development through reading primarily white, male canonical texts.
Valkeakari's '"Luxuriat[ing] in Milton's Syllables": Writer as Reader in
Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road' challenges the assumption
that Hurs ton dedicated only one chapter of her 1942 autobiography to
her literary career, and argues that the narrative of Hurston's profes-
sional identity permeates a larger body of the work than previous criti-
cism has acknowledged. To demonstrate this, Valkeakari examines
Hurston's self-portrait as a reader, focusing particularly on the autobiog-
raphy's construction of the young Zora as an avid reader, as well as a
learner of oral tradition. She finds that while Hurston's discussion of
Zora's early reading refrains from pitting the oral and the written
against each other, it entails another polarization: the literary tradition
that she explores is solely white, whereas her representation of black
culture largely freezes African American-ness at the stage of the oral,
folksy, and rural, suggesting that for Hurs ton and her contemporaries
the African-American canon did not yet exist as an established concept
or an unequivocally desirable literary affiliation. That Hurston remains
largely silent about her familiarity with African-American literary tradi-
tion indicates, Valkeakari argues, that her relationship with it was deeply
troubled by the ambiguity accompanying the label 'marginal.'
From Losano's treatment of women readers in nineteenth-century
paintings to Lamb's work on contemporary readers in Oprah's book
club, the essays in our collection demonstrate that the line between
nineteenth-century and today's women readers is not at all a straight
one. By arranging the essays in chronological order while also drawing
connections between them here, we hope to show the circularity of the
history of women readers - the way it defies a clear trajectory even as it
seems to move along an axis of similar concerns about what, how, and
why women read. Given this strange pattern of development, it is per-
haps fitting that Kate Flint, whose work has so clearly inspired and
shaped the essays featured in Reading Women and in many cases served as
their starting point, should have the final word in the collection. Along
22 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

with assessing the significance of the collection, Flint provides a narra-

tive of her own history as a reading woman and points to remaining
work to be done in the field.
And there is certainly a lot of work to be done, especially in terms of
understanding the diversity of women readers. Several essays in our
collection, including those by Trubey, Wadsworth, Valkeakari, and
Crescenzo, begin this work insofar as they directly take up issues of race
and class as part of their investigations. Still, we recognize that the essays
in Reading Women focus on implicit constructions of mostly white, mostly
middle-class women. In this way, the essays included here reflect the
visual images being marketed today. What Pomegranate's collection of
images does, in fact, is make clear that the general image of the reading
woman is one very much inflected by white, middle-class ideology.
Among all the images packaged by Pomegranate, only one stands out as
an exception, William McGregor Paxton's The House Maid (1910), which
depicts a young woman stealthily breaking away from her dusting duties
to read a book (fig. 0.3). In its depiction of a white working-class woman,
the painting clearly disrupts the middle-class narrative that emerges
from the other works, yet it also conveys many of the same idealized
aspects of reading for women. As Pomegranate might put it, the house
maid is absorbed in her reading, having stolen a moment from her daily
routine, perhaps to search the book's pages for a means to transform her
life. At the same time, the fact that she is still holding her feather duster
under her arm and is merely paused over the table she is dusting sug-
gests that her reading experience is a fleeting one. Furthermore, the title
of the painting makes clear that she cannot transcend her class position,
despite her access to books: unlike the women in the other images who
are often identified as 'reading women' in the titles, this woman is 'the
house maid,' plain and simple. That her image is also juxtaposed with
the Asian art of her bourgeois employer further serves to put her in her
social and economic place and to emphasize her position as an object of
the painter's gaze rather than as a reading subject. Contrary to Pome-
granate's claim, then, this working-class woman cannot be separated
from her life's narrative, even at the moment of reading.
While an isolated instance, the image of The House Maid hopefully
suggests ways of broadening our understanding of women readers and
of thinking about their diverse history. Very recent studies, like Eliza-
beth McHenry's aptly titled work Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost His-
tory of African American Literary Societies (2002) and Jonathon Rose's The
Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001), already show signs of a
 Introduction 23

Fig. 0.3. The House Maid, William McGregor Paxton (1910). Corcoran Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C. Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund.
24 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

new interest in those readers who have been left out of the popular
image. Yet if the submissions we received in response to the call for this
collection are any indication, the study of women readers is still primar-
ily the study of a narrow selection of readers. The gap alone says much,
we think, about how far the subject of women readers as a site of serious
investigation within literary and cultural studies has come, even as it
reveals how far it has to go in terms of recognizing the diversity of read-
ers. And of course, since our collection begins with 1837, it also leaves
considerable room for additional inquiry not only into issues of race
and class but into prior historical periods. In any case, we hope that the
essays in this collection will provide a foundation for future scholarship
that addresses the diversity of visual and literary representations of
women readers that is undoubtedly out there, waiting to be recovered.

NOTES

1 The essays in this collection focus primarily on British and American repre-
sentations of women readers, though some of the paintings we discuss are
from continental European countries. Images of women readers from these
nations are relevant to our study because they emerged from and contributed
to similar discourses surrounding women readers and are marketed as part of
Pomegranate's coherent vision of the woman reader today.
2 Not surprisingly perhaps, the images recirculated in Pomegranate's collec-
tion are largely portraits by male artists. While the issue of the male gaze is
outside the scope of this introduction, it certainly represents an important
line of inquiry for future scholarship about representations of women
readers.
3 For discussion of women readers before 1837, see Erler, Michaelson,
McManus, Taylor and Smith, and Thomas. As well, a conference entitled 'The
Emergence of the Female Reader, 1500-1800,' organized by Heidi Hackel
and held at Oregon State University on 18 May 2001, featured papers by Mar-
garet Ferguson, Mary Kelley, Catherine Kelly, Janice Knight, Mary Ellen
Lamb, Janice Radway, and Eve Sanders.
4 See Rose, and Thompson.

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 Introduction 25

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26 Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia

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1 Reading Women/Reading Pictures:
Textual and Visual Reading in
Charlotte Bronte's Fiction and
Nineteenth-Century Painting

ANTONIA LOSANO

Reading Pictures

When the young Jane Eyre takes her seat in the curtained alcove in the
opening pages of Bronte's novel, she brings with her a book to read. But
as Jane says herself, she takes care that the book should be one 'stored
with pictures.'Jane, famously, proceeds to 'read' the pictures of birds in
Bewick's The History of British Birds. Pictures in Jane Eyre are never simply
viewed; they are also read, mined for narrative potential while their
visual qualities remain largely forgotten. Visual 'reading' offers Jane
food for creative imagination; she writes of one Bewick image, 'The two
ships becalmed on a torpid sea I believed to be marine phantoms ...
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understand-
ing and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interest-
ing as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she
chanced to be in good humour' (6, italics mine). Visual images in
Bewick tell stories as interesting as verbal narratives told by Bessie, which
are taken, Jane later realizes, from literary texts by Samuel Richardson
and John Wesley.
Yet while Jane insists that 'the letterpress thereof I cared little for,'
written text is not entirely uninteresting to her: she confesses that 'there
were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass
quite as a blank' (6). As Jane examines Bewick, 'The words in these
introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes,'
she explains (5, italics mine). Jane translates the verbal text into visual
images: 'Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own:
shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through
children's brains' (6). In the introductory pages of the novel, then, Jane
28 Antonia Losano

shifts the meaning of the term 'read' to include the visual perception of
images as well as the interpretation of text.
Jane's collapse of- or rather her desire to simultaneously perform -
reading and viewing is modelled on Bronte's own textual practice.
Bronte's style has often been characterized by critics as radically picto-
rial; George Henry Lewes, in his review of Jane Eyre in Eraser's Magazine,
was but the first of many critics to note the strong visual elements of
Bronte's novel. More recently, Lawrence Starzyk argued for 'the central-
ity of the pictorial in the development of [Jane's] world view' (289), and
Christine Alexander, in her productive research into Bronte's early artis-
tic endeavours, found sources for Bronte's 'fondness for the vignette,
her method of analyzing a scene as if it were a painting, and her ten-
dency to structure the novel as if it were a portfolio of paintings' (Alex-
ander and Sellars 56). Bronte presents her own painting of sorts in the
opening scene of the novel. While Jane is 'shrined in double retirement'
with her book, Jane also views the outside landscape. In fact, her enclo-
sure makes possible the framing and aestheticizing of the landscape:
'Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left
were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from
the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of
my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon' (5). Jane neatly
frames the visible world with scarlet drapes (classically artistic) on one
hand and glass on the other. Simultaneously, of course, the reader of
Jane Eyre is looking at Jane as if she is within a frame (bound by curtains
and windows); the picture Bronte verbally represents here is precisely a
picture.
G.H. Lewes describes Bronte's methods in a very pictorial manner
himself when in his Eraser's review he praises the novel's ability to paint
reality, to represent what he calls 'the material aspect of things':

We have spoken of the reality stamped upon almost every part; and that
reality is not confined to the characters and incidents, but is also striking in
the descriptions of the various aspects of Nature, and of the houses, rooms,
and furniture. The pictures stand out distinctly before you: they are pic-
tures, and not mere bits of 'fine writing.' The writer is evidently painting by
words a picture that she has in her mind. (23)

But Bronte is not simply using the pictorial mode as she writes; she is,
rather, submitting visual images to the faculty of 'reading,' suggesting
that viewing and reading are similar modes of aesthetic perception. She
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 29

writes to Lewes, 'Then, too, Imagination is a strong, restless faculty,

which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her
cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we
never to look at them, and try to reproduce them?' (quoted in Gaskell 267-8,
italics mine). The 'bright pictures' that imagination shows Bronte are
reproduced in prose; Bronte performs a translation from one medium
(visual images) to another (the written word). This is, obviously, neces-
sary given Bronte's medium (although when her publishers offered her
the option of illustrating Jane Eyre herself, she refused). Jane's ekphrasis,
however, always translates images into stories; she describes not the
visual appearance of images (of birds, or her own paintings later in the
novel) but the narrative potential of visual images. When she produces
for the reader an ekphrastic description of her three watercolour paint-
ings that Rochester critiques during their first formal meeting, Jane
'reads' the watercolours as if they told stories, as do the images she
encounters in Bewick's History of British Birds.
Gayatri Spivak, in her essay famous for its expose of imperialism in
women's fiction, offers a brief analysis of the connection between the
visual and the textual in Jane Eyre. Spivak notes that Jane's attention is
curiously focused on the pictures in the book she holds, rather than the
text: 'She cares little for reading what is meant to be read: the "letter-
press." She reads the pictures.' Spivak terms this practice of reading only
the pictures a 'singular hermeneutics' (246) and links it to Jane's study
of the outside scene beyond the glass: both ways of 'reading' 'can make
the outside inside' (246). We have seen, however, that Jane both reads
text and views images as text. Therefore, Jane's 'singular hermeneutic'
is in fact a doubled hermeneutic: to understand Jane's perceptual
actions we must take into account both the textual and visual reading
that Jane undertakes. The young Jane cannot, or does not choose to,
distinguish reading from viewing; for her they are similar modes of aes-
thetic consumption. Reading may eventually win the battle here,
although not simply because Jane Eyre is a novel and not a painting. For
all the novel's emphasis upon the visual, for all its pictorial moments,
the opening scene of the novel forces us to acknowledge a profound
readerly impulse that is never overshadowed by the imagistic. Jane, like
Bronte, continually forces the visual to submit to the verbal; even when
Jane views images, she does so in readerly fashion. I suggest that this is
because the activity of reading, rather than viewing, resonates with the
character Bronte wishes to develop for Jane and with the particular kind
of feminist argument Bronte is making in her novel. It is reading as a
30 Antonia Losano

culturally determined action that is most suitably symbolic for Bronte's

purposes; viewing, as we shall see, evokes a radically different complex
of significances for nineteenth-century audiences. Given the cultural
and historical moment, Jane must be represented as a reader rather
than a viewer.
Certainly the young Jane neatly encapsulates many of the critical
issues evoked by women readers of texts in the nineteenth century. She
begins as a voluntarily secluded reader, having positioned herself in
'double retirement' because she is not, as Mrs. Reed complains, a prop-
erly 'sociable' child (5). Her book of choice is, significantly, a book of
birds - and she chooses, out of all the various birds depicted by Bewick,
to focus upon wild, solitary, and mysterious birds (a 'black, horned
thing' (6) rather than, say, a sparrow). The symbolic connection
between Jane and birds is emphasized when she becomes, in the Red
Room, a caged bird - involuntarily secluded because of her forbidden
reading.1 Reading for Jane is dangerous (it gets her in trouble, marks
her as different) and empowering (it gives her a creative outlet in her
bleak world) simultaneously, which suggests that Bronte's representa-
tion of Jane's experience of reading participates in the dominant cul-
tural discourse on women readers that saw in the reading process
evidence of a possibly radical subjectivity. In her study of the cultural
meaning of the woman reader in the period 1837-1914, Kate Flint
(1993) argues that the self-absorption of the reading woman hinted at a
dangerous inferiority, potentially disruptive of social codes of feminin-
ity; Flint sees visual and textual representations of women reading as
consistently negotiating this possible inferiority. Mark Hennelly in his
article 'Jane Eyre's Reading Lesson' writes that reading itself is a 'retreat
from life' (695). Within the scene of reading the woman reader with-
draws into herself, just as Jane withdraws into the curtained recess at
Gateshead; the scene of reading in literature and art becomes, in the
words of Mary Jacobus, a 'temporary form of madness' that is necessarily
both frightening and potentially empowering (13). Reading becomes a
space that 'involves concepts or unconscious phantasies of inner and
outer, absence and boundaries' (9). Jane's reading does precisely this: at
the opening of the novel, it signals the arrival of a heroine whose imagi-
native inferiority is nothing if not socially disruptive. For Jane, reading
becomes 'an act of individualism and imaginative rebellion against the
confining circumstances of her life' (695).
But what, then, do we make of Bronte's continual insistence that Jane
is also a viewer - one who, famously, must translate the visual world for
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 31

her blind and maimed husband at the novel's end? This essay attempts
to trace further connections and contrasts between reading texts and
reading images in representations of women in nineteenth-century
paintings, with a view to understanding the cultural discourse with
which Charlotte Bronte's representation of Jane as a reader and a viewer
might engage. Charlotte Bronte would have understood, and been
invested in, the cultural politics of women and the visual arts. She her-
self wished to be a painter before her eyesight failed and she turned to
writing. But even after her decision to give up painting, Charlotte and
all the Bronte siblings were thoroughly knowledgeable about the visual
arts, a fact attested to by the frequent appearance of scenes of painting
in Charlotte and Anne Bronte's novels. As children the Brontes had
access to numerous engravings of famous paintings, as well as several
drawing masters; in her adult life Charlotte regularly visited galleries in
London. She would have been familiar with the prevailing discourses
surrounding the woman viewer; even if not familiar with precisely the
paintings I will discuss here, Bronte would have been highly conscious
of how her cultural moment represented women as artists and art spec-
tators. Her fiction allows us to see her engagement with these cultural
debates over women's access to the aesthetic realm, and in fact shows
her to be in the vanguard of such debates.
The visual representations of women readers in the middle and late
nineteenth century, when contrasted with images of female spectators
of art during the same period, offer possible reasons why Jane becomes
a 'reader' of pictures, transforming the visual into the narrative. I argue
that by looking at these two alternate techniques for representing the
status of women's aesthetic consumption in relation to one another, we
gain insight into the motivations behind - and cultural resonance of -
both representations.
Robert Martineau's 1863 painting The Last Chapter shows us in visual
form the disruptions and rebellions that reading women can occasion.2
A young, elegantly dressed woman kneels before the hearth, intent
upon a novel. The light from the fire falls softly upon her cheek, neck,
and white hand, and part of her rich satin dress creeps alarmingly
towards the fire. But her attention is utterly fixed upon her novel; she
gives no evidence of acknowledging the fire or the viewer. Her awkward
posture makes her seem oddly foreshortened, but she is still overwhelm-
ingly the central image in the composition; the rest of the room recedes
into the background or falls away from the side of the frame. If she were
to stand, her head and her book would disappear from the picture; her
32 Antonia Losano

posture thus seems to mirror her forced attention to the 'frame' of the
book. She is on her knees because the book has somehow dragged her
to that position. Reading deforms a nice girl's body, makes her forget
the hour and her dignity, and draws her literally closer to the fire of
knowledge. The young woman's head shares a horizontal plane with
one windowpane; within this pane is framed the clearest image of the
outside world available in this very cloistered image. Like Jane Eyre, the
young woman represented here is in a liminal state between enclosure
and freedom. From her head, then, can arise the desire to follow the
winding river visible in the background, the desire to connect with a
dark and gothic world outside the self and the domestic sphere. Her
absorption in the book is visually echoed by the threat of her absorption
into the painting's background.
A similar scene, although at first less erotically charged, appears in
John Callcott Horsley's A Pleasant Corner. Even the title suggests a certain
quietness; this is a 'pleasant' corner, not a secret or hidden one. How-
ever, if we compare it with Martineau's work, we see key similarities: the
girl's dress draws near the fire, suggesting the possible danger of her
reading, while her head is at the same height as the window, positioning
her within reach of the outside world. Unlike the woman in The Last
Chapter, however, Horsley's figure looks up from her book (an imposing
leather-bound volume, which bears no resemblance to a sensation
novel); her attention does not appear to be entirely fixed on the text.
She seems to be looking at the viewer/painter, but not quite. That is,
her gaze is unfocused, her exact line of sight unreadable. Her expres-
sion suggests pensive musing, a 'lost in thought' state of mind (and
sight). We are still invited to watch her reading - or thinking about her
reading - but her gaze threatens to connect with ours at any moment.
For nineteenth-century viewers, any woman in this state of porous
availability to textual influx raised grave doubts, but also offered a delec-
table sight. We cannot experience what the woman reader experiences;
thus, there is a powerful sense of secrecy and attendant subjectivity
gained from that hidden experience, which mutates into eroticism. As
Flint suggests, 'the very relaxation of outward social awareness which we
observe [in the woman reader] prompts the idea of another element:
the eroticism of the female subject for the male spectator or commenta-
tor' (1993, 4). Certainly the Martineau image foregrounds the erotic
charge offered by the reading woman; her position near the floor,
rather than steadily upright, signals the ease with which she might fall,
literally and metaphorically. In both Martineau's and Horsley's works,
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 33

the movement of the women's dress towards the danger of the fire can
be read similarly, as a dangerous movement towards worldly knowledge.
Let us now examine a contrasting image that shows us the possible
dangers of a woman viewing images. In Gustave Courbet's enormous
(almost eleven by twenty feet) The Studio of the Painter: A Real Allegory
Summing up Seven Years of My Artistic Life (1855), a painter's model stands
naked in the centre of the canvas, gazing rather bemusedly at the paint-
ing upon which the painter works. The painting, significantly, is a land-
scape painting in which the nude model does not appear. Why, then, is
she there? Since Courbet has pointedly titled his painting an allegory,
one looks first for allegorical meanings of the nude female figure.
Michael Fried, in his masterly analysis of the painting, argues that the
central grouping of painter, boy, and nude serves to allegorize the expe-
rience of painting itself; that is, the group dramatizes the process of
painting the picture. Fried sees the nude model as part of the landscape
painting on the easel; he connects the flow of the waterfall from the
canvas with the flowing draperies of the model, and notes also that her
body is only visible within the same plane as the landscape painting.
Thus, he argues, the nude 'may be regarded as a synecdoche for that
picture ... [she is] subsumed within the painting he is making' (162).
Other critics insist that the figure is in fact 'freed of the allegorical bur-
dens placed upon her by innumerable academic artists' (Eisenman
224). In other words, the painting might be an allegory but the nude is
not; she is 'a model and nothing more,' as Eisenman writes, 'reduced to
[a] mere passive vehicle of painterly dexterity and authority' (224). Yet
if she is simply a model, then the question remains: Why is she in the
studio, and naked, when she is not actually needed for the production
of the landscape currently underway?
For an answer, one needs to consider the other two figures in the
painting who, like the nude model, look at the painting: a small boy and
a playful cat (the cat's line of sight is not entirely clear, but the twist of its
neck suggests that it too could be looking upward at the painting). A
nude woman, a young boy, a cat: these are the representatives of the
viewing public in Courbet's allegory. None of these possesses social or
symbolic power; each is a figure for passivity, vulnerability, or disposses-
sion - and pointless frivolity, if you toss the ball of yarn into the mix. All
three, in fact, are feminized objects (the woman because she is female,
the child because children are associated with women, and the cat
because feline character is culturally feminized).3 Viewing thus becomes
explicitly aligned with femininity, youth, and dependency. For the actual
34 Antonia Losano

viewer of Courbet's painting, the subject positions offered seem disem-

powered; one must therefore reposition one's self as viewer if one does
not wish to identify with the nude, the boy, or the cat. We are invited,
then, to shift our gaze and become aligned instead with other figures
that appear in the right corner of the painting and are all apparently
engaged in viewing the nude rather than the painting. The seated male
viewer appears to be staring directly and intently at the nude's backside;
similarly, the four male figures beyond him in the background must be
staring at the nude, for she blocks their line of sight to the landscape
painting on which the artist works.
We are asked to take pleasure in the sight of a nude woman who is
preoccupied with her own viewing. Because the model is temporarily
'off duty,' and so lost in her own contemplation of art that she lets the
drapery begin to slip, we are seeing, we feel, what we are not officially
invited to see. In Fried's argument, the nude, because she is subsumed
into the landscape on the easel and hence becomes an object rather
than a viewing subject, loses her status 'as an independent beholder of
that picture' (163). While I agree with his reading, I would suggest that
her status as a beholder is necessarily 'neutralized,' as he terms it, not
only because she blends into the landscape but also because she is a fig-
ure of passivity whom the viewer rejects as a point of identification.
Instead, she becomes an object whose attractions are heightened
because of her activity (viewing). She looks at the painting, not at the
actual viewer; she appears lost in thought, her opinions unreadable.
In this she might begin to sound similar to a woman reader, and
indeed many visual representations of women reading and women view-
ing display striking similarities, in particular the tendency to depict the
woman in question as pensive, languorous, absorbed to the point of
immobility and of utterly disregarding her surroundings. However,
there are striking differences between the paintings by Martineau and
Courbet - not least, of course, that the female spectator is stark naked
and the reading woman decently clothed. This might seem a trivial
point, but it aptly expresses in blatant terms what I will argue exists in
more subtle fashion in many nineteenth-century texts and pictures (and
what Bronte's fiction reinforces, as we shall see): women readers are hid-
den objects, while women art viewers are seen as more public, active,
and on display. Female spectators of art are always threatened with the
possibility of becoming metaphorically nude - vulnerable, looked at,
absolutely available in a way that women readers never are, with their
interiority upheld by their tightly circumscribed relation to the book.
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 35

The Disappearing Woman Reader

Generally speaking, pictures of women reading make women disappear.

Let me clarify this. Pictures of women reading painted by Western artists
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently depict
the woman reader in question as vanishing into the background scene,
blending into the scenery in an often radically elusory way. It is as if the
women in these pictures, by virtue of their pastime, are slipping slowly
but steadily into their environment, losing their individual outline and
becoming almost literally 'one with' the background scene, whatever it
may be.4 Such blending, obscuring, or fading generally happens at the
level of colour or outline - often both. Occasionally figural composition
lends itself to such a reading, but most frequently it is the execution of
the composition, rather than the position of the painted woman herself,
that suggests such a reading. Several examples from French, British, and
American painters manifest such characteristics.
In Renoir's Madame Claude Monet Reading (c. 1872), for example,
Madame Monet's dress and skin partake so powerfully of the colour
components of the sofa on which she reclines that her body seems in
danger of becoming no more than part of the sofa cushions. The blue
stripes of her dress outline her against the sofa, but the central two pan-
els of her dress, her collar, and even her face and hair echo, in colour,
the sofa fabric. Furthermore, the blue 'outline' links the figure firmly to
the wall, sinking her even further back into the recesses of the picture.
Tea Time by Marie Bracquemond (French 1841-1916), painted in 1880,
shows a young woman in a white summery dress sitting at a table in a
garden with her book. The preponderance of blue in her dress and cap
strongly connects the woman reading with the slice of sky and distant
hillside visible in the left background, and a white-flecked pattern on
her dress becomes so tree-like in its relationship to the light in the paint-
ing that the woman blends more and more into the scenery.
Berthe Morisot's La Lecture (Reading) again links a reading woman's
dress with the painting's background, in terms of both colour and line
(fig. 1.1). In the painting a young woman sits in a delicate lattice-work
chair on a balcony or porch; behind her are the rising fronds of a palm.
The blues and greens of the woman's dress repeat the blues and greens
of the palm fronds behind the railing; even more startling is the similar-
ity of line. The dress appears to be made of palm leaves - Morisot's
brush-strokes make the fabric of the dress seem painted with the back-
ground pattern itself. Similarly, in Winslow Homer's Sunlight and Shadow
36 Antonia Losano

Fig. 1.1. La Lecture (Reading), Berthe Morisot, 1888. Museum of Fine Arts, St
Petersburg, Florida. Museum purchase in memory of Margaret Acheson Stuart.

(also 1872), the woman in the hammock is just barely distinguishable

from the harmony of greens behind her.5 Mary Cassatt's Young Woman
Reading (1876) offers evidence that Cassatt was aware of such a tradi-
tion: the dress of the young woman reading on the sofa is partially a
vivid, distinct blue - and part an orange stripe that duplicates the uphol-
stery of the sofa. Half of the woman stands out; half begins to sink into
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 37

her surroundings. Woman Seated in a Garden (1914) by Frederick Carl

Frieseke (American 1874-1939) offers an almost entirely invisible
female figure reading on a garden chair in the distance.
Numerous other images share in this tendency: Corot's A Woman
Reading (1869) and Interrupted Reading (1870); Sargent's Zukika (1907)
and Rose-Marie Ormon Reading in a Cashmere Shawl (c. 1908-12); and
Renoir's Woman Reading (1875-6) .6 All depict women disappearing as
they read, becoming part of the environment that shelters their solitary
activity. One might argue that many of these examples could be loosely
lumped together under the category of Impressionism, in which the
kind of colour harmony I am pointing out would have been a common
characteristic of all paintings in the style. Certainly within many Impres-
sionist paintings the figure, if figure there is, does bleed quiedy into the
landscape. But one must consider that the reading woman was a fre-
quent subject for Impressionist painting (almost all the central Impres-
sionist painters executed at least one painting on this subject) precisely
because the woman reader, as a traditional subject for painting, was the
perfect choice of a figure who blended into the background. One must
also consider that images of men reading from the period tend to dis-
play the male reader in stark contrast to the surroundings. For instance,
in Toulouse Lautrec's painting M. Desire Dihau, Bassoonist of the Opera
(1890), a man in a large top hat sits in the centre of a garden path with
his back to the viewer. He is reading a newspaper or magazine whose
text blurs into the play of light and shadow. His clothes are dark; he
stands out starkly in the midst of the pleasant garden scene. His chair,
too, looks bizarre, stuck as it is in the middle of a garden path. It seems
to be a dining chair, straight-backed and dark, liberated from the
domestic space, rather than a proper garden chair. Male readers, unlike
female readers, appear in bold relief from their surroundings, suggest-
ing an independence or power denied to the female figures; male read-
ers, like the bassoonist, also turn completely away from the viewer,
refusing to become aestheticized objects.
Nineteenth-century art belonging to schools other than Impression-
ism or its close relations also share this characteristic dissolve of the
woman reader. In Albert Moore's A Reader (1877) we again see the dis-
appearance of the female figure, but not through soft brush strokes and
dappled sunlight. While this woman is certainly in the foreground of
the painting (though the painting is not particularly deep - in fact it is
strangely shallow, which contributes to this disappearing act by making
the woman appear part of a single flat plane, rather than an individual
38 Antonia Losano

in an environment), the colour and texture of her dress make her

appear part of the tapestry behind her and the rug in front of her. She is
not what one might consider an 'individual' - she is a geometric shape.
Furthermore, to believe that the woman in A Reader is actually reading is
impossible: she is standing, so obviously posing for a picture that the
book in her hand seems almost like a joke. People rarely read standing
up.7 What, then, is the book for? Let us consider what the painting
would look like if the woman was drawn with crossed arms, rather than
with one forearm lifted to support the thin book. To begin with, the
woman's downcast gaze would need another explanation; her absorp-
tion here is comprehensible, safely explained. As Flint (1993) has sug-
gested, the image of the woman reader provided a simple way to make
women viewable; a woman who reads is absorbed, and therefore
unaware of her surroundings - hence, she is available to be watched
without any threat of a returned gaze.
What conclusions can be drawn from the prevalence of this formal
characteristic of paintings of women reading? The woman in each of
these images literally retreats into the background; she is absorbed by
the colour and line around her, even when - as in Moore's painting -
the book itself stands out boldly. One can read this several ways. Cer-
tainly the sense of harmony and unity these paintings provide suggests a
positive spin on this blending into the background, as if women were
being offered a vision of a fantasy of (at least) partial absorption into
the beauty of the material world (be it natural or interior). On the other
hand, it cannot be ignored that these paintings also offer a vision of self-
loss through reading - yet again, this self-loss can be read as a positive or
negative option for the reader depicted. For the viewers of the painting,
the reading woman becomes merely another part of the landscape, an
additional object of pleasure upon which to gaze, and an undifferenti-
ated object at that.8

The Public Woman Viewer

Images of women viewers, by contrast, offer a different narrative, as we

saw in the Courbet painting. Representations of women viewing paint-
ings offer another illustration of the dangers of female aesthetic con-
sumption, but with certain key contrasts. Women viewing paintings are
forced to share their viewing experiences; in most paintings we can see
what the woman viewer sees, and we participate in her experience of
viewing. We can feel connection with her activity, or we can (as in the
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 39

Courbet painting) attempt to replace her as spectator. The female spec-

tator as subject allows artists to position women within a visible, public,
interpretive community. Reading is radically private, most paintings sug-
gest,9 but viewing art is a public endeavour, done in art galleries, studios,
museums, or wealthy people's homes. Art-viewing, in the nineteenth
century, was a radically public event: visits to the Royal Academy were
part of the social rounds; the opening exhibit of the RA each year
signalled the official opening of the London social season. As Flint
writes, 'by stressing ... social gathering rather than the paintings them-
selves, depictions of art shows, whether in paintings or in periodical
publications, ultimately serve to reinforce the point that spectators are
participating in social rituals, however much any individual act of spec-
tatorship may involve individualized, subjective apprehension and judg-
ment' (The Victorians 176). Women who participated in these events
were therefore open to public scrutiny in a way that they would not be
had they chosen to simply remain at home and read 'in private.' View-
ing opened a woman up to extreme public scrutiny, while paradoxically
at the same time offering her a socially sanctioned excuse to engage
with the public realm.10
Recent criticism, drawing on Lacan, Foucault, Debord, and others,
has exploded with interest in the 'Victorian visual imagination,' as
Christ and Jordan have termed it. Conclusions are mixed, but consensus
does seem to have been reached about one thing: Victorian culture in
England was embarking upon what one critic has termed a 'sort of
frenzy of the visible' (Comolli 122). Critics of nineteenth-century illus-
tration regularly note that the Victorian experience of reading was
heavily visual: books, newspapers, journals, and other printed texts were
in fact multimedia events, heavily dependent upon images. The prolifer-
ation of visual images - illustrations, engravings, paintings in galleries,
advertisements, photographs, and more - turned the Victorians into
visual fanatics, 'fascinated,' as Kate Flint has recently written, 'with the
act of seeing, with the question of the reliability - or otherwise - of the
human eye' (The Victorians 1). Martin Meisel's Realizations: Narrative,
Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England offers a wide-
ranging look at how this fascination with the visual affected the arts;
writers, painters, and dramatists, argues Meisel, shared a common picto-
rial-narrative style.
Women's role in this culture of the visible has been less clearly investi-
gated. The best recent work on women in the Victorian art world
focuses upon women as cultural producers - painters, sculptors, and so
40 Antonia Losano

on - rather than as spectators of the fine arts.11 The closest thing to a

theory of the female spectator of art is available in the recent treatments
of early women art historians. Any nineteenth-century representation of
women viewing must call to mind the rise to prominence of female art
critics during the period. Recent critics and historians have renewed our
acquaintance with the numerous excellent female art historians of the
Victorian period: the works of Anna Jameson, Lady Dilke, Elizabeth
Rigby (Lady Eastlake), Maria Graham (Lady Callcott), Ellen Clayton,
Vernon Lee, and others have been rediscovered and their contributions
to public taste and art history re-evaluated.12
Such female commentators on art had an easier time publishing their
work than one might expect given the cultural moment. Female art his-
torians made excellent use of a prevailing cultural belief in woman's
greater powers of perception, their potent aesthetic sensibility. In fact,
many male writers on women painters of the day, in order to justify their
exclusion of women from the ranks of aesthetic producers, relegated
women to the role of supreme consumers of art - a tactic that gave
women approved access to the realm of art criticism. Elizabeth Rigby,
when speaking of women travellers, insisted that there was a 'peculiar
power inherent in ladies' eyes ... that power of observation, which, so
long as it remains at home counting canvass stitches by the fireside, we
are apt to consider no shrewder than [men's], but which once removed
from the familiar scene, and returned to us in the shape of letters or
books, seldom fails to prove its superiority' (98-9). Her comments on
female travellers could easily extend to female spectatorship; and
indeed, other writers echo Rigby's characterization of women as pecu-
liarly visually perceptive.13
It was this very belief in women's susceptibility to images that, of
course, fueled the cultural concern over women's viewing practices. The
positioning of the female spectator is highly regulated in the period, as
viewing was seen as conferring a certain power upon the spectator. It is
rather a cliche to suggest that the position of beholder confers such
power while the object-of-the-look is positioned as vulnerable or weak,
and that the position of beholder is regularly aligned with the masculine
subject position while the object is coded feminine. Cultural critics from
John Berger to Laura Mulvey to feminist Freudians and Lacanians14
have investigated this troublesome structure of the visual act: 'In a world
ordered by sexual imbalance,' writes Mulvey, 'pleasure in looking has
been split between active/male and passive/female' (19). The simplicity
of this paradigm has recently been radically complicated; the easy bifur-
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 41

cation along gender lines has been shown to be historically and theoret-
ically problematic. However, if we confine ourselves to how the act of
looking at paintings is represented within paintings, we can see that
the 'powerful male beholder/vulnerable female object' paradigm is
unavoidably apparent; we can therefore envision what a female subject
would be up against in stepping into the position of masculine beholder
within the frames of a painting.
For a woman to step out of the frame, so to speak, and become a
viewer in her own right meant negotiating a dangerous path. What do
representations of women viewers suggest was at work in the cultural
reaction to their viewing? One answer comes from a genre of painting
that I call the 'female invasion of the studio' genre, which includes such
works as William Merritt Chase's In the Studio (1880), In the Studio (1892),
and In the Studio, Interior: Young Woman at a Table (c. 1892-3); and Mat-
isse's The Painting Lesson (1916). The genre's most famous representa-
tive, however, is Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who painted an entire
series of female invasions (fig. 1.2). Corot's series is, on the surface, sur-
prisingly like a reading woman series. His female figures are indulging in
moments of private absorption, for which reading, not viewing, is the
model. However, their viewing oscillates between the public and the pri-
vate, because the figures in Corot's series are models, and they are always
essentially intruders in the studio space. That is, they have a function
there to be looked at, not to look; the space does not belong to them, as
it does in most of the reading women images (which show the women in
their own bedrooms or parlours or gardens) and the models all appear
to be taking a rest from their proper role of being looked at to perform
a bit of looking of their own. This intrusion, I argue, is characteristic of
almost all the woman viewing images; women do not belong in the posi-
tion of viewer, as we saw in the painting by Courbet, and any viewing
activity is explicitly or implicitly a transgression.
As in the Courbet painting, if on a different scale, each painting in
Corot's studio series offers the viewer two images to look at: the model
herself in the studio and the painting on the easel. Unlike images of
women readers, in which the viewer cannot see what the woman reads,
in Corot's paintings we are vouchsafed a vision of whatever the model
herself sees. This does several things. First, it bifurcates the viewer's
gaze, releasing some of the attention directed at the woman, which is
not the case in an image of a woman reader. Additionally, this forces the
viewer to imagine the viewing woman as an interpretive presence in her
own right, part of the interpretive community with which we must join if
42 Antonia Losano

Fig. 1.2. The Artist's Studio, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (c. 1868). The Widener
Collection, Image ©2004 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 43

we are to fully engage the painting. She is thinking about the painting
on the easel in some way, considering it, judging it. As with the nude
model in the Courbet painting, the viewing model in the Corot series
becomes our alter ego as a viewer; we are forced to recognize her as a
viewing subject even as we attempt to reposition her as an aesthetic
object.
Perhaps it is the shared activity - she is looking, we are looking -
which makes images of women viewing so distinctive and potent. If we
look at Corot's painting of a woman reading, La Lettre (1865), a compo-
sitional (indeed, postural) distinction between women reading and
women viewing becomes apparent: the woman reader has her head
tilted downward, her eyes modestly cast down at the letter; women view-
ers look up. While this is an anatomical fact of life (one rarely views
paintings in one's lap), it also signals a symbolic difference between rep-
resentations of reading and viewing. Reading can preserve the modest
downcast look proper to ladies, while viewing art requires an erect
posture suggestive of outward rather than inward focus. Furthermore,
the woman reading the letter is enclosed within the protective circle of
the chair, whose arm provides a barrier between the reading figure and
the viewer. Although the figure is a model - and indeed close observa-
tion of the painting reveals that the scene is Corot's studio just as in the
other sequence - she is profoundly separate from the viewer; she is
engaged in an activity that we cannot share.

Viewing Pictures

Representations of women viewing - and this is no surprise, perhaps —

negotiate women's position in the visual aesthetic order. That is, the cul-
tural formation with which artists who depict women viewing must con-
tend involves the 'classic' aesthetic scenario of male viewer/female art
object; artists like Courbet, Corot, or Cope seem to strive to uphold this
primal aesthetic scene. Charlotte Bronte provides one way out of this
aesthetic bind. In Jane Eyre, reading — and the complex of associations
reading implies - offers Bronte's heroine a retreat from the tyrannies of
the visual. But to understand more fully Bronte's use of the visual, let us
consider a scene from her final novel, Villette, which features the hero-
ine Lucy Snowe in an art gallery - perhaps the most famous literary rep-
resentation of the attempted regulation of female spectatorship in
British fiction of the period. The scene shows that Bronte would have
been aware of the social hindrances to female spectatorship, the way
viewing in public was highly problematic for the exercise of indepen-
44 Antonia Losano

dent female perception. After Lucy Snowe's 'nervous fever,' she conva-
lesces with her friends the Brettons; to amuse her, Dr John Bretton
escorts her to a museum. As Lucy tells us, 'I liked to visit the picture-
galleries, and I dearly liked to be left there alone.' She continues:

In company, a wretched idiosyncrasy forbade me to see much or to feel

anything. In unfamiliar company, where it was necessary to maintain a flow
of talk on the subjects in presence, half an hour would knock me up, with a
combined pressure of physical lassitude and entire mental capacity. I never
yet saw the well-reared child, much less the educated adult, who could not
put me to shame, by the sustained intelligence of its demeanour under the
ordeal of a conversable sociable visitation of pictures. (189, italics mine)

Picture-going, for the bulk of the public whom Lucy describes, is a social
activity, as her experience in the gallery demonstrates; she watches
groups of gallery-goers chat together, walk together, as they examine the
paintings. Lucy, being a Bronte heroine, is naturally perverse: she wishes
to treat picture-viewing like reading, and in fact she makes the connec-
tion by insisting, 'it seemed to me that an original and good Picture was
just as scarce as an original and good book' (190). Remember that Jane,
in Spivak's words, 'cares little for reading what is meant to be read'
(246): similarly, Lucy cares little for the publicity of viewing. She longs
for the privacy of reading, and attempts to transform the visual experi-
ence into a solitary interpretive moment.
The picture Lucy describes most fully is an enormous canvas that
'seemed to consider itself the queen of the collection,' depicting Cleo-
patra. Lucy has no praise for the image, considering the larger-than-life,
scantily clad, reclining figure morally repugnant. Not for its indecency,
however. Rather, Lucy is offended by the languorousness and size of the
woman: 'She lay half-reclined on a couch: why, it would be difficult to
say; broad daylight blazed round her; she appeared in hearty health,
strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks; she could not plead a
weak spine; she ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt
upright. She had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa' (191).
Similarly, it is not the figure's nudity that disgusts Lucy, but her ineffi-
ciency as a domestic manager: 'out of abundance of material - seven-
and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery - she managed to make ineffi-
cient raiment. Then, for the wretched untidiness surrounding her,
there could be no excuse' (191). Lucy makes no mention of the figure
as sexually immoral; this is not the moral axis upon which Lucy judges
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 45

the figure. The erotic shock of the painting is, however, deeply distress-
ing to M. Paul, the despotic Catholic professor with whom Lucy works,
and who eventually becomes her fiance. He discovers her in the gallery
and is, famously, appalled to find her — an unmarried woman — encoun-
tering such a painting. What is acceptable for men or 'des dames' to
view is not at all appropriate for a young woman; instead, M. Paul drags
Lucy off to a corner and forces her to look at a series of four paintings
representing 'The Life of a Woman' - sentimental, traditional represen-
tations that Lucy finds 'bloodless and brainless' (193).
The scene dramatizes the seminal elements in the cultural negotia-
tions surrounding women's spectatorship in England in the mid-nine-
teenth century. First, viewing is a public matter, done in galleries and in
company. Looking at paintings involves talking about them, actively and
immediately interpreting them, and vocalizing that interpretation in
public: Lucy, after M. Paul leaves, takes a turn around the gallery with
Dr John, and the two carry on a dialogue about the merits and faults of
various paintings. For someone who 'dearly liked to be left ... alone,'
Lucy has now been forced to hold two aesthetic conversations during
one brief trip to a gallery. Second, museum-going brings women almost
unavoidably into proximity with the human nude, which could heighten
their awareness of human sexuality.15 Novels (especially French ones,
thought the British) might contain erotic scenes, but they rarely offered
detailed descriptions of human anatomy.
The first element of spectatorship - its public side - is unique to
painting. Scenes of women viewing illustrate public transgression, while
scenes of women reading focus on the representation of individual inte-
riority (which, for women in the period, was also a kind of transgres-
sion). Viewing offers Lucy Snowe a chance to exercise her powers of
social rebellion, but also forces her to submit, at least in part, to the pub-
lic middle-class codes of female spectatorship. Lucy has, privately, trans-
lated the image of Cleopatra into her own narrative (of lethargy and
indolence), just as Jane proffered her own 'reading' of the Bewick birds.
Lucy's narrativizings, however, are pushed out into the verbal, public
realm - she must articulate her ideas about the paintings in question to
M. Paul or Dr John, and she must receive their judgments in return.
Lucy is forced, because of the public nature of spectatorship, into direct
conflict with masculine control of the visual realm in the figures of the
tyrannical M. Paul and the more conventional Dr John. Both attempt -
and to a certain extent are able - to force Lucy to accept (or at least
countenance) their aesthetic interpretations.
46 Antonia Losano

Lucy's aesthetic experience has the same result as Jane's: both are
'locked up' physically - Jane is locked up literally, in the Red Room;
Lucy is figuratively locked into the social confines of sitting where M.
Paul tells her and walking through the gallery with Dr John. The pun-
ishment for reading by yourself is to be locked away by yourself: Jane's
statement of her own independence (by reading privately) is punished
in kind. On the other hand, Lucy's punishment for her independence
in viewing alone is to be placed in company - to be locked into a public
environment and visually regulated. The punishments fit, not the
crimes (since what both heroines want is solitude), but the public con-
ceptions of the acts of reading and viewing: the reader is forced to
endure the ultimate in readerly solitude, the viewer is forced to be in
company.
If we return again to Jane Eyre, we can see at last the repercussions of
her curious blending of the verbal and the visual. Remember that Jane's
reading was solitary, dangerous, yet striking in its ability to introduce
radical female subjectivity. Reading, for Bronte, is simultaneously dan-
gerous and empowering. It makes Jane - and women in pictures of
women reading - able to disappear. This can signify a powerful libera-
tion from social observation, yet it can turn ugly, as it does with Jane:
reading makes you vulnerable in your secluded retreat, and so John
Reed finds Jane easily, because she has literally boxed herself in. Neither
can the women reading in the paintings 'hide' entirely from the viewer;
their activity makes them easy prey for prying eyes. Viewing is another
story: women view in public and are much easier prey, yet they are also
socially engaged, exercising a public power, with (as we have seen with
Lucy) social sanction for their endeavour. Neither position is without
danger, but neither is without potential rewards. Bronte seems to have
tried them both on for size in her continued struggle to represent
independent-minded nineteenth-century women.
Edgar Degas's painting of Mary Cassatt and her sister at the Louvre
(fig. 1.3) offers a fitting conclusion to this argument. The painting
shows two women in a gallery space; the sisters in the image are not
only biological sisters, but nod towards the relation between the 'sister
arts,' and can be read as a metaphoric meeting of Charlotte Bronte's
two heroines, Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe. The figure of Cassatt's sister
in the foreground sits behind what is probably the guide for the gal-
lery exhibition;16 the figure in the background (Cassatt herself) heads
out into the exhibition space beyond. The reading figure is tucked in a
nook as Jane was, 'safe,' while the viewer is heading out into the space
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 47

Fig. 1.3. Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery, Edgar Degas, 1885.
Bequest of Kate L. Brewster. Reproduction, The Art Institute of Chicago.
48 Antonia Losano

of the public, of possible danger, like Lucy Snowe who charges off
alone to the Continent to try her fate. Like the figure of Cassatt in the
painting, however, Lucy stands with her back to us, retaining some
semblance of privacy in a public arena.17 The reading woman sits still
for our gaze, but the viewer's back is to us, and we cannot create sub-
jectivity for the figure. She is upright, in motion, heading out into the
public arena. Similarly, Bronte's earlier heroine Jane remains in a read-
ing posture, so to speak, throughout the novel. Jane might try her luck
in the wide world, but she always ends up back inside, with her family
(as at the Moor House) or in private. She sits still and forces us to
acknowledge her internal subject-position, the intensity of her inter-
nal cogitations. Yet the reading figure here is also nearly obscured by
the very book she holds; the book along with the wall provides a
'nook' from within which the female figure can engage in her own pri-
vate speculations. In fact the 'reader' appears - like Jane - to be view-
ing as well, looking out sideways at a painting from behind the guide.
Hence, at the same time as these figures are set in apparent contrast,
Degas's image also dramatizes the intimate connection between the
two aesthetic activities that Bronte herself insisted upon. Given the pre-
ponderance of disappearing female readers and overly visible female
viewers that mid-century painting has to offer, it seems likely that
Bronte was herself writing into and out of a tradition that saw the two
modes of female consumption as representing different dangers for
the women involved in them. In Jane Eyre, reading provides a retreat
from the dangers of the visual. Perhaps Rochester's famous punish-
ment at the end of the novel is not only Bronte's way of subduing a
powerful hero, as Gilbert and Gubar and others have argued, but also
her way of forcing him to enter into a verbally based mode of percep-
tion rather than a visual mode - a mode that has threatened Jane
throughout the novel, ever since she was forced to stand on a plat-
form at Lowood to be stared at by her classmates. The entire novel
could therefore be seen as a determined if incomplete eradication of
the dangers of the visual, culminating in the eventual creation of a
world in which Jane can look freely, but where no one else can look
at Jane. Even when Rochester's vision partially recovers at the end of
the novel, Bronte is careful to tell us that he turns his fuzzy vision on
candles, a necklace, and his child's eyes - but never on Jane. She, like
many of her later nineteenth-century counterparts in paintings, has
disappeared from his view.
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 49

NOTES

1 It is not only that Jane's reading of Bewick leads to her cousin's cruelty and
hence to Jane's anger and imprisonment; it is also that her rebuttal to her
cousin John Reed ('you are like the Roman emperors!') comes directly from
her reading (T had read Goldsmith's "History of Rome"') (8).
2 Flint's brief reading of this painting in The Woman Reader is my starting point
for what follows.
3 Cats, says Freud ('On Narcissism'), are in a class with women, criminals, and
children as supreme examples of narcissism.
4 While this essay considers paintings and texts from the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, later paintings also share this trait: see, for example,
Macarina Reading (1979) by Ruby Aranguiz. The face and lower body of the
figure blend entirely into the background; only the green jacket allows the
woman to become visible against the background. The book also shares the
fate of the woman's lower body, as both become part of the orange and
brown background pattern.
5 Another Homer image, The New Novel (1877), breaks with this pattern. The
painting shows a young woman lying on her side in the grass with a novel in
one hand; her dress is a clear vivid orange that stands out dramatically from
the dark, obscure background.
6 John George Brown, Girl by the Seacoast, offers another startling contrast to
this tradition: the woman reading in his picture is alarmingly, almost danger-
ously, set apart from her surroundings, high upon a rock that is jutting out
into the sky.
7 Gwen John's work offers an exception to this rule; in A Lady Reading (1910-
11) and Girl Reading at the Window (1911), the female figures are standing
while they read, apparently so involved in their books that they ignore the
chairs available to them. Note, too, that in both of John's paintings the
woman reader emphatically does not disappear into the background. John
critiques this tradition by making her figures radically separate in colour and
form from their backgrounds; neither of the figures can be read as losing
identity or position by reading.
8 This movement towards objedification is what allows such paintings as Mar-
tineau's The Last Chapter to become a kind of 'disappearing woman' image
even though neither its composition nor its colouring justifies such a read-
ing. The woman in Martineau's painting is extremely foregrounded, which
makes it quite rare amongst nineteenth-century representations of reading
women. However, Martineau's point seems to be that the woman reading
50 Antonia Losano

should be part of her own background - that is, she should be in bed (sug-
gested by the reclining couch behind her). Reading keeps her out of her
proper background.
9 There are, of course, numerous images from the nineteenth century that
show women reading in public - in libraries, with friends or relatives, and
the like. However, the reading experience remains private, even in a public
space; the woman reader's absorption is in conflict with the public space.
10 The Lady of Shalott, who might stand as a representative of the repercus-
sions of female looking, meets a symbolic fate: because she dares to look she
is condemned not only to death but to be stared at by a crowd of people.
Lancelot's verbal epitaph for her, 'she had a lovely face,' also signals her pun-
ishment: to be looked at.
11 See Cherry; Nunn; Chadwick, chap. 6; Marsh; and Orr.
12 See, in particular, Sherman and Holcomb, chaps. 1-7. Also see Schaeffer,
The Forgotten Female Aesthetes.
13 See Uzanne, 'Women Artists and Bluestockings'; Moore, 'Sex in Art'; and
Scott, 'Women at Work: Their Functions in Art'; all in Harrison, Wood, and
Gaiger.
14 See Mulvey, and Grosz.
15 This last, indeed, was a frequent complaint by writers in England during the
Victorian era; statues and paintings were famously draped to hide their geni-
tals, and young women were refused admittance to art schools because they
were not allowed to study 'from the life,' that is, the nude.
16 There are numerous British engravings, such as one by Mary Ellen Edwards
('At The Royal Academy,' from The Graphic, 1871), that show women in gal-
leries looking dutifully at gallery guides. Just as both men in Villette attempt
to 'guide' Lucy's interpretation of paintings, so, too, might the presence of
these guides suggest a forceful re-positioning of women out of the poten-
tially powerful viewing position and back into a more vulnerable readerly
position. Lucy rejects such guidance, and Jane skilfully reinterprets the
reader-position into a less vulnerable, radically independent one. (I thank
Jennifer Phegley for bringing to my attention the numerous representations
of women reading gallery guides.)
17 Critics have noted that Lucy lies to us. She hides data from the reader in a
way utterly foreign to Jane, whose first-person narrative foregrounds an
angry forthrightness. Lucy, on the other hand, spends much of her narrative
withholding information, metaphorically turning her back to us. See Cherry
53-64; Gilleit 158-72; Dodd, in Orr, 188-90.
18 For an excellent reading of the novel as the triumph of Jane's literal and
metaphoric point of view, see Gezari (chap. 3).
 Textual and Visual Reading in Charlotte Bronte's Fiction 51

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Risk. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992.
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2 'Success Is Sympathy': Uncle Tom's Cabin
and the Woman Reader

ELIZABETH FEKETE TRUBEY

In an 1852 review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, George

Sand explains that the novel's political efficacy depended upon its abil-
ity to foster affective identification between its readers and characters.
'We should feel,' she states, 'that genius is heart, that power is faith, that
talent is sincerity, and, finally, success is sympathy, since this book over-
comes us, since it penetrates the breast, pervades the spirit, and fills us
with a strange sentiment of mingled tenderness and admiration for a
poor negro' (461). She points out that the book's power to persuade its
audience of slavery's evil originates in the sympathy aroused by charac-
ters like Uncle Tom. Stowe's descriptive language practically invades
readers' bodies, filling them with the sensation of kinship - 'mingled
tenderness and admiration' - which is the surest sign that Uncle Tom's
Cabin has performed its office properly. Sand's claim that, for Stowe,
'success is sympathy' was historically correct on two levels. First, the
arousal of 'feminine' sympathy caused many readers to 'feel right,' as
Stowe put it, to know in their hearts that slavery is wrong (Uncle Tom's
Cabin 385); second, the extent of the proliferation of this sympathy was
manifested in the novel's unprecedented commercial success. Signifi-
cantly, Stowe, in the novel and elsewhere, also imagined a third version
of 'success' that extended beyond feeling: her women readers' proper
feeling would lead to action in the public sphere that would bring about
slavery's end. Responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin suggest, however, that
this ultimate victory remained elusive, as Stowe and her readers often
ended up at cross-purposes. While Uncle Tom's Cabin aimed to revise the
social function of women's reading by reaching into the political arena,
its sympathetic women readers often collapsed the distinction between
private feeling and public action. This reading experience begs us to
54 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

rethink our understanding both of Stowe's women readers and of nine-

teenth-century women's reading in general: in fostering pleasure that
was simultaneously domestic and political in nature, reading tended to
focus women's attention more on their own circumstances than on the
plight of slaves.
In connecting abolitionism with sentimental reading, Uncle Tom's
Cabin effectively blurs the boundary between public politics and private
affect. Stowe recasts the significance of a woman's ability to read sympa-
thetically so that, instead of ostensibly serving as a means to instruct
readers in true womanhood as in many nineteenth-century sentimental
novels, reading as a woman takes on the weight of a nation's fate. By
associating sentimental, identificative reading practice with ending sla-
very, Uncle Tom's Cabin fundamentally alters the relationship between
women and politics traditionally imagined by the discourse of true wom-
anhood. A woman's innate sympathy and sensitivity do not de facto
exclude her from public politics, the novel suggests, but rather demand
her participation in a sphere to which traditionally she has not had
access. This tension between the rhetoric Stowe uses to exhort her
women readers and the end to which she writes is evident in women's
responses to the novel, which often focus as much on the issue of femi-
nine propriety as on that of slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin encourages its
audience to merge an abolitionist sensibility with domestic femininity,
yet the very excesses of 'womanly' emotion the novel fosters tended to
overshadow the possibilities for anti-slavery mobilization in sympathetic
readers. The pain of slavery and the pleasure of reading Uncle Tom's
Cabin mingled to focus women's eyes on the deepening tension over the
limits of 'feminine' propriety and the domestic sphere itself, in turn
revealing how the act of reading itself became caught up in nineteenth-
century conflicts over gender.
As scholars concerned with race and gender have revived the study of
the novel, they have typically focused on the first two aspects of sympa-
thy's 'success': its ability to convert readers to abolitionism and to make
Uncle Tom's Cabin a commercial triumph. Like Sand, they tend to tie the
novel's sentimental qualities - its religiosity, emotionalism, and empha-
sis on the female-centred domestic sphere - to its political and cultural
power among readers. Feminist critics have placed particular weight on
Stowe's assumption that mothers are uniquely suited for the empathy
necessary to abolish slavery, a belief that sets her women readers at the
epicentre of her political and moral crusade. Jane Tompkins, for one,
reads Uncle Tom's Cabin as 'a monumental effort to reorganize culture
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 55

from the woman's point of view' (124). By 'resting her case [against sla-
very], absolutely, on the saving power of Christian love, and on the sanc-
tity of motherhood and the family,' Stowe 'relocates the center of power
in American life ... in the kitchen. And that means that the new society
[she envisions] will not be controlled by men, but by women' (145).
Stowe's women readers, by virtue of their femininity, are imagined
as the bearers of far-reaching cultural power, responsible for ending
slavery and establishing a Utopian, domestic America.
At the very heart of this potential power shift is Stowe's imagined
ideal reader; indeed, by combining calls for reader-character identifica-
tions with detailed metatextual instructions, Stowe schools her implied
audience in the correct way to interpret the novel and to respond to its
political exhortations.1 At the end of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe asks 'what
can any individual do' to end slavery, answering that 'they can see to it
that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles
every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily
and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to
the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter!' (385).
Stowe's discussions of sympathy rely upon a set of assumptions about
women's inherent ability to empathize and identify with others, and
these moments throughout the text establish that this right feeling is in
its essence 'feminine.' Specifically, Stowe zeroes in on maternal affect.
As Kate Flint explains, maternity was thought to carry with it 'the ability
to venture with sympathetic identification into the lives of others,' and
thus 'women's susceptibility to identificatory modes of reading was per-
ceived to be related to the inescapable facts about the way in which her
biological make-up influenced the operations of her mind' (31). By vir-
tue of what was considered to be their physiological and psychological
nature, the women Stowe includes among her implied audience possess
the potential to become ideal readers.
For Stowe, it is mothers, fictional and real, who are most capable of
identifying with the slaves in need of their assistance. For instance, early
in the novel the kindly Mrs Shelby excoriates her husband's decision to
sell a young slave boy because to do so would separate him from his
mother, Eliza, and would disrupt the sanctity of the family. Likewise, a
girl like Eva St Clare can have her developing maternal feelings aroused
by the injustice of slavery - she loves the rambunctious Topsy because
the girl hasn't '"any father, or mother, or friends,"' and therefore
assumes a familial role herself (245). The most poignant example of
the power of motherly sympathy comes as Eliza, fleeing north from the
56 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

Shelby plantation with her son in tow, is able to gain protection from a
white family by forming a maternal bond. She asks Mrs Bird if she has
ever lost a child, a question that Stowe then turns outward to include
her readers, writing, 'oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in
your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you
like the opening again of a little grave?' (75). Indeed, it is this bond
between mothers originating in a sense of loss that Stowe claims
inspired the book itself: 'I have been the mother of seven children, the
most beautiful and the most loved of whom lies buried near my Cincin-
nati residence. It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learned
what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from
her,' Stowe wrote in an 1852 letter to abolitionist Eliza Cabot Follen. She
continued, 'much that is in [Uncle Tom's Cabin] had its root in the awful
scenes and bitter sorrow of that summer. It has left now, I trust, no trace
on my mind except a deep compassion for the sorrowful, especially for
mothers who are separated from their children' (413). While the novel
presents a variety of arguments against slavery - including George Har-
ris's use of revolutionary language to decry America's betrayal of equal
rights and St Clare's theory of the destructive power of slavery as a social
institution - it is Stowe's deployment of maternal identification that
most frequently and touchingly makes her case.
Importantly, Stowe links this maternal capacity for sympathy with the
ability to read the Bible 'correctly,' which she in turn suggests leads to
'feeling right' and to abolitionism. Rhetoric of true womanhood posited
that the source of female strength lay in a woman's inherent religiosity
and piety, and Uncle Tom's Cabin explicitly connects these 'feminine'
traits to sentimental literacy.2 Stowe teaches her white characters - and
her white readers - the proper way to deal with the Bible before showing
them how to interpret slavery. One of the novel's more overtly political
tactics is to guide readers through the contemporary debate over the
role of the Bible in justifying either slavery or abolitionism, ultimately
teaching them that slavery is counter to God's will. In the years leading
up to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the

debate over who was misinterpreting the Bible and therefore blaspheming
was conducted at a [high] pitch. Because of the unquestioned authority of
the Bible, it became the favorite weapon of both pro- and antislavery
forces. The abolitionists positioned themselves as driven by a Christian
imperative to combat evil, and the South responded by 'discovering' the
Biblical defense of slavery. (O'Connell 21)
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 57

Within this debate, abolitionists tended to have a more difficult time

using the Bible to support their cause than those who supported slavery.
For those who adhered to a literal interpretation of the text, as many
Protestant abolitionists did, anti-slavery passages were hard to find: Old
Testament patriarchs owned slaves; Moses regulated slavery but did not
condemn it; Jesus said nothing against slavery; and St Paul advised the
slave Onesimus to return to his master. Against this daunting evidence,
abolitionists tended to turn to the Golden Rule or to logical arguments
against using the Bible to promote slavery. Lydia Maria Child, for exam-
ple, claimed that although Christ had never explicitly forbidden Chris-
tians to own slaves, he also never forbade counterfeiting; it was illogical,
she suggested, to conclude that Christ's silence implied acceptance.3
In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe rehearses both sides of the debate, using
ironic descriptions of pro-slavery clergy to suggest that the Bible, as the
source of Christian moral authority, necessarily teaches that slavery is
wrong. For example, Stowe describes a conversation between several
ladies and gentlemen on the boat that carries Uncle Tom to New
Orleans. A pro-slavery clergyman tries to convince his listeners that the
curse God levies on Ham for seeing his father, Noah, naked applies to
Africans:

'It's undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should
be servants, - kept in a low condition ... "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of
servants shall he be," the scripture says.'
... [He continued,] 'It pleased Providence, for some inscrutable reason,
to doom the race to bondage, ages ago; and we must not set up our opin-
ion against that.' (107)

The 'Cursed be Canaan' passage Stowe refers to was frequently cited by

pro-slavery advocates; Mary H. Eastman, for instance, in the introduc-
tion to her 1852 anti-Tom novel Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or, Southern Life as it
Is, quotes it and asks, 'Is it not preposterous that any man, any Christian,
should read these verses and say slavery was not instituted by God as a
curse on Ham and ... [his] posterity?' (14). Eastman goes on to claim
that abolitionists' reliance on the Golden Rule 'is absurd: it might then
apply to the child, who would have his father no longer control him;
who would no longer that the man to whom he is bound should have a
right to direct him. Thus the foundations of society would be shaken,
nay, destroyed' (19). Stowe suggests this interpretation of the Bible is
impure, corrupted by the economic forces of slavery; St Clare says that if
58 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

the price of cotton should drop, another reading of scripture would

arise: 'What a flood of light would pour into the church, all at once, and
how immediately it would be discovered that everything in the Bible
and reason went the other way!' (160).
Given this heated rhetorical battle over the 'proper' interpretation of
the Bible, Stowe's emphasis on reading scripture becomes particularly
relevant to an understanding of the power to change society she locates
in her audience. Stowe's female characters possess an innate ability to
read the Bible correctly and consequently can convert men to an anti-
slavery point of view. Mrs Shelby, Mrs Bird, and Eva are exemplars to
men, teaching them that religion-fuelled empathy - not the reasoning
used by politicians and businessmen, which has a way 'of coming round
and round a plain right thing' (70) - demands one abhor slavery. For
instance, Mrs Bird tells her senator husband, '"I don't know anything
about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed
the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate"' (69). Because
she understands that the Bible demands sympathy for those in need, she
can see beyond political exigencies to the moral grounds that underlie
slavery; she can thus convince Senator Bird, who had voted for the 1850
Fugitive Slave Act, to aid Eliza in her escape. To Stowe, it is only once one
has learned to read the Bible properly, with a sympathetic heart, that one
can begin to 'feel right' about slavery. All readers, male and female, must
thus learn to read as women before their emotions can be properly
aroused to 'awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race' (xiii).
Stowe politicizes the act of sentimental reading, engaging her audi-
ence in the slavery debate by virtue of their skills as Bible readers. The
extent to which Stowe thus associates ending slavery with the develop-
ment of readerly sympathy has led feminist critics who follow Tompkins
to emphasize what they see as the culturally subversive power of femi-
nine affect. Elizabeth Barnes claims that 'the dynamic process of sympa-
thy that attempts to break down barriers between real and fictive bodies'
helps a 'nation of readers on the brink of war ... [form] filial attach-
ment [s] to create and sustain the idea of the American democratic fam-
ily' (95, 98). Similarly, Karen R. Smith posits the potentially radical
implications of 'the reader [who] takes on and is transformed by the
suffering of the represented victim,' examining 'images of reading as a
form of martyrdom that metaphorically bestows upon the emphatically
suffering reader the power to transcend difference' (352). Smith and
Barnes both emphasize the power of sentimental reading to form bonds
that subvert the racist ideology that underlies slavery; as white readers
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 59

identify with suffering black characters, they are moved to a more

expansive notion of democracy and to the desire to change their behav-
iour to better help those victims. Robyn Warhol explains the political
ramifications of such sentimental identification: 'Stowe evidently
intended the realism - or, what she saw as the "living dramatic reality" - of
her novel to work magic among her readers, to move them to sympathy
and to action' (287). Such descriptions of the 'magic' performed by the
novel open the compelling possibility that the piety, purity, submissive-
ness, and domesticity attributed to the mid-nineteenth-century cult of
true womanhood could be interpreted as a sign not of patriarchal
oppression but of matriarchal strength.
However, this mainstream feminist argument for the radical cultural
power of sentimental readership does not fully account for the reactions
of actual readers in literary reviews and fan mail. Without including the
thoughts of actual respondents, such interpretations can focus only on
Stowe's vision of her ideal reader. Attempts to extrapolate the cultural
effect of the novel's depiction of sentiment and women's reading from
this constructed ideal are necessarily limited, leading scholars to make
several problematic assumptions about Stowe's actual readers. First,
claims for the power of the novel's vision of a slavery-free America pre-
suppose a friendly and sympathetic audience; in fact, there were proba-
bly just as many resistant readers as receptive ones. Second and more
important here, while both Stowe and feminist critics imagined that
feeling right would inevitably move readers, as Warhol says, 'to sympathy
and action,' women's responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin present an inward-
looking form of engagement, calling into question a continuum of
increasingly politicized and public action posited by Stowe.
The novel's female characters represent the most traditional end of
the continuum of responses to slavery that Stowe envisions. The female
exemplars in Uncle Tom's Cabin are all roused by reading and experience
to translate their abolitionist emotions into private, politicized deeds.
Mrs Bird, for example, a sensitive woman whose 'unusually gentle and
sympathetic nature' is thrown into a passion by 'anything in the shape of
cruelty,' has become an abolitionist because of her Bible reading (68).
Her 'proper' reading, notably, has given her the impetus to resist her
husband and try to influence his thinking about the Fugitive Slave Act.
However, she goes a step further than simply denouncing the law,
exclaiming, '"It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it,
for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shallhave a chance, I
do!"' (69). Mrs Bird here states a willingness to take illegal steps to end
60 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

an institution she feels violates God's will and the dictates of her own
heart. Jean Fagin Yellin admiringly calls Mrs Bird 'the most important
model for Stowe's readers among women' (96). However, it is important
to point out that her activism is radically contingent - it is conditional
upon Eliza's arrival at her doorstep. She hopes to have the chance to
break the law, but will not on her own take measures to ensure that
she will be put in this position. Once Eliza appears, though, Mrs Bird
welcomes the opportunity to act and, within the safe confines of the
domestic sphere, breaks public law.
Eva St Clare's plan, when compared to Mrs Bird's, marks a more activ-
ist place on Stowe's continuum of appropriate female responses to
slavery. Eva desires to '"buy a place in the free states, and take all our
people there, and hire teachers, to teach them to read and write"'
(230). She wants to teach slaves to be 'Biblically literate' so that they can
fully experience the reality of God's word; she believes that it is through
the act of reading that the gospel can become manifest.4 However, in
the early 1850s, there were laws on the books in most southern states
prohibiting teaching slaves to read and write. Most of these laws did not
make it into the revised Black Codes of the mid-1850s, but slaves who
were caught reading were still (at least apocryphally) subject to beat-
ings, brandings, and amputations. Eva wants not only to break laws pro-
hibiting black literacy, but also to relocate her household and free her
slaves in order to do so; her new home in the North will become a polit-
icized refuge for blacks seeking education. As Yellin argues, Eva's plan
signals a need for women to take exceptional measures to end slavery's
injustice (92-3). However, Eva's plan can never be put into action
because of her untimely death.
Mrs Bird and Eva are examples of good women who desire to take
action, but the effectiveness of their plans is to a degree undercut by the
conventions of sentimental fiction: providential coincidence and melo-
dramatic death detract from the power of both characters' proposals.
Their efforts are bounded by the domestic sphere and the ideology of
true womanhood; each plan, while requiring action that breaks public
law, allows women to maintain a sense of 'feminine' propriety. In the
novel's conclusion, however, Stowe advocates a response that is less con-
strained by the limits of domestic femininity. Even as Stowe writes in her
'Concluding Remarks' that the 'one thing that every individual can do'
is to 'feel right,'' she advocates that women take measures that fit notions
of activism more familiar to today's readers (385). Stowe writes that
Northerners - women included - need to realize that slavery is not 'a
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 61

thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over in silence,' imply-

ing that her readers must actively lend their voices to the abolitionist
cause (384). But she is even more direct in her challenge, asking, 'Shall
the doors of churches and school-houses be shut upon [slaves]?' (385).
She answers her question with an activist plan of recolonizing slaves to
Liberia: 'Let the church of the north receive ... [slaves] to the educating
advantages of Christian republican society and schools, until they have
attained to somewhat of a moral and intellectual maturity, and then
assist them in their passage to those shores, where they may put in prac-
tice the lessons they have learned in America' (386). By referring to
churches and schools, Stowe looks to social institutions traditionally
located within women's sphere but outside the home, rousing her
women readers to righteous work. Mobilizing churches and schools
gives women the means to enter into a more public phase of the aboli-
tion movement; instead of strictly keeping women's efforts within the
home, in the novel's final moments Stowe pushes for action that
exceeds the purely domestic arena.
One could perhaps argue that because Stowe frames her exhortations
as questions at the end of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the call to action is implied
at best. However, in the years following the novel's publication, Stowe
claimed that women should move towards an even more expansive
notion of public activism than she put forth in the novel. In 1854, as the
debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act grew more heated, she reiterated
that, for women, the development of sympathy should be the root of
larger-scale action against slavery:

The first duty of every American woman at this time is to thoroughly

understand the subject for herself, and to feel that she is bound to use her
influence for the right. Then they can obtain signatures to petitions to our
national legislature. They can spread information upon this vital topic
throughout their neighborhoods. They can employ lecturers to lay the sub-
ject before the people. They can circulate the speeches of their members
of Congress that bear upon the subject.
Above all, it seems to be necessary and desirable that we should make
this subject a matter of earnest prayer. (Charles Edward Stowe, 259-60)

As at the end of the novel, here Stowe indicates that before any 'politi-
cal' action can be taken, women must first come to understand the
issues that surround slavery and abolitionism, presumably through read-
ing books like her own. But once they 'feel right,' women ought to
62 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

become agents of change: through grassroots measures in the public

sphere, they should spread the abolitionist word through their commu-
nities and - surprisingly, given the novel's disavowal of a corrupt politi-
cal arena - engage directly with legislators. Stowe even associates
'earnest prayer' with this kind of explicitly political action; it, too, is a
means of becoming engaged in public abolitionist discourse. By 1854
Stowe had reached the conclusion that domestic sentiment and limited
female response are not sufficient; women must more directly influence
the public domain in order to be effective in ending slavery.
Stowe offers a number of potential measures by which women can
facilitate the end of slavery, ranging from wielding emotional influence
over husbands, to limited domestic civil disobedience, to weighing in on
public discourse. These strategies originate in acts of proper reading,
moments in which sentimental, feminine identification allows women
temporarily to elide the differences between themselves and the slaves
about whom they read. Reading is thus both a means to information,
teaching women about slavery's evil, and a means to action, fostering
the necessary sympathy and tears. Implicit in Stowe's concept of senti-
mental readership is a redefining of womanhood. In the novel and in
her later writing Stowe appropriates the rhetoric of true womanhood,
in particular pushing to its 'logical' end language that emphasizes
women's moral and emotional superiority over men. If women are
indeed naturally sympathetic beings who bear the burden of training
their children to be good Christians and good citizens, as this vision of
womanhood would suggest, then contained within this ideal is room for
certain types of action. Stowe claims that because women possess the
identificative ability necessary to understand slavery's evil, it is funda-
mentally feminine to work to end slavery. That work can range from
changing the opinions of men to taking more activist, grassroots mea-
sures. But most important, while Uncle Tom's Cabin suggests that the
desire to end slavery is nearly as effective a tool for ending slavery as tak-
ing more direct measures, it still maintains that action is necessary.
It is clear why the ideal of this mobilized sentimental woman reader is
desirable: for Stowe, it galvanizes women with a voice through which
they could influence an inaccessible political sphere while still empha-
sizing appropriate 'feminine' qualities. Likewise, for many feminist crit-
ics, it signals a radical expansion of the notion of true womanhood
beyond the confines of home and heart. Although the cultural power of
this ideal is undisputed, a look at a number of responses to Uncle Tom's
Cabin suggests that the effects of reading the novel were somewhat dif-
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 63

ferent than what Stowe and feminist critics have hoped. In spite of the
novel's tremendous success and millions of devoted readers, Stowe's
efforts to move women 'to sympathy and to action' against slavery seem
to have prompted self-reflection in readers more than the outward-look-
ing, grassroots measures she describes.5
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a literary phenomenon unmatched in the nine-
teenth century. While Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter sold a very respect-
able 7,800 copies in his lifetime, Stowe's novel sold 10,000 copies in its
first few days in print in its complete form; within a year, 300,000 copies
had been sold in the United States alone. These numbers do not even
begin to tell the whole story, as one review reminded readers: 'we must
not forget, that ... Uncle Tom has probably ten readers to every pur-
chaser, and in a calculation of the readers we must stretch our powers of
arithmetic to a degree far beyond to what they have been tasked by the
numbers of purchasers [sic], and try to expand the hundred thousands
into millions' ('Uncle Tom Epidemic' 355). The novel's ubiquity
sparked the production of plays, poems, songs, toys, games, dioramas,
china figurines, dresses, hats, and commemorative plates based on its
plot - even gold and silver spoons bearing a portrait of Stowe and a
picture of the cabin itself.6
With this unparalleled commercial success, Uncle Tom's Cabin was
poised to influence the millions of readers. Rufus Choate, a prominent
pro-slavery lawyer and former senator from Massachusetts, was quoted
in the Independent as stating a fear that the novel could make 'two mil-
lions of abolitionists' (137), while a sympathetic review in the New
Englander proclaimed that Stowe 'has made the public realize ... the
unspeakable wickedness of American slavery ... [She] has brought the
dreadful meaning of facts into contact with millions of minds' (Review
588-9). Stowe's sympathetic reviewers almost universally linked the
novel's popularity to the particular effectiveness of her 'feminine' fram-
ing of the abolitionist case; they tended to focus on the power of her
religious argument and its emotional language. A review in The Literary
World titled 'The Uncle Tom Epidemic' found that the novel 'appeals
strongly to the domestic feelings' and as such 'never fail[s] to awaken
sympathy, and ... arouse indignation in every human heart' (355). By
describing the novel's effect on the 'human heart' and its deployment
of religious pathos and domestic feelings, The Literary World ascribes the
power of Uncle Tom's Cabin to qualities in both author and readers that
nineteenth-century culture generally attributed to women. The Lon-
don Times pointedly emphasized that it was Stowe's gendered depiction
64 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

of slavery that made the novel persuasive: 'With the instinct of her sex,
the clever authoress takes the shortest road to her purpose, and strikes
at the convictions of her readers by assailing their hearts. She cannot
hold the scales of justice with a steady hand, but she has learnt to per-
fection the craft of the advocate ... Who shall deny to a true woman the
use of her true weapons?' (Review 478). The Times makes clear that
even though Stowe, by virtue of her sex, does not have direct access to
policy, her ability to affect her readers' hearts is the key to the novel's
success. The reviewer's comment that emotional appeal is the innate
weapon of a 'true woman' implies that Stowe's women readers are, by
their nature, similarly armed to spread the word. As in the novel, an
essentialized notion of womanhood enables - demands, even - female
action and agency.
The sheer force of these emotional reactions to Uncle Tom's Cabin
raised two specific fears in the minds of some anti-slavery reviewers.
First, the author of 'The Uncle Tom Epidemic' was concerned that the
novel would 'excite inconsiderate popular feeling' against slavery that
would make the issue harder to resolve without bloodshed (358); the
Times similarly worried that the book's 'effect will be to render slavery
more difficult than ever of abolishment ... It will keep ill-blood at the
boiling point, and irritate instead of pacifying those whose proceed-
ings Mrs. Stowe is anxious to influence on behalf of humanity' (Review
481-2). Despite the legitimacy of this concern, the fear that the novel's
emotionalism would not be backed up by the continuum of politicized
action Stowe describes was just as common. Charles F. Briggs's 1853
review in Putnam's Monthly points to just this problem: he states that 'it
is the consummate art of the story teller that has given popularity to
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and nothing else. The anti-slavery sentiment
obtruded by the author in her own person, upon the notice of the
reader, must be felt by everyone, to be the great blemish of the book;
and it is one of the proofs of its great merits as a romance, that it has
succeeded in spite of this defect' (100). Briggs, valuing the novel's art-
istry over its propagandistic qualities, dilutes Stowe's abolitionism into
pure sentimentalism.
Despite the book's popular success, America's political ire was gener-
ally slow to awaken, particularly where women readers were concerned.
In fact, it was in England - where sales of Uncle Tom's Cabin totaled
approximately one million in 1852, as compared to three hundred thou-
sand in the United States - that the largest-scale, traditionally political
mobilization of women readers was seen. A group of English ladies
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 65

called upon American women to 'raise your voices to your fellow-citi-

zens, and your prayers to God, for the removal [of slavery's] affliction'
(qtd. in Johnston 271). Their petition, known as the Stafford House
Appeal, garnered half a million signatures; they sent the 'Affectionate
and Christian Address' to Stowe in the hopes of galvanizing American
women. The scale of their political activism, however, was not echoed by
their target audience. The Southern Literary Messenger, responding to the
petition in an article titled 'Woman's True Mission,' was relieved to note
that the novel had not had the same effect in the United States:

Fortunate it is for America, that [Stowe] has succeeded so much better

than the mother country in ... teaching [women their] mission ... [T]hanks
be to the wisdom-imbued mothers of America, that reprobate woman
stands almost alone ... And though she may be a fitting recipient for the
caresses of English women, the daughters of America feel that she has been
carried far ... from their sympathies and their respect. (305-6)

The article applauds the 'wise' American women who avoid this sort of
activism, which the Messenger deems not only politically wrong but in
violation of woman's proper place.
When more sympathetic responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin than the Mes-
sengers are examined, it becomes clear that while 'feminine' sentimen-
tal readership was indeed responsible for converting many readers to
the abolitionist cause, the attention of individual women seems to have
been turned inward, rather than to the variety of activist measures that
Stowe recommends. Although, as New York lawyer George Templeton
Strong wrote in his journal, the novel 'set all Northern women crying
and sobbing over the sorrows of Sambo,' evidence of grassroots mobili-
zation is scarce (qtd. in Gossett 167). Women's responses to reading the
novel were typically rooted in the domestic sphere, but intriguingly they
tended to collapse Stowe's implied distinction between affect and
action. Like Mrs Bird, women readers felt the desire to do something to
end slavery, but their rhetoric points to a more insistent concern with
their own place within the true womanly ideal.
For instance, women most frequently were inspired not to intervene
publicly in the slavery debate but to reinterpret activities in the home
through the novel's lens. In a satirical letter to the editor of the Port-
land, Maine, Eclectic entitled 'A Voice From a Sufferer,' a man identify-
ing himself as Mr Tyke, 'The man who never read Uncle Tom's Cabin,'
described the behaviour of his wife and daughters:
66 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

Mrs. Tyke read [Uncle Tom's Cabin] in the New Era long ago, - and she, as
well as the little Tykes, has been reading it in two volumes ever since. Never
was a mortal so hunted down by a book before. I have no peace - morning,
noon or night. Indian cake at breakfast suggests sympathetic allusions to
the thousands of poor Uncle Toms at the South, who must eat hoe cake or
die; dinner is enlivened by conversation upon the incidents of the work;
and I am pestered every evening after tea, by my eldest daughter's implor-
ing me to hear 'the last sweet song about little Eva.'
The young ladies are working fancy sketches of Uncle Tom's physiog-
nomy in black worsted; the baby has a woolly headed doll whom she tries to
call Topsy ... Our youngest has fortunately been christened - but Mrs. Tyke
gives dark and mysterious hints about naming somebody else Eva one of
these days, if circumstances permit. (5)

Despite the obviously derogatory humour of this sketch, the behaviour

Tyke details is fairly typical of women's sympathetic responses to the
novel. One of the most common actions taken by women after reading
the book appears to have been naming daughters after Eva; in fact, by
the end of 1852, approximately three hundred babies in Boston alone
had been christened with that name (Hirsch 305). This private gesture
suggests a deeply felt affinity for the beautiful death of the little girl, but
does not necessarily point to a desire to pursue the sort of abolitionist
work Eva advocated.
More specifically, the behaviour that Tyke rails against is firmly rooted
in the domestic sphere. The Tyke women have turned everyday wom-
anly activities - cooking, sewing, taking care of children - into small-
scale abolitionist protests. As a result of reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, tradi-
tionally separate spheres have been intermixed in such a way as to allow
women to comment upon public debate from within the confines of the
home. Their household objects have given them a forum in which they
can express political sentiments to which they did not traditionally have
access. As the Tyke women have turned their home into an abolitionist
haven, they have also asserted their power in the home. In their hands,
Uncle Tom becomes not a martyr who has found in his faith the power
to resist physical abuse, but a piece of homespun art they can display;
Topsy is a toy for the baby. Characters who are property in the novel
essentially are figured as commodities to be enjoyed - objects of delight
for free women. Mrs Tyke and her daughters derive pleasure from thus
taking the novel into their home and hearts; not only have they gained
toys and leisure activities from their reading, but they have also assumed
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 67

a position of moral authority from which to 'pester' Mr Tyke. As a result

of 'properly' reading Stowe, the Tyke women have redefined their
home around their beliefs and pleasure.
The Tykes embody the shift within many responses to the text; their
reaction simultaneously domesticates slavery and politicizes domesticity
while turning attention to the home and women's place in it, rather
than to slavery's wrongs. A second example demonstrates even more
how such rhetorical turns put the focus on women readers' own strug-
gle with gender roles, as opposed to on anti-slavery activism. In a letter
to Stowe, her friend Georgiana May writes:

I sat up last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing 'Uncle
Tom's Cabin.' I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying
child; nor could I restrain an almost hysterical sobbing for an hour after I
laid my head upon my pillow. I thought I was a thorough-going Abolitionist
before, but your book has awakened so strong a feeling of indignation and
compassion, that I seem never to have had any feeling on this subject till
now. But what can we do? Alas! alas! what can we do? This storm of feeling
has been raging, burning like a very fire in my bones, all the livelong night,
and all through my duties this morning it haunts me, - I cannot do away
with it. Gladly would I have gone out in the midnight storm last night, and,
like the martyr of old, have been stoned to death, if that could have res-
cued these oppressed and afflicted ones. (qtd. in Gossett 167)

In this letter, May expresses the 'right' feelings that Stowe tries to incul-
cate in her audience: her 'storm of feeling' burns 'like a very fire' with-
out end. Although she had had abolitionist feelings before reading
Uncle Tom's Cabin, she seems 'never to have had any feeling on the sub-
ject' until she picked up the book. As in the novel itself, the maternal
desire to protect and heal one's baby becomes a lens through which she
understands the novel's plot. May writes that she 'could not leave [the
book] any more than [she] could have left a dying child'; through
the reading process she becomes willing to do the same for slaves. For
May, the novel is like Eva herself - a dying child who must be tended to,
who inspires religious feelings, who pushes one towards abolitionism.
The text itself becomes humanized, a child in need of her attention, a
talisman of sentiment and right feeling.
The excess of maternal feeling that May experiences as a result of her
reading takes its form in language of both delightful and uncomfortable
bodily sensation. May's repeated use of corporeal images signals the log-
68 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

ical extreme of a discourse of womanhood that privileges tears as a mode

of expression while it also denotes May's failure to live up to a disembod-
ied feminine ideal. Specifically, this response to Uncle Tom's Cabin
exposes the conflicted nature of true womanly concepts of the female
body - that it is at once a means of visibly communicating sympathy and
yet a vessel of unfeminine corporeality that theoretically should not exist
in a proper lady, a figure whose emotions and piety transcend the limits
of her flesh. May is overwhelmed by right feeling to such an extent that
emotion exceeds propriety. That these sensations 'haunt' her suggests
that she is aware that what she feels is somehow wrong, but that she will
not let go of this fantasy that has taken physical root inside her.
In May's case, Stowe's novel has aroused abolitionist sentiment that is
given form in a body politic - or, more accurately, in her body politic. As
the Tyke women's household chores become politicized by the interpo-
lation of abolitionist feeling into a domestic routine, so May's own body
becomes a site of mingled pain and pleasure that gives her the means to
express a gendered, maternal condemnation of the political sphere.7
Her unrestrained 'hysterical sobbing' and the feeling that burns 'like a
very fire' in her bones are themselves expressions of a politicized femi-
nine subjectivity. May's letter thus demonstrates the ways in which
Stowe's women readers were put in a position to exceed the limits of
true womanhood by the novel's very rhetoric: encouraged to feel right,
May's sympathy is embodied and her body is in turn politicized by
approaching the novel as a true sentimental reader should. May's
response suggests further that this 'improper' position gives voice to a
sense of self-righteousness that is pleasurable and enabling. The 'indig-
nation and compassion' that Uncle Tom's Cabin fosters empower May to
consider herself to be 'like the martyr of old.' Even as she identifies with
the pain of 'oppressed and afflicted ones,' May takes pleasure in know-
ing that her feelings put her on the side of moral and political 'right.'
However, as significant as the development of this female voice is in
testing the limits of true womanhood, the strong feeling of 'indignation
and compassion' aroused by the book appears ultimately to keep May's
attention on herself. May's letter gives no indication that she has been
inspired by her reading to engage in direct political action. She asks,
echoing Stowe, 'But what can we do? Alas! alas! What can we do?' But
while Stowe offers a continuum of responses that extends beyond feel-
ing right, May's repetition of the question suggests a sense of helpless-
ness. She writes, 'Gladly would I have gone out in the midnight storm
last night, and, like the martyr of old, have been stoned to death, if that
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 69

could have rescued these oppressed and afflicted ones.' In its use of the
conditional voice, this statement resembles Mrs Bird's when she says she
hopes to have the chance to aid a runaway slave; without the coinciden-
tal appearance of such a person, the possibility of engagement is effec-
tively shut down. May's emotions have collapsed in on themselves - she
would have taken action if she thought that it would save the lives of
slaves, but the sheer force of her passion does not open the door for
practical politicking. The pleasure and pain that May feels do give her a
voice that pushes at the limits of nineteenth-century notions of proper
womanhood, but these feelings are more self-reflexive than they are out-
ward looking. In a culture that promoted female self-abnegation and
erasure, this focus on the self, this turning inward of political issues, sug-
gests a pleasurable rejection of confining roles, but it does not seem to
open up the possibility of the activism Stowe describes.
The responses of these sympathetic Northern women readers suggest
that Stowe's aim to manipulate her audience's 'feminine' emotions
through identification with slaves was successful in converting readers to
a frenzy of abolitionism but not in encouraging them to act beyond the
limits of the home. The solipsistic pleasures of 'feeling right' provided
female readers with an important mode of agency that counteracted
contemporary notions of women's self-denying, apolitical natures and
their lack of physical passion, but they were not necessarily an impetus
to engage in action beyond sympathizing. These responses to the novel
counteract the image of the woman reader on which so many recent
feminist critics have relied. The readers of Uncle Tom's Cabin were, as
such scholars suggest, deeply affected by the book, and often revised not
only their feelings about abolitionism but their thinking about their
domestic possessions because of the experience of reading. However,
being moved to sympathy for the plight of slaves apparently turned
readers' eyes to their own circumstances more than it did to the political
sphere.
Yet even as responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin reveal the flaws in our own
contemporary concepts of the cultural role of the nineteenth-century
woman reader, they also signal a resistance to Victorian America's
notions of what women should read and what female readership does.
Stowe's expectations that reading about slavery would lead to public
action against it may not have been met, but the effects of her changes
to women's sentimental reading material are palpable. As both Cathy N.
Davidson and Susan K. Harris have noted, sentimental literature was
typically directed at a female audience; it primarily was a tool for female
70 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

education, teaching women about new subjects and about their proper
gender role. Such novels at once allowed women to imagine a variety of
social possibilities while overtly advocating a traditional, domestic femi-
nine ideal.8 Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its connection between empathetic
reading, identification with characters, and conversion to abolitionism,
explicitly broadens the reach of sentimentalism. Her presentation of the
horrors of slavery within the conventions of the sentimental novel in
and of itself alters the prevailing model of female readership. While still,
like most sentimental texts, teaching women about their proper role in
society, Uncle Tom's Cabin demands that this role include a stake, albeit a
largely indirect one, in the political arena. Prevailing ideas about female
readership required books to teach women to be better wives and moth-
ers; Stowe plainly shifts the terms of what proper womanhood entails to
include a deeply felt abolitionism. When women like Mrs Tyke read the
novel, their very notion of what 'home' entails expanded to include
abolitionism, even if in practice this expansion did not include any of
the modes of politicized response that Stowe advocated.
Women's experiences with Uncle Tom's Cabin also push at expectations
about what women's reading is not supposed to do. As the novel grew in
prominence as a literary form through the eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries, anxieties about the pernicious effects reading novels
could have on 'true women' were prevalent. Novels were thought to be
dangerous to women, arousing uncontrollable sexual passion that
unsexes their readers. The concern was that, as the imagination is stimu-
lated by fiction, so will be the body to the extent that the reader is no
longer recognizably 'feminine'; the excesses of novel-reading, it was
feared, will ruin not only otherwise true women, but entire families and
communities.9 Although this anti-novel discourse was declining by the
middle of the nineteenth century, concerns about the effects that cer-
tain types of sensational fiction would have on the health and virtue of
women readers remained common. Given this concern about the pro-
priety of women and girls reading novels, many women writers refused
to categorize their works as fiction, instead emphasizing, like Stowe, the
religious and educative qualities of the book as well as its inherent truth.
Intriguingly, Stowe's Southern detractors made a particular point of
claiming that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a 'dangerous' book for female read-
ers, citing the same reasons as those who railed against novels in gen-
eral. Louisa McCord, in a lengthy review of the novel for the Southern
Quarterly Review, claims that the book is 'a collection of "tales of wonder,"
which would rival in horrors those of Monk Lewis' (109). This statement
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 71

not only undermines Stowe's claims for the truth of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
but also places the book in the sensational gothic genre. Indeed, she
suggests that the book is 'spiced too high' with the 'vilest kind' of inci-
dents so as to 'leave the diseased taste of the reader, who has long sub-
sisted on such fare, sick, sick and palled as it is with the nauseous diet,
still with a constant craving, like that of the diseased palate of the opium
eater, for its accustomed drug' (85-6). In Aunt Phillis's Cabin, Mary H.
Eastman similarly notes that Stowe's is a 'book of romance' - as opposed
to a realist work - the sort that 'sells well, for the mass of readers are
fond of horrors' (271). The two authors suggest that the popularity of
Uncle Tom's Cabin is not due to a positive sympathetic reaction to tales of
truth, but to something addictive and destructive that appeals to read-
ers' basest, unladylike desires.
Eastman goes on to make the point that reading such 'romances' as
Uncle Tom's Cabin is especially dangerous for innocent women. While
describing the life of Susan, an unhappy slave who is 'seduced' by aboli-
tionists into running away from an idyllic life in the South to a miserable
one in the North, she notes that the girl 'was fond of hearing her favor-
ite books read aloud. For the style of books that Susan had been accus-
tomed to listen to, as she sat at her sewing, Lalla Rookh would be a good
specimen' (57). Lalla Rookh, an 'eastern romance' by Thomas Moore
first published in 1817, tells the story of an Indian princess who, on
her way to be married, falls in love with a poet who turns out to be her
future husband in disguise. It is the type of romance that many warned
young girls about; it also subtly tells the story of romantic heroes and
heroines who rise up to resist tyrants. This is Susan's favourite book
and the possible cause of her 'fall' to the abolitionists; her imagination,
fired up by her reading, makes her susceptible to the 'lies' of Northern-
ers who convince her to run away. In essence, Eastman has recast anti-
novel discourse, replacing the innocent girl who is seduced because she
has read too many novels with the naive slave who mistakenly gives up
her life on the plantation because of her reading.
Eastman's and McCord's claims that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a danger-
ous book when in women's hands lead them to disparage Stowe for her
lack of true womanhood. McCord pointedly states that she hopes that
the 'ten thousand dollars [Stowe earned for writing the novel] was ...
worth risking a little scalding for. We wish her joy of her ten thousand
easily gained, but would be loath to take it with the foul imagination
which could invent such scenes, and the malignant bitterness (we had
almost said ferocity) which, under the veil of Christian charity, could
72 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

find the conscience to publish them' (84). McCord's sense of self-

righteous indignation is aroused by the profit Stowe has made on the
book; the money apparently comes at the price of Stowe's femininity.
Eastman is even more explicit about the connection between Stowe's
writing and unladylike bodily arousal. She describes a nameless 'she Abo-
litionist' who 'writes for the Abolition papers' as sexually profligate: 'she
wants Frederick Douglass to be the next president, and advocates amal-
gamation ... She is so lost to every sense of propriety that it makes no dif-
ference to her whether a man is married or not' (229-30). Female
abolitionists like Stowe, Eastman asserts, have neither propriety nor sex-
ual mores; politicization of women becomes tantamount to sexual licen-
tiousness - and, it is hinted, miscegenation. Both women recall fears
that novel-reading and writing endanger the mental and physical purity
and even the marriageability of women readers.
Georgiana May's testimony about her reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin
clearly demonstrates that the novel did arouse the very sort of excessive
bodily sensations that anti-novel advocates and Stowe's Southern detrac-
tors railed against. The 'storm of feeling' she suffers through has dis-
tinctly sexual overtones: 'I seem never to have had any feeling on this
subject till now ... This storm of feeling has been raging, burning like a
very fire in my bones, all the livelong night... I cannot do away with it.'
May's reading experience recalls Roland Barthes's notion of a reader's
orgasmic jouissance. The mingling of a sense of maternal bereavement
with readerly passion caused by Uncle Tom's Cabin suggests that it serves
as what Barthes calls a 'text of bliss': 'the text that imposes a state of loss,
... unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions'
(14). The pleasure May has found in reading Uncle Tom's Cabin has dis-
rupted her sense of the world around her, redefining the terms on
which she interprets her role in her home and as a mother. That it is her
maternal body which channels May's readerly and physical pleasure is
suggestive. Her experience with Stowe's novel contradicts notions of
passionless, disembodied Victorian women, but also counteracts the
prevailing idea that women's reading should be for moral edification
and not for pleasure. Such highly embodied reactions to the novel indi-
cate that women were not only subject to the 'depravity' feared by those
who railed against the genre, but that they enjoyed feeling such plea-
sure. They sought to recreate that physical, readerly pleasure by writing
effusive letters to Stowe, by turning their household chores into games
that recalled the text, and simply by reading and rereading the book as
often as they could.
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 73

An examination of women's responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin demands a

revision of our notions of the nineteenth-century woman reader and
the cultural work done by sentimental reading. We must first realize that
the claims made by Stowe and her recent defenders for the mobilization
of an army of feeling women to do battle against slavery are exagger-
ated; sympathetic women did not engage in the public, political arena as
Stowe hoped they would. This lack of public action, however, signals a
deeply felt, self-perpetuating, inward-looking readerly pleasure that is
important to a feminist understanding both of women's reading prac-
tices and of nineteenth-century ideals of women readers. This pleasure
is not limited to true womanly domestic practice, but is expressed in
bodily sensations; as such, this textual pleasure indicates that reading
was not simply a means of teaching women their proper place. That
women sought to recreate the many joys of reading and responding to
books as often as possible suggests that such pleasure, although often
outwardly decried by Victorian moralists, was absolutely central to nine-
teenth-century women's experience with texts. Indeed, rather than sim-
ply promote the ideal of the domestic, true woman, the act of reading
sentimental novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin reveals the seeds of ideological
conflict: reading simultaneously enables a domestic ideal and reveals
that pleasure and authority come when the limits of that ideal are
pushed.

NOTES

1 Iser determines that the ideal reader 'is a purely fictional being' who has 'an
identical code to that of the author' and would thus 'be able to realize in full
the meaning potential of the fictional text' (29). Here, I differentiate the
ideal reader of Uncle Tom's Cabin - a construction Stowe develops in the
novel to suggest perfect sentimental interpretation - from her implied read-
ers, also constructions of the text. The implied reader 'embodies all those
predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect' (Iser 34);
in the case of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the implied reader is a person who is capable
of learning to feel right and to read right, but needs to be taught by the text to
do so.
2 See Welter for the quintessential statement of a true woman's traits: 'The
attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was
judged by her husband, her neighbors and society could be divided into four
cardinal virtues - piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity' (152).
74 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

3 See Gossett (122-5) for a detailed discussion of the battle between abolition-
ists and proponents of slavery over biblical interpretation and Stowe's own
position in this debate.
4 Janet Cornelius contrasts what she terms 'Bible literacy' with 'liberating liter-
acy.' Whereas the former's 'prime motive was the conservation of piety,' the
latter 'facilitates diversity and mobility' (171).
5 Since I am primarily concerned with women readers, I have focused on arti-
cles published in journals geared towards a female readership; essays, books,
and letters written by women; and other texts by both men and women that
address the issue of female readership directly. See Gossett and Hirsch for
wider surveys that include published and unpublished reactions among
Northerners and Southerners, men and women, blacks and whites.
6 See Gossett and Hirsch for discussions of the cultural phenomenon spawned
by Uncle Tom's Cabin.
7 See Noble (141-3) for an interpretation of the masochism inherent in May's
response.
8 Harris writes that mid-nineteenth-century letters and diaries indicate that
women readers were particularly interested in books that told historical or
fictional stories of exceptional women, that provided intellectual substance
that would give them 'power in the world of ideas,' and, more specifically,
that featured heroines who had to become professionally or emotionally self-
sufficient (30). Although Davidson discusses republican sentimentalism, she
similarly stresses the imaginative possibility of such fiction, suggesting that
'sentimental novels fulfilled the social function of testing some of the possi-
bilities of romance and courtship - testing better conducted in the world of
fiction than in the world of fact' (113).
9 See Davidson (38-54) for a discussion of anti-novel discourse and shifting
attitudes towards the novel in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies.

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New York: Columbia UP, 1997.
Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill
and Wang, 1975.
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Choate, Rufus. Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Indepen-
dent, 26 August 1852: 137.
 Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Woman Reader 75

Cornelius, Janet. '"We Slipped and Learned to Read": Slave Accounts of the
Literacy Process, 1830-1865.' Phylon44:3 (1983): 171-83.
Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New
York: Oxford UP, 1986.
Eastman, Mary H. Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or, Southern Life as it Is. 1852. New York:
Negro UP, 1968.
Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader 1837-1914. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Gossett, Thomas F. Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture. Dallas: Southern
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Harris, Susan K, 19th-century American Women's Novels: Interpretive Strategies. New
York: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Hirsch, Stephen A. 'Uncle Tomitudes: The Popular Reaction to Uncle Tom's
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Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1978.
Johnston, Johanna. Runaway to Heaven: The Story of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New
York: Doubleday & Company, 1963.
McCord, Louisa S. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' In Selected Writings, ed. Richard C.
Lounsbury, 83-118. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.
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Princeton UP, 2000.
O'Connell, Catharine E. '"The Magic of the Real Presence of Distress":
Sentimentality and Competing Rhetorics of Authority.' In The Stowe Debate:
Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom's Cabin, eds. Mason I. Lowance, Jr., Ellen E.
Westbrook, and R.C. DeProspo, 13-36. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P,
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(November 1852): 588-613.
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2 September 1852. Rpr. in Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 478-83.
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17 December 1852. Rpr. in Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 459-63.
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Letters andjournals. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York:
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Cabin, 413-14.
76 Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

Tompkins,Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-

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Welter, Barbara. 'The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.' American Quarterly
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3 Reading Mind, Reading Body:
Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah and the
Physiology of Reading

SUZANNE M. ASHWORTH

In a long letter, dated 15 July 1863, to Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, influ-
ential Alabama legislator and Confederate colonel, Augusta Jane Evans
defines (white, elite) Southern womanhood in no uncertain terms.
Waxing philosophical, she details the aptitudes, faults, and frailties of
her sisters below the Mason-Dixon line. '[T]heir imagination(s) [are]
more vivid and glowing,' she declares, 'their susceptibility to emotions
or impressions of beauty or sublimity, infinitely keener.' For Evans,
nineteenth-century Southern women were almost a distinct race - at
least they constituted a singular breed of femininity, one marked by an
active inner life and an acute receptivity to external stimuli. Add to that
'more leisure for the cultivation of their intellects, and the perfection of
womanly accomplishments' and in her judgment, Southern women
were potentially 'perfect instruments for the advancement of Art.' But
their bodies and their habitat betrayed them. According to Evans,
Southern women were not realizing their inborn potential. '[L]ook at
the physical and mental status of Southern women,' she exclaims, 'Are
they not enervated, lethargic, incapable of enduring fatigue, and as a
class, afflicted with chronic lassitude?' She attributes this collective
debility to the 'fact that having a number of servants always at hand ...
the Southern matron accustoms herself to having every office in the
household performed by others, while she sits passive and inert, over a
basket of stockings, or the last new novel' (Evans, Papers). Evans held
that Southern women did not exercise their intellects or their imagina-
tions any more than they exercised their bodies. With legions of slaves
to do their bidding, they did not have to.
Evans was not advocating abolition with this disputation, and by no
stretch of the imagination was she a Yankee sympathizer.1 But this isn't
78 Suzanne M. Ashworth

an essay about Evans's politics or slaveholding mentalities or Southern

womanhood. Not directly, at least. I open with this earnest exposition of
Southern womanhood to foreground the complex relationship that
anchors this investigation: a relationship between reading, the body,
and female ideality. Evans theorized that Southern women were physi-
cally and culturally equipped to receive 'Art.' By her culture's logic, all
women were. According to Kate Flint, Victorian women had 'greater
sensitivity and sensibility' than their more stoic male counterparts (54).
As one nineteenth-century physician put it, female nerves 'are smal-
ler, and of a more delicate structure. They are endowed with greater
sensibility, and, of course are liable to more frequent and stronger
impressions from external agents on mental influences' (qtd. in
Smith-Rosenberg and Rosenberg 112). This sexually specific physiol-
ogy rendered women highly sensitive to sensual and intellectual influ-
ences. For Evans, female physiology colluded with social placement to
make Southern women prime conduits of culture. But both 'chronic las-
situde' and unhealthy reading habits - their passivity before 'the last
new novel' - made it impossible for them to embody this sociobiological
possibility. In this lexicon, images of women's reading and the female
body punctuate the representation of both 'perfect' and 'enervated'
gendered subjects, and I aim to make better sense of this juxtaposition
in the analysis that follows.
Such norms of gender and reading intermingle with regional alle-
giances and geographical pockets of identity. The South that was so inte-
gral to Evans's sense of self ('I am an earnest and most uncompromising
Secessionist,' she wrote) was a world of its own, and Victorian trends and
ideals were refracted within it (Fox-Genovese xvi).2 Indeed, the South -
as an identity-marker and a geography - is the backdrop of Evans's
Beulah (1859), the novel that put her on the American literary map.
Contemporary reviewers celebrated Beulah as a well-crafted 'contribu-
tion to a distinct southern literature,' and twentieth-century scholarship
positions the novel firmly within a singular tradition of southern domes-
tic fiction (Fox-Genovese xv).
While I do not mean to efface the South altogether or proffer an 'a-
geographical' reading of the novel, it's important to underscore the fact
that Beulah spoke to audiences and ideologies that exceeded Dixie's
borders. I'm interested in Beulah because of its paradigmatic status
within the genre of domestic fiction, because it was a near-bestseller in
its time, because it's a literary artifact that resounds with national
import: twenty-two thousand copies of Beulah were printed in the first
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 79

nine months after its release, and its plot, style, and themes mirror those
of St. Elmo (1867), the clear-cut blockbuster Evans would publish eight
years later (Fox-Genovese xiv, x). As Elizabeth Fox-Genovese so suc-
cinctly affirms, Beulah attends to 'all of the great theological, moral, and
intellectual questions of the mid-nineteenth century' (xii). In light of its
cultural scope and popularity, one can engage Beulah as a representative
text, as a literary artifact that preserves norms, values, and habits that
were extant across regional borders. In methodological terms, there-
fore, I approach the novel as a discursive emblem of beliefs and prac-
tices that pervaded Victorian America, despite local variations, political
distinctions, and geographic positioning.
As a classic 'woman's fiction,' Beulah tells the story of a young girl's
search for home, family, God, and husband in the late 1850s. At not
quite fourteen, Beulah is the studious and homely ward of an asylum for
orphaned children. In the novel's opening chapters, she is farmed out
as a nursemaid and loses her only sister, first to adoption and then to
death. Sick with grief and entirely alone, she is taken in by Guy Hartwell,
a wealthy, brooding bachelor-doctor. Beulah becomes both his charge
and his intellectual protege. But as she matures, Beulah's need for
financial and intellectual independence asserts itself. She leaves the
comfortable, privileged home that Hartwell provides for her, supporting
herself as a teacher and reading voraciously. Delving into philosophy
and metaphysics, Beulah flirts with atheism and quests for literary fame.
After years of this solitary, striving existence, Beulah finds herself alone,
surrounded by books, longing for Hartwell. At long last, Hartwell
returns from the Orient, they marry, and the novel ends with the prom-
ise of his religious conversion.
As this dominant plotline unfolds, the woman reader takes centre
stage in the text. Beulah dramatizes women's reading graphically and
deliberately, and in the process, it goes a long way towards illuminating
the relationship between the reading body, the reading mind, and
gendered ideality. Indeed, when Beulah reads, the narrative pays scru-
pulous attention to her emotional, mental, and physical anatomy -
detailing her cognitive and affective responses to texts, positioning her
body in space, placing her hands on the book or different parts of her
body, and describing the emotional import of her face, lips, eyes, and
forehead as she scans the page. To a certain extent, Beulah's reading
postures reflect her author's conception of Southern femininity: its 'sus-
ceptibility to ... impressions of beauty or sublimity' and its archetypal sta-
tus as an 'instrument' of art. But as we shall see, Beulah is no sedentary
80 Suzanne M. Ashworth

Southern matron passively imbibing the latest new novel. And her read-
ing practices - her reading mind and reading body - resonate far
beyond Southern ideals and ideologies to reflect the sociomedical
truths of her age.
Beulah pushes us to more fully consider the body, to think about gen-
dered reading as a fully embodied practice - as an interpretive operation
that is firmly grounded in the body. It's my contention that this embodied
subjectivity is shaped (in part) by historical discourses that make sense of
the body - by mainstream conceptions of the relationship between mind
and body, self and sex. So I turn to physiognomy and best-selling house-
hold medical manuals3 with the understanding that this literature com-
ments on the physiology of reading at work in Evans's novel.4
Roger Chartier's work encourages the revaluation of the significance
of both body and movement in the novel's successive - very physical -
images of Beulah reading. Chartier writes: 'A history of reading must
not limit itself to the genealogy of our own contemporary manner of
reading, in silence and using only our eyes; it must also (and perhaps
above all) take on the task of retracing forgotten gestures and habits
that have not existed for some time' (8-9). The physical incarnation of
Beulah's interpretive experiences may reflect some of the 'forgotten
gestures and habits' of mid-century reading practices, and at the very
least, Beulah's embodied response to the text reinforces Chartier's
contention that 'reading is not uniquely an abstract operation of the
intellect: it brings the body into play, it is inscribed in a space and a rela-
tionship with oneself or with others' (8).
Of course. Chartier's observation serves as a valued reminder of
something we think we already know: of course there's a body doing the
reading - a hand holding the book, a heart quickening, a tear falling on
the page; of course that body reads in material surroundings - a library, a
bedroom, alone or with others. Recent scholarship pays lip service to
how important the body is to the reading experience itself.5 It has
become something of a critical commonplace to nod to the reader's
body, acknowledging that it makes a difference whether or not that
body is male or female, black or white, straight or gay, whether it's sick
or hungry or cold, whether it's reading before a cozy familial fireside or
in a darkened garret. But we have yet to fully reckon with how the body
makes a difference, and in its images of a woman reading, Beulah raises
that question. In the process, the novel enhances our understanding of
the 'body-play' at work in mid-century constructions of gendered read-
ing processes.
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 81

Given my interest in the interplay between reading body and reading

mind, I focus much of this analysis on the novel's initiatory scenes of
reading, on those moments when we're introduced to Beulah and come
to understand who she is and how she reads. Those moments propel
this essay because they introduce us to the physiology of her reading
practices and to the science that premises it. As we shall see, a psychoso-
matic physicality - a body/mind continuum - is central to the physiol-
ogy of reading enacted here. This continuum acts as an agent of both
female ideality and disorder. As it represents this psychosomatic connec-
tion, Beulah teaches us that because reading brings the body into play -
because it isn't purely an abstract operation of the intellect - reading is
a privileged, embattled site of identity formation, a site where the norms
and ideals of gender vie for control of the reading subject. As it's repre-
sented, reading works in, on, and through the reading mind and body,
sculpting gendered subjects from the inside out and the outside in.

The Physiognomy of a Woman Reader: A Psychosomatic Self

Our historical moment increasingly refuses to separate biology from the

cultural discourses and the personal perceptions that render biology
meaningful,'1 but the nineteenth century negotiated the boundary
between body and mind differently. Within Victorian medical lore, the
body was an immutable sign and site of individual character - a fixed
index of the soul. Physiognomy, pathognomy, and phrenology taught
that one could gauge interior reality by its outward manifestations, be
they the forms and colours of the face, passing facial expressions, or the
shape of the head. These 'sciences' bear witness to a complex and his-
torically contingent relationship between subject and object, body and
mind. In this historical interval, identity was literally psychosomatic.
Within the nexus of individual character, body and mind were recipro-
cal, coeval, and mutually conditioning. As Charles E. Rosenberg
explains it, 'There were no categorical boundaries between the realms
of body and mind in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
medical theory' (78). The body not only reflected the interior 'truths'
of intellect, emotion, and spirit, but sensual and mental stimuli could
also alter outward face and form. Beulah is uniquely invested in this
mind/body relationship. Thus, examining the novel against the physi-
ognomical codes it invokes is a productive way to begin an exploration
of how Victorian notions of mind and matter inform literary spectacles
of reading.
82 Suzanne M. Ashworth

The first physical description of Beulah comes barely one page into
the novel when the narrative presents her face in vivid detail, and with a
nod to 'the curious physiognomist,' it cues the reader to pay close atten-
tion to the visage before her:

Reader, I here paint you the portrait of that quiet little figure, whose his-
tory is contained in the following pages. A pair of large gray eyes set
beneath an overhanging forehead, a boldly-projecting forehead, broad and
smooth; a rather large but finely cut mouth, an irreproachable nose, of the
order furthest removed from aquiline, and heavy black eyebrows, which
instead of arching, stretched straight across and nearly met. (6)

The leading physiognomist of the age - Johann Caspar Lavater -

affirmed that facial features revealed the innermost reaches of charac-
ter, and Evans mines that sociomedical truth in this depiction of Beulah.
Byway of repetition and extended description, this passage meticulously
attends to certain features of Beulah's face: the youthful heroine seems
all forehead, nose, and eyebrows. On the heels of this description, we
learn that this 'quiet little figure' reads. In fact, she reads a great deal.
We see her hide a volume in her workbasket when the asylum ladies
approach; we learn that Eugene, an old orphan frierid, has 'sent her a
book and a message'; and more provocatively, the novel links Beulah's
countenance — its delicacy and its pallor — to her solitary and unre-
strained reading habits (7, 8). "There is not a better or more industri-
ous girl in the asylum,'" Mrs Williams (the asylum matron) explains,
'"but I rather think she studies too much. She will sit up and read of
nights, when the others are all sound asleep; and very often, when Kate
and I put out the hall lamp, we find her with her book alone in the
cold"' (8). With the inaugural description of Beulah's face, therefore,
the novel presents the physiognomy of a reader. And so the questions
become: What can this physiognomy tell us about the 'body play' at
work in Beulah's reading experiences? What can it tell us about the
meaning of reading practices that are both the object of paternalistic
concern and so integral to the character of our heroine?
Lavater's immensely popular Physiognomische Fragments (1772) can
help us answer that question, providing a useful frame for understand-
ing the corporeal signposts of character invoked in the description
above. Scholars tell us that Lavater developed a science of physical dif-
ference, dividing the face into three diagnostic domains: the forehead
mirrored the understanding; the nose and cheeks reflected the moral
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 83

life; and the mouth and chin signified animal appetites. With this tripar-
tite division, Lavater's physiognomy encompassed the basic building
blocks of identity in Victorian America: mind, body, and spirit. As Lav-
ater writes: 'the nose [indicates] taste, sensibility, and feeling; the lips,
mildness and anger, love and hatred; the chin, the degree and species of
sensuality; the neck ... the frank sincerity of the character; the crown of
the head, not so much the power, as the richness, of the understanding;
and the back of the head the mobility, irritability, and elasticity' (qtd. in
Graham 48). The face within Lavater's system was a window on the
deepest recesses of character.
When we view Evans's portrait of Beulah through this physiognomic
lens, we see the predilections of mind and body that rule her character.
Her pronounced, 'boldly-projecting' forehead signifies the questing
strength of her intellect, and with this detail, the narrative foreshadows
the mental courage that will attend Beulah's forays into arduous philo-
sophical texts. Her 'irreproachable nose' represents a highborn sensitiv-
ity. In fact, George Jabet's Notes on Noses (1852) provides a representative
ranking of nasal shapes and sizes that clarifies what it means to have a
nose ranked within 'the order furthest removed from the aquiline.'
Within Jabet's hierarchy, the 'Class F or aquiline nose was 'rather con-
vex, but undulating,' which indicates 'great decision, considerable
Energy, Firmness, Absence of Refinement, and Disregard for the
bienseances of life' (9). Its antithesis (Beulah's nose) is the 'Class IF or
'Greek' nose, which is 'perfectly straight,' 'fine and well-chiselled, but
not sharp,' signifying 'Refinement of character, Love for the fine arts
and belles-lettres, Astuteness, Craft... Its owner is not without some energy
in pursuit of that which is agreeable to his tastes; but, unlike the owner
of the Roman nose, he cannot exert himself in opposition to his tastes'
(9). According to this codification, Beulah's nose and forehead reflect a
superior intellect, an exquisite taste, and an inborn penchant for 'fine'
literature. In proportion and effect, these features indicate that Beulah
is 'naturally' endowed with the makings of an ideal female reader: a
reader who reads the 'right' books (history, biography, moral and reli-
gious works, select poetry, and travel narratives) 'rightly' (with generous
doses of self-improvement and moral discipline). Advice manual adages
held that reading should function as a form of 'social education' (Flint
81). '[EJvery book read makes us better able to understand others,'
Matilda A. Mackarness summarizes in her Young Lady's Book (1876);
'[W]e cannot fail to recognize the importance of [girls] reading such
books as will be likely to strengthen and develop the moral faculties and
84 Suzanne M. Ashworth

judgment' (41 ).8 Given physiognomic indicators, Beulah certainly has

the innate refinement to select the 'appropriate' texts - and enough
mental fortitude to read them with the proper measure of moral rigour.
But her physiognomy also challenges her claim to ideality. In particu-
lar, Beulah's eyebrows and her mouth bespeak a subversive sensuality.
Recall that within Lavater's physiognomy the mouth mirrors an individ-
ual's 'animal life,' or the carnal appetites that rival intellect and morality
for control of the Victorian subject.9 The largeness of Beulah's mouth
reveals the aggregate health of such drives within her character. More
tellingly, the fact that her eyebrows grow straight and nearly touch one
another betrays powerful bodily forces. 'The eyebrows are only signifi-
cant of [mental power],' Lavater explains, 'when they are unperplexed,
equal, and well disposed' (177). 'Strong eyebrows,' like Beulah's, 'speak
... bodily power' (qtd. in Graham 46). Thus, this science of the face
reveals the dangerous vigour of Beulah's animal life, and, as we shall
see, her body will prove a force to reckon with - especially as she reads.
For now, it's enough to recognize that within the confines of her face,
the novel encodes the suspicious, disturbing primacy of Beulah's body.
Punctuating that primacy, the reading practices that shape this body
are not the only object of communal scrutiny, regulation, and anxiety;
the body itself is likewise the repeated object of punishing gazes and
acerbic critique. This (reading) body is named 'ugly' over and over
again. For instance, in the first three chapters alone, Miss Dorothea
White (the horrible orphan matron who sends Beulah out as a nurse-
maid) demands, 'Just look at her face and hands, as bloodless as a tur-
nip' (9). Mrs. Grayson (the wealthy, blue-blooded socialite who adopts
Beulah's sister) remarks, on first seeing her, 'that girl yonder is ugly'
(17). The spoiled Martin children have an extended conversation about
Beulah's pallid homeliness, remarking that '"she is horribly ugly"' and
that "'[h]er forehead juts over, like the eaves of the kitchen"' (28). Beu-
lah hears each of these pronouncements in chastened silence, and to a
certain extent, she internalizes this perceptual truth. Ugliness becomes
a formative aspect of the body that she lives. After the Martin children
callously call her 'strikingly ugly,' she sees '"horribly ugly" inscribed on
sky and water' (28). And as a result of this cruel declaration (and others
like it), throughout the novel Beulah habitually shrinks from public
attention of any kind (28). In addition, she often refuses food - perhaps
loath to nourish the body that is deemed so 'ugly' (28). Oddly, however,
this unpalatable body exhibits a strange immunity to contagious disease,
escaping the scarlet fever, yellow fever, and typhus epidemics that rage
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 85

throughout the novel. In these ways, the narrative asks us to consider

Beulah's body as a pivotal aspect of her character.
Beulah herself understands the body as the locus of her identity, and
that understanding is deeply implicated in both what and how she reads.
In fact, the centrality of Beulah's body within her own self-conception
gives rise to the central questions that propel her reading: 'True, she
had read that identity was housed in "consciousness," not bones and
muscles? But could there be consciousness without bones and muscles?'
(131). Beulah wonders about the nature of the body - the relationship
between body and self, flesh and spirit: '"What constitutes the differ-
ence between my mind and my body?"' she asks herself, '"Is there any
difference? If spirit must needs have body to incase it, and body must
have a spirit to animate it, may they not be identical?"' (209). The narra-
tive will eventually answer these questions with conventional platitudes.
(By the end of the novel Beulah will undergo a prototypical conversion
experience and fulfil her domestic destiny as Guy Hartwell's wife and
spiritual exemplar.) But for the bulk of the story, Beulah's identity is dis-
turbingly and subversively rooted in the body. And because she under-
stands the body as the '"stuff of subjectivity,' Beulah finds herself
doubting religious tenets that divorce the self from the 'bones and mus-
cles' that give it an intelligible form (Grosz xi). More specifically, the
enigmatic relationship between the physical and the metaphysical
becomes the focal point of the intellectual hunger that keeps Beulah
reading, drawing her to the works of Byron, Carlyle, Coleridge, Cousin,
Cowper, Descartes, Emerson, Goethe, Kant, Lamb, Locke, Poe, Ruskin,
Shelley, Swedenborg, Spinoza, Tennyson, and others.
This inquiry takes the principles of physiognomy to their logical out-
post. To be sure, Beulah's physiognomy signifies a 'spirit' that is so
'identical' with the body that it literally shapes the face - actually creat-
ing the countenance of her character. Thus, Beulah's physiognomy does
just what Evans's disputation on Southern womanhood does: it brings
the body - and reading - front and centre, forcing us to question what
both have to do with the kind of femininity Beulah represents.

Body 'Bad,' Mind 'Good': The Ideal Reading Subject

Beulah's fully embodied character seems to challenge Victorian ideals

of reading that wanted to take the body out of the reading equation -
that wanted to exile and expel what Lavater would have called the
reader's 'animal life' from any textual encounter. A popular guide to
86 Suzanne M. Ashworth

young women's improvement, for example, cautions, 'It is worthy of

your observation, that the Most High ... has wisely made the gratifica-
tions arising from [the senses] in a great measure momentary. To pro-
long these inferior enjoyments, is the laborious task of the slaves of
appetite and fancy ...' (Young Lady's Own Book 39-40). Such prohibitions
against the body made fiction-reading a dangerous pastime; by nine-
teenth-century standards, it was better to centre oneself in texts and
methods that were far removed from the '"realities of material and ani-
mal existence"' (qtd. in Flint 79). Within the adages of domestic advice
literature, to fully embrace the body and its 'gratifications' (the senses,
appetite, and fancy) was a sign of personal debasement. More pointedly,
nineteenth-century physicians viewed the reading female body as a
highly suspect entity. Dr Hugh L. Hodge cited reading as an exciting
cause of 'morbid irritation' of the uterine system. Reading, he asserts,
acts 'through the medium of the imagination and passions - through
the brain - on the ovaries and uterus.' And 'the indulgence of volup-
tuous imaginings ... generated by the reading of romances, novels, plays,
or books still more impure,' Hodge goes on to explain, have a 'terrible
influence' on female physiology (233).
But the inaugural scenes of Beulah reading underscore the reality
that the body was not simply or uncontrovertibly 'bad.' On the contrary,
Beulah shows us that the body could be enlisted in the formation and
representation of an ideal reading subject. And in the interplay between
reading mind and reading body, we come to understand that, like Beu-
lah, the ideal reading subject was a psychosomatic being.
In the first sustained textual encounter the novel presents (a highly
idealized encounter, I might add), we're introduced to the mind/body
continuum that will gauge Beulah's proximity to exemplary modes of
reading and paradigmatic (pious, self-improving) femininity. In this
scene, Beulah reads at the edge of a wood and beneath a cloudless sky:
'An open volume lay on her lap; it was Longfellow's Poems, the book
Eugene had sent her, and leaves were turned down at "Excelsior," and
the "Psalm of Life." The changing countenance indexed very accurately
the emotions which were excited by this communion with Nature' (14).
The object of Beulah's gaze is not the book, but the 'majestic beauty' of
the landscape, and Longfellow's poetry serves only to heighten and
encapsulate emotions Beulah already feels - faith, reverence, spiritual
fortitude. Inspired by this fellowship with the book and the natural
world, Beulah sings the 'Psalm of Life' as if it were a hymn: 'Her soul
echoed the sentiments of the immortal bard, and she repeated again
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 87

and again the fifth verse: "In the world's broad field of battle, / In the
bivouac of life; / Be not like dumb driven cattle, / Be a hero in the
strife"' (14). In this instance, reading moves Beulah to a very physical
response - to singing the words on the page - and it's clear that what-
ever touches her mind touches her body as well:10 'There was an
uplifted look, a brave, glad, hopeful light in the gray eyes generally so
troubled in their expression. A sacred song rose on the evening air, a
solemn but beautiful hymn' (14). Beulah is communing with text and
nature here - her face 'index[ing] very accurately the emotions' she
feels. And like her 'changing countenance,' the reading-song bespeaks
a romantically unguarded state of being. The song is spontaneous, unin-
hibited, and unaffected. The narrative presents Beulah's singing as a
physical, even instinctual response to emotional and intellectual stimuli,
one that ends in a silent prayer to 'the Great Shepherd' (14). Thus,
mind and body work on and through each other as Beulah turns reading
into an affirmation of self and faith (an affirmation that reflects the
refinement and sensitivity we saw encoded in her forehead and nose).
More significantly, Beulah's reading body is not ugly in this scene. Far
from it. Rather, it's the house, the vehicle, and the agent of an
'immortal bard' and beatified Christian devotion - nothing less than the
'perfect instrument of Art' that Evans glorified.
The same idyllic mind/body dynamic is perhaps better illustrated in
Beulah's response to a 'soothing, plaintive melody' that Guy Hartwell
plays for her after a grief-inspired nightmare has sent her into convul-
sions. Because the episode so vividly dramatizes the body play that
informs Beulah's reading experiences, it is worth quoting in full:

Beulah sat entranced, while [Guy] played on and on, as if unconscious of

her presence. Her whole being was inexpressibly thrilled; and, forgetting
her frightful vision, her enraptured soul hovered on the very confines of
fabled elysium. Sliding from the couch, upon her knees, she remained with
her clasped hands pressed over her heart, only conscious of her trembling
delight ... [A]s the musician seemed to play upon her heartstrings, calling
thence unearthly tones, the tears rolled swiftly over her face. Images of
divine beauty filled her soul, and nobler aspirations than she had ever
known, took possession of her. Soon the tears ceased, the face became
calm, singularly calm; then lighted with an expression which nothing
earthly could have kindled. It was the look of one whose spirit, escaping
from gross bondage, soared into realms divine, and proclaimed itself God-
born. (75)
88 Suzanne M. Ashworth

Again, in this passage the body - its movements, gestures, and expres-
sions - both mirror and magnify an exemplary subjective condition, one
marked by 'divine beauty,' 'nobl[e] aspirations,' and an outward 'calm.'
For Beulah, listening to music is no less an embodied experience than
reading Longfellow in the woods, and it likewise leads to an idealized
religious experience. More importantly, the body in these intervals does
not simply signify or reflect Beulah's ideality; rather, it is a formative
agent of the womanly perfection that she represents. Taken all together,
Beulah's corporeal signals - her supplicant posture, the hand she
presses to her heart, her trembling, her tears, and the expressions on
her face - signify and advance an archetypal psychosomatic event. In
other words, Beulah's corporeal expressions and gestures are intricately
bound up in the 'God-born' sense of self she achieves.
Interestingly enough, through the character of Guy Hartwell (a physi-
cian) the novel directly implicates this exemplary psychosomatic state
in the theory and practice of domestic medicine, aligning the physiog-
nomic truths we've already encountered with sociomedical truths dis-
seminated in household medical references. As the musician in the
scene above, Beulah's doctor-guardian has essentially prescribed this
receptive experience for her because he's just found her 'lying across
the foot of the bed ... grasping the post convulsively' (74). And the
prescription works: in the afterglow of Guy's musical tonic, Beulah
becomes a vector of 'divine beauty.' The prescription works because
Victorian science - the principles outlined in Lavater's physiognomy
and the principles that inform domestic medical literature - posit such
reciprocity between mind and body that the 'right' stimulus (be it a
Longfellow poem or a piano serenade) can serve as a cordial for disor-
der and a conduit of ideality.
Like Lavater, nineteenth-century medical commentators saw potent,
causal connections between the mind and body.11 As Charles Rosenberg
notes, Victorian medical discourse skirted distinctions between 'soul,
mind, and soma - and concentrated instead on elucidating the pre-
sumed interaction between body and mind, emotions and physiological
dysfunction, internal and external environment' (75). For example,
Aristotle's Masterpiece (1798) - republished throughout the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries - explained that '[t]he Body and Mind are so
disposed by the Author of nature, that they cannot act separately' (365).
And Beach's Family Physician (1859) confirmed that '[s]uch is the con-
nexion between the body and the mind, that one cannot be affected
without a correspondent or sympathetic affection of the other' (Beach
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 89

132). Mind and body were believed to be so intimately correspondent in

medical circles that the more immaterial 'mind' was indistinguishable
from the biological, material brain (Flint 53). As Alexander Walker
writes, 'Mind is a general term expressing the aggregate of the acts or
functions performed by the nervous organs situated chiefly in the head'
(3). According to accepted dictums, the nerves mediated this corre-
spondence between body and mind, self and spirit. 'The most we know
is, that the nerves are the connecting medium between the soul and the
body,' Wooster Beach, MD, writes, 'Hence certain passions or mental
affections have great influence over the system, and likewise whatever
affects the body must, in like manner, affect the mind' (132). This liter-
ature articulates the medical vehicle - the mind/body continuum - that
shapes Beulah's reading physiognomy and the more idealized respon-
sive encounters analysed above.V2~ Through it, we come to understand
the physiological machinery that awakens, agitates, and alters the body
as she reads.
Domestic medical manuals (passion theory in particular) encourage
the recognition that Beulah's body should be understood as an exacer-
bating, rather than a causative, agent of womanly perfection. In other
words, according to this physiological lens, the body can nourish and
amplify ideality - or diminish and drain it. That systemic connection
explained states of psychosomatic health and disease. For example,
within medical advice literature, particular 'passions' or emotional
states - love, grief, fear, anger, and so on - were a formidable influence
in the onset, prevention, and cure of physical disease and psychological
disorder: 'emotions out of balance meant physiological function out of
balance' (Rosenberg 77). So it's not surprising that domestic references
exhaustively outlined the psychosomatic effects of feeling. Anger, for
example, 'ruffles the mind, distorts the countenance, hurries on the cir-
culation of the blood, and disorders the whole vital and animal func-
tions. It often occasions fevers, and other acute diseases; and sometimes
even sudden death' (Buchan 114). The pathology of the passions graph-
ically illustrates the interplay between body and mind that defined the
human subject within mainstream Victorian medicine. Like physiog-
nomy, 'passion theory' foreclosed the possibility that mind and body
were singular or divisible aspects of being. As William Buchan wrote in
his widely reprinted Domestic Medicine (1812), 'there is established a
reciprocal influence between the mental and corporeal parts, and that
whatever injures the one, disorders the other' (114).
Yet, when the mind/body continuum works for good - as it does
90 Suzanne M. Ashworth

when Beulah engages with Longfellow in the woods - 'the mental and
corporeal parts' can read in service to an idealized religious experience.
So much so that the reading mind and the reading body fuel an empow-
ering devotional exercise. Significantly, we find Beulah reading Longfel-
low in the woods just before she will be forced to withstand great
emotional trauma - before her sister is adopted and she must leave the
orphan asylum for domestic servitude. Indeed, she sings the fifth verse
of Longfellow's 'Psalm of Life,' sensing 'that an hour of great trial was at
hand, and this was a girding for the combat,' and the reading-song cul-
minates in a prayer to the 'Great Shepherd' (14). This auditory reflex
strengthens and ennobles her, serving as a sacred guard against the 'biv-
ouac of life' that looms ahead of her (14). At the close of her reading-
song, Beulah is equipped with 'the shield of a warm, hopeful heart and
the sword of a strong, unfaltering will' (14). And to her credit, she is
marked by a 'self-possession ... unusual in children of her age' (15). In
this instance, the mind/body continuum nourishes Beulah's spiritual
resolve and her capacity to endure: she's centred, calmed, and empow-
ered by the connections between her reading mind and body.
We can more fully appreciate the therapeutic effects of Beulah's read-
ing in this scene with reference to a passion that Wooster Beach, MD,
terms 'Love to the Creator.' 'There is,' Beach explains, 'no passion
which exercises such a healthful and important an influence as pure,
celestial love' (133). Because her reading serves as a psychosomatic
cordial - suffusing mind, body, and spirit with the passion of 'celestial
love' - Beulah experiences a holistic rejuvenation at the resolution of
this textual encounter. Her faith is affirmed, her heart warmed, her will
emboldened to such an extent that she exhibits a self-control beyond
her years.
The psychic strengthening that Beulah gains through the embodied
dimensions of her response to Longfellow (not to mention Guy's piano
serenade) re-encodes what Guide to Health and Long Life (1849) affirms in
'On the Passions': 'The mind can be cultivated to withstand the shocks of
disasters common to the world, and also to resignation for those which
can not be averted' (Culverwell 41). More provocatively, domestic medi-
cal literature allows for the possibility that this mental cultivation can
come through bodily elements: exercise, air, diet, climate. Thus, rural
scenery and gardening are curatives for the disorders of love, and sailing
is an antidote to the pathology of grief. Reflecting these productive cross-
currents between body and mind, as Beulah reads Longfellow's verse her
mind is 'gird[ed] for the combat' through the physical incarnation of her
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 91

response: the song. In other words, Beulah's responsive song is part and
parcel of her ability to harness the strength-giving power of celestial love.
Put simply, her fully embodied reaction to the text fuels and foments an
exemplary state of being.
Beulah's reading is so idealized here that it's this responsive act - this
inaugural scene of reading — that first draws Guy Hartwell, her future
guardian and husband, to her. Unbeknownst to Beulah, Guy 'lean[s]
against a neighboring tree' and 'regard[s] her very earnestly' as she
sings (14). And as the novel progresses, Beulah's reading body/mind is
the object of a male gaze that grows increasingly erotic. In a subsequent
scene, Guy's attraction to Beulah crystallizes as she reads Thomas De
Quincey's 'Analects from John Paul Richter': Wo sooner were her eyes once
fastened on her book, than his rested searchingly on her face. At first she read
without much manifestation of interest ... After a while the lips parted
eagerly, the leaves were turned quickly ... Her long, black lashes could
not veil the expression of enthusiastic pleasure. Another page fluttered
over, a flush stole, across her brow; and as she closed the volume, her whole
face was irradiated' (127, italics mine). The seductive, sensual potency
of Beulah's reading body/mind is obvious here. In this passage, the con-
tinuity between reading mind and reading body positions Beulah fully
within the courtship narrative, rendering her a full-fledged romantic
heroine - a paragon of hetero-erotic ideality.
Yet despite such sensual overtones, the 'animal life' and subversive
'bodily power' latent within Beulah's physiognomy are kept in check in
these passages; the framework of 'right' (moralistic, devotional, self-
improving) reading ensures that she is not enslaved by carnal appetites
or licentious fancies. Indeed, Beulah resolves to read De Quincey's essay
as 'a guide-book to [her] soul, telling of the pathway arched with galax-
ies and paved with suns, through which that soul shall pass in triumph
to its final rest!' (127).
While the seduction narrative might be temporarily forestalled, the
sociomedical narrative continues to unfold. These scenes demarcate
and define the anatomy of the woman reader that centres this story.
Fundamentally, Beulah is the human subject defined within physiogno-
mic texts and household medical manuals: she is literally a psychoso-
matic being - an embodied mind and a psychic body. And thus it follows
that her body is a building block of whatever ideality she achieves in and
through her reading experiences.
Still, it's tempting to say that Longfellow's poetry or De Quincey's
'Analects' preclude any other possibility. It's tempting to privilege the
92 Suzanne M. Ashworth

text - the external stimulus - over the continuum that receives it, as if
the text itself holds the key to gender ideality. And Beulah lends that
supposition a certain weight. When Guy 'test[s]' Beulah's faith with the
textual 'specter of Atheism,' the mind/body continuum registers the
success of his experiment:

She sat down and read. [Guy] put his hand carelessly over his eyes, and
watched her curiously through his fingers. It was evident that she soon
became intensely interested. He could see the fierce throbbing of a vein in
her throat, and the tight clutching of her fingers, and the lips were com-
pressed severely. Gradually the flush faded from her cheek, an expression
of pain and horror swept over her stormy face. (128)

While the book in this scene is unnamed, its psychosomatic power is

obvious. Beulah's body - the throbbing vein, clutching fingers, com-
pressed lips, pallid cheeks, and mortified facial expression - index the
moral and intellectual consternation she's experiencing in the grips of a
godforsaken passage. And the books in Guy's library are so potent - so
dangerous - that he warns her away from them: '"Beulah, do you want
to be just what I am? Without belief in any creed! hopeless of eternity as
of life! Do you want to be like me? If not, keep your hands off my
books!"' (129). Guy's warning leaves the reading subject prostrate be-
fore the book, as if the mind/body continuum is a passive weathervane
of psychic and physical currents.
Certainly, within the axioms of domestic advice books and medical
manuals some texts were deemed more godforsaken than others.
Cultural invectives against novel reading in particular have become
legendary in the annals of literary scholarship.13 Harvey Newcomb, for
example, declared in his Young Lady's Guide (1846) that

[n]ovel reading produces just the kind of excitement calculated to develop

this excessive and diseased sensibility, to fill the mind with imaginary fears,
and produce excessive alarm and agitation at the prospect of danger, the
sight of distress, or the presence of unpleasant objects; ... If you wish to
become weak-headed, nervous, and good for nothing, read novels. (201)

Likewise in On the Preservation of Health of Women at the Critical Periods of

Life (1851), EJ. Tilt advised:

Novels and romances, speaking generally, should be spurned as capable of

 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 93

calling forth emotions of the same morbid description which, when habitu-
ally indulged in, exert a disastrous influence on the nervous system, suffi-
cient to explain that frequency of hysteria and nervous diseases which we
find among the highest classes, (qtd. in Flint 58)

With this apocryphal rhetoric, authoritative discourses granted the text

an inordinate power over the reading mind and reading body. And if
this power holds within the context of Beulah, then its protagonist can-
not lay a firm claim to whatever reading ideality her character repre-
sents: where novels can produce a nervous, debilitated femininity, Guy's
library can create a godless one, and in any case the text controls the
reader, dictating and determining her psychosomatic character. Accord-
ing to this critical trajectory, the 'warm, hopeful heart,' 'God-born
spirit,' and 'divine beauty' fostered in Beulah's first responsive experi-
ences are accidental by-products of a textual encounter that proves
much more formidable than her own subjectivity.

Body 'Bad,' Mind 'Good'?: The Disordered Reading Subject

As we shall see, the novel will go on to resist the power of the text,
underscoring the self-determined force of Beulah's reading practices
and her ability to penetrate - and manipulate - a text. But it's important
to note that Beulah's grasp on reading ideality is indeed fragile and
transient. In fact, she reads herself out of the fold of womanly perfec-
tion that she occupies at the novel's opening, growing thin, pallid, and
enfeebled by her intellectual exploits. As Beulah's reading becomes a
compulsion, her friend Clara Sanders observes: '"Sometimes, when I
come in, and find you, book in hand, with that far-off expression in your
eyes, I really dislike to speak to you. There is no more color in your face
and hands, than in that wall yonder. You will dig your grave among
books, if you don't take care"' (161). Thus, Beulah reveals that the rela-
tionship between reading, gendered excellence, and the body was a
troubled one. The reading body/mind could not be trusted to fix ideal-
ity in character, and the threat of disruption and disorder haunts the
continuum between them.
As her physiognomy indicated, Beulah exhibits a predisposition to
disordered reading practices early on in the novel, and whatever hold
she has on 'true' (reading) womanhood is an uneasy one. Almost imme-
diately, we learn that Beulah 'studies too much,' reading 'alone in the
cold' through the night at the orphanage. As both the lay community
94 Suzanne M. Ashworth

and practicing psychologists well knew, such intense application to study

was an established precursor to insanity.14 In fact, reading played a
prominent role in lay accounts of mental deterioration transcribed in
hospital casebooks. For instance, one father wrote to the Pennsylvania
Hospital for the Insane that as his son's grip on reality rapidly dimin-
ished, he burned his books, saying that his younger brothers 'should not
have a chance to pore over them as he had done'; and another father
said that his daughter's declension into insanity was first evidenced in
her 'unsteady pursuit of objects of excitement, first books, then visiting
... to the neglect of all else' (Tomes 96, 102). In light of this symptoma-
tology, when Beulah sacrifices sleep and warmth to read, she flirts with a
harbinger of delusion and derangement.
Compounding her predilection to distemperate reading habits, in the
opening chapters Beulah displays a disturbing vulnerability to self-
centred reading reverie and inappropriate identification. For example,
as the Martin baby recovers from an extended illness, Beulah reads Irv-
ing's Sketch Book and becomes so 'absorbed in the volume' that 'her
thoughts wandered on with the author, amid the moldering monu-
ments of Westminster Abbey' (39). Beulah's identification with Irving
enables her to wander through the ruins of Westminster Abbey and
occupy another subject position and space - a dangerous proposition
within an ideology of true womanhood. More specifically, Beulah's
mental travelling disturbs an ideology that worked hard to position
women firmly within the kitchen, the parlour, the nursery, the sick-
room, and the bedroom. The 'cult of true womanhood,' as Caroll
Smith-Rosenberg explains, 'prescribed a female role bounded by
kitchen and nursery, overlaid with piety and purity, and crowned with
subservience' (13). When Beulah reads outside or beyond those
bounds, Beulah testifies to the reality that reading might manifest itself
as a form of social-forgetfulness - a relaxation of consciousness that con-
flicts with the other-centred ethics of domestic femininity.15
Even more troubling, Beulah inhabits texts at her own discretion -
without guidance or censor - and such intellectual autonomy could
license the 'wrong' lessons. As a testament to this danger, when Beulah
is again inspired to voice her response to a text she betrays a highly sus-
pect associative reaction. Moved to recall the life of the English poet
Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) Beulah sighs, '"Ah if we could only have
sat down together in that gloomy garret, and had a long talk! It would
have helped us both. Poor Chatterton! I know just how you felt, when
you locked your door and lay down on your truckle-bed, and swallowed
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 95

your last draught!"' (39). Although '[tjhere is not a word about [Tho-
mas] Chatterton' in the sketch before her, Beulah calls him to mind
because she identifies with the social and psychological alienation he
represents: he was not laid to rest in the Abbey 'under sculptured mar-
ble,' Beulah muses, '[rather,] his bones were scattered, nobody knows
where' (40).
Thomas Chatterton came of age in eighteenth-century Bristol, the
son of the sexton of St Mary's. Though he did not read until he was
eight, once initiated into literacy he read everything he could lay hands
on; he wrote his first poem at age eleven, and at twelve or thirteen he
assumed the persona of a fifteenth-century priest, Thomas Rowley, and
continued composing. With unscrupulous ambition, he claimed his
poems were copies of medieval manuscripts housed at his father's
church, and sent several to Horace Walpole. When Walpole discovered
the con, he returned the poems and ended the correspondence. At
seventeen, Thomas went to London and struggled to make it in literary
circles. After starving for three days, he poisoned himself. Not exactly a
veritable role model for a young, pubescent girl in mid-century Amer-
ica: Chatterton does not exemplify temperate reading practices, stoic
self-sacrifice to social duty, or pious resignation to a life of suffering. Yet
Beulah dwells self-formatively on the association. Admittedly, her mind
often turns to Thomas Chatterton '"[b]ecause he was so miserable and
uncared-for; because sometimes I feel exactly as he did"' (40). Beulah's
associative connection with Chatterton may be integral to her own iden-
tity, but it's not a particularly instructive or ennobling bond. Thus this
reading experience - in its all-encompassing absorption and its inappro-
priate associative end - is clearly at odds with the ideal reading behav-
iours we've seen before.
More importantly, that Beulah is again moved to voiceher response to
a text stands as a telling narrative parallel to the reading-song that
marked a more fitting textual encounter. Just as before, the body oper-
ates in the service of a larger psychosomatic response: 'her mind was
filled with weird images, that looked out from her earnest eyes,' the nar-
rative relates. 'At length she closed the book, and passing her hand wea-
rily over her eyes,' Beulah speaks aloud her thoughts of Chatterton
(39). More pointedly, Beulah's sighing address to Chatterton ministers
to a particular psychic construct: '"I often think of him"'; '"I feel exactly
as he did"' (40). Again, the physical response (the eyes, the hand, the
voice) augments and expresses a coexistent emotional state. And again,
Guy Hartwell covertly observes this textual encounter, reinforcing the
96 Suzanne M. Ashworth

embodied (and hetero-erotic) dimensions of Beulah's reading prac-

tices. Despite these narrative connections, in this instance the reading
body/mind does not reinforce overarching moral or social constructs,
not because the Sketch Book is an inappropriate text or because Irving is
an improper literary companion for the woman reader,16 but because
Beulah's character - her lived experiences and affective associations -
render this a countercultural reading practice. The interactions be-
tween the mind and the body - between Beulah's memories, thoughts,
emotions, and words - make this scene culturally suspect, which means
that it's not the text that undoes Beulah's reading ideality in this inter-
val. It's not her body that betrays her. Rather, it's the interplay between
her reading mind and reading body that is ultimately unpredictable and
unstable.
What's finally at issue when Beulah reads is the power of her reading
body/mind: there's something about Beulah's psychosomatic make-up
that renders reading a volatile exercise for her. The books don't wear
her out, Beulah herself explains, but 'the thoughts they excite' do
(199). '"For instance,"' she details to Clara, '"I read Carlyle for hours,
without the slightest sensation of weariness. Midnight forces me to lay
the book reluctantly aside, and then the myriad conjectures and inquir-
ies which I am conscious of, as arising from those same pages, weary me
beyond all degrees of endurance"' (199). As Beulah makes clear, the
book itself is not the toxicant. Rather, it's Beulah's receptive system - the
'conjectures and inquiries' that arise from the pages - that drains her
mentally and physically. It's her reading mind and reading body that
prove a more formidable force to reckon with than any given text.
At first glance, the volatility of Beulah's body/mind seems to fall in
line with Victorian visions of an unruly female physiology: 'Physicians
saw woman as the product and prisoner of her reproductive system'
(Smith-Rosenberg and Rosenberg 112). The female sexual anatomy
determined and defined female character and rendered the female
body a mercurial mechanism. 'Each month, for over thirty years, these
organs caused cyclical periods of pain, weakness, embarrassment, irrita-
bility, and, in some cases, even insanity,' Caroll Smith-Rosenberg details
(183). These sociomedical assumptions encourage us to see Beulah's
receptive system as a by-product of her reproductive system - as if ovary
and uterus hold her troubled reading psyche in their unforgiving grip.
But the tenacity of Beulah's reading body/mind conflicts with physio-
logical truths that made female subjectivity synonymous with delicacy
and susceptibility. Indeed, despite Beulah's exhaustion, neither her
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 97

mind nor her body is weak or lethargic. Beulah has the physical and
intellectual capacity to 'read for hours'; she engages extremely arduous
texts and she reads them vigorously and critically. Thus it's the strength
of Beulah's body/mind that compels her reading program:

From her earliest childhood she had been possessed by an active spirit of
inquiry, which constantly impelled her to investigate, and as far as possible
explain the mysteries which surrounded her on every side ... It was no
longer study for the sake of erudition; these riddles involved all that she
prized in Time and Eternity, and she grasped books of every description
with the eagerness of a famishing nature. What dire chance threw into her
hands such works as Emerson's, Carlyle's and Goethe's? Like the waves of
the clear sunny sea, they only increased her thirst to madness. Her burning
lips were ever at these fountains; and in her reckless eagerness, she
plunged into the gulf of German speculation. (208-9)

Underscoring the power of Beulah's reading body/mind, the narrative

explains her reading practices with recourse to hungers that are both
physical and intellectual: 'an active spirit of inquiry,' a 'famishing
nature,' a 'thirst' for knowledge. Beulah reads, it seems, because body
and mind leave her no alternative. Thus, the threat to her (pious, mor-
alistic) reading ideality is not that sensual aspects of her responsive
experiences will subsume the spiritual and the intellectual. Nor is it that
Beulah will be taken over by the carnal, pulsing 'animal life' that lurks
within her. The threat is that her intellect is itself embodied - that her
mind hungers - and that she will choose to feed that hunger, sculpting a
subjectivity that resists and defies normative gender ideals.
But feed that hunger she does. And when the novel again deploys
physiognomy to index her character, her body testifies to a holistic dis-
composition of her reading ideality. After three years in Dr Hartwell's
home, 'The placid element was as wanting in her physiognomy as in her
character, and even the lines of that mouth gave evidence of strength and
restlessness, rather than peace' (109). Although the narrative calls atten-
tion to the feminine elements of her physicality - her 'slender form' and
'luxuriant black hair wound in a circular knot' - the 'strength and rest-
lessness' registered in her face is 'unsexed' by Victorian standards. Rein-
forcing Beulah's questionable gender identity in this passage, the
narrative records this physiognomy as Beulah reads a decidedly unfemi-
nine text: a geometry book. Hence, Beulah's physiognomy ultimately
works to expose the gender trouble that is latent within her character.17
98 Suzanne M. Ashworth

With the juxtaposition of its inceptive (and embodied) scenes of read-

ing - one an exemplary encounter and the other a cautionary fore-
shadow - Beulah pushes the revelation of pivotal definitive principles.
'Bad' reading practices are not simply excessively embodied reading
practices; they're not simply mind-numbing acts of self-pollution or titil-
lating encounters with novels and romances. Unlike the nineteenth-
century's infamous novel readers or Evans's Southern matrons, Beulah
is not catapulted into a degenerate sensual state; she does not read pas-
sively or gluttonously, and her reading is not a stimulus to masturbation.
But she does read herself out of an idealized subject position, and the
Victorian continuity between mind and body renders that an omnipres-
ent possibility.
Only when Beulah relinquishes her books and ceases to quest intel-
lectually does she regain the paradigmatic status that she lost. Eventu-
ally, we see Beulah in 'a Godless world' as 'a Godless woman': 'On all
sides, books greeted her ... These well-worn volumes, with close "mar-
ginalias," echoed her inquiries, but answered them not to her satisfac-
tion. Was her life to be thus passed in feverish toil ...?' (370). Faced with
the 'cold metaphysical abstractions' housed in her library, Beulah must
amputate her voracious reading body/mind from her character to
regain 'the holy faith of [her] girlhood' (371). In one of the last images
we have of Beulah with a book, we see again that spiritually armoured
sense of self she achieved with Longfellow's poems in her lap, only this
time it's not a product of her reading: 'She took up a book she had been
reading that morning, but it was too dim to see the letters, and she con-
tented herself with looking out at the stars, brightening as the night
deepened. '"So should it be with faith," thought she, "and yet, as trou-
bles come thick and fast, we are apt to despair"' (396). Thus, the pivotal
affirmation of faith that re-secures Beulah's ideality is completely
divorced from the text: it isn't inspired by any particular passage and it
comes after she has turned away from reading. From this point forward,
the only book Beulah holds is her Bible - the one text that can, appar-
ently, fix ideality in character (or, at the very least, not threaten it). In
fact, the novel ends as Beulah lays the good book on her husband's lap,
engaged in the 'holy work' of his conversion (420).
Ultimately, the individual reading body/mind proves too tempera-
mental - too wayward - to anchor female ideality. And nothing under-
scores its power, and its threat, more than the circumspection of
Beulah's reading habits that concludes the novel. Therein lies a distinct
irony. As a domestic novel, Beulah itself attempted to use the mind/body
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 99

continuum to foster ideality among its readers. As Nina Baym writes,

deploying a 'grippingly affective reading experience,' the domestic
novel 'aim[s] to forward the development in young, female readers, of a
specific kind of character' (Woman's Fiction xix). But as Beulah's charac-
ter teaches us, the reading mind and reading body cannot be fully
governed by the text. In the end, Beulah's books couldn't effectively
contain or restrain the psychosomatic nature of their reader. Thus
within its pages Beulah enfolds the sociomedical truth that haunts the
age: that the 'young, female reader' is always already reading beyond or
outside this psychosomatic fence-row of self-improvement; that she's
transfiguring and transforming herself as she reads; and that her mind -
and her body - are in control.

NOTES

1 On the contrary, Evans broke off her engagement with Yankee journalist
James Reed Spaulding because he argued that secession was akin to treason
and economic suicide. Her wartime journalism qualifies as ardent Southern
propaganda; she travelled regularly to the Confederate front, and with the
publication of Macaria (1863) she hoped to glorify the cause. After the war,
she refused to receive any man who had served in the Federal army, even
when it meant turning away the literary brass that would have advanced her
career (Evans Papers).
2 As Eugene D. Genovese remarks, slaveholders 'adapted the messages of
bourgeois domesticity, economic and scientific progress, and socially respon-
sible Christian charity to local conditions and values' (xv).
3 Among general domestic medical references, I rely primarily on Dr William
Buchan's Domestic Medicine, John C. Gunn's Domestic Medicine, and Dr
Wooster Beach's Family Physician. According to Joan Burbick, Buchan's and
Gunn's texts rank among the century's most popular lay manuals written by
regular physicians (18). In addition, Burbick argues that medical manuals
are deeply implicated in the rhetoric of nation-building. That rhetoric like-
wise informs theories of reading. This common nationalistic aim under-
scores the fact that although this essay centres on a woman reader, the
reading body isn't just a gendered entity; it's a coagulation of multiple iden-
tity markers (age, race, class, region, and nation). For a discussion of the
prototypical tenets of female physiology within this literature, see Diana
Price Herndl (34-8).
4 The twentieth-century equivalent of this methodology and the logic behind
100 Suzanne M. Ashworth

it can be seen in feminist analyses of the body that affirm the interchange
between discursive representations and lived reality - between the way that
popular media image the female body and the way that individual women
understand their own physicality. See, for example, Susan Bordo (45-70,
139-214).
5 Kate Flint devotes a chapter to medical and physiological theories of reading
in Victorian Britain (53-71); she also considers the variances of reading in
the library, the bedroom, and the railway car (102-6). But her study is lim-
ited to British discourses. Cathy N. Davidson, Richard H. Brodhead, Barbara
Sicherman, James L. Machor, Susan K. Harris, and Janice A. Radway under-
stand that women read as women, and they attend to the gendered aspects of
reader response, but they don't locate gender in the lived body. In other
words, they don't attend to the physicality of gendered reading, and that is
the conceptual gap I hope this essay will speak to.
6 Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter, Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight, and Eliza-
beth Grosz's Volatile Bodies are representative of this trend.
7 By 1810, the Fragmente 'had gone through no fewer than sixteen German,
fifteen French, two American, two Russian, one Dutch, and twenty English
editions.' In his lifetime, Lavater achieved 'tremendous celebrity' and devel-
oped a 'cult following' that remained vitally alive throughout the nineteenth
century. Serious sciences and scientists, including Franz Joseph Gall's
phrenology, Carl Gustav Carus's craniology, and Alexander von Humboldt's
physical anthropology, 'owed a great deal' to Lavater's theories, and Goethe
'openly acknowledged' his debt to physiognomy as he disseminated 'his own
notions of osteology and morphology' (Shookman 2, 5).
8 I've outlined the construction and practices of the ideal woman reader more
fully in 'Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, Conduct Literature, and Proto-
cols of Female Reading in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.'
9 George Lippard's bestselling novel The Quaker City reinforces how deeply sus-
pect this 'animal life' was for a woman in the nineteenth century:
For this is the doctrine we deem it right to hold in regard to woman. Like
man she is a combination of an animal, with an intellectual nature. Unlike
man her animal nature is a passive thing, that must be roused ere it will
develop itself in action. Let the intellectual nature of woman, be the only
object of man's influence, and woman will love him most holily. But let
him play with her animal nature as you would toy with the machinery of a
watch, let him rouse the treacherous blood, let him fan the pulse into
quick, feverish throbbings, let him warm the heart with convulsive beat-
ings, and the woman becomes like himself, but a mere animal. Sense rises
like vapor, and utterly darkens the Soul. (85)
 Augusta Jane Evans's Beulah 101

Thus, the more carnal elements of Beulah's physiognomy encode the seeds
of her own fall from ideality.
10 Granted, voice has a certain cognitive component, but Beulah's singing (and
later her audible reactions to texts) can constitute a physical incarnation of
response because, with its concern for proper elocution and vocal training,
the nineteenth century itself considered the voice a physical organ. And
because Beulah's song is such a spontaneous, reflexive act, it seems more of
the body (and its instincts) than of the mind.
11 For a comprehensive history of domestic medical literature and an overview
of its contents, see Risse, Numbers, and Leavitt (11-49, 73-93). Flint traces
the psychological and medical 'truths' that were most relevant to women's
reading in her The Woman Reader (53-70). McCandless details more con-
cretely how the body/mind continuum informed mid-century psychology,
specifically its reliance on moral treatment as a cure-all for psychic disorder
(84-7).
12 Highlighting the significance of this body/mind within the norms of both
reading and gender, Flint notes that such physiological principles founded
'an implicit theory of [women's] reading': '[S]uch instincts as sympathetic
imagination, and a ready capacity to identify with the experience of others,
are unalterable facts about [a woman's] mental operations, and hence, by
extension, her processes of reading' (57).
13 See, for example, Davidson (38-54) and Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers
(44-62).
14 Nancy Tomes affirms this fact in A Generous Confidence (94). And interestingly
enough, the South is peculiarly implicated in the history of insanity and its
treatment in this country. According to Peter McCandless, the first public
mental institutions in the United States were in Virginia, Kentucky, South
Carolina, and Maryland (3-4). Contrary to prevailing conceptions of the
South as a psychiatric outback, the Southern asylum actively participated in
the scientific mainstream, especially in the antebellum decades. That doesn't
mediate the fact that the South was uniquely (and increasingly) invested in
racial difference and segregation, but like their Northern counterparts,
Southern asylums 'were influenced by avant-garde ideas of moral treatment
and therapeutic optimism' (McCandless 5).
151 am indebted to Kate Flint's recognition that portraits of women reading in
the nineteenth century also manifested this 'relaxation of outward social
awareness' (4).
16 On the contrary, Beulah lays hands on the book through the authoritative
auspices of her friend Eugene, and The Young Lady's Own Booklists the Sketch
Book among the texts in its 'select library' (102, 103).
102 Suzanne M. Ashworth

171 borrow this term from Judith Butler's book by the same name, and I define
it as she does. As I understand it, gender trouble happens when a gendered
performance destabilizes the 'signifying gestures through which gender
itself is established' (viii).

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ana State UP, 1992.
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4 'I Should No More Think of Dictating
... What Kinds of Books She Should
Read': Images of Women Readers in
Victorian Family Literary Magazines

JENNIFER PHEGLEY

John Ruskin's emphatic warning to parents in 1864 to 'keep the mod-

ern magazine and novel out of your girl's way' exemplifies the precari-
ous relationship that existed among critics, popular literature, and
women readers in the nineteenth century ('Of Queen's Gardens' 66).
Ruskin's and other critics' concerns about the dangerous effects of
print culture on women were intimately linked to the explosive growth
of the periodical industry. As literacy rates rose, printing technologies
improved, and taxes on newspapers were revoked, periodicals began to
dominate nineteenth-century literary culture. Between 1824 and 1900
as many as fifty thousand periodicals were published in Great Britain
(North 4), and by the middle of the century there were over one thou-
sand journals devoted solely to literary subjects (Thompson 3). The
development of this mass of periodical literature had such an impact
that the eminent Victorian critic George Saintsbury declared in 1896:

Perhaps there is no single feature of the English literary history of the

nineteenth century, not even the enormous popularisation and multiplica-
tion of the novel, which is so distinctive and characteristic as the develop-
ment in it of periodical literature ... [I]t is quite certain that, had ...
reprints [from magazines] not taken place, more than half the most valu-
able books of the age ... would never have appeared as books at all. (166)

In order to combat the overwhelming abundance of inexpensive maga-

zines and the novels contained within them, many critics took it as their
mission to direct readers to choose the proper texts and read in the
'right' ways.
These critics characterized women as the most susceptible victims of
106 Jennifer Phegley

the 'disease of reading' that was believed to be a threat to the sanctity of

the family and to the social order of the nation.1 The specific dangers
of reading were often only vaguely alluded to, though they were most
frequently associated with women behaving in ways unbecoming of a
proper wife and mother. In other words, many critics feared that what
women read (especially if it happened to be sensational or scandalous)
and how women read (particularly if it was quickly and uncritically)
would at best infect them with romanticized expectations that would
leave them dissatisfied about their lives, or at worst with immoral
thoughts that could lead to immoral behaviour. Critics' definitions of
good and bad literature were strongly influenced by discussions of what
constituted 'proper reading' for women because both the subject mat-
ter and the methods of women's reading were considered central to the
production of good wives and mothers.
However, not every critic or literary magazine was concerned about
protecting women from reading material and reading habits that could
contaminate them. In fact, the newly emerging genre of the family liter-
ary magazine, which included periodicals such as the Cornhill, edited by
William Thackeray, and Belgravia, edited by Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
opposed the argument that women were inherently uncritical readers
who were unable to make good decisions about reading.2 Instead, these
magazines invited women to become active members of their middle-
class reading audience, to exercise their critical thinking skills, to im-
prove their literary knowledge, and to raise the entire nation's cultural
status through reading.
Unlike more elite journals such as the Saturday Review and the Quar-
terly Review - which assumed an all-male audience - and domestic peri-
odicals such as the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine - which were
focused on women's household duties - family literary magazines sold
themselves as friendly cultural instructors for men, women, and chil-
dren. These shilling monthly magazines balanced serial fiction with
factual articles on subjects of current interest, including science, art, his-
tory, and, to a lesser extent, political events. It was due largely to the
inclusion of women in literary and intellectual discussions that the
genre of the family literary magazine became the most popular periodi-
cal format of the 1860s. Considering the importance of women readers
to the success of these magazines, it is crucial to document the ways in
which they constructed a particular image of the woman reader in their
articles, novels, poems, and illustrations.3 I argue that both the Cornhill
and Belgravia overtly combated the portrayal of improper reading as a
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 107

particularly female malady and attempted to reshape attitudes towards

women readers by visually and textually depicting them participating in
intellectual development through reading. These periodicals, then,
transformed the literary debate surrounding women readers by insist-
ing that women could read critically and productively.4
Both magazines asserted that women should be empowered to read
what they wanted; however, they diverged in the degree to which they
accepted that women should read without regulation or supervision. In
this essay, I will show that the Cornhill consistently depicted women who
were guided in their reading choices by the magazine itself and who
read in the presence of men for the benefit of their families, while
Bdgravia, the more radical of the two magazines, featured images of
solitary women who chose their own books and read for their own
enjoyment and edification. Although Belgravia makes a more revolution-
ary statement regarding the relationship of women to literary (and not-
so-literary) texts, I will first turn to representations of women readers in
the Cornhill because it had a more dominant voice in the period and
serves as a more typical gauge of the alternative public image of the
much-maligned woman reader. The Cornhill's prestige was linked to the
fact that it was issued by the respectable Smith, Elder, and Company,
edited by the revered Thackeray, and featured novels written by criti-
cally acclaimed authors such as George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and
Anthony Trollope.1 Belgravia, on the other hand, was issued by the mav-
erick publisher John Maxwell and managed by Braddon, whose illicit
relationship with Maxwell and reputation as the 'queen of the sensation
novel' garnered critical disrespect. Braddon's magazine also showcased
her own sensational novels, which were reviled by critics. The reputation
of each magazine had a profound effect on its relationship to women
readers, as Belgravia was in a position to take risks defending its primary
consumers, while the more reputable Cornhill took a progressive but safe
route to promote women readers.6
The Cornhill, the most famous and successful of the family literary
magazines, showed respect for its women readers by maintaining not
only that women were educable, but that they should be educated for
the good of the middle-class family and the British nation. In fact, the
Cornhill advocated the improvement of women's formal education -
and, to a lesser degree, women's movement into the professions - as a
means of assisting the development of the 'professional gentleman' who
was emerging as the leader of the British nation. To keep potential wives
occupied while upwardly mobile gentlemen took more time to establish
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

ahemselve s financially before marrying, the Cornhill urged readers to

consider the benefits of intellectual advancement and professional
employment for women. Even before Ruskin delivered his speech 'Of
Queen's Gardens' to Manchester housewives in December 1864, the
Cornhill supported a similar philosophy of broadened reading experi-
ences for women that was explicitly linked to the fulfilment of a domes-
tic ideal of womanhood. Both believed that if women read widely they
would not only be able to engage in more meaningful conversations and
thus build stronger bonds with their husbands, but also pass on their
new-found knowledge to their children. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
argues that Ruskin explicitly urged women to take on a queenly - and
inherently public - role by reading widely and exerting their critical fac-
ulties, particularly on matters related to morality and social justice.
Since Ruskin also implied that women should share their thoughts on
such matters with the world (the extended 'home'), Weltman declares
that his speech obliterated 'the inside/outside dichotomy that forms
the basic division of Victorian sex roles' (112). However, for both Ruskin
and the Cornhill, the intellectual capabilities women gained through
reading would primarily be used in the service of their families. While
women's intellectual development might have a public function, that
function was still required to reinforce domesticity, to be an extension
of good housekeeping. Furthermore, neither Ruskin nor the Cornhill
addressed women's intellectual activity as a form of self-fulfilment. Both
saw women's reading primarily as a means of satisfying the family's or
the nation's needs.
Harriet Martineau, well known for her advocacy of women's rights,
makes the CornhiWs approach to women's intellectual development
clear in her article 'Middle-Class Education in England - Girls' (Novem-
ber 1864). In this essay, Martineau moulds her claims to the magazine's
agenda concerning women readers as she argues that girls should be
taught Latin, Greek, and other serious subjects in addition to domestic
training because it is 'desirable that the mothers of the next generation
should have a large intelligence and rich culture' to pass on to their chil-
dren and, ultimately, to strengthen the nation's citizens (563). For the
Cornhill the 'briars and brambles' had to 'be cleared away from women's
avenue to the temple of knowledge' for the good of the family and the
nation, but not necessarily of the woman herself (Martineau 567).
While Martineau's article reconciled the gap between the intellectual
woman and the domestic one by pointing out the need for well-educated
mothers, G.H. Lewes (who sporadically served as editor of the Cornhill)
 a

took a slightly different approach to delivering the magazine's message

about the value of women readers. Lewes argued that women should be
well read because what they read symbolized the state of the nation's cul-
ture. In 'Publishers Before the Age of Printing' (January 1864), Lewes
seems to provide a straightforward history lesson that touches on the
important role books played in the lives of Romans at the height of that
civilization. However, it becomes clear that Lewes is writing more than a
history lesson; he is arguing for more serious reading practices, particu-
larly for women, in Victorian England. He points to women's reading
practices as a vital indicator of a nation's level of cultural development
and implies that England should not merely emulate the fallen civiliza-
tion, but surpass and outlast it. Lewes explains that although Roman
women did not have Mudie's Circulating Library, they did have extensive
collections of books in their homes as well as free public libraries, which
gave them better access to reading material, even in an age before the
invention of the printing press. Thus, he concludes, 'Stockings would
have been as blue then as now only stockings had not been invented'
(28). While he pokes fun at intellectual women by playing with the term
'blue stocking' and by stating that' [t]he women were as well read in the
current literature as our idle ladies who subscribe to Mudie's,' he reas-
sures male readers that intellectual women are not a new and dangerous
breed, but are symbols of any advanced culture (28). Lewes's message is
clear: women readers - all readers for that matter - should be encour-
aged to take full advantage of the vast resources available to them as a
result of the dominance of print culture. Accordingly, Lewes urges a
revival of the 'fashion' for books that he identifies in Roman times and
calls on his readers to construct their own libraries as monuments to the
nation's superior culture (29). Presumably, the CornM/would itself make
a suitable start to such a collection of literary treasures.
In suggesting itself as a proper purveyor of culture, the Cornhill defied
many elite (and elitist) reviewers who saw periodicals as a major cause
of the downfall of the nation's literature and of women's unhealthy
reading practices. Periodicals were criticized for contributing to the pro-
liferation of texts that made it more and more difficult to distinguish
between good and bad literature and for encouraging careless reading
habits such as skimming and skipping that resulted from the miscella-
neous format and serialized contents. To combat such negative views of
the effects of reading magazines, the Cornhill used a variety of strategies
to promote proper reading practices. The magazine published 'serious'
nonfiction articles that required a critical engagement with politics, his-
110 Jennifer Phegley

tory, and economic issues; featured 'quality' fiction that provided read-
ers with role models for respectable middle-class behaviour; and in-
cluded commentaries on taste to instruct readers how to judge literary
texts. One of the most famous of these commentaries on literary taste
was Matthew Arnold's 'The Literary Influence of Academies' (August
1864). Arnold's influential essay praises the French academy's ability to
determine which literary works were worthy representations of the
nation's cultural achievement and should therefore be made available
to the public. Arnold uses this foreign example to impress upon his fel-
low citizens the cultural benefits of a formal system of literary regula-
tion. Like Lewes, Arnold promoted the idea that a nation's literature,
and thereby its reading, were lofty symbols of its power and status. How-
ever, Arnold's glorification of the academic 'culture police' was not
wholly embraced by the Cornhill. The magazine would 'set standards'
and 'create ... a force of educated opinion' but would not 'rebuk[e]
those who fall below these standards' (Arnold 160-1). Furthermore,
instead of merely choosing the proper texts for its women readers, the
magazine would teach them to distinguish between high and low cul-
tural texts while permitting them to consume both. The fact that the
magazine allowed both high and low cultural works to be consumed is
significant because in the elite press the dangers of obsessively reading
periodicals were second only to the dangers of reading sensation novels
- the quintessential low cultural form of the century that was particu-
larly associated with women readers.
Lyn Pykett succinctly summarizes the connection between anxieties
about sensation as a genre and the developing divisions between high
and low culture in her analysis of Henry Mansel's scathing critique of
the sensation novel in the April 1863 Quarterly Review:

Mass-produced for mass consumption, the sensation novel was used by

some critics to mark the boundary between high art and popular artifact.
Unlike the productions of high culture, it was argued, sensation novels
were not written to 'satisfy the unconquerable yearnings of an artist's soul',
rather they were produced by the 'market law of supply and demand' and
were 'redolent of the manufactory or the shop' ... In short, sensation fic-
tion disturbingly blurred the boundaries between the classes, between high
art, low art, and no art (newspapers), between the public and the private,
and between the respectable and the low life or demi-monde. (9)

Likewise, the frequent equation of sensationalism with the deterioration

 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 111

of femininity had become a commonplace by the 1860s. Sensation fic-

tion presented readers with exciting and intricate plots focusing on
supposedly respectable middle-class citizens, often women, who were
secretly involved in criminal activities such as bigamy, arson, forgery,
and even murder.
Though many critics viewed this type of fiction as dangerous, the
Cornhill treated it differently. Through its editorial commentaries in
'Our Survey of Literature and Science,' written primarily by Lewes, the
Cornhill distinguished between entertaining or sensational fiction, such
as Wilkie Collins's Cornhill contribution Armadale (November 1864-June
1866), and serious or realistic fiction, such as George Eliot's Cornhill
serial, Romola (January 1862-August 1863). Instead of perpetuating the
hysteria surrounding women's consumption of the low cultural genre of
the sensation novel, the Cornhill maintained that reading for entertain-
ment was an acceptable practice, as long as the reader remained aware
of its purely recreational purpose. This point is made in the magazine's
defense of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret:

Granting, as we must, that works of this class merely appeal to the curiosity
- that they do nothing more than amuse the vacant or wearied mind, if
they do that, it is something. They may be transitory as fireworks, and raise
no loftier emotions. But a frivolous and wearied public demands amuse-
ment ... and the public may be grateful when such amusement leaves
behind it no unwholesome sympathy with crimes and criminals ... Its inci-
dents are not simply violations of probability, but are without that congru-
ity which, in a skillful romance, makes the improbable credible. (Lewes,
'Our Survey: L<ady Audley's Secret,' 135—6)

The Cornhill, then, gave women enough respect to permit them to read
an otherwise defamed fictional form with an understanding that they
were not likely to be harmed by it. However, the magazine condoned
such reading only if readers had enough self-awareness of the categories
of literature to understand that sensation novels lacked artistry, failed to
provide cultural enrichment, and were therefore suitable only for frivo-
lous entertainment.
While the Cornhill proclaimed sensation fiction to be acceptable if
approached sensibly, it actively promoted realistic fiction as a higher cul-
tural form. Realism was elevated above sensationalism because it was
believed to teach readers about real life, serve as a model for proper
behaviour that would make readers better middle-class citizens, and
112 Jennifer Phegley

embody the kind of art that would be likely to pass muster with an imag-
inary Arnoldian academy. In a review of Trollope's OrleyFarm in another
installment of 'Our Survey of Literature and Science,' Lewes outlines
the benefits of reading realist literature for women and their families.
He claims that realism could improve women's relationships with their
fathers, husbands, and children by developing their powers of sympathy.
For example, Trollope's realistic presentation of 'human beings, with
good and evil strangely intermingled' rather than the black-and-white
depiction of 'angels and devils' might allow readers to gain a deeper
understanding of the moral and psychological motivations of real peo-
ple (702). To emphasize his point, Lewes claims that Trollope's fiction
encourages 'pity for the weakness out of which wickedness springs'
(702-3), thereby increasing sympathy and thus femininity. Lewes's
endorsement of Trollope's realism focuses on the ways in which it
encourages the melding of those feminine and emotional qualities that
make women well suited for domesticity with those rational and intellec-
tual abilities that allow them to serve as Arnoldian judges of literary
quality.
The Cornhill offered a significant improvement in the rhetoric sur-
rounding women readers by insisting on the link between the intellec-
tual development of women and their roles within the family and by
trusting them to read for both entertainment and enlightenment while
also declaring that they could learn to distinguish between the two. The
Cornhill's focus on traditional roles adapted to intellectual abilities can
also be seen in the illustrations for the magazine. I will examine two
illustrations accompanying the magazine's serialized fiction that empha-
size the inseparability of women readers from their roles as wives, moth-
ers, and daughters. These women readers are able to use their
intellectual abilities to serve the needs of their families despite the
doubts and fears of some of the men in their lives.
'The Blind Scholar and His Daughter' (fig. 4.1) is an illustration by
Frederic Leighton that accompanied the premier installment of Eliot's
Romola in July 1862.8 This illustration, placed in its context within the
novel and the magazine, casts the woman reader as a devoted daughter
whose intellectual abilities contribute to the success of her family. This
depiction suits the attitude of the magazine since it promotes learning
that contributes to the pleasure and pride of male authority figures but
not intellectual activity that goes beyond the strict confines of masculine
supervision. Leighton's illustration depicts Romola, a fifteenth-century
Italian woman, conducting academic work in the service of her father
who sits clutching a book as she stands patiently by his side reading to
 linages of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 113

Fig. 4.1. The Blind Scholar and His Daughter,' CornhillMagazine (July 1862): 1.
114 Jennifer Phegley

him. Romola stands majestically over her father with a lantern in her
hand, shining light on his permanent darkness. This image suggests that
Romola is in a position of power; however, her placid facial expression
and outstretched arm, placed on the back of her father's chair, indicate
that her task is a daughterly duty undertaken to assist her beloved
father. In the text, we learn that Romola selflessly serves her father by
applying the education he has provided for her to meet his ambitions
and desires rather than her own. Her father rather unappreciatively
describes her as 'endowed beyond the measure of women ... filling up to
the best of her power the place of a son,' and marvels at her capricious
memory, which 'grasps certain objects with tenacity, and lets fall all
those minutiae whereon depends accuracy, the very soul of scholarship'
(August 1862, 153, 149). Although she may not find the details valued
by her father worth remembering and feels inadequate as a result,
Romola takes pleasure in her intellectual activities and in her ability to
further her father's academic pursuits. She is, however, equally ready to
give up her scholarly role if asked.
Romola does just that to marry Tito, a mysterious wanderer who dis-
places her as her father's primary assistant. While Tito distances Romola
from her identity as a scholar, he does not completely displace her intel-
lectual life. In fact, he is unable to attend to her father as consistently
and devotedly as she does. In Tito's increasing absences, she continues
her work: 'It was not Tito's fault, Romola had continually reassured her-
self ... [I]t was in the nature of things that no one but herself could go
on month after month, and year after year, fulfilling patiently all her
father's monotonous exacting demands' (December 1862, 722). When
Romola's father dies without having completed his scholarly goals, Tito
betrays her by dividing and selling her dead father's library to make
some quick cash. Even after her father's death, Romola wishes to serve
her father by granting his dying wish that his library be donated to the
community. Tito's violation of her life's mission, along with his adulter-
ous relationship with a peasant and his shady political activities, cause
Romola to seek an independent life. When she discovers that Tito has
been murdered by his own father (whom he also savagely betrayed), she
uses both her intellectual abilities and her innate sense of duty to serve
others by seeking out Tito's mistress and children in order to take on a
new role as guardian for this makeshift family. Serving as a sort of father
figure to this new family, she guides Tito's son towards a life that is more
humane than the one lived by his father. Romola's real power, then, lies
in her ability to both intellectually and morally transform the next gen-
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 115

eration. Within the context of the Cornhill, it is vital that Romola's intel-
lect and domesticity are compatible even if Tito is unable to recognize
that fact.
While it is clear that fathers can benefit from their daughters' intellec-
tual engagement, the Cornhiirs reading women have a more difficult
time convincing potential husbands that they will not be distracted from
their wifely roles by undertaking literary endeavours.9 In George Du
Maurier's illustration for Elizabeth Gaskell's November 1863-February
1864 Cornhill serial 'Cousin Phillis,' the lead character, whose reading is
also encouraged by her father, is shown seated in a corner of the kitchen
studying Dante's Inferno (fig. 4.2). Phillis Holman has taken time out
from her domestic duties to steal a peek at her beloved book, but she
still holds a kitchen utensil as she reads, indicating that she is able to
shift quickly from one activity to another and that she must soon return
to her 'real' work.10
In the text of 'Cousin Phillis' Peter Manning peers over his cousin's
shoulder to monitor her attempts at scholarly activity. Phillis asks him to
help her translate the Italian book into English; however, he cannot
even identify the language the text is written in, let alone translate it.
Though Phillis assures him that she 'can generally puzzle a thing out in
time' and can do without his help, Peter maintains his vigil (December
1862, 689). While surveilling an intellectual activity he doesn't compre-
hend, Peter arrives at a new realization: 'A great tall girl in a pinafore,
half a head taller than I was, reading books that I had never heard of,
and talking about them too, as of far more interest than any mere per-
sonal subjects, that was the last day on which I ever thought of my dear
cousin Phillis as the possible mistress of my heart and life' (689). The
illustration captures the moment of this rejection; even though Phillis is
depicted in a kitchen and as dutifully domestic, her books make Peter
doubt her fitness as a potential wife. Later, Peter introduces his boss Mr
Holdsworth to Phillis as someone who can serve as a Greek and Latin
tutor. Although Holdsworth is attracted to Phillis's intellect and leads
her to believe he will marry her, he eventually deserts her as well. Nei-
ther Peter nor Holdsworth can imagine how to fit an intellectual woman
into his life because neither is sure how such intellectual activity can
coincide with domesticity. Although Romola's husband Tito more dras-
tically dramatizes the critique of men who cannot appreciate intelligent
women, Peter and Holdsworth are in the same general category. These
men reveal their anxieties about intellectual women, but both Romola's
and Phillis's otherwise passive and even angelic demeanours cast asper-
116 Jennifer Phegley

Fig. 4.2. 'Cousin Phillis and Her Book,' CornhillMagazine (December 1863): 688.
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 117

sion on the cowardly gentlemen who reject them rather than on the
reading women themselves. Thus, the Cornhill chastizes men like these
who refuse to accept the compatibility of intellectual activity and tradi-
tional domesticity.
In Belgravia Magazine, Mary Elizabeth Braddon took the Cornhiirs
encouragement of women readers one step further by arguing that
women should read not only for the benefit of others, but for their own
intellectual fulfilment and leisurely enjoyment. What's more, Braddon
made this argument while using her magazine to showcase her own sen-
sation fiction. In an effort to defeat the high/low cultural split, Braddon
set out to counteract critics' rampant fears of sensationalism as a sign of
an infectious, mass-produced low culture that corrupted its women
readers. In fact, one of Belgravia's primary purposes was to refute the
Cornhiirs assertion that women should only read sensation novels for
amusement; the magazine maintained that realism and sensationalism
were on equal ground and could each be beneficial to women's moral
development. Braddon accomplished her goals, in part, by employing a
bevy of critics who forcefully argued that sensationalism was merely an
intensified realism that could have even greater benefits for women
readers by teaching them to read not only books but also people and
situations more critically.
The most famous of Belgravia's critics was George Augustus Sala who,
in 'The Cant of Modern Criticism' (November 1867), defines sensation-
alism as a heightened form of realism that is no more harmful to read-
ers than the daily news: 'in all these novels the people walk and talk and
act ... like dwellers in the actual, breathing world in which we live. If we
read the newspapers, if we read the police reports ... we shall take no
great harm by reading realistic novels of human passion, weakness, and
error' (53). Sensation novels, Sala claims, are literally drawn from the
headlines and therefore cannot be accused of being more outrageous
than real life. Sala declares that the public deserves such thrilling and
real presentations and that adult readers - even women - can handle
such fiction: '[We] want novels about that which Is, and not about that
which never Was and never Will be. We don't want pap, or spoon meat,
or milk-and-water, or curds-and-whey, or Robb's biscuits, or boiled whit-
ing, or cold boiled veal without salt. We want meat; and this is a strong
age, and we can digest it' (54). In this passage, Sala tacitly declares that
realist fiction, which is typically praised by critics, is no more than a
bland and lifeless idealization of human behaviour (cold boiled veal
without salt). Sensation fiction, on the other hand, is a heartier, stron-
ger version of life that is, nevertheless, closer to 'reality.' Far from
118 Jennifer Phegley

destroying the minds (or the digestive tracts) of readers, Sala argues
that sensationalism provides readers with a better understanding of the
world as it is, rather than as it should be. For Sala and Braddon, realist
novels were not 'real' but 'ideal' representations of life that did not
deserve to be valued over sensation novels.
Braddon's Milly Darrell (November 1870-January 1871) is a prototypi-
cal sensation story that effectively illustrates Belgravia's literary philoso-
phy. Milly is an innocent young girl whose wealthy businessman father
prevents her from marrying Angus Egerton, the impoverished aristocrat
she loves. When Mr Darrell unexpectedly dies, Milly's friend Mary, also
the story's narrator, discovers that Milly's young stepmother once had a
secret relationship with Angus. Upon her husband's death, Mrs Darrell
attempts to resume her relationship with Angus. When she is rejected,
she seeks revenge by slowly poisoning her stepdaughter. When Mary
uncovers her murderous intentions and' thwarts her plan, Mrs Darrell
commits suicide. Milly recovers from the partial poisoning, marries
Angus, and lives happily ever after with her friend and saviour by her
side. Such romantic intrigues and criminal activities among female char-
acters are abundant throughout Belgravia's, fiction. But, in contrast to
the Cornhill's relegation of sensationalism to a minor form that serves
only as amusement, Belgravia insists that sensationalism actually sur-
passes realism in both entertainment and educational potential. This
story, according to Braddon's defense of sensationalism, would fulfil a
reader's desire for excitement while also teaching her to question
authority and to be aware of the circumstances around her. It is, in fact,
the story's narrator who serves as the model woman reader who is able
to protect her more passive friend. Mary becomes an amateur detective,
reading clues that allow her to save Milly's life. The contrast between
Milly and Mary demonstrates that passively accepting what one is told is
a greater danger to women than reading the world critically and cre-
atively without regulation.
Belgravids insistence on the merits of the sensation novel for women
is the subtext of many of its nonfiction articles. For example, an article
titled 'Insanity and its Treatment' articulates a rationale not only for
exposing the horrors of insane asylums but also for exposing women to
sensational subjects in everyday life:

We have taken the readers of Belgravia for a while out of their own geo-
graphical district to ... places and subjects which are hardly congenial, how-
ever important they may be. But it is good for us sometimes to see the
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 119

'night-side' of things - to have laid bare our social scourges both of the
moral and material kind, in order that we may with one heart and mind
unite in striving to rectify those evils which madden peoples and hurry
nations to premature decay. (478)

Together Belgravids fiction and nonfiction articles stress that although

sensationalism dwells on the 'night-side' of life, the reading practices
required by the genre instruct women to detect and prevent unrespect-
able or even criminal behaviour, thereby preventing cultural decay
rather than causing it. Braddon and the critics she hired maintained
that the education and simulated worldly experience provided by sensa-
tion fiction would allow women to become active readers of life and
fiction who could make more informed moral choices that would be
good for themselves and for the nation. In The Woman Reader, Kate Flint
echoes Braddon's view of the positive social power of sensationalism
when she explains that sensation fiction mocked

the belief that women read uncritically, unthoughtfully: the very character-
istics which their authors were themselves accused of engendering. [Sensa-
tion authors] refute the idea that a woman reader is mentally passive and
accepting of what she consumes, and emphasize her capacity to act as a
rational, rather than as an emotional, being ... [T]hey stimulate, simulta-
neously, their readers' capacity for self-awareness and social analysis and
judgment. (15)

Though Braddon was clearly motivated by a desire to promote her

own scandalous brand of fiction as culturally beneficial, she also worked
hard to reshape the critical discourse surrounding sensationalism by
creating a positive image of women readers. In fact, these dual goals
were inseparable due to their incessant link in contemporary reviews. A
defense of women's reading skills was thus necessary for any complete
defense of the sensation novel. Consequently, Sala firmly defends the
right of women to choose their own books. He argues that '[n]ovels are
written for grown people and not for babes and sucklings'; therefore,
'grown women should be free to choose whatever reading material they
desire' (53). He speculates that if he had a daughter, 'When she came
to be one and twenty, or got married, I should no more think of dictat-
ing to her as to what kinds of books she should read, than as to what
kinds of stays she should wear - if she wore any at all' (54). Referring to
women's undergarments as equivalent to her reading material is a very
120 Jennifer Phegley

clever strategy because it excludes men from having any say in the mat-
ter at all; it maintains that what women read is their own business.
Through a combination of fiction and criticism, Belgravia thus took a
stand against the regulation of women's reading materials. The next
step for the magazine was to deter the elite critics from meddling with
women's reading practices.
T.H.S. Escott used his May 1869 article 'Vagueness' to speak out
against the charge that women were uncritical - and therefore corrupt-
ible - consumers of print by turning the table on the defenders of high
culture. Ironically, Escott asserts that the readers who are most in dan-
ger of 'a habit of slovenliness ... which is absolutely destructive of all
mental improvement or discipline' are not women but critics, 'who
believe they see everything at once and feel they can grasp complexity
and think that nothing can be hidden from their view' (412-13). Escott
laments the dizzying proliferation of print since 'every morrow brings
with it ... fresh newspapers to be read, fresh magazines to be skimmed,
new works of fiction or science or politics through which [readers] must
gallop at express rate, without cessation or pause' (410). In mentioning
newspapers and scientific and political treatises, Escott implicates a
male, rather than a female, audience, particularly one that quickly con-
sumes texts for professional purposes. He makes it clear that profes-
sional men are the most likely victims of 'vagueness' because they read
under harried circumstances for money. The inherent arrogance of
professionals - especially critics - and the intense pressure to make a
reputation for themselves and their magazines put them in a more vul-
nerable position than amateur (women) readers, who could take a more
leisurely approach to the consumption of print. According to Escott,
leisure allows thorough digestion of information and results in the
formation of more thoughtful opinions. With this argument, Escott
acquits women of the slanderous charges frequently lodged against
them and legitimates them as more skilled consumers of print (and
implicitly of sensation) than critics themselves.
Under Braddon's leadership, the magazine worked to legitimize
women as respectable readers who could read what they wanted, by
themselves, in any way they chose. Unlike the Cornhill, which endorsed a
certain amount of Arnoldian regulation to ensure that women could
distinguish between high and low cultural texts, Belgravia maintained
that those categories were inherently flawed and should, in fact, be dis-
regarded. The power of Belgravia's support for the independence of
women's reading is most striking when its illustrations of women readers
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 121

are compared to those featured in the Cornhill. Just as Sala argues that
what women read is their own business, Belgravias illustrations consis-
tently depict women readers whose activity is conducted independently
for their own personal benefit rather than for the good of others. Brad-
don's magazine provides images of women who experience pleasure
and the fulfillment of fantasies through reading. In this way, the maga-
zine enhanced its textual arguments in support of women readers
through the positive visual images it displayed, presenting stories with
outcomes that remained compatible with the behaviour expected from
a proper middle-class woman and thus emphasizing that reading was
not as threatening as critics implied.
The ability to read independently allows the woman reader portrayed
in 'In the Firelight' to explore her fantasies in a healthy manner
through reading as she falls asleep with a book on her lap, the visions of
her imagination swirling around her head (fig. 4.3). This woman reader
lounges in a chair, one arm dangling at her side, one arm still clutching
the oversized book. Her dream visions of dramatically costumed figures,
just barely visible in the background, hover around her as she rests. As
Sally Mitchell notes, women's daydreams are often pleasurable mental
stories that 'provide expression, release, or simply indulgence for emo-
tions or needs which are not otherwise satisfied either because of psy-
chological inhibition or because of the social context' (32). Tn the
Firelight' presents reading as just such an emotional outlet that is satisfy-
ing but also safe because the final result of this self-indulgence, as we are
told in the accompanying poem, is a socially acceptable dream about
marriage. In the poem, the woman imagines two lovers being torn apart
against the background of the French Huguenot War. After the bloody
turmoil of war plays out, the scene brightens and the separated couple
happily emerge at the wedding alter. The vision ends when the woman
unexpectedly awakens to recognize herself and Frank, presumably her
real-life beau, as the main characters of her fantasy (W.T. 66).
Surprisingly, the poem itself does not mention reading as the impetus
for the dream. In the poem the woman sits alone at night gazing into the
fire; however, the fireplace is only a bit player in the illustration - we can
just see the edge of the mantle at the left margin of the picture. Instead,
the fire is replaced by what many nineteenth-century critics saw as an
equally dangerous element: a book. While Charles Dickens's Louisa
Gradgrind notoriously gets into trouble by gazing into the fire and 'won-
dering,' Belgravias independent woman reader shows that such fancy can
be healthy and normal, even when the flames are replaced with printed
Fig. 4.3. 'In the Firelight,' Belgravia Magazine (March 1868): 66.
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 123

words. Whether the book in the woman's lap is a gothic romance (a fore-
runner of the sensation novel) or a historical account of seventeenth-
century France, she is able to read it on her own without dangerous
results. In fact, her imagination transforms a chaotic scene of death and
destruction into a conventional courtship narrative that reinforces soci-
ety's expectations for her as a woman. This image suggests that even if
women were to allow their minds to wander into dangerous territory,
they would not be likely to present a real threat to patriarchal society.
Even when reading fulfils a fantasy of rebelliousness, as it does in the
story and accompanying illustration 'One Summer Month' (fig. 4.4), it
is ultimately depicted as a safe imaginative exercise. In this story, Miss
Royes, a self-denying governess, dreams of the satisfaction of reading a
book for her own pleasure, but she never actually does so. Instead, she
remains devoted to her ungrateful pupil and her aloof employer. After
falling in love with a man who proposes to her, she sacrifices the oppor-
tunity to escape her drudgery by refusing the proposal. Then she self-
lessly reunites her potential fiance with his first love from whom
he has been estranged. In the story, Miss Royes's sole pleasure stems
from the fantasy of acting on her own will instead of someone else's by
escaping from her oppressive duties to read something other than a
lesson-book as she relaxes on the beach. While she does not take the
opportunity to escape her servitude in the story, this pleasurable beach
reading scene becomes the only visual representation of Miss Royes
included in the magazine. It is as if merely imagining the fulfillment of
independent reading is enough to prevent her from shirking her duties.
Thus, Belgravia figures the enjoyment of reading — even if it is only
imaginary - as productive rather than destructive, permitting the possi-
bility of the healthy self-indulgence that Miss Royes otherwise goes out
of her way to avoid. By choosing professional duty over romantic love,
however, Miss Royes is able to keep her fantasy of independence alive
while enacting what seems to be self-sacrificing behaviour.
Belgravia's device of depicting seemingly dangerous activities as harm-
less once their context is understood is typical of the magazine's strat-
egy. Once again, Braddon's magazine highlights the positive aspects of
women's reading while also acknowledging and assuaging public fears
about its dangers. Braddon hoped that those who feared the boldness of
women's independent reading would be appeased by the pictures they
saw, for it would seem that women, given a bit of room to make their
own decisions, would willingly use them to improve their traditional
roles rather than to overturn them.
Fig. 4.4. 'One Summer Month,' Belgravia Magazine (August 1871): 197.
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 125

Both the Cornhill and Belgravia opposed the popular conception of

the woman reader as susceptible to disease and contamination by
emphasizing that reading could preserve and even strengthen the
domestic sphere while also encouraging women's intellectual improve-
ment and allowing them to make their own informed reading choices.
However, the Cornhill preserved the right of male authorities to regulate
how women's reading would be conducted - by insisting on the mainte-
nance of cultural divisions - and for what purposes women's reading
would be used - by requiring that it enhance family life. Belgravia, on
the other hand, argued that even these choices should be left up to
women themselves. Despite these differences, together the magazines
reveal that there were active and powerful defenders of women readers
in the nineteenth-century press, though their voices may not have been
the dominant ones. By the end of the century, moreover, these minority
voices had significantly contributed to an atmosphere in which women's
formal education was on its way to becoming standard for middle-class
women. Family literary magazines were not overtly political in nature,
but they participated in a wide public debate that affected the roles of
women and the function of literature in their lives for years to come. As
a result of magazines like the Cornhill and Belgravia, women's growing
intellectual abilities and independent reading practices became less
controversial and more acceptable as an inevitable part of societal
progress.

NOTES

I would like to thank the Ohio State University Press for allowing me to reprint
in this essay portions of my book, Educating the Proper Woman Reader: Victorian
Family Literary Magazines and the Cultural Health of the Nation (Columbus: Ohio
State UP, 2004). Thanks also to the Ohio State University library for the use of
their copies of the Cornhill and Belgravia.

1 For more on the conception of reading as a disease, see Flint, Gilbert, and
Mays.
2 When I use the term 'family literary magazine,' I am referring to that class of
magazines typically called shilling monthlies, including Macmillan's (1859),
Temple Bar (1860), St James's (1861), The Argosy (1865), Tinsley's (1867), and
St Paul's (1867). Instead of using the more commonly recognized label, I
have coined the term 'family literary magazine' because, in my estimation, it
126 Jennifer Phegley

more accurately describes the attributes of these magazines than the simple
designation of their price.
3 My methodology assumes that editors, contributors, and readers interact to
create the particular character of a magazine, a character that is larger than
the sum of its parts, that permeates even the seemingly disparate and dis-
crete sections of the collection of works in any given issue. Therefore, works
included in periodicals are not only equivalent to their author's intentions
or related to the context of the magazine in a secondary way, as is often
assumed. Instead, such works gain deeper meaning when examined in their
periodical context. I will focus on publications featured in the Cornhill and
Belgravia during - roughly - each magazine's first five years of publication
(1860-4 for the former and 1866-70 for the latter), a time when each peri-
odical was developing its own character and agenda.
4 The genre of the family literary magazine went beyond offering lightweight
entertainment for its women readers, as some scholars have alleged (see, for
example, Schmidt; Turner, 'Gendered Issues'). Indeed, these magazines pro-
vided a more open intellectual forum for women than other contemporary
periodicals.
5 Thackeray edited the periodical from January 1860 until May 1862. After his
resignation, the Cornhill was conducted by an editorial board consisting of
George Smith, Frederick Greenwood, and G.H. Lewes (May 1862 until
August 1864). When Lewes resigned in 1864, Greenwood became the sole
editor until 1868, when Lewes, Smith, and Button Cook took over. Finally, in
1871 Leslie Stephen was hired, giving the magazine a unified editorial iden-
tity once again, but with a continued decline in sales (Huxley 118).
6 The Cornhill also had a much wider circulation than Belgravia. According to
John Sutherland, the first issue of the Cornhillsold 109,274 copies (106); by
1865, that astounding figure had dwindled to around 40,000 largely because
of the increased number of competing magazines like Belgravia (Glynn 143).
In contrast, Bill Scheuerle records the average circulation of Belgravia at
15,000(31-2).
7 For a thorough exploration of this argument, see my 'Clearing Away the
"Briars and Brambles."'
8 For more extensive analyses of Leigh ton's illustrations for Romola see Malley,
Turner, 'George Eliot v. Frederick Leighton.'
9 Interestingly, this kind of father-daughter relationship parallels Thackeray's
relationship with his own daughter Anne. He was particularly concerned
that she was 'going to be a man of genius' rather than a proper wife (Ritchie
23). In her 'Notes on Family History,' Anne explains that just before his
death her father told her he was afraid that she would have 'a very dismal
 Images of Women Readers in Victorian Literary Magazines 127

life' when he was gone (Ritchie 129). With no marriage prospects on the
horizon for a daughter who seemed to reject the traditional occupations of
middle-class women, Thackeray decided to accept and nurture Anne's intel-
lectual ability by allowing her to write for the Cornhill
10 The object Phillis holds - which appears to be a rolling pin - is unmistak-
ably phallic and is thus an additional sign of the threat she poses to her
cousin.

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(August 1864): 154-72.
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January 1871).
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Escott, T.H.S. 'Literary Bagmanship.' Belgravia Magazine (February 1871):
508-12.
- 'Vagueness.' Belgravia Magazine (May 1868): 407-14.
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Glynn, Jennifer. Prince of Publishers: A Biography of George Smith. London: Allison
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Huxley, Leonard. The House of Smith Elder. London, 1923.
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[Lewes, G.H. ]. 'Our Survey of Literature and Science: Lady Audley 's Secret.'
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- 'Our Survey of Literature and Science: Orley Farm.' Cornhill Magazine (Novem-
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Malley, Shawn. '"The Listening Look": Visual and Verbal Metaphor in Frederic
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the Marketplace, eds. John O.Jordan and Robert L. Patten, 165-94. New York:
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3-20. New York: MLA, 1978.
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Saintsbury, George. A History of Nineteenth Century Literature. London: Macmillan
and Company, 1896.
Sala, George Augustus. 'The Cant of Modern Criticism.' Belgravia Magazine
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Schmidt, Barbara Quinn. 'The Cornhill Magazine. The Relationship of Editor,
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5 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow
Wallpaper'
BARBARA HOCHMAN

During Charlotte Perkins Oilman's engagement to Walter Stetson, a

friend offered her a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Gilman
refused to accept the volume, saying that she would never read Whit-
man. Discussing this incident, Anne Lane attributes Gilman's refusal of
the book to the influence of Stetson, who apparently 'accepted, at least
for his fiancee, the conventional view of his day that defined Whitman's
poetry as unseemly and unsavory' (Lane xi). Any anxiety Stetson may
have had about the consequences of reading Leaves of Grass would have
rested upon another perfectly 'conventional view' of the day, the notion
that one's reading could have an enduring impact on one's life - signifi-
cant effects, whether benign or pernicious.
Much has been written about Gilman's relation to the 'work' of writ-
ing, but her relation to reading deserves more attention than it has
received. At the end of the nineteenth century many writers, reviewers,
and educators were preoccupied by the pros and cons of what was
widely referred to as 'the reading habit.' This essay will historicize 'The
Yellow Wallpaper' by suggesting that the story reflects culturally typical
anxieties about certain kinds of fiction-reading, especially the practice
of reading for escape, through projection and identification. Whether
or not Gilman shared these anxieties - and I believe that she did - her
most famous story provides an oblique but powerful image of a woman
reader who is temporarily exhilarated but ultimately destroyed while
absorbed in a mesmerizing text. The figure of the narrator in 'The Yel-
low Wallpaper' reflects Gilman's own intensely conflicted relation to
reading, including her painful inability to read at all during the period
of emotional upheaval on which the story is based. Attention to the
story's self-reflexive concern with the dynamics of reading elucidates
130 Barbara Hochman

not only Oilman's own reading practices but also her commitment to
fiction 'with a purpose' (as she referred to 'The Yellow Wallpaper' in an
exchange with William Dean Howells [ The Living 121]).
Although Oilman's 'purpose' in writing 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was
misunderstood by many of her contemporaries, the strong emotional
impact of the story was never in doubt. When Horace Scudder rejected
the story for the Atlantic, he wrote Oilman: 'I could not forgive myself, if
I made others as miserable as I have made myself (The Living 119). Less
well known than Scudder's famous response to the story are the com-
ments of a reader who sent a letter of 'protest' to the Boston Transcript
after 'The Yellow Wallpaper' appeared in the New England Magazine.
Charging that 'such literature contains deadly peril,' the letter devotes
particular attention to the story's powerful grip upon its reader. 'It is
graphically told, in a somewhat sensational style, which makes it difficult
to lay aside, after the first glance, til [sic] it is finished, holding the
reader in morbid fascination to the end' (TheLiving 120). This descrip-
tion of reading The Yellow Wallpaper' bears an uncanny resemblance
to the way Oilman's story itself represents the narrator: 'morbidly fasci-
nated' by the wall-paper, increasingly preoccupied with it, and deter-
mined to follow its pattern to 'some sort of conclusion' (19).1 In the
course of the story, the narrator herself becomes a reader - an avid,
indeed an obsessive reader of the paper on the walls that surround her.
From a nineteenth-century point of view, the narrator becomes what
Nancy Glazener has recently called an 'addictive' reader - one who
reads incessantly and who, while doing so, loses her last remaining hold
on reality (chap. 3).
Oilman's nameless protagonist enters an action-filled world that she
creates by inference from a printed design. As a result, her depression
and despair are temporarily dispelled. Like a reader absorbed in an
exciting tale, the narrator 'follow [s] the pattern about by the hour'
(19). Soon she finds that '[l]ife [is] much more exciting than it used to
be.' She has 'something more to expect, to look forward to' (27). Like a
reader who can't put a book down, she no longer sleeps much 'at night
for it is so exciting to watch developments' (28). Like the reader of a
detective story (a popular genre at the end of the last century), the nar-
rator's assiduity pays off and she 'discerns something at last' (29). 2
To perceive the narrator as a kind of fiction reader is to see that
Oilman's story projects a brilliant nightmare-version of what many
nineteenth-century commentators represented as a common reading
practice - and a dangerous one. In a phrase that might have been used
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 131

by any anti-fiction critic of the period, Gilman's narrator herself notes

the paper's 'vicious influence' (16) .3 Literary journals of the period
repeatedly distinguished the valuable 'habit' of consuming books for
'pleasure and improvement' from the kind of reading 'habit' associated
with inferior reading matter and with an inferior reader (often, though
not always, a woman). If we reflect upon 'The Yellow Wallpaper' in this
context, it can be seen as a kind of cautionary tale about nineteenth-
century reading - especially, but not exclusively, women's reading.4
To put some historical pressure on both the idea of the narrator as a
reader and that of the wallpaper as a 'text,' let us set aside the character-
istic emphasis on the content of the story implied by the wall-paper.
Like the narrator herself, critics of the last twenty years have devoted a
great deal of attention to the writing on the wall and have suggested that
the wall-paper - like Gilman's story - tells the tale of nineteenth-century
women, rendered querulous, infantile, and passive by the restrictions
imposed upon them.0 With this aspect of the story well established,
much can be gained by seeing the wall-paper not only as a symbolic text
but as a more literal (indeed a fictional) one.
Understood metaphorically, the problem of 'reading' in 'The Yellow
Wallpaper' has been much discussed. The idea that the narrator comes
to understand her own existential situation by reading herself into the
wall-paper has provided a key to the story for almost twenty years. Many
critics interpret the wall-paper - with its dominant pattern, its subordi-
nate pattern, and its emerging image of a woman behind bars - as the
'patriarchal text' in which literary women, in fact all women, are
trapped. Of course, the wall-paper is not always taken as a constricting
or constraining text; sometimes it is seen as one that enables the narra-
tor to confront her own situation and gain access to long-suppressed
feelings. 'Blocked from expressing herself on paper,' Judith Fetterley
writes, the narrator 'seeks to express herself through paper ... [S]he con-
verts the wallpaper into her text ... and recognizes [in it] elements of
her own resisting self (164). The wall-paper, in short, is repeatedly seen
as a kind of text; yet it is never exactly a text that the narrator writes, nor
is it exactly a text that she reads.
The wall-paper has neither words nor pages. Perhaps that is why it has
so often been seen as an image of the narrator's life, never as an ana-
logue of Gilman's writing, or of other fictional works. Still, the narrator
'follows' the paper as if it were a story with a plot. Through the image of
the narrator Gilman inscribes a kind of protocol of reading into her
story:7 the narrator's 'addictive' reading provides a forceful image of
132 Barbara Hochman

how Gilman's tale is not to be read. This image points to a reader who
was widely presumed to exist in nineteenth-century America. I mean the
kind of fiction reader who was repeatedly attacked for what one doctor
at mid-century called a 'profitless, pernicious habit [that] ... poisons the
imagination [and] dissipates the mind' (qtd. in Zboray, A Fictive People,
14-15; cf. Borus, 195-6).

The Reading Habit

'The Yellow Wallpaper' sets out to modify contemporary conceptions of

readers and reading by emphasizing the social as well as the psychic con-
sequences of the narrator's reading 'habit.' If we see the narrator's rela-
tion to the wall-paper as the relation of a nineteenth-century reader to a
fictional text, we have a schematic representation of a practice that was
severely criticized in the 1880s and 1890s. The anti-fiction prejudice and
the widespread ambivalence about the potential effects of the reading
'habit' were deeply ingrained elements of the literary culture within and
for which Gilman wrote.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, men of letters
regarded the emerging genre of the novel with suspicion. Although dis-
approval of fiction lost much of its force between the 1860s and the
1890s, it did not disappear. Even at the end of the century, editors, edu-
cators, and reviewers often denounced a mode of reading that was pre-
sumed to result in a loss of borders and therefore of the reader's sense
of reality. This way of reading, moreover, was generally associated with
fiction that, like the wall-paper itself, often seemed flamboyant, inconsis-
tent, or outrageous. As many commentators saw it, fiction in general,
and certain kinds of fiction in particular, fostered an imaginary merger
between the reader and figures who never existed. Sentimental fiction,
historical romance, and other popular genres were repeatedly charged
with encouraging passivity, escapism, and emotional extravagance. The
'novel-reading habit' in particular was identified with a lack of control.
Associated with lower appetites, intemperance, and even corruption, it
was seen to foster delusions, indiscriminate desire, and the possible
breaking of social boundaries. Carried away by impossible visions graph-
ically represented, a reader might well lose his or her sense of 'place'
and even self.8
Such an outcome was quite different from that attributed to active,
critical reading - the kind promoted at mid-century by writers like
Melville or Thoreau and praised in many contexts both before and after
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 133

the Civil War.9 Between the 1850s and the 1890s educators, writers, and
reviewers repeatedly differentiated between reading that was passive or
frivolous and reading that was serious, active, and conducive to self-
development. Towards the end of the century many commentators
stressed the innumerable benefits to be gained by 'spending less than
an hour a day' on reading. As one such article titled 'The Reading
Habit' put it, 'Of all the habits that can be cultivated, none is more pro-
ductive of pleasure and improvement than that of reading, provided the
books be well chosen' (60). Throughout the century, similar formula-
tions appeared in manuals with titles like How to Read a Book, The Choice
of Books, and Noah Porter's influential Books and Reading: What Books
Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them?10 Such discussions regularly
stressed the critical faculty - the need for activity, choice, and purposive-
ness in reading.
As an adolescent and a young woman, Oilman saw herself as just the
kind of diligent and purposive reader projected by cultural custodians
like Noah Porter, Edward Everett Hale (Oilman's uncle), or her own
librarian-father, Frederick Perkins. Oilman's 'learned father,' as she
describes him on the first page of her autobiography, was the author of
The Best Reading, a reference book that 'was for long the standard' (The
Living, 4). Indeed, Oilman claims that she always associated the word
'father' with 'advice about books and the care of them' (5-6). When Oil-
man was seventeen she wrote to her absentee father, asking him to pro-
vide a list of books that she could use as a starting point for her most
ambitious goal: 'improvement of the human race' (36, 47).
Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one Oilman believed that her
'steady reading' would give her access to 'the larger movements of the
time' (61). She read voraciously, seeking a way 'to help humanity' (70)
and disciplining herself with all her 'powers of ratiocination' (75). As
Oilman represents this phase of her life, the image of her reading-self
suggests a passionate commitment to the sort of vigorous, reality-bound
reading praised by nineteenth-century commentators. It is not surpris-
ing to find that fiction-reading plays virtually no role in Oilman's
account of her development.11
In writing 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Oilman entered a highly contested
literary field where many fictional genres jockeyed for position. She had
a clear sense of what her own fiction was not to provide: escapist visions
and vicarious emotional gratification. One could say of Oilman's fiction
in general what Ann Lane says of Oilman's Utopia: it 'leads us back to
reality,' not away from it (xxxiv). Even Oilman's most fanciful stories -
134 Barbara Hochman

'When I Was a Witch,' or 'If I Were a Man' - employ whimsy for didactic
and pragmatic ends, creating a sharp focus on social conventions in
contemporary America.12 Before I examine the narrator's reading prac-
tices in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' more closely, a brief look at another Gil-
man story will suggest how Gilman could inscribe a protocol of reading
into her text with a few deft strokes.
A minor character in The Girl in the Pink Hat' is 'a romantic soul,'
who is always reading 'foolish stories' in 'her interminable magazines'
(39, 46). Towards the end of the story, this girl - an innocent victim of
male duplicity and aggression - immerses herself in 'one of Leroy
Scott's doubly involved detective stories, [and] forget[s] her own dis-
tresses a while following those of other people' (46). The girl's 'escapist'
reading in this context seems harmless enough. Yet this character,
seduced by the fictions of a con man, has failed to act rationally on her
own behalf. Only the narrator's intervention saves the 'girl in pink' from
destruction. She is rescued because the narrator, seated behind her on a
train, pays attention to the troubles of a fellow passenger rather than
whiling away her time with 'foolish stories.' Although Gilman seems to
concede that there might be some advantages to a tale that simply
'take[s] up your mind' and diverts it (46), she mocks such stories for
didactic purposes.
'The Girl in the Pink Hat' can be taken as a gloss on Gilman's sense of
the contrast between escapist fiction and her own work. There was a cru-
cial difference for Gilman between reading that might become a substi-
tute for the 'real' world, and reading that might lead one to confront it.
No story of hers engages this problem more forcefully than 'The Yellow
Wallpaper.'

The Narrator Reads

Presented in the form of a diary, The Yellow Wallpaper' begins with a

focus on the narrator's writing. Her writing is a pervasive motif for
almost half the narrative. Many discussions of the tale emphasize the
narrator's frustrated need and desire to write. However, as Annette
Kolodny and Richard Feldstein have noted, the focus on writing disap-
pears entirely by the middle of the text (156, 276-7). The last reference
to the narrator's writing appears at the beginning of the fourth section
(T don't know why I should write this' [21]). As her effort to write is
abandoned, it is replaced by a growing determination to read the pat-
tern inscribed in the wall-paper.
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 135

The narrator turns out to be far more persistent as a reader than she
has been as a writer, and her commitment only increases as the story
continues. Early on, the narrator repeatedly seeks a way out of the room
where she is confined. Once she becomes engrossed in the wall-paper,
however, her desire to escape diminishes and then disappears. She
becomes 'fond of the room ... because of the paper' (19), and deter-
mined to satisfy her curiosity about its design. The narrator grows
increasingly absorbed in the paper and intensely possessive about it.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me or ever will,'
she insists (22).
Although the narrator is not represented as much of a reader until
the middle of the story, certain details point to her reading habits as
early as the opening section. In her initial description of the house she
inhabits, the narrator notes: 'It makes me think of English places that
you read about' (11). These lines do not specify a particular text that
makes the narrator 'think of English places,' but they do establish her as
a reader. When she subsequently notes that if the house were 'haunted'
she would reach the 'heights of romantic felicity' (9), we may well infer
that she has been reading gothic fiction.13
The narrator's 'romantic' sensibility is elaborated through many
details in the text, and has often been seen as part of the contrast
between her and her husband, a contrast sharply drawn along stereotyp-
ical gender lines. While the narrator seeks 'romantic felicity,' John is
'practical in the extreme' (9). From John's point of view, his wife's
'imaginative power and habit of storymaking' only exacerbate her 'ner-
vous weakness' (15). References to her 'silly fancies' (22) and 'foolish
fancy' (24) abound. As critics have noted, John's view of the narrator as
fanciful serves his effort to dismiss her ideas, keep her from creative
'work,' and confine her to domestic functions.
At the outset, however, the narrator's response to the wall-paper itself
is far from fanciful or romantic. Instead it is critical and somewhat
detached. T never saw a worse paper in my life,' she declares in her first
description of it; ' [o]ne of those sprawling flamboyant patterns commit-
ting every artistic sin' (13). Many of the narrator's statements about the
wall-paper suggest that she is familiar with the vocabulary of aesthetic
discourse. Repelled by the wall-paper's 'flamboyant pattern,' she stresses
its 'artistic' limitations (13) and asserts, 'I know this thing was not
arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation or repetition or sym-
metry, or anything else I ever heard of (20). These comments designate
the paper as an aesthetic object, which the narrator initially considers
136 Barbara Hochman

from a relatively analytic point of view. She approaches the paper with a
set of assumptions about aesthetic unity and what she calls 'the principle
of design' (20). Thus the narrator is represented not only as a middle-
class woman and fiction reader, but also as an educated person whose
reading has not been confined to ghost stories.
The categories used by the narrator, however, often seem unsuited to
a description of wall-paper and indeed more appropriate to discussion
of a narrative. If we imagine the wall-paper as a fictional text - some-
times dull and repetitive, but also flamboyant, outrageous, self-contra-
dictory, and repellant - we might see it as a sentimental or sensational
work, the sort denounced by many nineteenth-century critics, especially
those who were partial to realism. It will seem less fanciful to think of
the wall-paper in these terms if we take a closer look at how the story
renders the narrator's increasing desire to 'follow' the printed pattern
on the wall.
While the narrator offers intermittent remarks about the aesthetic
composition of the paper until late in the story, her commentary
reflects a growing disposition to read the pattern like a plot - a
sequence of events - structured around human agents. The narrator's
tendency to see the paper as a form that harbours human life is evident
from early in the story.14 At first she attributes human qualities to iso-
lated elements of the design - its 'broken neck' or 'unblinking eyes'
(16). 'Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those unblinking eyes
are everywhere,' she notes (16). But 'lolling necks' and eyes are not the
only animated features of the pattern. 'Looked at in one way,' the narra-
tor suggests in the third section, 'the bloated curves and flourishes - a
kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens - go waddling up
and down' (20). The paper's 'curves and flourishes' are not explicitly
identified as human figures here; but they are nothing if not animated.
First they 'waddl[e]'; soon they 'run off... in full chase' (20). Moreover,
the narrator identifies the 'curves and flourishes' with delirium tremens,
a strictly human affliction (and one that gains additional resonance in
the context of the narrator's own emerging 'habit'). As the narrator
continues to contemplate the paper, its trembling animation only seems
to increase. At times the narrator reads the design as you might read a
tale of adventure, throwing herself imaginatively into the midst of the
action. Her efforts to 'follow' the pattern are repeatedly frustrated, but
her desire to do so is a recurrent, in fact a pervasive emphasis. She is
preoccupied with the design's 'lack of sequence' (25) and bent upon
resolving the seemingly irrational pattern into some sort of mimetic
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 137

representation - one with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 'I WILL

follow [the] ... pattern to some sort of conclusion' (19), she insists.
What we might call the climax of the narrator's reading experience
occurs when 'at last' she discovers the woman behind bars (29). This, of
course, is the image that has galvanized readers of the last twenty years
into reclaiming 'The Yellow Wallpaper' for the literary canon in gen-
eral, and feminist criticism in particular. But since the main focus of the
present argument is the process or experience of reading, rather than
the implications of domestic ideology, the point to emphasize here is
that the narrator gradually discerns a distinct storyline in the pattern
that she 'follows.' This storyline centres on a figure that takes on human
features, motivations, and finally a specifically human shape. Soon the
narrator identifies herself with both the figure and the plot that she has
discovered (or projects). Indeed, towards the end of the story she
merges with that figure and enters that plot.

Addictive Reading or Creative Practice?

The narrator attributes human features and motives to the paper until
the end of the story, but gradually the image of the woman behind bars
becomes the central focus of her attention. As discussions of 'The Yellow
Wallpaper' have noted, the narrator comes to read the wall-paper pri-
marily by seeing her own situation - her entrapment, frustration, and
anger - reflected back to her, first through the 'strange, provoking,
formless sort of figure' (18) whose identity is unclear, and finally
through the woman who 'shake [s] the pattern, just as if she wanted to
get out' (23).
Many readers of the story have argued that the narrator's developing
relation to the wall-paper is a process of self-recognition, one that boldly
confronts reality, even though the price is high.15 However, the narra-
tor's identification with the figure of the imprisoned woman can be seen
as a practice that divorces her from reality. By the time the narrator tri-
umphantly announces, 'I've got out at last ... [and] you can't put me
back' (36), she no longer differentiates between herself and the woman
in the paper at all. It is in this sense that the narrator's behaviour looks
like an extreme version (perhaps even a parody) of novel-reading as anti-
fiction critics imagined it - an activity that by eliciting the reader's own
fantasies could render her (or him) useless for the real 'business' of life.
Writing in Forum in 1894, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyeson expressed charac-
teristic anxieties about the detrimental effects of sensational and 'infe-
138 Barbara Hochman

rior' fiction. Using the trope of addiction, he reflects upon Jean Jacques
Rousseau's representation of reading in The Confessions. According to
Boyeson, Rousseau 'was unfitted for life by the reading of novels' (724).
The Confessions, he argues, shows how Rousseau sought refuge in fiction
from 'the "sordid" reality which surrounded him' (724). He read 'with a
ravenous appetite for the intoxication which he craved ... more and
more ... Like the opium habit the craving for fiction grew upon him,
until the fundamental part of him suffered irreparable harm' (724).
Boyeson emphasizes that the 'detrimental effects' caused by Rousseau's
'intemperance in the matter of fiction' were the typical result of 'dwell-
ing too long' in an alternative reality constructed by reading (724).
In an essay entitled 'The Novel-Reading Habit' published in 1898,
George Clarke, like Boyeson, elaborated the seductive powers of fiction
by comparing 'the effects of novel-reading ... with those of indulgence in
opium or intoxicating liquors' (674). Emphasizing that' [t]he sensations
excited by fiction ... are superior in rapidity of succession to those of real
life,' Clarke notes that fiction seems to offer 'escape' from 'tedium and
anxiety' (671, 674). Among the 'easiest victims,' he explains, are '[p]er-
sons who ... have an abundance of leisure time, and who have not
acquired by education a healthy interest in subjects of serious study or a
taste for what is best in literature' (674). The narrator of 'The Yellow
Wallpaper,' subjected to the enforced 'rest' of a 'cure' for depression and
prevented from exercising whatever interest she may have had in 'the
best' literature, reads the wall-paper precisely for relief from 'tedium [,] ...
anxiety,' and the pressures of'real life.' But for her, as for Boyeson's Rous-
seau or Clarke's addicted novel reader, what begins as diversion ends as
intensified debility and even obsession.
When nineteenth-century commentators emphasized that if a reader
were to identify too completely with a fictional character he or she
might have trouble returning to the demands and the limits of daily
reality, they drew upon another common assumption about reading: the
idea of the novel reader as a self-involved and isolated person.16 By 1890
an 'excessive indulgence in novel-reading' had long been associated
with the image of the solitary reader. The act of reading itself - private,
silent, infinitely absorbing - was seen as a kind of metonomy for the
dangerous moral and social situation of every fiction reader, first cut off
from daily life in the very act of reading, and then later, as a conse-
quence, radically dissociated from appropriate social roles and responsi-
bilities.17 I suggest that by elaborating the narrator's preoccupation with
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 139

the woman in the wall-paper until it reaches fantastic proportions, Gil-

man sought to prevent her own readers from identifying uncritically
with the narrator's situation and thereby in a sense reproducing it. If
'The Yellow Wallpaper,' as Fetterley suggests, is 'a text that can help the
woman reader to effect an escape' from the constrictions of domesticity
(such as Gilman herself achieved in her own life), it is such a text only
insofar as readers employ a particular reading strategy, one that enables
them to differentiate between their own experience and that of Gil-
man's narrator (164).
Like all Gilman's work, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' has clear didactic pur-
poses. Gilman meant her story to be read as social criticism - not
merely, let us say, for excitement and suspense, like detective fiction or a
ghost story. But Gilman well knew that there could be a considerable
gap between an author's intention and a reader's response. How could
she lead her reader to perceive the wider social issues implicit in the
narrator's experience? I have been proposing that Gilman designed her
tale to discourage her readers from identifying with the narrator as the
narrator identifies with the woman in the subpattern. From this point of
view there is a certain irony in the fact that feminist readings of 'The Yel-
low Wallpaper' have relied so heavily on identification with the narrator.
As Susan Lanser pointed out in 1989, feminist interpretations of the
story have often been shaped by 'an unacknowledged over-identifi-
cation with the narrator-protagonist. I now wonder,' Lanser wrote,
'whether many of us have repeated the gesture of the narrator ... [deter-
mined to] read until she finds what she was looking for. ... [W]e may
have reduced the text's complexity to what we need most: our own
image reflected back to us' (420). Feminist readers, of course, do not lit-
erally identify the woman in the wall-paper as themselves; nor do they
(like the narrator) see the printed text as their own habitat or antago-
nist. Thus, as Lanser notes, the final move of many feminist discussions
has been to shift the focus of attention from the narrator to the author
of the tale. The story encourages this move in part by the structural
anomaly created when the narrator stops writing. In the course of the
story, the narrator's preoccupation with the wall-paper displaces her
desire to write in her diary and culminates in her quixotic attack on the
material text. Stripping paper off the walls, crawling around the floor of
the nursery, she cannot be imagined as writing at all, and at this junc-
ture if one asks whose writing we are reading, the figure of Gilman her-
self comes into view.
140 Barbara Hochman

The Author as Reader

Like the narrator/protagonist whom she created, Gilman was both a

writer and a reader. Oilman's own defiance of the doctor's orders - her
persistence as a writer - is well known to students of her work. Yet her
reading practices, which have received little emphasis, are equally rele-
vant not only to the design of 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' but to the experi-
ence on which the story draws. I have already suggested that Oilman's
reading as a young woman provides a sharp contrast to that of both the
narrator and the 'addicted' novel readers so graphically imagined by
certain commentators of the period. Indeed, like Edith Wharton, and
other upper- and middle-class women of her generation, Gilman was
forbidden to read novels as a child (The Living 30).18 Reconstructing her
childhood in her autobiography, Gilman (like Wharton again [Backward
Glance 33-5]) emphasizes the powerful attraction of scenes created by
her own imagination. She describes how she devoted a portion of each
day to imagined scenarios until the age of thirteen, when she was
required by her mother's disapproval to 'give them up' (TheLiving23).
It was after renouncing the pleasures of what she calls 'wishing' that Gil-
man wrote to her father for a list of the 'best books.' From this point on,
as Gilman tells it, she read for the logic and hard facts of natural history,
philosophy, and science. She would seem to have internalized the disap-
proval widely associated with fictional worlds in late-nineteenth-century
American culture.
As we have seen, Gilman's 'reading habit' helped her shape large
ambitions for herself and her society. In this sense her experience as a
reader corresponds to a pattern that recent feminist historians have
traced. By drawing on the letters, diaries, and commonplace books of
nineteenth-century women, as well as the work of response critics and
theorists of reading, Mary Kelley, Barbara Sicherman, and others have
shown how, for many women of the period, reading became an active
and 'creative' practice with 'transformative potential' (Kelley 404). This
view of nineteenth-century women's reading constitutes a challenge to
the image of the passive or addicted fiction reader. It also challenges an
idea proposed by Wai-Chee Dimock: that The Yellow Wallpaper' was
designed for a woman reader who did not exist at the turn of the cen-
tury.19 The nineteenth-century women whose reading habits Kelley and
Sicherman describe were the forerunners of the 'professional' readers
who rediscovered Gilman's tale a century later.
Up to a point, the work of Sicherman, Kelley, and others restates the
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 141

idea of women's reading as a private encounter in which a book - often

a novel - stimulates the fantasy or imagination of a solitary reader. But
these historians represent the reading experience as empowering and
creative, not solipsistic or self-destructive. Describing the reading habits
in one Victorian middle-class family where reading was a central activity,
Sicherman emphasizes 'the freedom of imagination women found in
books ... Reading provided space - physical, temporal, psychological -
that permitted women to exempt themselves from traditional gender
expectations, whether imposed by formal society or by family obliga-
tion' ('Sense arid Sensibility' 202). Discussing Alice Hamilton and her
siblings,20 for example, Sicherman underscores the imaginative inten-
sity of the reading experience. There are times, to be sure, when this
intensity itself suggests the very dynamic that elicited the concern of the
anti-fiction critics. Writing in her diary in 1890, the young Agnes Hamil-
ton describes herself as living 'in the world of novels all the time' and
expresses anxiety about her '"insane passion" for reading' (207-8).
Comparing it to 'an addiction,' Hamilton notes that she has 'resolved
not to read another novel for a week at least, and [that she] conse-
quently feels like a reformed drunkard' (qtd. in Sicherman 207-8). The
imagery of addiction and intemperance should sound familiar by now;
but it is important here to stress the differences between Hamilton's
'insane [reading] passion,' and the 'addictive' reading imagined by anti-
fiction critics, or by Gilman in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'
Insofar as Hamilton's reading threatened to overwhelm her at times,
she herself was aware of this as a problem, and reflected upon the issue.
But more than that, Hamilton's reading, like that of her sisters and many
other nineteenth-century middle-class women, took place not in isola-
tion but in the framework of a highly supportive interpretive community
where books were often read aloud in company and discussed in a variety
of contexts.21 Many nineteenth-century women were avid consumers of
books; but they did not necessarily read alone. Indeed, for American
women of the period, reading was often what Mary Kelley has called a
'collective practice' (420). 'The female culture of reading,' Sicherman
writes, 'fostered friendship and love, healing and learning, [and] rein-
forced individual efforts at self-creation' ('Reading and Ambition' 79).
Unlike the women described by Kelley and Sicherman, the narrator/
reader of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is denied both peer support and self-
expression through writing. Since her enforced isolation makes reading
her only activity, the desires stirred by her reading have no constructive
outlet and are forced back upon themselves under the coercive con-
142 Barbara Hochman

ditions of the 'rest cure.' By contrast, Gilman herself can be taken as

another example of a nineteenth-century woman whose reading
became a ground of constructive self-fashioning. If the interpretive con-
ventions denounced by anti-fiction critics are in some sense analogous
to those of Gilman's narrator, the reading practices described by Sicher-
man and Kelley are in some sense analogous to Gilman's own. The story
of Gilman as a reader does not end as disastrously as that of the narrator
in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' But it does not end as happily as Kelley's nar-
rative of 'learned women' in antebellum America or Sicherman's tales
of 'female heroism.' A lasting and little-noted consequence of Gilman's
'breakdown' (as she refers to it in her autobiography) was a permanent
inability to read at all with any ease or pleasure. Her refurbished life and
her enormous productivity as a writer and lecturer are all the more
amazing in the light of this enduring handicap. At one point in The Liv-
ing Gilman attributes her 'ruin' in part to 'the rigid stoicism and con-
stant effort in character-building of my youth; I was "over-trained" and
had wasted my substance in riotous - virtues' (98). If Gilman's self-
analysis is correct, she paid a heavy price for her renunciation of 'wish-
ing' and other imaginative outlets. Her lonely and rigorous attempts at
self-shaping through 'the power of ratiocination' may have contributed
not only to significant achievement, but also to inordinate pain.
Gilman's autobiography tells the story of a child who read 'eagerly,
greedily,' a girl who read steadily, with warm interest, in connected and
scientific study' (99), and a woman who 'lost books out of [her] life'
(100). 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was written at a time when Gilman 'could
read nothing' (99); years later the effort to read still turned her mind
into 'boiled spinach' (99). In this context the narrator's determination
to 'follow' the design of the wall-paper and make it cohere may also
reflect Gilman's own desperate - and futile - struggles with printed mat-
ter during her most difficult days.
Feminist readings of Gilman's story have elided both the figure of the
narrator as an isolated, fantasy-ridden reader and the figure of Gilman
as a tormented one. It is worth bringing these images back into focus
because 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is informed by two contrasting and his-
torically specific images of women reading: isolated, 'addicted,' and
identifying with a phantom on the one hand; capable of 'creative appro-
priations'22 that become the ground of far-reaching ambition (but, at
least in Gilman's case, also emotional stress) on the other.
'The Yellow Wallpaper' reflects the destructive consequences of soli-
tary reading, reading for escape and for the vicarious satisfactions of
 The Reading Habit and The Yellow Wallpaper' 143

identification and merger. At the same time, the story, like Gilman's
autobiography, attests to the 'transformative potential' of reading. If Gil-
man's narrator fails to realize that potential, Gilman well knew that
there were other women like herself who could do so, despite the price.
Many of Gilman's readers in the late twentieth century have read 'The
Yellow Wallpaper' in that spirit, even if they have not always perceived
the story's direct engagement with certain nineteenth-century reading
practices - including Gilman's.

NOTES

1 When the story was first published in the New England Magazine, 'wall-paper'
was spelled both with and without the hyphen. Recent editions of the story
vary considerably in this respect. The edition that I am using deletes it, and
1 have done so when citing from the text, or mentioning the title. Elsewhere
I retain the hyphen because it puts a certain emphasis on the wall-paper as
'paper.'
2 On detective stories at the end of the century, see Klein.
3 In the words of one essay on 'the novel-reading habit,' 'When the confirmed
novel-reader has an idle hour the craving for his customary dissipation seizes
him. Not being conscious of the viciousness of his habit, he offers less resis-
tance than the toper and proceeds at once to indulge it' (Clarke 675).
4 Although, as Glazener notes, 'women were widely charged with addictive
reading' (310), men, too, were cautioned that excessive novel-reading could
draw one away from the vital concerns of life. For a challenge to the idea that
nineteenth-century novels were mainly read by women, see Zboray, A Fictive
People (chap. 11).
5 For readings of the story along these lines see Gilbert and Gubar, Fetterley,
and Kolodny. For a recent reassessment of the way feminist literary studies
have engaged separate sphere ideology, see Amy Kaplan.
6 To Gilbert and Gubar, Gilman's tale represents 'the story that all literary
women would tell if they could' (145). 'The paper,' they write, 'surrounds
the narrator like an inexplicable text' (146). In Annette Kolodny's formula-
tion, towards the end of the story the narrator is 'totally surrendered to what
is quite literally her own text - or rather herself as text' (157).
7 In 'First Steps Toward a History of Reading,' Robert Darnton proposes that
insight into both readers and texts could be gained by 'comparing readers'
accounts of their experience with the protocols of reading' inscribed in liter-
ary works (157).
144 Barbara Hochman

8 On 'unreasonable' fantasies of advancement stimulated by fiction, see Borus

(29-30). Glazener notes that 'the problem of literature's becoming a substi-
tute for reality ... preoccupied [contributors to] the Atlantic toward the end
of the nineteenth, century (105-6). For a discussion of the hostility to novel-
reading in the early Republic, see Davidson (39-44 and chap. 3).
9 That 'alert and wakeful' reading was associated with serious, generally male,
and elitist pursuits can be clearly seen in the 'On Reading' section of Walden
(94), or in Melville's review of Hawthorne's Mosses From an Old Manse. The
exclusionary emphasis of these texts may account for their disappearance
from the most recent Norton Anthology of American Literature.
10 See Philes, Porter, Richardson. Some commentators criticized the growing
emphasis on purposive reading. In 'The Vice of Reading' Edith Wharton
directed her irony against what she called 'mechanical' readers, encouraged
by the notion of reading for improvement and social advancement (513-21).
See also Dunn.
11 Rare exceptions in The Living include fleeting references to Scott (1) and
The Virginian (93). Discussing her attempts to acquire 'desirable traits' in her
girlhood, Gilman refers to her project of imitating 'some admired character
in history or fiction.' But since, as she explains, she got only 'as far as
Socrates' (59), the 'fiction' in question is certainly not the nineteenth-
century novel.
Gilman's diary suggests she read more fiction than her autobiography
reflects. During the 1880s and 1890s she read fiction by James, Alcott, Fuller,
Frederic, Phelps, Poe, Twain, and many others. In general, her references
to fiction reading are extremely sparse and matter of fact. Occasionally, how-
ever, they reflect the strong ambivalence about the power of fiction to beguile
or enthrall that is under discussion here. (See, for example, pp. 19, 37.)
12 Gilman's ghost stories present the most serious challenge to the claim that
her fiction 'lead[s] us back to reality.' Yet even 'The Great Wisteria,' one of
Gilman's richest ghost stories, makes a forceful point about the stigma
attached to unwed mothers. More obliquely and (for this reader) less suc-
cessfully, 'The Rocking Chair' engages gender relations through its focus on
the desirability of 'golden haired' girls.
13 Susan Lanser points to the gothic resonance of 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' link-
ing the narrator's description of the house to that of the house in Jane Eyre
(427-8). On 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and the 'gothic,' see also Lane (xvii)
and Shulman (xiv-xvi).
14 Here again, the narrator's responses are typical of nineteenth-century read-
ing conventions generally. In representations of reading throughout the
century, both professional and nonprofessional readers commonly used the
 The Reading Habit and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 145

trope of the book as a living thing - friend or foe. 'Books are only makeshifts
for men,' in the words of one commentator (cited in Philes 13); or, as Bron-
son Alcott puts it, 'Good books ... like living friends, have their voices and
physiognomies, and their company is prized as old acquaintances' (cited in
Baldwin 13). For a discussion of the widespread reading practice of identify-
ing books with people, see my Getting at the Author, especially chap. 1.
15 Many readings suggest that the narrator comes to recognize desires that she
has suppressed and aspects of her self and situation that she has failed to
acknowledge. See Fetterley, Gilbert and Gubar, Kolodny, Lanser.
16 The image of the solitary reader has a long history. It played a role in the
polemics of anti-fiction critics well before the nineteenth century, and was
taken up in the twentieth century by theorists of the novel like Walter Ben-
jamin, Georg Lukacs, and Ian Watt. In 1977 J. Paul Hunter suggested that
the novel is 'naturally' an isolating medium (456, 472, 478). Since then,
Roger Chartier has proposed 'the sociability of reading' as 'a fundamental
counterpoint to the privacy of the act of reading' (158), and Elizabeth Long
has challenged the 'hegemonic picture of reading as a solitary activity'
(192).
17 Solitary reading can be seen from a different perspective, of course. 'Private
reading is already, in itself, an act of autonomy,' Cora Kaplan writes; 'in
turn it sets up or enables space for reflective thought' (123). See also Radway
(90-4).
18 Gilman also describes a visit to a ninety-nine-year-old woman who, when
asked what she does with her time, answered, "T read nov-els. When I was
voung they would not let me read them, and now I read them all the time"
(The Living, 111).
19 Attempting to historicize Wolfgang Iser's construct of the 'implied reader,'
Dimock suggests that 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 'implies' an educated, rational,
authoritative woman reader who was 'not quite real' in the 1890s. The 'cul-
tural work' of the story, Dimock claims, was precisely to bring this woman
reader into being. But there were many kinds of women readers, including
educated and critical ones, in late-nineteenth-century America. Moreover, as
Kolodny notes, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' does not exclude the male reader,
and can even be seen as directed towards making him a 'better reader'
(162). In The Living, Gilman emphasizes that 'the real purpose of the story
was to reach S. Weir Mitchell and convince him of the error of his ways'
(121). To recognize Gilman's designs on a male reader is not to deny the
story's feminist concerns.
20 'The Hamiltons of Fort Wayne, Indiana were an intensely and self-con-
sciouslv literarv family,' Sicherman writes; 'Hamiltons of three generations
146 Barbara Hochman

were distinguished by their literary interests' (202-3). Alice Hamilton

became a doctor and the first woman on the medical faculty at Harvard; her
sister Edith Hamilton is well known for her work on classical mythology.
21 Reading aloud was a common practice in many middle-class families (Kelley
407; Sicherman, 'Sense and Sensibility,' 206). Oilman's diaries provide
ample evidence of the practice. See also Zboray and Zboray, 'Have You
Read?' (168-70); 'Books, Reading, and the World of Goods' (588, 590-1,
596-7,600).
22 On the idea of reading as creative 'appropriation' see Chartier (171). In
'Sense and Sensibility' Sicherman suggests that imaginative identification
allows a reader to occupy a variety of subject positions, crossing lines of gen-
der and class, selectively appropriating what can be useful to the self. On
multiple subject positions encouraged by reading, see also Cora Kaplan
(130-1, 139, 142).

WORKS CITED

Baldwin, James. The Booklover: A Guide to the Best Reading. 1884. Chicago:
McClurg, 1898.
Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market.
Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1989.
Boyeson, Hjalmar Hjorth. 'The Great Realists and the Empty Storytellers.' Forum
18 (1894): 724-31.
Chartier, Roger. 'Texts, Printings, Readings.' In The New Cultural History, ed.
Lynn Hunt, 154-75. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.
Clarke, George. 'The Novel-Reading Habit.' Arena 19 (May 1898): 670-9.
Darnton, Robert. The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History. New York:
W.W Norton, 1989.
Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New
York: Oxford UP, 1986.
Dimock, Wai-Ghee. 'Feminism, New Historicism and the Reader.' In Readers in
History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, ed.
James L. Machor, 85-106. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
Dunn, Martha. 'APlea for the Shiftless Reader.' Atlantic^ (January 1900):
131-6.
Feldstein, Richard. 'Reader, Text, Referentiality.' In Feminism and Psychoanalysis,
ed. Richard Feldstein and Judith Roof, 268-79. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.
Fetterley, Judith. 'Reading About Reading: "A Jury of Her Peers," "The Murders
in the Rue Morgue," and "The Yellow Wallpaper."' In Gender and Reading:
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Essays on Readers, Texts and Contexts, ed. Elizabeth A. Flynn and Partocinio P.
Schweickart, 147-64. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. 'From The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman
Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination.' In The Captive Imagina-
tion: A Casebook on 'The Yellow Wallpaper, 'ed. Catherine Golden, 145-8. New
York: Feminist P, 1992.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Denise D.
Knight. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1994.
- 'The Girl in the Pink Hat.' In The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, ed. Ann
Lane, 39-46. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
- The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990.
- The Yellow Wallpaper.' New York: Feminist P at the City U of New York, 1973.
Glazener, Nancy. Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution
1850-1910. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.
Hochman, Barbara. Getting at the Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age
of American Realism. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2001.
Hunter, J. Paul. 'The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reader.' Genre IQ (Winter
1977): 455-85.
Kaplan, Amy. 'Manifest Domesticity.' American Literature 7'0:3 (1998): 581-606.
Kaplan, Cora. 'The Thorn Birds: Fiction, Fantasy, Femininity.' In Sea Changes:
Feminism and Culture, 581-606. London: Verso, 1987.
Kelley, Mary. 'Reading Women/Women Reading: The Making of Learned
Women in Antebellum America.' Journal of American History, 83:2 (1996):
420.
Klein, Marcus. Easterns, Westerns and Private Eyes: American Matters, 1870-1900.
Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1994.
Kolodny, Annette. 'A Map for ReReading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of
Literary Texts.' In The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on 'The Yellow Wallpaper,'
ed. Catherine Golden, 149-67. New York: Feminist P, 1992.
Lane, Ann J. 'The Fictional World of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.' In The Char-
lotte Perkins Gilman Reader, ed. Ann Lane, ix-xlii. New York: Pantheon Books,
1980.
Lamer, Susan. 'Feminist Criticism, "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the Politics of
Color in America.' Feminist Studies 15:3 (Fall 1989): 415-41.
Long, Elizabeth. 'Textual Interpretation as Collective Action.' In The Ethnogra-
phy of Reading, ed. Jonathan Boyarin, 180-211. Berkeley: U of California P,
1993.
Philes, George. How to Read a Book. Printed for George Philes: New York, 1873.
Porter, Noah. Books and Reading: What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read
TAm? New York: Charles Scribners, 1872; rpr. 1882.
148 Barbara Hochman

Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Culture.
Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991.
The Reading Habit.' The Critic 30 (July 1892): 60.
Richardson, Charles. The Choice of Books. New York: American Book Exchange,
1881.
Shulman, Robert. 'Introduction' to 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and Other Stories, by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, vii-xxxii. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.
Sicherman, Barbara. 'Reading and Ambition: M. Carey Thomas and Female
Heroism.' American Quarterly 45:1 (1993): 73-103.
- 'Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of Women's Reading in Late Victorian
America.' In Reading in America: Literary and Social History, ed. Cathy Davidson,
201-25. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
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of Henry David Thoreau, ed. Brooks Atkinson. New York: Random House, 1950.
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- The Vice of Reading.' North American Review 177 (1903): 513-21.
Zboray, Ronald. A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American
Reading Public. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Zboray, Ronald, and Mary Saracino Zboray. 'Books, Reading and the World of
Goods in Antebellum New England.' American Quarterly 48:4 (December
1996): 587-622.
- '"Have You Read?" Real Readers and Their Responses in Antebellum Boston
and Its Region.' Nineteenth-Century Literature 52 (September 1997): 139—70.
6 Social Reading, Social Work,
and the Social Function of Literacy
in Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers'

SARAH A. WADSWORTH

[I]f workbaskets were gifted with powers of speech, they could tell stories
more true and tender than any we read.
- Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl

In the preface to her last book, an assemblage of stories called A Garland

for Girls (1888), published just one month before the author's death, Lou-
isa May Alcott explains that the stories in the collection 'were written for
[her] own amusement during a period of enforced seclusion,' adding
that' [t]he flowers which were my solace and pleasure suggested titles for
the tales and gave an interest to the work' (n.p.). Characteristically,
Alcott's summing up of her work is entirely too modest. Not only is the
flower symbolism to which she alludes intricately entwined with the
motifs of such stories as 'An Ivy Spray and Ladies' Slippers,' Tansies,'
'Water-Lilies,' and 'Mountain-Laurel and Maidenhair,' but the stories are
further united by a compelling thematic thread that binds together these
narrative strands. A fitting, though neglected, capstone to Alcott's career
as a woman of letters, A Garland for Girls offers an extended, multivalent
commentary on gender and reading in nineteenth-century America.
In 'May Flowers,' the first story in the collection, Alcott establishes
her theme. In this engaging tale, six blue-blooded Boston girls bearing
the historic names of Anna Winslow, Ella Carver, Marion Warren, Eliza-
beth Alden, Maggie Bradford, and Ida Standish meet 'together, once a
week, to sew, and read well-chosen books' (I). 1 Weary of novels and
wary of frivolity, the young women turn for inspiration first to Happy
Dodd: or, "She Hath Done What She Could' (1878), a pious novel by Rose
Terry Cooke, and then to Prisoners of Poverty (1887), a dissertation on
150 Sarah A. Wadsworth

'women wage-workers, their trades and their lives' by novelist, reformer,

and home economist Helen Stuart Campbell.2 Roused from compla-
cency by the humanitarian appeal of these texts, the young women
become determined to disrupt their comfortable routine and resolve to
make themselves useful in their community. Under the guidance of
Anna Winslow, the club president, the girls decide that for the remain-
der of the year each one will secretly conduct a charitable mission of her
own choosing. At the end of the season, when the group convenes for
the last time before the summer interim, each girl reveals her project
and reports on her progress. From Anna, who befriends shop-girls and
reads papers to them at their local union, to Elizabeth, who brings
books and magazines to hospitalized children, and Marion, who visits a
veterans' home and reads history books to learn about the battles in
which the residents fought, Alcott shows that the social functions of
reading transcend the homely middle-class sociability of the sewing
circle.3
Through a series of vignettes in which each member narrates her
adventures, Alcott demonstrates that reading provides both an intellec-
tual context for social reform and a means through which to bridge the
boundaries of gender, class, generation, and ethnicity that separate the
girls from the objects of their benevolence. At the same time, however,
the narrative continually reminds readers of the differentials in culture
and privilege that reinforce those boundaries. Beneath the veneer of a
conventional, moralistic tale about the responsibilities of the wealthy
towards the poor, 'May Flowers' contains complex and problematic
ideas about the relationships among gender, class, and literacy. Thus
even as Alcott illustrates how these elite young women strive to aid the
disadvantaged, her depiction of the interactions between the upper and
lower classes suggests that social reading and social work may ultimately
reinscribe social difference.

From Sewing Circle to Reading Club

Being Boston girls, of course they got up a club for mental improvement,
and, as they were all descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, they called it the
Mayflower Club. A very good name, and the six young girls who were mem-
bers of it made a very pretty posy when they met together once a week, to
sew, and read well-chosen books. (1)

Margaret Mackey has observed that the opening line of the novel Little
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 151

Women, containing Jo's lament that '"Christmas won't be Christmas with-

out any presents,"' is 'rightly famous,' as '[i]n a single sentence, Alcott
establishes situation, setting, mood, and a certain amount of character,
writing with utmost economy' (155). Although understandably less
famous, the opening of 'May Flowers' is no less impressive in its econ-
omy and scope. Doubly constrained by the restricted length of the short
story and the necessarily swift pace and modest compass of juvenile fic-
tion, Alcott manages to situate the Mayflower Club within a geographic
and cultural context almost entirely by inference. Not only does she
inform readers that the society is 'a club for mental improvement,' but
with the phrases '[bjeing Boston girls,' and 'of course they got up a
club,' she conveys the sense that the club is one of many, part of a popu-
lar trend in contemporary Boston that engaged countless young women
in such societies for the collective reading of 'well-chosen books.'
Indeed, as research into women's organizations reveals, women's read-
ing groups or literary clubs 'spread across the American scene in the
late 1860s, gathering momentum and increasing in number through
the early 1890s' (Martin 1). It is from this tradition that Alcott's 'May
Flowers' simultaneously emanates and departs.
Historians of the women's club movement have pointed out that the
earliest forebears of these groups, loosely organized around individual
church congregations, met to sew, read aloud from the Bible and other
devotional works, discuss their reading, and, eventually, to contribute to
the support of missionary work, temperance groups, and Magdalen
Societies 'devoted to the salvation of "fallen women"' (Martin 6; see also
Blair 7-13). Later, with the founding of the National Woman's Suffrage
Association in 1869 and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in
1873, women's clubs became independent of religious institutions and
began to organize nationally. Tracing the 'genealogy' of women's liter-
ary clubs back through Margaret Fuller's 'Conversations,' Elizabeth Pea-
body's 'Historical Society' and 'Reading Parties,' and Ann Hutchinson's
theological discussions, Theodora Penny Martin portrays Boston, 'the
Athens of America,' as a hotbed of club activity, a social fact that Alcott
seamlessly weaves into her domestic fiction (see also Deutsch 14—15).
Historically linked to the reading society or study club, sewing circles
were, as Carolyn J. Lawes notes, 'the oldest and most common form of
New England women's voluntary associations,' evolving in the antebel-
lum period into 'permanent, constitutionally based organization [s] with
explicit ties to social activism' (54). Gradually, however, social activism
and self-culture took precedence over needlework. On the founding of
152 Sarah A. Wadsworth

a real-life Mayflower Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in May 1893, a

reporter for the Boston Transcript archly observed:

For nearly a quarter of a century Boston has been beset with women's clubs
of varying charm and usefulness, organized in fervent spirit and for various
purposes. These societies have grown and flourished and have long ago
passed through those early stages of development where the Puritan pas-
sion for visible usefulness was expressed by crochet work, those eras when a
woman could scarcely listen conscience free to a Dante reading or a paper
on reincarnation without having her fingers employed with needlework
while her mind reached after ideas, (qtd. in Martin 62)

Notwithstanding the evident abandonment of the domestic arts for the

liberal arts in contemporary women's reading societies, Alcott's Mayflow-
ers are clearly not ready to trade in their needles and workbaskets for
pens and notebooks. As the title page of the 1908 reprint illustrates, some
of the girls attend to their sewing while others pause in their work to lis-
ten intently to the designated reader (fig. 6.1). This synthesis of literary
club, Dorcas society, and sewing circle, a vital convergence in nineteenth-
century New England (Lawes 45-81), is a recurrent site of mental, moral,
and domestic improvement in Alcott's fictional and autobiographical
writings. Her girlhood diary reveals that Mrs Bronson Alcott read Edge-
worth and Scott aloud while her daughters plied their needles (Girlhood
Diary 5). An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870) juxtaposes a fashionable sewing cir-
cle in which the rich girls gossip while stitching garments for the poor
with a less privileged 'sisterhood of busy, happy, independent girls' (196)
whose 'minds and tongues [rove] from subject to subject with youthful
rapidity' as they discuss '[a]rt, morals, politics, society, books, religion,
housekeeping, dress, and economy' (230). And in Jo's Boys (published
about a year before A Garland for Girls), Alcott reveals the full cultural
power of 'these household retreats,' where 'with books and work, and
their daughters by them, [the March sisters] read and sewed and talked
in the sweet privacy that domestic women love, and can make so helpful
by a wise mixture of cooks and chemistry, table linen and theology, pro-
saic duties and good poetry' (243). Alcott remarks:

It was curious to see the prejudices melt away as ignorance was enlight-
ened, indifference change to interest, and intelligent minds set thinking,
while quick wits and lively tongues added spice to the discussions which
inevitably followed. So the feet that wore the neady mended hose carried
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 153

Fig. 6.1. A Garland for Girls (Grosset & Dunlap, 1908), title page vignette.

wiser heads than before, the pretty gowns covered hearts warmed with
higher purposes, and the hands that dropped the thimbles for pens, lexi-
cons, and celestial globes, were better fitted for life's work, whether to rock
cradles, tend the sick, or help on the great work of the world. (244-5).

In Jo's Boys, too, Alcott provides considerable detail about the intellec-
tual content of Jo's 'sewing-school,' as the artistically inclined Amy pro-
vides selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson; imaginative
young Josie contributes romances, poetry, and plays; and 'Mrs Jo' gives
'little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in
154 Sarah A. Wadsworth

which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's
"Duties of Women," Miss Brackett's "Education of American Girls," Mrs.
Duffy's "No Sex in Education," Mrs. Woolson's "Dress Reform," and
many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters,
now that they are waking up and asking, "What shall we do?"' (250).
In contrast to the conventional mid-nineteenth-century image of the
'isolated reader, immersed in her book' (Docherty 361), these various
depictions of female reading groups demonstrate that for Alcott the
domestic sewing circle could provide both a forum in which home-
bound women might learn about social issues, particularly those that
concern women, and a means of intellectual training or self-education
(which many nineteenth-century clubwomen considered the key to the
advancement of their sex). The reading circle in 'May Flowers' is excep-
tional, however, even among Alcott's numerous progressive portrayals of
literary sewing circles, for in this story the fictional readers move
beyond discussions of topical social issues, and transcend the acquisition
of knowledge for its own sake (the primary goal of the majority of
women's study clubs in the late nineteenth century), to achieve positive
social action through the agency of literacy. Historians of women's orga-
nizations have identified a gradual shift in emphasis 'from the realm of
abstract thought to the arena of practical action, from education for self
to education for service' and 'from philosophy to philanthropy' (Martin
4; see also Blair) as women became more assured of their own educa-
tional standing around the turn of the twentieth century. Anticipating
this trend, the antebellum sewing circle experienced a similar shift in
focus: 'From sewing to benefit one's family to sewing to benefit society
was a charge many women eagerly embraced' (Lawes 54). Fusing the
parallel development of literary society and sewing circle, Alcott's 'May
Flowers' explores this movement to involve women of privilege directly
in the amelioration of social ills.
In The Sound of Our Own Voices: Women's Study Clubs, 1860-1910, Martin
portrays women's reading clubs as remarkably homogeneous from
region to region, indeed, 'almost identical in structure, purpose, and
operation' (14; see also Lawes 59-76). Although several features of
Alcott's Mayflower Club conform to those recorded by Martin - that the
group meets in members' homes, that the club year runs from September
to May, that meetings typically lasted two hours, with the first portion
given over to business matters, and that members were predominantly
white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant - on a few key points, the composi-
tion of Alcott's reading circle varies significantly from the profile Martin
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 155

presents. While the Mayflowers comprise half a dozen patrician eighteen-

year-olds who (being unmarried) define themselves as girls rather than
women, nineteenth-century women's study clubs typically consisted of at
least twenty members, middle aged, married, and comfortably middle
class - blue-stockinged perhaps, but not blue-blooded.4 Another notable
departure is that, although Alcott identifies the objective of the May-
flower Club as the girls' 'mental improvement,' their reading agenda is
substantially less rigorous in content and more spontaneous in mode of
selection than those of sister clubs, which typically printed their annual
programs in advance and systematically worked through large bodies of
literature - a formal program of study - organized by author or subject
matter (such as Shakespeare, for example, or American history). In con-
trast, Anna Winslow, president of the Mayflower Club, arrives at the meet-
ing armed with a selection of suitable titles, chosen, one gathers, on the
basis of their moral tone rather than their cultural importance, aesthetic
value, or intellectual content. 5
In her fiction for young people, Alcott frequently guides her readers
towards improving reading matter while steering them away from books
that she considered useless or even harmful. In Little Women (1868), her
approach is predominantly descriptive, as she incorporates into the
novel myriad details of the March sisters' reading, from the edifying and
cherished Pilgrim's Progress to the boys' books and sensation novels in
which unladylike Jo revels (see Crisler). Subsequent texts are often pre-
scriptive, however, with Alcott liberally dropping the names of authors
and titles of books into her narratives and spelling out in no uncertain
terms which to read and which to avoid. In An Old-Fashioned Girl, for
example, the Shaws exemplify young people who indulge in all manner
of unsuitable reading, from Lady Audley's Secret, in which Fanny becomes
utterly absorbed (37), to the sultry European novels Tom reads purport-
edly 'only ... to keep up [his] French' (210).6 Near the novel's conclu-
sion, when Polly is faced with the possibility of marriage to a man she
does not love, Alcott wryly notes, 'If she had read as many French novels
as some young ladies, she might have considered it interesting to marry
under the circumstances and suffer a secret anguish to make her a
romantic victim' (239). Eight Cousins (1874) includes a chapter ('Good
Bargains') detailing the demerits of popular juvenile sensation stories,
which Alcott criticizes for their peppering of slang and lack of realism.
Later, in Rose in Bloom (1876), Uncle Alec encourages Rose to form her
own conclusions about the immorality of French novels in the chapter
entitled 'Small Temptations'; meanwhile bookish Mac develops into a
156 Sarah A. Wadsworth

youth worthy of Rose's love in part through his devoted reading of Shel-
ley, Keats, Emerson, and Thoreau. In 'May Flowers,' Alcott is at her most
forceful on this favourite topic of books and reading, as she moves
beyond a passive model of reading that stresses the effects of particular
types of texts upon the minds of individual readers to a more active
model that not only suggests ideas of what to read but also provides a
template for how to read, together with specific illustrations of what to do
with what one has read. Privately reading the British and American
Romantics might serve to elevate the intellect and refine one's sensibili-
ties, just as sensation novels could dull one's moral and emotional make-
up. For the girls in 'May Flowers,' however, the combination of uplifting
prose, naturalistic reportage, and wholesome companionship provides
the inspiration, impetus, and moral support necessary to catalyse a
latent impulse of charity into active, usefully directed missionary zeal.

Reading and Reform

After her suggestion of Happy Dodd is met with 'a chorus of "I've read
it!"' (1), Anna Winslow, who has been devising her plan to encourage
the girls in the Mayflower Club to 'do good,' 'turn[s] to her list for
another title' (1). By reading Prisoners of Poverty with them, she hopes to
give them 'hints' (6) and instigate them to action. Quick to anticipate
Anna's motive, Elizabeth Alden chimes in with ' [l]et us begin with "The
Prisoners of Poverty," and perhaps it will show us something to do' (4).
The others agree, and '[s]o they began' (6). In considerable detail,
Alcott chronicles their reading of Helen Campbell's socioeconomic
study of women employed in New York's garment industry:

For an hour one pleasant voice after the other read aloud those sad, true
stories of workingwomen and their hard lives, showing these gay young
creatures what their pretty clothes cost the real makers of them, and how
much injustice, suffering, and wasted strength went into them. It was very
sober reading, but most absorbing; for the crochet needles went slower and
slower, the lace-work lay idle, and a great tear shone like a drop of dew on
the apple blossoms [she was embroidering] as Ella listened to 'Rose's
Story.'7 They skipped the statistics, and dipped here and there as each took
her turn; but when the two hours were over, and it was time for the club to
adjourn, all the members were deeply interested in that pathetic book, and
more in earnest than before; for this glimpse into other lives showed them
how much help was needed, and made them anxious to lend a hand. (6)
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 157

Although Prisoners of Poverty may have been less inviting to the young
women than a sentimental novel like Happy Dodd, Alcott presents a poi-
gnant tableau of the reading scene, tinged with pathos and suffused with
goodwill. In so doing, she indirectly coaxes her real-life readers to sam-
ple this more ponderous fare, encouraging them to gloss over the statis-
tics and read out of order, as she models these practices in her fictional
readers. Ann Ruggles Gere has commented on precisely these kinds of
reading strategies: 'In many clubs reading aloud was a common practice,
and ... this practice redefined the nature of reading to make it more
communal and corporeal. Rather than interacting in isolation with a
written text, club members shared responses, frequently inserting their
own voices into the reading' (652). So, too, in Alcott's 'May Flowers,'
reading aloud encourages the girls to articulate their responses to the
text, to form a consensus about their reading, to relate the information
embodied in the text to their own experiences of the world outside the
text, and hence to translate abstract ideas into concrete social action.
The responses of historical readers to such communal reading prac-
tices are regrettably difficult to recover; nevertheless, it is surely note-
worthy that at least one contemporary reviewer recommended A
Garland for Girls precisely on the basis of the instruction Alcott provides
in the arena of reading, exclaiming:

We are sure we need only mention Miss Alcott's 'Garland for Girls' ... to
have it clearly understood that we think every girl ought to have it, to learn
how one set of little maids were encouraged to personal effort for others by
reading Mrs. Campbell's 'Prisoners of Poverty.' (Review 67)8

As this reviewer tacitly acknowledges, the real power of a book such as

Prisoners of Poverty lies in its potential to move its readers to action.9
Before reading this documentary text, Alcott's Mayflowers are uncertain
how to go about helping the less fortunate, despite their good inten-
tions. Even though all the girls express profound admiration for
Cooke's didactic tale of the Christian do-gooder Happy Dodd, a few
remain doubtful as to why they should help the poor: Maggie Bradford,
for one, appears to be more attracted by the fun and mystery of the
project than by any lofty humanitarian ideal. '[C]aught by the idea of
doing good in secret and being found out by accident,' she vows to 'look
round at once for some especially horrid bootblack, ungrateful old
woman, or ugly child, and devote [herself] to him, her, or it with the
patience of a saint' (5). After sampling the stark journalistic realism of
158 Sarah A. Wadsworth

Prisoners of Poverty, however, the Mayflowers set aside their qualms and
resolve to 'shoulder' their burdens - although Anna fears that they
'can't do much, being "only girls'" - and even Maggie declares 'with a
resigned expression, and a sanctimonious twang to her voice': 'I shall
stand on the Common, and proclaim aloud, "Here's a nice young mis-
sionary, in want of a job! Charity for sale cheap! Who'll buy? Who'll
buy?"' (7). Ella Carver is more diffident, predicting: 'I shall probably
have a class of dirty little girls, and teach them how to sew, as I can't do
anything else. They won't learn much, but steal, and break, and mess,
and be a dreadful trial, and I shall get laughed at and wish I hadn't done
it' (7). Thus, Alcott reassures her readers that a certain amount of trepi-
dation is natural but that it is important nevertheless to persevere. As
the meeting concludes, each member is determined to conquer her res-
ervations and seek out '"a little chore" to do for sweet charity's sake' (8).
In her study of women and reform in nineteenth-century New
England, Lawes establishes that the antebellum sewing circle, 'the most
ubiquitous form of women's organization,' functioned as 'a forum for
good fellowship, mutual improvement, and social activism' (6) and
'moved women's labor beyond the realm of domestic production to
connect with larger social concerns' (55). Raising money for a variety of
local and national reforms, permanent for-profit sewing circles allowed
women to '[lay] claim to the right to participate in the political and
social development of the community, the nation, and the world' (47)
and 'to act upon their concern for creating a more just and moral soci-
ety' (78) .10 In 'May Flowers,' Alcott demonstrates how a postbellum
women's group could 'connect with larger social concerns' not through
the labour of needlework directly, but rather by translating ideas ac-
quired through communal reading into purposeful acts of community
service and by conveying to others the transformative role of literacy
in social betterment. The activities of her characters thus set in motion a
potentially self-perpetuating cycle of reading and reform, as Alcott dis-
patches each of the club members on a humanitarian errand. Fanning
out across Boston, the Mayflower girls traverse the urban landscape in
search of charitable opportunities, transporting their ideas and ideals
beyond the limits of their exclusive domestic circle and across class and
ethnic boundaries (see Deutsch 7-8):

Marion was often seen in a North End car, and Lizzie in a South End car,
with a bag of books and papers. Ella haunted a certain shop where fancy
articles were sold, and Ida always brought plain sewing to the club. Maggie
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 159

seemed very busy at home, and Anna was found writing industriously sev-
eral times when one of her friends called. All seemed very happy, and
rather important when outsiders questioned them about their affairs. But
they had their pleasures as usual, and seemed to enjoy them with an added
relish, as if they realized as never before how many blessings they pos-
sessed, and were grateful for them. (8)

The causes the Mayflowers eventually espouse are as various as the girls
themselves: Anna helps to improve the working conditions for a pair of
toil-worn shop-girls; the enterprising Ella becomes 'a silent partner and
co-worker in a small fancy store at the West End' (13), therebyjoining the
legions of female petty entrepreneurs who inhabited late-nineteenth-
century Boston (see Deutsch 115); Lizzie amuses patients at the Chil-
dren's Hospital; Ida provides food, clothing, and comfort for three
neglected waifs; Marion obtains a place in the Soldiers' Home at Chelsea
for a disabled veteran of the Civil War; and Maggie becomes a second
mother in her own home, keeping house and tending her younger sib-
lings so that her mother can recuperate from a debilitating illness.
Throughout 'May Flowers,' Alcott persistently emphasizes the role of
reading and writing in volunteerism and social change, even as she dem-
onstrates a broad range of activities in which charitable young women
might engage. When Anna discovers that Maria, one of the shop atten-
dants she meets, is homebound with a lame knee, she asks if she might
take her some books or flowers. Later, after she has persuaded the girls'
employer to allow them to seat themselves on stools when no customers
are present, she becomes involved with the girls' union. When she tells
the members of the Mayflower Club that she has been 'reading papers
to a class of shop-girls at the Union once a week all winter,' her 'deeply
interesting statement' is met with '[a] murmur of awe and admiration'
(II). 1 1 As Alcott hastens to explain, with tongue in cheek, 'true to the
traditions of the modern Athens in which they lived, the girls all felt the
highest respect for "papers" on any subject, it being the fashion for
ladies, old and young, to read and discuss every subject, from pottery to
Pantheism, at the various clubs all over the city' (11). Anna begins her
course of readings by sharing amusing selections from the journals her
brother kept while traveling abroad, 'and when the journals were done
... read other things, and picked up books for their library, and helped
in any way [she] could, while learning to know them better' and win
their confidence (12-13). Meanwhile, Lizzie amuses hospitalized chil-
dren by bringing them picture books and papers, among other diver-
160 Sarah A. Wadsworth

sions, and reads and sings to them; Ida enables two destitute children to
attend school and lends books to their neighbour, Miss Parsons, 'a
young woman who was freezing and starving in a little room upstairs'
(29); and Marion, having befriended a veteran, becomes swept up 'in a
fever of patriotism' to the point that she begins 'to read up evenings'
about the Civil War and becomes 'great friends' with her brother as a
result of 'reading together' about all the battles (36).12 In each of these
cases, reading opens up a channel of communication between the
young woman and the object of her benevolence, affording a means
with which to bridge the gaps arising from disparities in social class,
gender, age, and ethnicity.
For all the transformative power of the written word, however, Alcott
never ceases to remind her readers of the relentlessly intransigent cate-
gories of social difference that define the world depicted in her narra-
tive. Indeed, the protagonists of 'May Flowers' appear considerably less
progressive than their reform-minded author (a lifelong advocate of the
rights of African Americans, Native Americans, and the poor, as well as
of temperance, prison reform, child labour reform, and women's suf-
frage [Baum 251]), as Alcott continually alerts the reader to the daunt-
ing differentials in social caste that separate the Mayflower girls from
the humble folks whose lives they strive to improve. This disparity is per-
petuated, in part, through the perspectives of the girls themselves, who
view their society through a lens of bigotry and prejudice. In a city that
was one-third immigrant in 1880 and in which ethnic Irish would soon
be a majority (Deutsch 7), Ella refers with evident repugnance to the
prospect of washing 'dirty little Pats' and describes with apparent
unconcern the escapades of 'some black imps' she encounters playing
in a West End street. (The most densely populated area of Boston, the
West End had, by the 1880s, distinct Black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese,
and Italian neighbourhoods [Deutsch 7].) Moreover, in narrating the
elaborate means through which she lent support to two downtrodden
Vermont women, she explains to her friends: 'We did not dare to treat
them like beggars, and send them money and clothes, and tea and
sugar, as we do the Irish, for they were evidently respectable people, and
proud as poor' (18).13 The stereotype of the indolent Irish (not unusual
in Alcott's fiction) surfaces too in Ida's story, in which Mrs Kennedy, the
mother of the young children she assists, is 'a shiftless, broken-down
woman, who could only "sozzle round" ... and rub along with help from
any who would lend a hand' (29). Marion's story is, however, the great-
est condemnation of the Irish, for after she donates tea, sugar, a shawl,
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 161

and some pennies to a 'little Irishwoman who sells apples on the Com-
mon' - a woman she refers to as 'my old Biddy' - she learns from
another Irish vendor that 'a drunken ould crayther is Biddy Ryan,
and niver a cint but goes for whiskey' (33). Literacy, as Harvey Graff
has shown, paled in comparison to the impact of ethnicity in the
nineteenth-century city in effecting '[t]he process of stratification, with
its basis in rigid social inequality' (114), and Alcott tacitly accepts this
sociological fact.
Although the activities these girls undertake represent a momentous
departure from the self-culture orientation of the more cloistered
women's societies of the period, Alcott's Mayflower Club is fundamen-
tally conservative in impulse, tending ultimately to reaffirm the status
quo. This conservatism is nowhere more evident than in Maggie's story,
a piece de resistance that completes the narrative cycle by demonstrating
that the most admirable contributions are those which girls are capable
of making in their own domestic spheres. Recounting her transforma-
tion from indulged dependent to second mother with her own burden
of domestic responsibilities, Maggie explains:

'I didn't say anything, but I kept on doing whatever came along, and before
I knew it ever so many duties slipped out of Mamma's hands into mine, and
seemed to belong to me. I don't mean that I liked them, and didn't grum-
ble to myself; I did, and felt regularly crushed and injured sometimes when
I wanted to go and have my own fun. Duty is right, but it isn't easy, and the
only comfort about it is a sort of quiet feeling you get after a while, and a
strong feeling, as if you'd found something to hold on to and keep you
steady. I can't express it, but you know?' (39-40)

At the conclusion of Maggie's tale, Anna warmly responds with 'Many

daughters have done well, but thou excellest them all' (42), an affirma-
tion that unambiguously signals to the reader the relative value ascribed
by the text to charitable work outside of and within one's own domestic
sphere. True to the prevailing spirit of nineteenth-century women's
clubs, 'May Flowers' ultimately valorizes traditional roles for women and
conservative goals for social reform.

Social Transformation and Self-Transformation

In a paper entitled 'How Can Women Best Associate,' presented at the

First Woman's Congress of the Association for the Advancement of
162 Sarah A. Wadsworth

Woman (1873), Julia Ward Howe appealed to women club organizers

'to draw the circle so that it shall not strengthen the divisions of society
already existing, sundering rich from poor, fashionable from unfashion-
able, learned from simple' (qtd. in Martin 66). Unfortunately,
Howe's proposition may have represented an ideal few women's
clubs attempted to realize. Indeed, Anne M. Boylan contends that
antebellum women's organizations 'permitted individuals to cement
their religious commitments and signify their class locations and racial
identities' (54) and that the ability of the wealthiest and best connected
of these organizations 'to wield political and economic power ... set
them off from their less well situated sisters and reinforced differences
in their lives, deepening the chasms of religion, race, class, and legal sta-
tus that separated them from each other' (218). Certainly, Alcott's May-
flowers have not drawn their circle widely, instead restricting their
membership to descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, alike in gender, age,
ethnicity, and class. Yet in this story, the eponymous flower is doubly
symbolic, referring simultaneously to the impeccable ancestry of the
club members (an index both of their patriotism and of their unassail-
able social status in nineteenth-century Boston [see Martin 38]) and to
the trailing arbutus, also known as the mayflower, an evergreen plant
associated with transformation and renewal. At the conclusion of the
story, Anna pays tribute to the girls' moral regeneration by presenting
her fellow club-members with 'real Plymouth mayflowers ... a posy
apiece' [42]. With reference to the symbolic significance of the may-
flower, Alcott writes:

So the winter passed, and slowly something new and pleasant seemed to
come into the lives of these young girls. The listless, discontented look
some of them used to wear passed away; a sweet earnestness and a cheerful
activity made them charming, though they did not know it, and wondered
when people said, 'That set of girls are growing up beautifully; they will
make fine women by and by.' The mayflowers were budding under the
snow, and as spring came on the fresh perfume began to steal out, the rosy
faces to brighten, and the last year's dead leaves to fall away, leaving the
young plants green and strong. (8-9)14

Although each of the girls' vignettes ends happily, with some tangible
improvement wrought in the personal life of a member of the lower
classes (or, in Maggie's case, of her invalid mother), the real transforma-
tion, Alcott suggests, is in the girls themselves. Social reading (both
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 163

communal consumption of texts and the focus on socially progressive

works) has led them to social volunteerism and hence to moral enlight-
enment - a path clearly foreshadowed in Alcott's earlier novels for
young people. Ultimately, however, domesticity and personal growth
prevail over activism and social amelioration, while true reform - the
restructuring of a society stratified by disparities of wealth and power
and divided by inequalities prescribed by gender, class, and ethnicity -
seems to elude their grasp.
Yet in the end, Alcott hints of future progress as well, as her Mayflow-
ers possess 'a clearer knowledge of the sad side of life, a fresh desire to
see and help still more, and a sweet satisfaction in the thought that each
had done what she could' (47). If it ends with an allusion that brings us
back full circle to Happy Dodd; or, 'She Hath Done What She Could,' the nar-
rative as a whole still beckons onward, inviting us to follow the textual
trail marked by the author and join in the imagined circle of Alcott's
own reading, where 'prejudices melt away as ignorance [is] enlight-
ened' (Jo's Boys 244-5). Turning to Prisoners of Poverty, responsive readers
might then discover that 'back of every individual case of wrong and
oppression lies a deeper wrong and a more systemized oppression' (66),
and thus unravelling A Garland for Girls, trace in its roots the vital thread:
'Only in the determined effort of the individual, in individual under-
standing and renunciation forever of what has been selfish and mean
and base, can humanity know redemption' (Campbell 185).

NOTES

1 Among those who sailed from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth Rock aboard
the Mayflower in 1620 were passengers Edward Winslow, Gilbert Winslow,
Robert Carver, John Carver, Richard Warren, John Alden, William Bradford,
and Myles Standish.
2 An associate of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, Helen Campbell (1839-1918)
wrote novels for adults under the names 'Campbell Wheaton' and 'Helen
Stuart Campbell,' as well as stories for children, short fiction for popular
magazines, and a textbook on housekeeping and cooking. In addition to
Prisoners of Poverty, which was originally commissioned as a series of articles in
the New York Tribune, her books on reform include The Problem of the Poor
(1882), Mrs. Herndon's Income (1886), Prisoners of Poverty Abroad (1889), and
Women Wage-Earners (1891) (Paulson 280-1).
3 Alcott's 'May Flowers' may have been inspired by 'A Suggestion' in TheAmer-
164 Sarah A. Wadsworth

ican Girl's Handy Book by Lina and Adelia B. Beard. In their section on
Thanksgiving, the Beards advise their readers 'to form a society ... to be
called the Thanksgiving Society, whose object will be to provide a real
Thanksgiving for other and less fortunate girls, by giving them something to
be thankful for before next year's Thanksgiving shall arrive' (313).
4 Naturally, there were exceptions to this profile of women's study clubs, and
Martin points to several 'daughter clubs' formed by young women or girls,
including the well-known Saturday Morning Club of Boston, founded by the
daughters of prominent clubwoman Julia Ward Howe (72-9). For additional
information on clubs that ran counter to the 'typical' club profile, see Gere,
Intimate Practices, and McHenry.
5 In this respect the Mayflowers more closely resemble the antebellum sewing
circle described by Lawes, which, 'to guard against excessive chatting, the
"reproach to our sex," ... resolved to sew to the accompaniment of an appro-
priately uplifting text' (60).
6 Although Alcott anonymously authored numerous sensation novels for
adults, she clearly did not recommend such reading to her devoted audience
of youth.
7 In 'The Case of Rose Haggerty,' the second chapter of Prisoners of Poverty,
Campbell relates the experiences of an impoverished Irish American girl,
the eldest daughter of alcoholic parents, who must provide for several young
siblings when her ne'er-do-well forebears die of a fever. After years of profit-
less toil, hardship, and exploitation by unscrupulous employers, Rose finally
resorts in desperation to 'the one way left' (27), prostitution.
8 Erin Graham's 1897 article 'Books That Girls Have Loved' offers one exam-
ple of how real-life girls incorporated the literary practices of Alcott's fic-
tional heroines into their own lives. Referring to the Pickwick Club in Little
Women, Graham explained: 'We had been inspired by the club and the news-
paper in which the March family rejoiced. So we four determined to win lit-
erary bays, and decided that our Quartette Club should meet in the attic
every Thursday afternoon. Our periodical was written on brown paper, and
bore the name "Budget of Wit and Novelty." It did not lack for poetry, and
there was an abundance of short stories, in which Italian princesses and
English dukes played a prominent part' (432).
9 In An Old-Fashioned Girl, one of Alcott's characters comments on the failure
of most literature to move readers to action, musing, 'Speaking of pitying the
poor, I always wonder why it is that we all like to read and cry over their trou-
bles in books, but when we have the real thing before us, we think it is un-
interesting and disagreeable' (189). For Helen Campbell, the author of
Prisoners of Poverty, newjournalism offered a possible solution. She wrote: 'I
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 165

am by no means certain that... the plain bald statement of facts, shorn of all
flights of fancy or play of facetiousness, might not rouse the public to some
sense of what lies below the surface of this fair-seeming civilization to-day'
(129).
10 Lawes's research presents a striking contrast to Elizabeth Long's study of
women's reading groups in late-twentieth-century Texas, in which Long
concludes that although several of the groups she observed 'were aware of
the ways in which their nonfiction reading had linked them to wider social
currents' (599), women's reading groups lack 'the fascinating quality of
organizations spearheading social change' (591).
11 Alcott may have had in mind the Women's Educational and Industrial
Union, founded in 1877 as a community service agency to assist the working
girls of Boston. In addition to offering classes, this union operated an
employment bureau, a dispensary, and a legal aid service for poor workers.
Alcott likely drew on chapter 15 of Prisoners of Poverty ('Among the Shop-
Girls') in composing Anna's story.
12 Alcott's experience as a volunteer nurse in Washington, DC, from December
1862 to January 1863, recounted in Hospital Sketches, informs the stories of
Lizzie and Marion.
13 These countrywomen seem to be composites of several women Campbell
discusses in Prisoners of Poverty, for example, the New England milliner of
chapter 5 and 'Almiry' (a name Alcott uses for one of her Vermont women),
a seamstress from New Hampshire (chap. 12).
14 In An Old-Fashioned Girl, Alcott similarly uses the mayflower as a symbol of
moral regeneration, writing 'To outsiders that was a very hardworking and
uneventful winter to Polly. She thought so herself; but as spring came on, the
seed of new virtues, planted in the wintertime, and ripened by the sunshine
of endeavor, began to bud in Polly's nature, betraying their presence to
others by the added strength and sweetness of her character, long before she
herself discovered these May flowers that had blossomed for her underneath
the snow' (196).

WORKS CITED

Alcott, Louisa May. Eight Cousins; or, The Aunt-Hill. 1874. Boston: Little, Brown,
1996.
- A Garland for Girls. Illustr. byJessie McDermott. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888.
- A Garland for Girls. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [1908].
- Hospital Sketches. Ed. Bessie S.Jones. Cambridge: Belknap P, 1960.
166 Sarah A. Wadsworth

- Jo's Boys. 1886. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

- Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Introduction by Anna Quindlen. 1868.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.
- Louisa May Alcott: Her Girlhood Diary. Ed. Gary Ryan. Mahwah, NJ: BridgeWater
Books, 1993.
- An Old-Fashioned Girl. 1870. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997.
- .Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to Eight Cousins. 1876. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.
Baum, Freda. 'The Scarlet Strand: Reform Motifs in the Writings of Louisa
May Alcott.' In Critical Essays of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Madeleine B. Stern, 251-
5. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984.
Beard, Lina, and Adelia B. Beard. The American Girl's Handy Book: How To Amuse
Yourself and Others. 1887. Boston: David R. Godine, 1987.
Blair, Karen. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914.
New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980.
Boylan, Anne M. The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840.
Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002.
Campbell, Helen Stuart. Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and
Their Lives. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887.
Cooke, Rose Terry. Happy Dodd; or, 'She Hath Done What She Could.' 1878. Boston:
Ticknor & Company, 1887.
Crisler, Jesse S. 'Alcott's Reading in Little Women: Shaping the Autobiographical
Self.' Resources for American Literary Study 20 (1994): 27-36.
Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
Docherty, Linda J. 'Women as Readers: Visual Interpretations.' Proceedings of the
American Antiquarian Society 107 (1998): 335-88.
Gere, Ann Ruggles. 'Common Properties of Pleasure: Texts in Nineteenth-
Century Women's Clubs.' Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 10
(1992): 647-63.
- Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in U. S. Women's Clubs, 1880-1920.
Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1997.
Graff, Harvey. The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-
Century City. New York: Academic P, 1979.
Graham, Erin. 'Books That Girls Have Loved.' Lippincott's Magazine^ (1897):
428-32.
Lawes, Carolyn J. Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815-1860.
Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2000.
Long, Elizabeth. 'Women, Reading, and Cultural Authority: Some Implications
of the Audience Perspective in Cultural Studies.' American Quarterly 38 (1986):
591-612.
 Louisa May Alcott's 'May Flowers' 167

Mackey, Margaret. 'Little Women Go to Market: Shifting Texts and Changing

Readers.' Children's Literature in Education 29 (1998): 153-73.
Martin, Theodora Penny. The Sound of Our Own Voices: Women's Study Clubs, 1860-
1910. Boston: Beacon P, 1987.
McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African-
American Literary Societies. Durham: Duke UP, 2002.
Paulson, Ross E. 'Helen Stuart Campbell.' In Notable American Women, 1607-
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Review of A Garland for Girls. The Critic 12:215 (11 February 1888): 67.
7 'A Thought in the Huge Bald
Forehead': Depictions of Women in
the British Museum Reading Room,
1857-1929

RUTH H O B E R M A N

On 2 May 1857 a new, domed reading room opened in what had been
the courtyard of the British Museum. Constructed, like the Crystal Pal-
ace, from glass and wrought iron, the room was a design and engineer-
ing wonder, attracting 62,000 visitors during the eight days it was open
to public inspection. As serious readers followed the gawkers, the new
reading room quickly became a centre of London intellectual life.
Attendance increased steadily during the later part of the century, mov-
ing from 109,000 visits in 1876 to 146,000 in 1890. The recipient of all
copyrighted material published in the country, the library was, quite lit-
erally, the place to go for information about anything; journalists, politi-
cians, writers, and scholars spent long days there, their feet on the
heated foot rests, taking notes as they composed their articles, speeches,
and novels. Known as the 'mecca of literary research workers,' the room
drew such famous male readers as Thomas Hardy, Arnold Bennett, Sam-
uel Butler, W.E. Gladstone, Leslie Stephen, A.C. Swinburne, George
Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, and Bram Stoker.1
Less famously, the room also attracted women. Though rarely listed
now on the standard lists of famous patrons, these women - among
them novelists Olive Schreiner, Edna Lyall, E. Nesbit, Emma Brooke,
Beatrice Harraden, and Dorothy Richardson and social activists Annie
Besant, Mona Caird, Beatrice Potter, Charlotte Wilson, Charlotte
Despard, Eleanor Marx, and Clementina Black - attracted attention,
and as the century went on, both verbal and visual representations of
women in the reading room became increasingly common in novels
and in the popular press. In fact, from the 1860s on, the presence of
women in the British Museum Reading Room provided grist for count-
less journalistic depictions, generally either openly derisory or gently
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 169

satirical. At the same time, however, women depicted their own pres-
ence in the reading room, in everything from letters and autobiogra-
phies to fiction, in more sympathetic terms. I want to argue, in fact, that
depictions of women in the reading room became one way in which the
British debated the proper role of women, with the reading room itself
serving as a kind of stage on which women dramatized their involve-
ment in the public life of the nation.
These depictions took on particular importance because of the vital
role the British Museum played in Britain's self-image, as one of the
'knowledge-producing institutions' Thomas Richards places at the
'administrative core of the empire' (4). For the reading room's growth
coincided not only with the expansion of the British empire - in east
and west Africa, the Far East, Egypt and the Sudan, and India - but also
with the increasingly sophisticated means by which it was administered
and explained. As surveyors, missionaries, colonial administrators, and
practitioners of such new disciplines as anthropology and archeology
sent information and artifacts back to London, royal societies, muse-
ums, libraries, and universities constructed and disseminated the racist
and Orientalist discourse that justified their intervention. This interven-
tion necessitated surveillance, which generated more information,
which had in turn to be organized. (The control of knowledge, Richards
points out, is a recurring theme of nineteenth-century literature, with
degeneration, reverse colonization, and entropy offering constant
threats [5].) The British Museum Reading Room, with its vast collection
and 374-volume catalogue (finally published in 1900 after a twenty-five-
year effort [McCrimmon, Power, 148]), was command-central for this
late-nineteenth-century knowledge-control industry. Reinforcing this
sense of centrality was the fact that the reading room was a literal panop-
ticon. The superintendent, from his raised central platform, could sur-
vey the reading benches raying outward like spokes in awheel. The only
figure in the room allowed to wear a top hat (Harris, Reading Room, 20),
the superintendent, along with his domain, thus epitomized the effi-
ciency of British social surveillance and the centralization of British
knowledge and administration.
What happens when women enter such a space? From a Foucauldian
standpoint, women simply reinforced the room's disciplinary function.
According to Tony Bennett, for example, women aided in civilizing the
museum's patrons. Bennett has described an 'exhibitionary complex'
emerging during the nineteenth century - which included arcades,
exhibitions, galleries, and museums (61). Bennett, following Foucault,
170 Ruth Hoberman

argues that this complex worked 'as a set of cultural technologies con-
cerned to organize a voluntarily self-regulating citizenry,' turning spec-
tators into co-operative participants in civilization, order, and progress
as they survey each other as well as whatever is on display. Middle-class
women reinforced this process, he suggests, by forcing working-class
men to emulate the decorous behaviour of the upper classes out of
respect for their presence (63).
But a look at newspapers, novels, and journals during the late nine-
teenth century gives a more complicated and more conflict-ridden pic-
ture, suggesting that the reading room was not just a Foucauldian scene
of surveillance and discipline. While Bennett emphasizes the museum's
disciplinary role, my own research suggests a tension between that role
and the ways in which many women actually used the museum - a ten-
sion articulated by the widely varying depictions their presence there
inspired. In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau argues that
Foucault's emphasis on institutions' disciplinary mechanisms overlooks
actual consumers' 'ways of operating' (xiv). Actual consumers, de Cer-
teau suggests, reconfigure institutional space through the 'tactic,' a
'calculated action' that 'boldly juxtaposes diverse elements in order sud-
denly to produce a flash shedding a different light on the language of a
place' (37-8). I want to explore the ways women operated, reading their
actions in the reading room as well as their and others' depictions of it.
In the process, I hope to show that the room's very centrality and con-
spicuousness made it a public stage: an opportunity for women to dra-
matize their entry into - or rejection of- public life.
Women's presence in the reading room resulted in a complex battle
of representations, in two phases. During phase one, from the 1880s to
1907, women ambitious for a role in public life depict themselves and
each other as delighting in the reading room's resources. Their depic-
tions vary in tone, with more conservative writers emphasizing women
readers' unobtrusiveness, while those aligned with socialist and feminist
causes underline their self-assertion, even disruptiveness. But all see the
reading room in positive terms, as facilitating women's move from pri-
vate into public life. Those opposed to this move, on the other hand - a
group including a few women writers, much of the mainstream press,
and a number of male novelists - either ridicule women readers as
incongruous or pity them as exploited workers who would be happier if
married.
While these sides seem clearly drawn, the issues shift in phase two,
which begins after 1907, when the reading room was redecorated and
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 171

the separate section for 'ladies' seating' removed. The subsequent rep-
resentations of women readers by women - particularly by Virginia
Woolf and Dorothy Richardson in the 1920s - no longer depict the
room as a liberating, gender-free space women hope to share, but as an
implicitly male space, oppressing the women who work there with its
accumulated cultural weight, turning them - in Woolf's famous words -
into mere thoughts in the dome's 'huge bald forehead' (A Room of One's
Own 26). Throughout both phases, representations of women in the
reading room respond in complex terms to the behaviour of actual
women as well as to the layout of the room itself, as they serve to articu-
late shifting and conflicting views of the relationship between women
and public life.
From its earliest incarnation, the British Museum Reading Room was
largely a male domain. While women had never been barred from any
of the six reading rooms preceding the 1857 one, they had rarely
patronized them. During the ten years after the creation of the first
reading room in 1759, according to George Barwick, only three women
used it (34). Female patrons of the eighteenth century were occasion-
ally asked to find a companion to study with them, and around 1820,
one writer commented, 'It was not considered etiquette for ladies to
study in the library of the British Museum' (Barwick 65). During the
nineteenth century, female patronage increased; Harriet Martineau,
Dinah Mulock Craik, and Eliza Lynn Linton researched their novels in
the reading room of the 1840s. On the whole, however, according to
Thomas Kelly, women tended to prefer circulating libraries or, where
available, ladies' reading rooms (84).
Thus, when the 1857 room attracted women in larger numbers, peo-
ple noticed. The increase is not surprising, given that this was the period
when women became increasingly involved in politics and public life
(for example, joining socialist organizations like the Fabian Society,
writing for the press, serving on local school and poor boards, speaking
for women's suffrage). From the perspective of politically progressive,
educated middle-class women, the reading room offered tremendous
opportunities: to think through their ideas with the help of research, to
discuss them with like-minded friends, and to wield influence by spread-
ing them. Merely by gaining access, they defined themselves as public
scholars, for to get a reading ticket they had to describe their research
needs and supply a recommendation from a house-holder. They could
then use the reading room to gain the intellectual authority and profes-
sionalism that come from research, to share in that 'social life of the
172 Ruth Hoberman

intellect' Edith Simcox called for for women in an 1887 article (395),
and (taking advantage of their conspicuous visibility as women in a pre-
dominantly male-populated panopticon) to enact their identities as
public intellectuals and 'new women.'
As the role of women in public life became increasingly controversial,
the representation of women in the reading room took on new signifi-
cance, for, 'mecca' though it might be, the reading room was also an
intensely contested space as readers literally competed for scarce seat-
ing, as officials debated who could be excluded to make more room,
and as the popular press depicted the room as inappropriately over-
whelmed by women's bodies. Although the 1857 reading room had
been built to provide more room for books and readers (302 people
could be seated at its thirty-five tables, two of which were set aside for
women [Harris, History, 189]), by the mid-1870s it was already over-
crowded again (fig. 7.1). Alarmist commentators referred to the steady
increase in both readers and books, worrying that seating and shelving
were insufficient. An 1877 Athenaeum article complained the room was
too full of 'triflers' ('Literary Gossip' 700), and W.E. Gladstone wrote in
1890 that despite Panizzi's 'noble design' providing room for 1,200,000
books, 'all this apparently enormous space for development is being
eaten up with fearful rapidity' (388).
Some responses emphasizing the need for more seating and fewer
patrons focused on the space taken up by women. In 1872, Robert Cowtan
pointed out that while two long tables were set aside - complete with has-
socks - for female readers, 'a considerable proportion of lady readers sit
from choice at the unreserved places' (223-4). In 1878, a battle erupted
in the press over this issue. The seating set aside 'for ladies,' one reader
complained, was left unoccupied, while the rest of the room was packed:
'ladies,' he wrote, 'are well sprinkled over the general seats, but the infe-
rior sex [men] dare not invade the reserved territory' (Anonymous Stu-
dent 4). Three women quickly responded in favour of the seats, arguing
that some women need the separate seating to feel comfortable. One cor-
respondent even described a confrontation with a fellow reader over the
issue, an incident revealing how much anger this competition for space
generated. Arriving too late to get a seat in the ladies' section, the corre-
spondent had to sit with the men, but while she was working, the reserved
seats opened up. Because she remained where she was rather than move,
a man behind her complained that the reserved area was unused and pre-
vented his getting a seat. In fact, she suggested, the seating was used and
appreciated (Audi 8). Another writer agreed the room was crowded, but
Fig. 7.1. 'Plan of the New [1857] Reading Room'; reprinted from British Museum: New Reading Room and Libraries (London,
1857), courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum; the line points to those seats reserved for women readers.
174 Ruth Hoberman

suggested that rather than remove the 'ladies only' label, the room
should be barred to lawyers, surgeons, and lunatics, all of whom take up
space and do not really require the room's resources (Faulke-Watling 8).
A few years later, though, an article in Belgravia repeated the charge that
the ladies' reserved seats went unused: 'There are a few desks set apart,
like compartments in a railway train, "for ladies only," and one of the
standing jests of the place - perfectly supported, too, by experience - is,
that these are left solitary and untenanted' (Fitzgerald 163).
The overflowing of women from their designated area deprived the
men of their seats, these articles suggest; other accounts imply the
women deprive the men of their minds, as well. While the anonymous
author of an 1861 article in Chambers Journal appears to welcome
women, addressing his imagined reader as 'madam' and asking that she
take his arm as he leads her to the reading room, he depicts the actual
women he finds there as nothing but trouble. After passing several
'Arguses,' the author points out to his female visitor the room's 'perfect
light, chasteness, and simple grandeur,' despite which, he sometimes
gets nothing done:

Need I point out to you that the two seats marked 'FOR LADIES ONLY,'
do not afford sufficient accommodations for all the fair worshippers of
Minerva? They are consequently forced, ma'am, actually forced to sit about
amongst the rougher sex; and the consequence, so far as I am concerned,
is false quantities, misspelling, mistranslation, and wrong references.
('National Reading Room' 130-1)

Once the author perceives 'the whisk of silk and the rustle of muslin,'
he explains, his 'faculties' leave him. The article at once welcomes
women - as visitors - and warns them (albeit facetiously) that those
( women who remain there are seen only in terms of their bodies, which
violate the space's 'chastity' and make rational discourse impossible. An
1886 article in Saturday Review suggests that the terms of the problem
had not changed much in twenty-five years. Summarizing recent com-
plaints about women in the reading room, who are accused of talking,
flirting, eating strawberries, and reading novels, the author mentions
'the frou-frou of her silken raiment' and the resultant inhibition male
readers feel about scattering ink for fear it might stain those skirts. The
only remedy, the author concludes, is patience, since 'attempts to keep
a portion of the seats for dames seules do not seem very successful'
('Ladies'213).
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 175

Given a designated area yet sitting outside it, these women were dou-
bly visible. As a result, male observers seemed to experience their con-
spicuous presence as an imposition of bodily imperatives - their clothes,
food, and flirtations are most frequently complained of - on an other-
wise disembodied, rational workspace. In articles and illustrations
throughout the late nineteenth century, women readers appear as
emphatically embodied - in ways that conflict with their surroundings.
Punch, for example, depicts poet Mary Robinson in an 1885 cartoon as
an outlandish presence in a room packed with distinguished men -
Richard Garnett, Leslie Stephen, and Algernon Swinburne among them
(fig. 7.2). She is depicted as incongruously prominent, just off-centre in
the foreground, sitting on what must be her chairback or desk. Her
position and abstracted gaze remove her from the scene; her presence
seems disturbing and purposeless. The book on which her hands rest
is entitled A Handful of Honeysuckle, hardly the stuff of serious research
(in fact, a book of poems by Robinson, published in 1878) ('Valuable
Collection' 155). Along similar lines, an 1896 Idler illustration of the
reading room depicts an elderly, white-bearded man falling from a lad-
der, books flying, as an elegantly dressed young woman reads a massive
volume in the foreground (fig. 7.3). While the article proper makes no
reference to women, its title, 'The Horrors of London,' seems at first
glance to refer to the dangerous disorder this woman's body and her
outsized book have produced (Upward 3). This illustration in turn
resembles one that appeared on an 1895 pamphlet entitled The Truth
about Giving Readers Free Access to the Books in a Public Lending Library: a
woman on a ladder looks down at a man on his knees being bombarded
by books falling from the shelves, presumably at her instigation (Kelly
179). While the pamphlet's point is to argue against allowing the public
direct access to books, its illustration suggests that the threat of disorder
originates in women's bodies.
While depictions of well-dressed, oversized women suggest tension
about the takeover by upper-middle-class women of the nation's 'admin-
istrative core' (Richards 4), a related set of representations depict lower-
middle-class women in danger of tumbling into indigence, eccentricity,
and ill health. Common to both is the incongruity emphasized between
the female body and her labour: Percy Fitzgerald's Belgravia article from
the early 1880s, for example, describes 'fair "damozels," who work like
any copying-clerks, and whose appearance is antagonistic to their
drudgery'; and a 'fair and fresh young creature ... grappling earnestly
and laboriously with some mouldy and illegible MS' (161, 163).
176 Ruth Hoberman

nnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Punch (28 March 1885), courtesy of Punch Ltd.

But Fitzgerald's women are not merely physically incongruous; they

are exploited, 'fair "damozels"' in need of rescue from a workplace
where they do not belong, as they work 'for some literary man who has
cash and position' (161) - much like George Gissing's Marian Yule in
his 1891 New Grub Street, whose work in the reading room for her abusive
father makes her pale and cough-prone. Marian's only hope of salvation
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 177

Fig. 7.3. Illustration by Ernest Goodwin, from an article entitled 'The Horrors of
London. XI. The British Museum,' Idler (January 1897).
178 Ruth Hoberman

is marriage; after potential husband Jasper Milvain deserts her, we see

her again at work in the reading room, trying to 'convert herself into
the literary machine which it was her hope would someday be invented
for construction in a less sensitive material than human tissue' (Gissing
505). Along similar lines, Sarah Beautiman, in E.V. Lucas's 1910 Mr.
Ingleside, complains of her work in the reading room: 'the air's terrible,
and the people I sit between!' Employed in the meaningless task of
hunting down everyone important in history named 'Graham,' she
comments, 'I believe if I was introduced to anyone named Graham I
should have hysterics' (95). The only fully satisfied woman in the novel
is Alison Ingleside, who marries and so rescues her body from the
oppression and disease caused by professional labour. All these repre-
sentations of women at work in the reading room thus focus on the mis-
fit between their bodies and the setting in which they find themselves, as
well as the tasks in which they are engaged.
Why are women's bodies in the reading room so painfully and prob-
lematically visible? For one thing, they are aspirants to a public sphere
premised on their exclusion. The term 'public sphere,' of course, comes
from the work of Jiirgen Habermas, who has traced the development
during the eighteenth century of the 'bourgeois public sphere' - a
sphere of 'private people come together as a public' - that is, of ratio-
nal, civic-minded individuals who hammer out among them, via written
and spoken discourse, a body of opinion independent of the state (27).
Museums and reading rooms are listed by Habermas among the venues
where this hammering takes place, in part because they are places
where the absorption and exchange of ideas takes place (40), but also
because they contribute to a specifically literary public sphere in which
'the subjectivity originating in the Anteriority of the conjugal family, by
communicating with itself, attained clarity about itself (51). For men, at
least, this literary public sphere then fed directly into a political public
sphere, where these clarified subjectivities could engage in debate about
issues of shared concern. The British Museum Reading Room, where
journalists and political activists did the research that would allow them
to take public stands, where they met and talked about books and ideas
and wrote their articles, was thus a point of convergence between liter-
ary and political public spheres: a perfect image for the world that ambi-
tious late nineteenth-century women hoped to enter.
Feminists, however, have long complained that Habermas's notion of
a 'public sphere' conflates the middle-class man with citizenship, much
as, according to Woolf, the reading room dome (that 'huge bald fore-
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 179

head' with the names of male authors engraved around its moulding)
conflates masculinity and cultural achievement. Joan Landes, for exam-
ple, has pointed out that Habermas's 'public sphere' tends to margin-
alize those who 'would not or could not lay claim to their own
universality,' or whose concerns were defined as primarily 'private' -
namely, women (142). Building on Landes, Carole Pateman argues that
the rational civic individual has in fact been defined against the 'disor-
der of women' and the privacy of the domestic space (44). To the extent
that the reading room is a public space and a locus for the production
of public discourse, it is by definition a place removed from women's
bodies. The fact that women kept spilling over the seating set aside for
them - there is scarcely a commentator through the 1870s and 1880s
who fails to mention this - must have dramatized, for male readers, the
threat posed by this disorder.
That threat is only complicated by the fact that the 'rational civic indi-
vidual' had, in any case, ceased to exist by the 1880s and 1890s, according
to Habermas. Writers and researchers might believe they were moulding
public opinion, but in fact the power was now wielded by trade unions
and political parties in the political sphere and by newspaper 'hacks'
serving circulation-obsessed editors in the literary sphere. This debased
literary world is explicitly contrasted in Gissing's New Grub Street with
the eighteenth-century Grub Street of Johnson and Boswell - that is, the
Grub Street of Habermas's original bourgeois public sphere. Alfred Yule
and Edwin Reardon, reading room aficionados who fail as writers, are
both described as having based their literary ideas on eighteenth-century
literary practices. Figures like them appear frequently in the fiction and
nonfiction of the time: idealistic intellectuals who begin with high hopes
but end up broke and marginalized in a world unwilling to reward disin-
terested knowledge with either money or attention. Their opposite is the
'hack,' another stock reading room figure, who has accepted the crass
terms on which his writing is demanded and flourishes as a result. From
a middle-class male perspective, the women in the reading room must
have seemed at once complicit in this dissolution of the public sphere -
as their mere presence blurred public/private boundaries and as they
profited from the expanding market for their writing - and in danger of
being polluted by it as intellectual labour became increasingly commod-
ified and financially risky. ('A man might bear the struggle, though it had
killed the heart in many a man,' a male character says of work in the read-
ing room in Dora McChesney's 1903 novel London Hoses: An Idyll of the Brit-
ish Museum, 'but a woman, this woman?' [237].)
180 Ruth Hoberman

No wonder, then, that depictions in the mainstream press emphasize

the incongruity of women's bodies in a space associated - in theory -
with purely rational, disembodied thought, and - in practice - with the
compromises and uncertainties of earning a living through literary
labour. In contrast, women novelists and poets, at least those of moder-
ately conservative tendencies, tend to emphasize the quiet, unobtrusive
professionalism of their reading women, implying that the space offers a
gender-neutral opportunity to those who can work without drawing
attention to themselves. In her 1884 novel We Two, for example, Edna
Lyall describes the pleasure her heroine, Erica Raeburn, feels on enter-
ing the reading room, where she is researching the life of Livingstone
for an article in her father's atheist paper The Idol-Breaker: 'The great
domed library of the British Museum had become very homelike to
Erica, it was her ideal of comfort.' The room is 'homelike,' but without
the disadvantage of her actual home, where 'she could never be secure
from interruptions' (2:53). Erica likes the quiet and the books, but most
of all she likes to feel that the space is hers, that she has the same stake
in it, the same rights, as all the other readers:

Above all, too, she liked the consciousness of possession. There was no
narrow exclusiveness about this place, no one could look askance at her;
she - heretic and atheist as she was - had as much share in the ownership
as the highest in the land. She had her own peculiar nook over by the ency-
clopedias, and, being always an early comer, seldom failed to secure her
own particular chair and desk. (2:53-4)

Lyall's vastly popular novel celebrates its heroine's involvement in the

public worlds of reading room and journalism, depicting them as vital
sources of personal growth. The impact of Erica's reading is oddly con-
ventional: she is converted from the atheism of her father (a figure
based on Charles Bradlaugh) to Christianity in the process of her work
in the reading room. But what strikes me most is Erica's careful combi-
nation of professionalism and unobtrusiveness. Because the constant
interruptions at home produce 'bad work,' she works at the reading
room, and after her conversion to Christianity she continues to publish;
she just switches papers. Obviously Erica sees herself as a professional
journalist. But she is also poignantly grateful that 'no one could look
askance at her,' an immunity she apparently earns by arriving early and
remaining within 'her own peculiar nook.'
Even more disembodied is the speaker of Louise Guiney's 1894 poem
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 181

'In the Reading-Room of the British Museum.' Invoking the room's

domed summit as a 'moon of books' that is 'above/A world of men,' she
asks it to:

Lend to our steps both fortitude and light!

Feebly along a venerable way
They climb the Infinite, or perish quite!

Guiney's image turns the reading room into a kind of Platonic staircase
out of materiality into the world of ideas. As speaker, she is embodied
only through those 'steps,' which move her from the world of 'days and
deeds' towards the Infinite: 'Nothing are days and deeds to such as they
[our steps, presumably],' she concludes, 'While in this liberal house thy
face is bright.' The word 'liberal' is particularly resonant, interconnect-
ing library and liberty, designating, among other things, 'those "arts"
or "sciences" ... that were considered "worthy of a free man"' (OED).
Guiney's reading room thus offers a gender- and body-transcending
space in which her speaker, like Lyall's Erica, can gain access to the
world of rational, civic discourse.
A somewhat more conflicted depiction appears in Eliza Lynn Linton's
1885 Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland. In this autobiographical novel,
Linton, apparently uncomfortable with her own role as professional
woman, depicts herself as a man, the eponymous Kirkland. Through
him, she describes her own research in the reading room of the 1840s,
where she wrote her 1847 historical novel Azeth the Egyptian. Linton's
depiction of the 1840s reading room in which she worked anticipates
the 1857 room's intensely visual culture and its uneasy relation to pro-
fessional women. Kirkland, who reads 'daily at the British Museum,
gathering material for [his] magnum opus' (239), finds himself in a
tightly knit, mutually observant community, under the all-seeing eye of
Antonio Panizzi (Keeper of Printed Books at the time): 'not so much as
a mouse squeaked behind the skirting board,' Linton writes, 'but he
heard it and tracked the run from end to end' (243).
The other readers are highly visible, and many seem both consciously
theatrical (the 'uxorious couple who made embarrassing love in public,'
the snob who raises her eyebrows to show her social status) and them-
selves hawk-eyed ('the mincing prude who ... kept a sharp look-out on
the young men and was a very Cerberus to the girls') (252-3). Women
readers are prominent in Linton's description, but she singles out one
as a 'special friend' of the narrator, who, like him, is there as a profes-
182 Ruth Hoberman

sional: 'She was one of the vanguard of the independent women; but
she did her life's work without blare or bluster, or help from the outside'
(253). Linton was no friend to the new, so-called wild women she saw
emerging in the late nineteenth century, but she was willing to accept
the woman who does her work 'without blare or bluster,' that is, without
attracting notice. What emerges most powerfully from the description is
the room as a kind of theatre where everyone performs a chosen role
for the delectation of onlookers, where the readers are both actors and
critics of each others' performance, and where the 'vanguard of the
independent women' is particularly subject to scrutiny.
Unlike Lyall's Erica and Linton's 'independent woman,' who take what
they need from the reading room without creating a stir, other women
who worked there impressed onlookers with their energy and unruliness,
and some apparently delighted in their ability to shock. The room's
emphatic attention to 'lady' readers meant that any activity by women
readers would be noticed. While they could not gain instant access to
political power and influence, women readers could, by presenting their
less-than-proper bodies and inappropriately professional tasks to the
public gaze, subtly trouble and reconfigure the space in which they
moved. Kate Flint writes of women's autobiographies that they often pin-
point reading - generally, unconventional reading - as a crucial source of
identity; 'At the same time,' she points out, 'to recount these moments of
rebellion which took place through reading is ... to reinscribe the original
violation, celebrating the author's capacity to overthrow received notions
of femininity' (14-15). Along similar lines, the more progressive women
readers not only behaved unconventionally; they told stories about their
own and others' behaviour and even influenced the stories others told,
thus reinforcing 'the original violation.'
In the mid-1870s, for example, Annie Besant - in a neat if anticipa-
tory reversal of Erica's conversion - did the reading at the British
Museum that led her to break with her religion and her minister-
husband. In the process she discovered the publisher Truelove and
bought his journal, National Reformer. In her autobiography, she delight-
edly describes the response of an older man on a bus horrified by her
reading material: 'To see a young woman, respectably dressed in crepe,
reading an Atheistic journal, had evidently upset his peace of mind'
(127, 134). Besant's juxtaposition of respectable crepe and atheistic
journal resembles de Certeau's explanation of how consumers tactically
reappropriate institutional space, their particular actions producing a
'flash shedding a different light on the language of the place' (37).
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 183

Richard Garnett, at the time superintendent of the Reading Room,

describes the evidently intense impression Besant made on him in 1875:
'I am daily making interesting acquaintances in the Reading Room,' he
wrote Mathilde Blind, 'among others, Mrs. Besant, who is judiciously let-
ting God alone for the present, and venting her oppressiveness on the
inquisition' (qtd. in McCrimmon, Richard Garnett, 80).
Eleanor Marx had a similarly shocking impact on the more proper
and ladylike Fabian Beatrice Potter when they met at the library in 1883.
Marx worked there frequently from 1877 through the 1890s, taking
rooms in 1883 in order to be near the museum (Kapp 1: 283). Meeting
Potter in the 'refreshment-room,' Marx impressed Potter as 'comely,
dressed in a slovenly picturesque way, with curly black hair flying about
in all directions' (Webb 301n-2n). Then, in a portion not quoted in the
published version, Potter speculates that Marx has 'evidently peculiar
views on love, etc., and should think has somewhat "natural" relations
with men! Should fear that the chances were against her remaining long
within the pale of respectable society' (qtd. in Kapp 1: 284). Ambivalent
about the propriety of women's entering public life, Potter herself
worked in the reading room as unobtrusively as possible;2 Marx's
unconventional appearance and conversation apparently struck her, by
contrast, as so disruptive that she was unwilling to include the full
account in her published autobiography. The encounter reveals both
the contrast between the two women's self-presentations - Potter's as
unobtrusive researcher and Marx's as wild woman - and the impact
rambunctious researchers like Marx had on their fellow readers.
Marx's unconventionality impressed others as well. Olive Schreiner —
who herself used the reading room in the 1880s, receiving a ticket in
June 1883 - wrote her friend Karl Pearson about a friend who had run
into Eleanor Marx at the British Museum. Schreiner quotes the friend
as writing, T saw Eleanor at the Museum yesterday. She fairly danced
with anger. I told her that translation of the Kama Sutra was locked up,
in the Library, and refused to women. See if she don't get it!' (qtd. in
First and Scott 136n). That Schreiner is passing along a second-hand
anecdote about Marx suggests how important that dance of anger was to
her, as a staging of women's effort to gain access to knowledge and as a
reconfiguration of the museum's otherwise dignified atmosphere.
Just by presenting themselves in public as professional scholars, these
women defined themselves in unconventional terms, which their mildly
unruly behaviour reinforced. Schreiner, Marx, and Besant adapted the
room to their own uses, gave it a personal history and purpose that in
184 Ruth Hoberman

turn had an impact on how others saw it and them. Shaw writes in his
preface to Immaturity of a girl he saw there 'with an attractive and arrest-
ing expression, bold, vivid, and very clever, working at one of the desks'
(xl); on her he based Agatha Wylie in An Unsocial Socialist, serialized
in To-Day in 1884. While the novel marries her off, Agatha remains a
vivid and independent figure, a worthy match for unsocial socialist
Sidney Trefusis. The girl in the reading room had thus, through her self-
presentation, spoken to and influenced Shaw. All these women, in short,
redefine the role of women in public life and space through their per-
formances in the reading room.
While late-nineteenth-century, politically progressive, middle-class
women seem to lay triumphant siege to the reading room, Dorothy
Richardson and Virginia Woolf, writing in the 1920s, respond quite dif-
ferently, treating the room not as a source of knowledge and influence
to which they lay claim, but as a specifically male tradition from which
they recoil.
Richardson, writing Deadlock in 1920, describes Miriam Henderson's
visit there with the Russian emigrant Michael Shatov as a movement
towards this quite visceral rejection of the reading room. Set around
1900, this sixth section of her twelve-part autobiographical novel Pil-
grimage depicts a reading room in which women have a comfortable and
uncontested presence, yet one in which Miriam herself feels increas-
ingly alienated. In the past Miriam has enjoyed using the library,
though she feels herself an outsider compared to the 'lunching ladies ...
always in the same seats, accepted and approved,' who 'were so extraor-
dinarily at home there' (3:55). But when she shows off 'her' library to
the outsider Shatov, she winds up feeling herself an outsider in a male-
dominated institution. As the lunching ladies indicate, Miriam's mere
presence there as a female body is no longer an issue. But the substance
of the knowledge to be absorbed there is. Shatov introduces Miriam to
Anna Karenina, 'the story of a woman told by a man with a man's ideas
about people.' Finding herself subjected to a male-authored narrative
of a female body, Miriam is repelled by what she calls 'foreign poison.'
Her response to the reading room changes: 'The large warm gloom
of the library, with its green-capped pools of happy light, was stricken
into desolation as she read' (3:59, 61). Miriam is, finally, less 'at home'
in the library than Shatov, less at home than women like Besant,
Schreiner, and Marx, who used the room in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. For Miriam, the reading room is not a stage on which she can
redefine her own role, but a male-authored play within which her part -
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 185

like that of Anna in what Shatov calls Tolstoy's 'masterful study' - has
already been written.
What had happened to produce such a shift in attitude? One explana-
tion is that as self-supporting novelists who did not rely on the resources
of the reading room for their livelihood, Richardson and Woolf were
able to be more critical than women like Marx or the fictional Marian
Yule, who relied on 'devilling' - locating and copying data for (gener-
ally) male writers - and journalism for their income. But I would argue
for a less obvious explanation as well: I would argue that it was the very
acceptance of women into public life that made a difference, for it was
an acceptance premised on their identification with the disembodied,
implicitly male world of rational discourse. By 1920, when Richardson
was writing, there was an increasing sense that women could transcend
their bodies and act 'like men,' as evidenced by, among other things,
women's entry into the professions and universities. A microcosmic ver-
sion of the change occurred in the reading room, where female reader-
ship went up dramatically between 1906 - when women were one-fifth
of the reading room's daily average - and 1913 - when they made up
one-third (Esdaile 144). On a national level, there was a move away from
separate reading rooms for women, an idea whose popularity had
steadily grown during the late nineteenth century. J.D. Brown supports
the move in his 1907 Manual of Library Economy, when he rejects the idea
of separate women's reading rooms on the grounds that women's bod-
ies are no different from men's:

The sentimental idea that women are delicate creatures requiring seclu-
sion in glass cases is resented no more strongly than by the ladies them-
selves, and the mere fact that they do use general reading rooms without
complaint or hesitation in places where separate accommodation is not
provided is quite enough to demonstrate that such rooms are not essential,
(qtd. in Kelly 192)

Architect Amian Champneys, in his 1907 Public Libraries: A Treatise

on Their Design, Construction, and Fittings, argues similarly that 'most
[women] do not care to be considered as creatures apart' (88). While
such an argument benefits women by allowing them equal access to
men's facilities, it is not unproblematic, as Carole Pateman points out:
'women in civil society must disavow our bodies and act as part of the
brotherhood - but since we are never regarded as other than women,
we must simultaneously continue to affirm the patriarchal conception
186 Ruth Hoberman

of femininity, or patriarchal subjection' (52). In the representations of

post-1907 women writers, women readers are easily absorbed into the
reading room culture, and that is precisely the problem. In the process,
they must disavow their bodies and join the brotherhood.
Oddly enough, the decor of the reading room itself provides a turning
point to mark this change: in 1907, the domed room was refurbished.
When it reopened after six months of cleaning and painting, there were
two big changes: the 'ladies' section of seats was gone, and a ring of men's
names now adorned the mouldings just beneath the dome. Women
could now read on the same terms as men, without being explicitly iden-
tified in terms of their bodies. But the names revealed what had been less
evident before: the room was aligned with a model of cultural achieve-
ment implicitly gendered as male. The Times described the room's redec-
oration as an 'exhaustive spring cleaning,' whose most noticeable impact
has been to replace the 'grimy chocolate' of the great dome with white
decorated by gold ribs and panels bearing 'great names in English liter-
ature - from Chaucer to Browning picked out on a gold ground' ('British
Museum Reading Room' 9, 22). For Woolf, of course, it is precisely these
'great names' - Chaucer, Caxton, Tindale, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon,
Milton, Locke, Addison, Swift, Pope, Gibbon, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron,
Carlyle, Macaulay, Tennyson, and Browning - that are so oppressive. 'The
swing doors swung open,' Woolf writes in A Room of One's Own, 'and there
one stood under the vast dome, as if one were a thought in the huge bald
forehead which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names'
(26). Since Woolf herself received a reader's ticket in November 1905,
she would have been well aware of the room's decor both before and
after. In her Jacob's Room, published in 1922 but set shordy before the First
World War, the narrator notes the recent arrival of those names: 'Not so
very long ago the workmen had gilt the final "y" in Lord Macaulay's
name' (105), and feminist reader Julia Hedge mutters, 'Oh damn ... why
didn't they leave room for an Eliot or a Bronte?' (106).
This is the question A Room of One's Own seeks to answer. Set in large
part in the reading room itself, A Room of One's Own depicts Woolf's per-
sona seeking the truth about women and finding only the products of the
angry Professor von X 'engaged in writing his monumental work entitled
The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex' (31). Woolf's per-
sona responds tactically: she scribbles a caricature of the imaginary pro-
fessor rather than taking notes like her scholarly male neighbour, and
finally she rejects male scholarship about women as a disguised effort to
maintain male domination. Throughout Woolf's work in 1927 and 1928,
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 187

in fact, the reading room dome serves as a recurring image for the con-
flation of knowledge and masculinity, a conflation she deconstructs in
Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (published in 1929 but read to
societies at Newnham and Girton in 1928). In Orlando, Shakespeare is
always recognized by his large forehead, which Orlando compares to the
dome of St Paul's; assuming the 'noble brow' marks the man of genius,
she will later mistake a hump in a carriage cushion for Pope's forehead
(164-5, 205). But in both cases there is a subtext undercutting the link
between genius and male physiognomy: Pope turns out to have 'a fore-
head no bigger than another man's' (205), and A Room of One's Own
suggests that Shakespeare's achievement comes at the expense of his
imaginary but plausible sister Judith, destroyed because gender rather
than genius shapes the fate of women writers. Woolf thus reminds us that
while the reading room dome implies an organic connection between
the male mind and literary greatness, this connection is in fact mediated
by the exclusion of women.
Ambitious late-nineteenth-century women aspired to all the privileges
associated with the traditional public sphere: inclusion not just in profes-
sions or in public spaces, but in a well-informed, open conversation
about public policy. 'At last I determined,' Charlotte Despard wrote
shortly after receiving her reader's ticket in 1894, 'to study for myself the
great problems of society' (qtd. in Linklater 86). They felt themselves on
the brink of what looked from a distance like full participation in public
life and wrote enthusiastically about the reading room that would make
that possible. But over time, many of these activists found that to the
extent they succeeded iri integrating themselves into public life, they lost
their oppositional stance as women, disappearing into government
bureaucracies or male-dominated organizations. The 1907 redecoration
represented in visual terms both this integration of women into public
life and its price. Its integrated seating and ring of male names redefined
the literary public sphere in Arnoldian terms: as a canonized, implicitly
male national culture with which the heterogeneous genders and classes
now populating the reading room could be encouraged to identify.
In the face of such a move, Richardson and Woolf adapted their
tactics, challenging the values intrinsic to male-dominated public life
through their depictions of the British Museum Reading Room. Woolf's
female reading room readers and Richardson's Miriam want more than
the vote and participation in a 'public sphere'; they want to find and/or
create a mass of cultural achievement linked to women's bodies, needs,
and experiences, so that future subjectivities can bring more complex
188 Ruth Hoberman

and inclusive views of human experience to bear on public life than

those defining the public life of the past. In their oppositional stance,
they constitute what Nancy Fraser calls a 'subaltern counterpublic' (67)
and Rita Felski a 'feminist counter-public sphere,' offering 'a critique of
cultural values from the standpoint of women as a marginalized group
within society' (167).
Intriguingly, the reading room itself played a crucial role in dramatiz-
ing this problematic relation of women to public venues for learning,
debate, publication, and consensus-forming. From an institutional
standpoint, the British Museum Reading Room looks like a well-
regulated panopticon, encouraging identification with British impe-
rial power in the nineteenth century and with British culture in the
twentieth. From the standpoint of its female users, however, the reading
room and its representations worked in far more complex ways. Both
the women before and the women after the turn of the century
attempted to influence public discourse; that attempt was dramatized
and clarified by the existence of the reading room, as both literal and
represented space. Whether they overflowed their seats or sat demurely
in the ladies' seating, late-nineteenth-century women could reinvent
themselves as public personages through their work in the reading
room; the 1907 redecoration, by accepting their presence yet reinscrib-
ing them as honorary males, at once acknowledged their ambitions and
reconstituted their exclusion on a new plane. Yet that very exclusion, in
turn, allowed Woolf and Richardson to turn their backs on the 'huge
bald forehead,' conceptualize themselves as outsiders, and write, insis-
tently and productively, in rooms of their own.

NOTES

I would like to thank the Council for Faculty Research at Eastern Illinois
University for funding travel related to this project. In the course of that
travel, archivists John Hopgood at the British Library and Janet Wallace,
Christopher Date, and Gary Thorn at the British Museum were particularly
helpful in locating and providing access to unpublished material. Finally, I
would like to thank Feminist Studies for the useful feedback provided by its
anonymous readers and for permission to reprint this essay, which was origi-
nally published, in somewhat different form, in Feminist Studies 28 (Fall 2002):
489-512.
 Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room 189

1 Attendance figures at the reading room's opening and the names of writers
who worked there are cited from Harris (ReadingRoom 17, 25 ); later atten-
dance figures are from Garnett (417). For a meticulously detailed account of
the reading room's history, see Harris, History.
2 See Lewis on Potter's reluctance to cross 'the boundary into unwomanly
behaviour' (11).

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8 'Luxuriating] in Milton's Syllables'
Writer as Reader in Zora Neale
Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road

TUIRE VALKEAKARI

In a pile of rubbish I found a copy of Milton's complete works. The back

was gone and the book was yellowed. But it was all there. So I read Paradise
Lost and luxuriated in Milton's syllables and rhythms ...
- Zora Neale Hurston (1942)

This is an imperative: the writer must be a constant reader ... I was stimu-
lated at an early age into writing because of my reading.
-Leon Forrest (1988)

[In Dust Tracks Hurston] gives us a writer's life, rather than an account, as
she says, of 'the Negro problem.' So many events in this text are figured in
terms of Hurston's growing awareness and mastery of books and language,
language and rituals as spoken and written both by masters of the Western
tradition and by ordinary members of the black community.
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr (1991)

In the Afterword to the 1991 HarperPerennial edition of Zora Neale

Hurston's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Henry Louis
Gates, Jr, emphatically affirms that Hurston's work 'gives us a writer's
life' (264; italics in the original). His emphasis, trivial as it may appear at
first sight, is well placed. Despite Hurston's importance not only as an
ethnographer but also as a major fiction writer, critics have devoted lit-
tle attention to her self-portrait as a literary author in Dust Tracks? Hur-
ston's memoir is not usually classified as a 'literary autobiography,' to
use Lynn Domina's term - that is, as a text that 'understand [s] the liter-
ary career of the author to be significant material and/or impetus for
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 193

the autobiography' (208n2). However, while it is true that Hurston

explicitly addresses her professional participation in the literary world
only in one chapter (chap. 11, 'Books and Things'), the narrative of
authorship informs a considerably larger portion of the text: Hurston
weaves the story of her literary vocation, particularly in the sense of
'calling,' into the autobiography's first eleven chapters. The key to her
self-presentation as a creative writer is her portrayal of herself, especially
of the young Zora,3 as a keen reader. Hurston avoids forcing Dust Tracks
into the format of an expanded resume - a chronological itemization of
finalized manuscripts, published books, or other professional achieve-
ments. Rather, she mainly portrays her authorship in terms of her matu-
ration into the profession. In so doing, she particularly focuses on her
early reading, which crucially influenced her later development as a
writer.
The 'writer-as-reader' motif is one of the conventional (indeed, con-
stitutive) elements of lettered women's and men's autobiographical
works. The phrase 'Take up and read' occupies a pivotal position in
Augustine's Confessions (167). In his similarly titled book, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau barely finishes the paragraph recording his birth and immedi-
ate postnatal survival before moving on to address his first readings and
their effects on him (7). Harriet .Martineau and Mary Darby Robinson,
both writing during the gradual professionalization of women writers in
Britain, also discuss their readings in their memoirs.4 In her autobio-
graphical novel Our Nig (1859), the African-American author Harriet E.
Wilson explicitly ponders the significance of 'book information' for the
protagonist Frado (124—5). Charlotte Forten Grimke, a member of an
established family of the Philadelphia free black community, launches
her dialogue with literary works in the very first diary entry of her post-
humously published journals, which extend from 1854 to 1892. Even
these few examples suffice to demonstrate that autobiographical texts,
especially when written by scholars or literary authors, characteristically
engage in dialogue with books and evoke experiences prompted by
reading. Although in many ways Dust Tracks frustrates the audience's tra-
ditional expectations concerning the autobiographical genre, it does
conform to the convention of presenting the writer as an avid reader.
Hurston, first of all, offers us several lists of the books that she devoured
in her childhood, youth, and early adulthood. Second, she casts herself
as an individual who had to struggle for access to literature and for
whom her reading opened up a new world. Third, she connects this
storyline to her narrative of vocation. Her often-overlooked self-portrait
194 Tuire Valkeakari

as a keen reader in Dust Tracks reveals, in other words, her construction

of a writerly identity within the autobiography.
The narrative of authorship in Dust Tracks is a significant indicator of
women writers' emerging professionalization in the African America of
Hurston's era. Multiple aspects of Hurston's autobiography show that
she regarded her literary activity as serious, professional work rather
than as an amateur venture.5 For example, her search for a definition of
her relationship to her cultural and artistic antecedents indicates profes-
sionalism. Versatile in her use of influences, Hurston relates her writing
both to African-American vernacular sources and to preceding literary
tradition (s). While her incorporation of oral influences in her writing
has, with good reason, attracted a considerable amount of scholarly
attention, her attitude to her literary predecessors - a dimension of Dust
Tracks located in the portrait of the young Zora as a reader - calls for
further exploration. Despite oral tradition's vital importance for Hur-
ston, no valid intellectual or historical reason exists for pitting the oral
and written words against each other in a scrutiny of her self-presenta-
tion in Dust Tracks. Hurston's life's work was based on a constant dia-
logue between oral and written modes of linguistic expression, and her
project of translating aspects of African-American oral tradition into the
written word - particularly her distinctive fusion of the black Floridian
vernacular with literary language - is one of the main reasons why she is
still remembered and appreciated today.

Zora as a Future Writer - Zora as a Reader

As an autobiographer, Hurston 'contextualize[d] her identity by

connecting herself to the social archaeology of her region and family
background,' as previous scholarship has aptly stressed (McKay, 'Autobi-
ographies,' 266). Hurston's contextual self-presentation partly consists
of her examination of the genesis and components of her identity as a
creative writer: she acknowledges in Dust Tracks that '[tjime and place'
(DT561) - the early contexts and influences that moulded her personal
growth and nourished her later scholarly orientation - shaped her
future identity and career as a literary author. Although this storyline,
which includes the narrative of Hurston's early reading, is implicit and
often almost lost in digressions, it can still be extracted from Hurston's
organization and treatment of the material in chapters 1-11. The narra-
tive of the young Zora as an enthusiastic devourer of books informs,
most obviously, chapters 4 ('The Inside Search') and 9 ('School Again').
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 195

The discussion in chapter 8 ('Back Stage and the Railroad') of the long-
time frustration of her yearning for books and education is part of the
same storyline.
Preceding this narrative of Hurston's readerly self, multiple elements
of Dust Tracks first three chapters also relate to her literary vocation.
After narrating the story of the founding of her hometown, Eatonville,
Florida (chapter l), b Hurston discusses aspects of her maternal and
paternal legacies that empowered her to mature into authorship (chap-
ter 2). She portrays her mother as her earliest educator, who not only
helped Zora and her siblings to face school challenges, but also encour-
aged them to pursue their ambitions and to have faith in their talents (DT
572). Hurston's paternal heritage, together with Eatonville's blossoming
oral culture, endowed her with a lasting fascination with the art of story-
telling. The example of her father - a thrice-elected mayor of Eatonville
and a Baptist preacher who served several congregations and therefore
'didn't have a thing on his mind but this town and the next one' (DT580)
- also initiated her into the life of 'travel dust' (DT580), as opposed to
geographical or domestic confinement. However, while this experience
was formative for her later years as a travelling writer and scholar, Hur-
ston's narrative reveals that her father did not lead her to an itinerant way
of life by example only: Zora begins her 'Wandering' (the title of chapter
6) as the result of his neglect of her after her mother's death. While
emphasizing loneliness, the discourse of wandering strategically places
the young Zora in an in-between space, assigning her the double role of
an insider among, and outsider to, her community. This location is nec-
essary for her future traffic between two American cultures: in narrating
her formative years, Hurston launches the project of negotiating a space
for herself between the black and white worlds of the United States,
adopting a 'self-appointed' post as an 'interpreter' between these two
realms of cultural expression (McKay, 'Race,' 182). This role (a tense
position, considering the complexity of her era's identity politics) largely
determines Hurston's design of the context for, and the content of, her
self-presentation as reader and writer.
The narrative of Zora's contact with the white world and culture, later
highlighted by the 'whiteness' of her reading, begins with the story of
her birth. According to the 'hear-say' (DT 577) that Hurston mediates
to the reader in chapter 3 - humorously questioning the truth value of
autobiographical birth narratives and leaving us to wonder whether we
should believe her own legendary tale - her umbilical cord was cut by a
white man. John Hurston's absence from the scene of her birth remains
196 Tuire Valkeakari

a void that the narrative partly fills with the presence of this white man,
who becomes Zora's close friend in chapter 4. By describing the two
friends' reciprocal and dialogic interaction, chapter 4 presents the man
- another teller of stories and a supportive, fatherly prompter of Zora's
early verbalizing of her own experiences - as another important influ-
ence on the personal and linguistic development of the future writer.
The narrative associates this man with the direct action and down-to-
earth wisdom typical of American frontier mentality (DT 587-9), a men-
tality shared by both the black and white communities of Dust Tracks'
Florida (DT 563-6). Hurston's contextual commentary on the interra-
cial friendship in chapter 4 thus implicitly evokes and continues the
account, in chapter 1, of how the 'wilds of Florida' (Z)T562) were tamed
through joint African-American and European-American efforts before
the foundation of all-black Eatonville.
As the carefully crafted Eatonville saga, the birth narrative, and the story
of the interracial friendship show, Hurston initiates her project of rede-
fining the space allotted to her by the era's predominant racial configu-
rations at the very beginning of her autobiography. More generally,
although Hurston opens Dust Tracksby 'salutfing] the culture that made
her' (Lowe 57), the 'salutation' of her original community and culture is
soon transformed into a narrative of individuation. Dust Tracks frequently
suggests that Zora was different from her peers, even as a child. One aspect
of this discourse of difference stresses her yearning for action. The nar-
rative does not fail to record the fact that this trait is, stereotypically, con-
sidered to be more characteristic of boys than of girls (DT585); Hurston,
in other words, highlights her rejection of the traditional feminine gender
role even while narrating her childhood. Adults frustrate the young Zora's
longing for action by giving her dolls - symbols of the 'feminine,'
restricted domestic sphere - rather than allowing her to play outdoors
with energetic boys, future conquerors of new frontiers. She, however,
strikes back by creating an interior world of her own, one full of action:
'So I was driven inward. I lived an exciting life unseen' (/)T585). The nar-
rative presents this retreat to the imaginative realm as an act of innovative
resistance, rather than one of submission or Freudian sublimation.
From here, the journey is short to the world of books: in Dust Tracks,
reading nourishes and sustains the 'exciting life unseen.' In keeping
with the motif of excitement and adventure, chapter 4 underscores the
young Zora's fascination with energetic and physically powerful charac-
ters, such as Thor and Hercules, while depicting her early readings at
home and in school. In a similar vein, her initial interest in the Bible was
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 197

kindled, according to the narrative, by her first encounter with the war-
rior-king David - another man of action, who 'went here and ... went
there, and no matter where he went, he smote 'em hip and thigh, ...
sung songs to his harp a while, and went out and smote some more' (DT
595). Playfully depicting Zora's early attraction to these fictional embod-
iments of masculinity, the passage also mentions her parallel rejection
of 'thin books about this and that sweet and gentle little girl who gave
up her heart to Christ and good works.' In Zora's view, these girls, who
'almost always ... died' of their sacrifice, 'preaching as they passed,' were
totally uninteresting - 'had no meat on their bones' (DT594). This pas-
sage, notably, serves Hurston's womanist stance: the humorous dis-
course enables her to restate her rejection of submissive notions of
femininity capriciously, but nonetheless emphatically.
This ludic approach to the young Zora's biblical, 'action-oriented'
readings also allows Hurston to address a stage in her psychosexual
development while simultaneously maintaining the discretion that her
contemporaries expected of her. In 'hunting for some more active peo-
ple like David' (DT595), Zora and her friend Carrie Roberts discover
Leviticus, with its revelation of 'what Moses told the Hebrews not to do'
(DT595; italics mine). Leviticus and the 'Doctor Book,' together with
'all the things which children write on privy-house walls' and which Zora
also keenly reads (DT 595), teach the girls what they yearn to know
about the mysteries of the human body and sexuality. By lumping these
three sources of knowledge together, Hurston's narrative playfully strips
scripture of its traditional cloth of solemnity, at the same time gently
poking fun at the girls' 'elders': Tn that way I found out a number of
things the old folks would not have told me. Not knowing what we were
actually reading, we got a lot of praise from our elders for our devotion
to the Bible' (DT595).
As the focus on childhood reading habits implies, Hurston on various
occasions illustrates her giftedness as a 'natural' reader. In contrast to
early African-American autobiographers, who often depicted literacy as
a key to freedom and to public participation in abolitionism,7 Hurston
portrays access to the world of books as a key to individuation and to the
discovery of her individual talent. Ex-slave narrators treated the acquisi-
tion of literacy as an event of major political significance; Hurston, by
contrast, omits any depiction of how she learned to read, and instead
directly proceeds to discuss her experiences as a talented and inherently
competent interlocutor with literature. In so doing, she consistently
underscores skills and faculties essential for a literary author, stressing
198 Tuire Valkeakari

the intimate connection between her respective self-portraits as reader

and writer. Hurston explains, for example, that her visual imagination -
a vitally important mental faculty for creators of fiction - literally
'imaged' the action-packed myths that she devoured. While reading, she
'saw' Thor 'swing his mighty short-handled hammer as he sped across
the sky in rumbling thunder, lightning flashing from the tread of his
steeds and the wheels of his chariot' (DT594). The portrayal of her first
contact with the Episcopal hymnbook, moreover, demonstrates her
intuitive and spontaneous ability to read written lyrics with acoustic
imagination, a crucial faculty for an author who largely draws on oral
folklore as a source of inspiration and renewal. In Hurston's phrase,
'There was no music written there [in the hymnbook], just the words.
But there was to my consciousness music in between them just the same'
(.DT593). In particular, the young Zora preferred hymns whose 'words
marched to a throb' that she could actually 'feel' while communicating
with the written text (DT593). This formulation calls attention to her
sense of rhythm, yet another faculty required for successful translations
of oral tradition into written form. All these expressions cast Zora as a
reader who experiences what she reads in a holistic manner, bringing
her whole existence into creative dialogue with the texts.
Although Dust Tracks firmly links the young Zora's talent, or 'genius,'
to the activity of reading and the vocation of writing, the Romantic tenet
that genius alone is sufficient to make an individual an artist is, in its
purist form, foreign to Hurston's autobiography. Her narrative repeat-
edly stresses the crucial importance of school, books, and self-education
for the development of the future writer. Hurston's linkage of genius
and education as complementary forces is particularly apparent in the
story about the initial discovery of her talent. Her genius first manifests
itself in the classroom, through a (semi)public act of reading aloud in
front of adults and peers. Two white women from Minnesota visit Eaton-
ville's black village school unannounced. The teacher, eager to present
the institution and the fruit of his toil in a favourable light, 'put[s] on
the best show' (DT 590) that he possibly can at such short notice: he
calls on Zora's fifth-grade class to present their reading skills to the visi-
tors. Four or five equally unprepared students first stumble through
their assigned paragraphs, extracts from the story of Pluto and Perse-
phone. Then Zora takes her turn, reading her passage aloud not only
fluently but also in an 'exalted' (DT 591) - inspired and inspiring -
manner. She is asked to read the story to the end, and the guests are as
impressed as the teacher is relieved. The narrative reveals that Zora
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 199

actually knew the myth well, which in part explains the excellence of her
performance. This disclosure, however, is not intended to diminish the
value of her accomplishment in the classroom. Rather, the passage stra-
tegically points to her early reading habits; the 'confession' is part of
Hurston's project of complementing her artistic genius with her early
passion for self-education.
The classroom episode also underscores the nature of Zora's reading
as a performance with improvisatory qualities. She treats the text as a
basis for a celebratory reading that she performs in the manner and
spirit of an oral storyteller. The narrative gives centre stage neither to
the classic myth per se nor to the presence of the white listeners, but to
the performance of the child who masters the text so well that she is
able to play with, and improvise on, her material. (My comment is con-
cerned with the tone and manner of Hurston's self-representation,
not with the in/accuracy of Hurston's rendition of the myth.) During
her performance Zora utilizes repetition characteristic of the African-
American sermonic chant:

I was exalted by [the myth], and that is the way I read my paragraph. 'Yes,
Jupiter had seen her (Persephone). He had seen the maiden picking flowers in
the field. He had seen the chariot of the dark monarch pause by the
maiden's side. He had .seen him when he seized Persephone. He had seen the
black horses leap down Mount Aetna's fiery throat. Persephone was now in
Pluto's dark realm and he had made her his wife.' (DT591; italics mine)

The episode emphasizes Zora's creative agency and demonstrates her

early competence at moving between two cultures, as the overtly self-
conscious phrase 'that is the way I read my paragraph' indicates. Zora
appropriates the story 'for her own use'8 in a way that highlights her
ability both to luxuriate in the text for her own enjoyment and to recast
it creatively in a new context. Her transformation of the classic myth
into source material for an oral 'performance of blackness'9 before a
racially mixed audience is an integral part of Hurston's project of cast-
ing herself as a cultural interpreter, an individual proficient at traffick-
ing between two worlds.

The Narrative of Reading as a Strategy of 'Maroonage'

The classroom subjugation of the classical myth to the dynamics of black

cultural expression is a brief but unmistakable instance of a celebratory
200 Tuire Valkeakari

performance of blackness. Hurston, however, primarily actualizes her

celebration of black agency via a strategy of 'maroonage' (Bhabha 295)
while portraying herself as a reader. The term 'maroonage' originates in
Houston Baker's characterization of the way of life that emerged in fugi-
tive slaves' maroon communities; adopted and elaborated by Homi K.
Bhabha, this concept refers to the strategic utilization of a position of
marginality and liminality to attack and disappear again - a tactic remi-
niscent of guerrilla warfare (Bhabha 295). In Hurston's depiction of her
early reading, this strategy translates into a process whereby one dis-
course repeatedly and necessarily intrudes upon another, creating what
Russell Reising has termed 'ruptures ... which actually open up possibili-
ties of meaning almost impossible within the conventions and for the
ostensible audiences of [the writer's] time' (75-6). Originally a com-
ment on the writing of the early African-American poet Phillis Wheatley,
Reising's formulation aptly describes a dynamic operative both in Dust
Tracks and in its relationship to the extra textual world. The autobiogra-
phy's rhetoric of 'gratitude' - labelled by Alice Walker as Hurston's des-
perate and lamentable fawning over white audiences in the hope of
income and cultural acceptance10 - is frequently interrupted by sur-
facings of another discourse, which highlights Hurston's agency and
reveals her desire to unsettle fixed definitions of American society's
racial centre and circumference.
On occasion, such surfacings paradoxically take the form of a gap or
omission, or a strategically timed silence. As I mentioned earlier, Hurston
refrains from depicting herself as a learner of literacy, in striking contrast
to her vivid self-portrayal as a learner of black oral tradition in Eatonville.
This omission can be interpreted as a covert counter-reaction to the
discourse of thankfulness that frequently characterized ex-slave narra-
tors' depictions of their acquisition of literacy. Hurston's portrayal of the
classroom episode and its consequences, in turn, exemplifies a more
active strategy of maroonage. A few days after her performance in class,
Zora is invited to visit the two white women before they return to Minne-
sota. This is a major event in her young life; prior to calling upon the
'ladies' at a hotel in Maitland, she is sent home from school 'to be stood
up in a tub of suds and be scrubbed and have [her] ears dug into' (DT
592). While depicting the hotel encounter, the narrative courteously
acknowledges the ladies' hospitality, but the passage is at the same time
spiced with humorous irony that underscores the distance between their
and Zora's worlds: 'First thing, the ladies gave me strange things, like
stuffed dates and preserved ginger, and encouraged me to eat all that I
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 201

wanted. Then they showed me their Japanese dolls' (DT592). More sig-
nificantly, Hurston reveals that her future benefactors tested her reading
ability, ascertaining that her reading in the classroom was no fake perfor-
mance: 'I was then handed a copy ofScribner's Magazine, and asked to read
a place that was pointed out to me. After a paragraph or two, I was told
with smiles, that that would do' (DT 592-3). Hurston here complicates
her ostensible discourse of gratitude by covertly needling the white dis-
trust in black literacy.
The very next day, Zora receives a gift from the ladies: the Episcopal
hymnbook, as well as 'a copy of The Swiss Family Robinson, and a book of
fairy tales' (DT 593). Fascinated by several songs in the hymnal, she
immediately 'set[s] about to commit the song words to memory.' Fol-
lowing a familiar pattern, this formulation underscores Zora's talent
and her industriousness in self-education, as well as her willingness to
adapt print culture to oral culture; again, centre stage is given to Zora
and her agency, rather than to white generosity. The passage's criticism
of some of the hymns, moreover, functions as an occasion for cross-cul-
tural irony, providing yet another twist to the discourse of gratitude.
Hurston even inserts a reference to the expression 'white trash' in the
passage, adding a deliberately discordant note to her 'praise' of the
benefactors: 'Some of [the hymns] seemed dull and without life, and I
pretended they were not there. If white people liked trashy singing like
that, there must be something funny about them that I had not noticed
before' (D7"593; italics mine).
The second gift from the ladies, which arrives about a month later, is
a 'huge box packed with clothes and books' (Z)T593). Hurston stresses,
fittingly, that 'the books gave [her] more pleasure than the clothes.'
Again, she carefully itemizes the books: Tn that box was Gulliver's Trav-
els, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Dick Whittington, Greek and Roman Myths,
and best of all, Norse Tales' (DT594). All the fiction that Zora devours
in Dust Tracks, including Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and Rob-
ert Louis Stevenson's adventure stories, is markedly 'white.' The white-
ness of the canon does not, however, automatically translate into the
absence of a 'black' perspective in Hurston's narrative of her early read-
ing. While disclosing that Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Books was among
her favourites, Hurston singles out only one aspect from the work of the
archetypal colonialist: 'I loved his talking snakes as much as I did the
hero' (/)T594). Well acquainted with the importance of snake symbol-
ism for Haitian and American Voudou,11 she chooses to highlight the
talking snakes, an aspect of The Jungle Books that happens to resonate
202 Tuire Valkeakari

with a pivotal element of one black American variety of cultural expres-

sion and religious faith. This manoeuvre again underscores black
agency, demonstrating Hurston's guerrilla strategy and illustrating the
aptness of Kathleen Hassall's reference to Hurston as 'an inventive,
resourceful, spirited, effective warrior - in disguise' (160).

Called to Authorship, Sustained by Reading

As the story evolves, Hurston gradually transforms the depiction of her

access to the world of books into a narrative of hardship. During the
'wandering' that begins after her mother's death, Zora's desire for
'books and school' (DT 644) is repeatedly frustrated, but never extin-
guished. This aspect of the text stresses her perseverance in her calling,
the vocation to be a writer. Zora receives this calling through prophetic
visions, 'a preview of things to come' (DT596), in her childhood. The
incompleteness and inconsistency of Hurston's account of the visions
have repeatedly disappointed and frustrated critics. However, when
examined as part of the narrative of the calling, rather than a separate
storyline, this account can be viewed as a variation of a strategy that
autobiographers have often used in struggling with the problem of how
to 'maintain a semblance of modesty' (Bjorklund 25) while underscor-
ing their talent and achievement. If Hurston's depiction of her early
reading emphasizes her genius, her industriousness, and her desire to
'stretch [her] limbs in some mighty struggle' (DT596), the calling from
a divine source (mediated by the visions) gives her self-presentation an
air of modesty. It also conveniently 'affirms' her talent, justifying the
autobiographical enterprise.
Dust Tracks neither depicts the visions in detail nor explicates the
'commandment' (DT 597) that Zora receives through them. Hurston
nevertheless connects the visions to her authorial vocation, the link
being the motif of 'cosmic loneliness' (DT 598). The narrative of the
calling opens with the articulation of the 'great anguish' that Zora's
early reading experiences bring on her - an overwhelming sense of not
belonging in the 'real' world of mundane concerns: Tn a way this early
reading gave me a great anguish through all my childhood and adoles-
cence. My soul was with the gods and my body in the village. People just
would not act like gods ... I was only happy in the woods' (DT 595-6).
Hurston's linkage of this solitude to the calling to authorship is most
clearly manifest in her brief discussion of Kipling and the long-time Cos-
mopolitan Magazine columnist O.O. Mclntyre immediately after the por-
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 203

trayal of the visions' onset. Having, as shown above, already 'changed

the joke and slipped the yoke'13 while discussing The Jungle Books, Hur-
ston no longer evokes the colonialist Kipling for ironical purposes. She
now looks at him and Mclntyre as fellow participants in the experience
of cosmic loneliness that she considers to be common to all writers. The
following passage, with its reference to a spiritual communion of writers,
confirms that the 'dust tracks' Hurs ton explores in her autobiography
are, indeed, ones that she left on the road in her journey to becoming
an author and scholar:

Years later, after the last [vision] had come and gone, I read a sentence or a
paragraph now and then in the columns of O.O. Mclntyre which perhaps
held no meaning for the millions who read him, but I could see through
those slight revelations that he had had similar experiences. Kipling knew
the feeling for himself, for he wrote of it very definitely in his Plain Tales
from the Hills. So I took comfort in knowing that they were fellow pilgrims
on my strange road. (W598)

Assigning a pivotal role to the images of the pilgrimage and the road,
this passage refers back to another journey, the child Zora's wish to 'walk
out to the horizon and see what the end of the world was like' (DT583).
Zora's wish was later replaced by another passionate desire, suggestive of
Hurston's project of working with two expressive cultures: Zora yearned
to ride 'a fine black riding horse with white leather saddle and bridles' to
the world's end (DT584; italics mine). 14 Transforming the adventurous
ride into a pilgrimage requires yet another alteration in the tone of the
narrative voice in chapter 4. The child's wish to conquer the world even-
tually becomes an inner vocation, a 'calling' in the sense suggested by the
Latin verb vocare- a condition of being called and sent out into the world
by a force more powerful than the (future) author herself:

I had a feeling of difference from my fellow men, and I did not want it to
be found out. Oh, how I cried out to be just as everybody else! But the voice
said no. I must go where I was sent. The weight of the commandment laid
heavy and made me moody at times ... I would hope that the call would
never come again. (DT597; italics mine)

Hurston claims that the first 'coming' of the 'call,' mediated by the
visions, marked the end of her childhood (DT 598), although she was
'not more than seven years old' at the time: 'So when I left the porch
204 Tuire Valkeakari

[the location of her first visions], I left a great deal behind me. I was
weighed down with a power I did not want. I had knowledge before its
time. I knew my fate' (J3T596). Hurston even uses specifically christo-
logical allusions while portraying her calling: 'I knew that the cup meant
for my lips would not pass. I must drink the bitter drink' (DT 597).
These formulations illustrate her implied suggestion that her calling
originated from a higher power. She refrains, however, from identifying
this power as 'God' in any traditional, doctrinal sense. In her words, 'the
force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the
first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told,
and write what is commanded' (DT717).
It is hardly surprising, against this backdrop, that Hurston repeatedly
identifies her youth of hardship and poverty as a 'pilgrimage,' a process
of yielding to the calling and of obeying the Caller, rather than random
drifting: 'No one could spare me my pilgrimage. The rod of compel-
ment was laid to my back. I must go the way' (DT 634). During the story
of the pilgrim's progress, the motifs of reading, self-education, and
schooling surface repeatedly. In depicting her unsuccessful attempts to
work as a cleaning lady, Hurston reveals that once inside the houses of
her employers, she tended to take a deeper interest in books than in
cleaning - which, as might be expected, led to trouble: 'I did very badly
because I was interested in the front of the house, not the back. No mat-
ter how I resolved, I'd get tangled up with their reading matter, and lose
my job' (DT636). This anecdote exemplifies Hurston's capacity for a
playful tone even while narrating vagrancy and loneliness. On the
whole, however, the pilgrimage narrative's tone is serious, even poi-
gnant. Hurston's portrayal of her initiation into 'Milton's syllables and
rhythms,' with its embedded depiction of her poverty, is the acme of
Dust Tracks' narrative (and, some would argue, romanticized lore) of
hardship:

But one thing did happen that lifted me up. In a pile of rubbish I found a
copy of Milton's complete works. The back was gone and the book was yel-
lowed. But it was all there. So I read Paradise Lost and luxuriated in Milton's
syllables and rhythms without ever having heard that Milton was one of the
greatest poets of the world. I read it because I liked it. (DT 645-6)

This 'readerly' variation on the Romantic motif of the artist who cre-
ates poetic or visual art in poverty - here, a future writer who reads in
poverty - highlights the young Hurston's hunger for literature and her
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 205

perseverance in the pursuit of knowledge and aesthetic experience.

The verb 'luxuriate' strategically emphasizes the contrast between the
young pilgrim's lack of material wealth and her capacity to be spiritu-
ally strengthened and renewed by the immaterial pleasure of reading.
On the other hand, the narrative also implies that Hurston remained
faithful to the life of constant reading even when external circum-
stances did not require an escape from reality. While working as a maid
for a travelling Gilbert and Sullivan troupe's lead singer, she did 'some
reading' on tour (the tenor of the group being 'a Harvard man' who
took books with him on travels and allowed her to read them [DT
662]). Hurston depicts the time she spent with the Gilbert and Sul-
livan group as a precious experience that contributed to her psycho-
logical and spiritual growth, offering a new vision of the artist as
inherently cosmopolitan.
When the job as a maid - emotionally, a safe haven - ended, Hurston
felt equipped for new challenges: she decided to 'take up [her] pilgrim's
stick and go outside again' (DT665). In chapter 9, Hurston writes about
going to a night high school in Baltimore and studying English under the
African-American teacher Dwight O.W. Holmes, whom she calls 'a pil-
grim to the horizon' (DT667). This subtle evocation of the child Zora's
desire to walk/ride 'to the horizon' highlights the close connection
between the images of the adventurous walk, the horse ride to the world's
end, and the pilgrimage. Even the notion of trafficking between two
worlds - yet another element in the associative imagery of travelling -
appears in the episode: Mr. Holmes, the exemplary pilgrim, is in essence
a mediator between two cultures. In an episode that remotely echoes the
young Zora's performance in the Eatonville village school, white texts
again become a living reality through a black performance. This time,
Hurston is a silent pilgrim, who experiences a 'spiritual' renewal and
reaches a new understanding of her calling while listening to a moving
poetry reading in a Baltimore classroom:

[O]ne night in the study of English poets [Mr. Holmes] read Kubla Khan by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ... That night, he liquefied the immortal grains of
Coleridge, and let the fountain flow ... Listening to Samuel Taylor Col-
eridge's Kubla Khan for the first time, I saw all that the poet had meant for
me to see with him, and infinite cosmic things besides. I was not of the
work-a-day world for days after Mr. Holmes's voice had ceased. This was my
world, I said to myself, and I shall be in it, and surrounded by it, if it is the
last thing I do on God's green dirt-ball. (DT 667-8)
206 Tuire Valkeakari

This experience in the English class prompts Hurston to go to Mor-

gan College and enrol in its high school. She moves to the house of a
white clergyman and his sick wife, whom she assists in daily routines. In
their private library, she finally has the opportunity to irnmerse herself,
without restraint, in the world of books: 'I waded in. I acted as if the
books would run away' (DT 669). Again, Hurston lists titles, indicating
the broad range of her readings. She also provides a retrospective com-
mentary on what she had devoured before high school. While freely
admitting that some of her reading had consisted of 'dime novelists,'
she underscores that she already had 'hundreds of books under [her]
skin' by the time she entered Morgan. Hurston evaluates this aspect of
her reading history as follows: 'I do not regret the trash. It has harmed
me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is
the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the
rest later on' (DT669). The narrative of the natural reader, presented in
chapter 4, here fades away, giving way to the self-confident and analytic
voice of the autobiographer - a professional writer who is also an experi-
enced reader.
Hurston, as we have seen, mainly discusses her authorship in terms of
a pilgrim's progress, a journey rather than the goal. Hurston predomi-
nantly situates this storyline, which focuses on reading, in the depiction
of her childhood and youth, the phases of the life cycle that epitomize
formation and growth. Finally, in a passage that now, after Hurston's
1960 death in poverty and obscurity, seems poignant, she envisions her
old age as a string of days spent writing and reading: 'When I get old,
and my joints and bones tell me about it, I can sit around and write for
myself, if for nobody else, and read slowly and carefully the mysticism of
the East, and re-read Spinoza with love and care' (DT 768-9). For Hur-
ston, her identity as a writer was inextricably intertwined with her plan
to remain an active reader until what she hoped would be 'a timely
death' after 'a busy life' (DT768). In her scheme, the writer, a perpetual
pilgrim, constantly needed to be nourished by reading.

Hurston's Readerly Self-Portrait and the Issue of

African-American Literary Antecedents

Several aspects of Hurston's self-portrait as a reader represent, as my dis-

cussion has shown, dynamic strategies of celebrating African-American
agency. The same portrait, however, also raises questions concerning
her self-understanding as a cultural interpreter that do not lend them-
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 207

selves to easy or convenient answers. Most acutely, the literary tradition

in which Dust Tracks' Zora luxuriates as a reader and future writer is
exclusively white. Considering Hurston's project of casting herself as a
mediator between the black and white cultural realms, her total silence
about African-American literature seems puzzling. While some of this
silence can, with relative ease, be attributed to what must have been a
limited access to black writing during Hurston's childhood and youth,
the argument loses credibility when applied to the narrative of her later
life. Dust Tracks contains only passing references to the Harlem Renais-
sance - in sharp contrast, for example, to Langston Hughes's 1940
memoir The Big Sea - despite Hurston's importance to this movement
and the movement's importance to her. The lack of any explicit dia-
logue with African-American literature or literary phenomena is an
omission in her autobiography that cannot be explained away. This
silence, rather, speaks loudly of her uneasy relationship to her African-
American literary antecedents and colleagues of the day.
While Hurston's uneasiness with African-American literary tradition
is not without either precedents or contemporaneous parallels,15 her
position within this matrix has its own peculiar traits. Her autobiograph-
ical portrait as a reader is of crucial help in the effort to outline the
ambivalence characterizing her stance. In her essays, Hurston under-
scores and explicates African-American language use as an innovative
art form. She insightfully calls into question, as Gates observes, the dis-
tinction between originality and imitation by emphasizing the artistic
value of the constant reinterpretation, revision, and repetition with
difference that are typical features of African-American expression (Sig-
nifying Monkey 117-18). Her exclusion of black literature from the
depiction of her reading in Dust Tracks, however, reflects the limits that
she subtly but deliberately sets to her discussion of black linguistic inno-
vation. While her works highlight the creative qualities of African-Amer-
ican oral expression, she is reluctant to acknowledge and explore the
value of the black American literary production that either overlapped
with or preceded her career.
Apart from an unwillingness to be associated with a tradition that her
contemporaries labelled as wanting in originality,16 Hurston's reluc-
tance to engage in dialogue with African-American literature seems to
have resulted from three interrelated factors: personal schisms with Afri-
can-American colleagues,1 a need to secure a niche for herself in the
literary marketplace, and a wish to promote a specific cultural agenda.
Hurston's strategy of representing and mediating African-American cul-
208 Tuire Valkeakari

ture was almost exclusively based on the concept of the 'rural black folk'
and the folk's oral tradition (Carby 32).18 Hurston, moreover, to a cer-
tain extent sought to present a strategic, professionally profitable image
of herself as the sole competent mediator between Southern black oral
traditions and the white world's literary traditions. Her exclusion of
black literature from the depiction of her reading in Dust Tracks shows
diat while she wrote her own vocation and cultural agenda into her
autobiography, she firmly remained silent about other contributions to
the era's process of cultural mediation between the black and white
worlds. Puzzled about Hurston's 'brief autobiographical treatment of
her career as a writer, critics have ignored the fact that in Dust Tracks
Hurston herself is the only African American who is explicitly portrayed
as a creator of literary and/or scholarly texts. Black readers of (white)
literature are also few in the autobiography's world, which is another
sign of Hurston's effort to subtly accentuate the 'uniqueness' of her call-
ing and status as an interpreter between the African-American and
European-American realms of cultural expression.
It is vital, however, in assessing Hurston's autobiographical portrait as
writer and reader, to bear in mind the massive obstacles that African-
American writers of her era faced in getting their works published. In
practice, they had to compete with one another within the slot assigned
to 'Negro writers.' This was an issue even for an author like Hurston
(who, in the early 1940s, had the advantage of long-standing contact
with a publishing house, Lippincott's, which had actually initiated the
collaboration and continued to express interest in her work).19 From
this perspective, Hurston's heavy reliance on one chosen trope, the cul-
tural stereotype of the 'rural black folk,' appears as a project of culti-
vating a distinctive literary voice, aimed to render her oeuvre easily
identifiable and thus more marketable. The same rationale, the need to
compete in the publishing market, seems to have largely motivated her
reluctance to present herself as a reader of black texts and as one of the
writers of the New Negro Movement, which would have meant acknowl-
edging the literary achievements of African-American antecedents and
colleagues. This manipulative strategy is, at least to some extent, under-
standable in the light of Hurston's sociocultural context; her autobiog-
raphy after all reflects, in a variety of ways, tensions related to her social
status 'as a woman in a male-dominated world and as a black person in a
nonblack world' (Gates, 'Afterword,' 264) .20
Yet, Hurston's manipulative side - her desire to detach herself from
other African-American authors, revealed by the exclusive 'whiteness' of
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 209

the young Zora's reading in Dust Tracks - invites a remark on critic John
Lowe's discussion of the late-twentieth-century Hurston revival. In his
study of her comic voice and 'cosmic comedy,' Lowe utilizes the trickster
imagery fashionable in Hurston criticism while commenting on the
rediscovery of the once-forgotten Hurston: 'Zora must be somewhere,
riding high and having the last laugh' (1). That 'last laugh' may, how-
ever, belong to African-American literary criticism, which has firmly
placed Hurston, the individualist, in the company of her fellow writers
in the black American literary canon. Perhaps, in some dimension
beyond the reach of the literary critic's probe, these two 'last' laughs
may merge into one loud and unrestrained cosmic laughter, which cele-
brates both the individual talent of Zora Neale Hurston and the current
public recognition of the artistic riches and nuances of the African-
American literary tradition.

NOTES

I would like to thank Vera Kutzinski and Bo Pettersson for their valuable com-
ments on early drafts of this article. I am also grateful to Linda H. Peterson and
Robert B. Stepto for nurturing my interest in autobiography at Yale University in
the fall of 1999.

1 I refer throughout this article to the Library of America Edition of Dust

Tracks (1995), henceforth cited as 'D7^'
2 The persistence of this lacuna in Hurston criticism can be attributed to two
factors. First, several scholars have been preoccupied by what Pierre A.
Walker - implicitly critical of the unfavourable assessments - summarizes as
the book's 'apparent unreliability, its inconsistency or fragmentary nature,
and its seemingly assimilationist racial polities' (387). Second, critics have
traditionally considered the autobiography's professional focus to be lim-
ited, almost exclusively, to Hurston's work and self-understanding as a folk-
lorist and ethnographer.
3 I will refer to young Hurston by her first name, Zora, to maintain, where rel-
evant, the distinction between character and narrator.
4 See, for example, Martineau (26), Robinson (12).
5 First of all, Hurston openly addresses financial matters (see, e.g., DT714—
16). By depicting her life as one of constant financial hardship, she skilfully
embeds in Dust Tracks the claim - expressed, in the African-American con-
text, as early as 1859 by Harriet E. Wilson in the preface to Our Nig- that
210 Tuire Valkeakari

female authors are entitled to earn a living by their writing. Second, Hur-
ston's deep commitment to her work as literary author and ethnographer
also shows in her (tension-ridden) priori tization of vocation over domestic
bliss. She primarily depicts her love life in terms of its effect on her career,
addressing the difficulty of trafficking between the domestic and the profes-
sional (DT 746-50).
6 Pamela Bordelon stated in 1997 that Zora Neale Hurston was, in fact, born
in Notasulga, Alabama (8). According to Bordelon, who refers to the 'Family
Record' page of the Hurston family bible as her source, the Hurstons moved
to Florida soon after Zora's birth.
7 The thematization of the link between literacy and freedom in slave narra-
tives has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention since the initial 1979
publication of Robert Stepto's From Behind the Veil.
8 According to Hurston, while the African American 'lives and moves in the
midst of a white civilisation, everything that he touches is re-interpreted for
his own use' ('Characteristics' 838).
9 Kimberly W. Benston's major study from 2000, Performing Blackness, focuses
on the 'performative ethos' characterizing African-American modernism
(2). For a recent discussion highlighting wordplay and humour as essential
elements of the 'performance of identity' in Hurston, see Beilke.
10 Alice Walker, the initiator of the late-twentieth-century Hurston Renaissance,
sees Hurston as an autobiographer who, because of the consequences of her
social powerlessness, compromised too much. According to Walker's infa-
mous phrase, Dust Tracks was the 'most unfortunate thing Zora ever wrote'
(xvii).
11 See, for example, Speisman (88-9). In addition to Mules and Men, which
Speisman aptly highlights, Hurston's familiarity with snake symbolism also
appears, for example, in her 1939 novel Moses, Man of the Mountain.
12 See, for example, Braxton (148); Hemenway (282). For a more sympathetic
reading of the narrative of visions, see Rodriguez (36-7). In Rodriguez's
view, the visions 'call into question Hurston's own position as subject of her
text,' functioning as 'metaphors for a fragmented self and for the self as sign
and interpreter' (37).
13 The phrase was made famous by Ralph Ellison, who used it as the title of one
of his well-known essays.
14 For an insightful analysis of this image and its implications, see McKay,
'Race' (185-6,188).
15 Affected by the then-prevalent view that black American literary tradition
suffered from a lack of originality, African-American authors of the early
twentieth century seldom explicitly expressed pride in or deliberately
 Writer as Reader in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road 211

emphasized their black literary ancestry (Gates, Signifying Monkey, 113-21).

Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932), who desired to be remembered by posterity
as the first African-American fiction writer, 'wiped the slate of black authors
clean,' in Gates's to-the-point phrase, 'so that he could inscribe his name,
and inherently the name of the race, upon it' (Signifying Monkey 117).
Richard Wright, while admitting to being a reader of the African-American
tradition, judged his black literary predecessors harshly in his 1937 essay
'Blueprint for Negro Writing,' labelling the majority of them 'prim and dec-
orous ambassadors who went a-begging to white America ... dressed in the
knee-pants of servility' (45; see also Gates, Signifying Monkey, 119). Slightly
softening this statement, he clarified that most black American writing had,
in his view, either functioned merely as an instrumental proof of black
achievement or had represented 'the voice of the educated Negro pleading
with white America for justice' (45). Wright called for a renewal of thematics
and style based on the realization that 'Negro life may be approached from a
thousand angles, with no limit to technical and stylistic freedom' (51).
16 See note 15 above.
17 Hurston's arguments and disagreements particularly with Langston Hughes
and Richard Wright are well known. For Hurston's and Hughes's 1931 dis-
pute over the rights to the jointly written play Mule Bone, see, for example,
Hemenway (136-48); Hughes (331-4); and Gates, 'Tragedy' (10-14).
Hurston's unflattering review of Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children was
published in Saturday Review, 2 April 1938.
18 While this strategy has earned Hurston the reputation of a pioneering
African-American folklorist, critics of her approach, particularly Hazel
Carby, have argued that Hurston deliberately froze black culture at the stage
of the oral, folksy, and rural. Hurston, in this view, lamentably made the con-
cept of the folk designate the totality of African-American experience, failing
to include in her paradigm the modern urban forms of black culture that
had emerged in northern cities in the aftermath of the Great Migration.
19 For Hurston's contact with Lippincott's, see, for example, Hemenway (188-
9,275).
20 See also Meisenhelder (2).

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9 Poor Lutie's Almanac: Reading and
Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street

MICHELE CRESCENZO

As Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley write in the introduction to this col-
lection, the images in Pomegranate's The Reading Woman stationery
'make clear that the general image of the reading woman is one very
much inflected by white, middle-class ideology' (22). One exception,
William McGregor Paxton's The House Maid, nicely illustrates the plight
of Lutie Johnson, another maid who reads her employer's books, in Ann
Petry's 1946 novel The Street. And just as 'the house maid,' despite her lit-
eracy, cannot transcend her class, neither can Lutie. In fact, The Street
directly implicates Lutie's reading - or mis-reading - in her fate, as it
enacts the dangers that stalk women who unwisely or uncritically
attempt to model their lives on literature. These dangers multiply, The
Street suggests, when the woman reader is a young, black, working-class
single mother struggling to make her way in Harlem during the Depres-
sion and the Second World War. Yet Lutie insists that 'if Ben Franklin
could live on a little bit of money and could prosper, then so could she'
(64). Lutie's misplaced reliance on the myth of the American dream,
especially her unquestioning acceptance of Franklin's autobiography as
a prototype for her own success, clearly forms the crux of the novel. But
just as important is Lutie's relationship to print culture more generally.
Indeed, paper pervades The Street and figures as the principal image in
Petry's argument about Lutie as a black woman reader. My essay traces
this paper trail in order to show the ways Petry's novel exposes the roles
race, class, and gender play in women's relationship to reading in partic-
ular and to print culture in general.
Criticism of The Street has primarily focused on Lutie's misplaced reli-
ance on the myth of the American dream and, especially, her disas-
trously misplaced obsession with Benjamin Franklin.1 Lutie's fascination
216 Michele Crescenzo

with Franklin indisputably reflects her positive accomplishments (begin-

ning with her mastery of literacy) and her worthy aspirations (most
notably her desire to take a respectable place in American society). As
previous critics have emphasized, however, it also reflects an unrealistic
embrace of a model that does not remotely capture Lutie's own situa-
tion and possibilities. Franklin's pieties about effort and success thus
remain empty signs that lack concrete referents or embodiments in
Lutie's life. Moreover, Lutie's fixation on Franklin deadens her to the
wisdom of the oral culture that still percolates in the black community
in Harlem but from which she is trying to escape. Critics have, by and
large, failed to explore Perry's sophisticated and complex treatment of
this relation between literate and oral culture in the life of the protago-
nist and in the novel's larger black community.
Walter Ong and others have illuminated the respective strengths and
limitations of oral and literate culture. Oral cultures typically favour a
directness and repetition that literate cultures frequently disdain. Thus,
oral cultures will deploy narratives that feature heroes and villains - that
is, strong representatives of right and wrong. They will further empha-
size basic lessons that are to be understood as truths about human
nature and that bear endless repetition. Literate cultures, in contrast,
favour subtlety and indirection and are especially adapted to the expres-
sion of subjective life. The painful irony in Lutie's case is that she blindly
selects examples of literate culture and, as a result, the wrong subjectivi-
ties as guides. In this respect, the reader of The Street is challenged to ask
how well Lutie knows herself and how well she succeeds in locating her
position between the residually oral culture she is leaving and the more
literate culture she is attempting to appropriate. Compounding the
challenge are our common assumptions about reading, particularly our
assumption about its potential for liberation and self-discovery (after all,
it is a commonplace in many a Bildungsroman that a young protagonist's
discovery of books is the beginning of his or her quest for selfhood). For
example, in his 1945 autobiography Black Boy, Richard Wright poi-
gnantly evokes the importance of books and reading in nourishing his
sense of self and in shielding him from the worst ravages of the segre-
gated South:

The face of the South that I had known was hostile and forbidding and yet
out of all the conflicts and the curses, the blows and the anger, the tension
and the terror, I had somehow gotten the idea that life could be different,
could be lived in a fuller and richer manner ... But what was it that always
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 217

made me feel that way? What was it that made me conscious of possibilities?
From where in this southern darkness had I caught a sense of freedom? ...
It had only been through books - at best, no more than vicarious cultural
transfusions - that I had managed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital
way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had
clutched at books. (226)

Maya Angelou, in her autobiography / Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
(1969), echoes Wright's appreciation of books as 'vicarious cultural
transfusions' that help to connect marginalized, southern black chil-
dren to a larger and better world. Angelou writes:

To be allowed, no, invited, into the private lives of strangers, and to share
their jobs and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter worm-
wood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with
Oliver Twist. When I said aloud, 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I
have ever done ...' tears of love filled my eyes at my selflessness. (84)

Yet even as Angelou participates in what Wright calls the 'con-

scious [ness] of possibilities' bestowed by books, she also recognizes the
importance of oral culture and folk wisdom. Mrs Flowers, the teacher
who throws young Angelou her 'first life line' (77), instils in her an
appreciation for their cultural roots, alongside a love of literature. '[B]e
intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy' and 'listen care-
fully to what country people called mother wit ... in those homely say-
ings was couched the collective wisdom of generations,' Mrs Flowers
tells her (83). For Lutie, reading does not lead to the same results - self-
knowledge, development, and pleasure - as it does in the Bildungsroman
or in Wright's and Angelou's works. Nor can it, Petry suggests, as long as
Lutie ignores the 'mother wit' Mrs Flowers speaks of and privileges liter-
ate culture over oral culture. In short, Lutie's reading of the texts of
mid-twentieth-century white culture seems destined to leave her in a
kind of cultural limbo, primarily because she divorces herself from her
race, class, and gender and turns her back on the kinds of knowledge
that are intrinsic to her black cultural roots and the surrounding
woman-centred communities.
The novel opens with Lutie's attempt to read an 'Apartment for Rent'
sign, which, significantly, the wind keeps displacing. Each time she
thinks 'she ha[s] the sign in focus, the wind pushe[s] it away from her'
(2). Fearing the influence of her bootlegger father and his girlfriends
218 Michele Crescenzo

on her eight-year-old son Bub, Lutie wants to move out of his house to
an apartment of her own. Inquiring about the apartment, she encoun-
ters one of the building's tenants, Mrs Hedges, an 'enormous bulk of a
woman' with eyes 'as still and as malignant as the eyes of a snake' (5-6).
The building superintendent, Jones, whose eyes fill 'with a hunger so
urgent that she was instantly afraid of him' (10), shows Lutie the apart-
ment on 116th Street, and despite her instinctive distrust of these two
ominous characters, she immediately rents it. This opening scene
encapsulates Petry's construction of Lutie as a reader: paralleling her
fleeting ability to physically read the sign that is blowing in the wind,
Lutie is unable to correctly 'read' the signs of the danger surrounding
the apartment. At the very least, one could say that she misguidedly
rationalizes away her intuitive and therefore more sound 'reading' of
the danger.
Building on this initial scene, Petry later depicts Lutie on the subway
reading an advertisement for a 'miracle of a kitchen' inhabited by 'a girl
with incredible blond hair' (28). The kitchen is 'completely different
from the kitchen of the 116th Street apartment ... [b]ut almost exactly
like the one she had worked in in Connecticut' (28). Lutie, like most
black women of her time - as the 'incredible blond hair' implies - can-
not access the share of the American dream represented in this ad, but
she is permitted to labour in such a kitchen. The picture of the kitchen
triggers flashbacks through which we learn about the Chandlers, a
wealthy white family that employed her as a live-in maid for two years.
Lutie has ingested the Franklinesque spirit of the Chandlers, who
preach a similar gospel of success through individual effort as they pro-
fess that 'anybody could be rich if he wanted to and worked hard
enough and figured it out carefully enough' (43). Subsequent flash-
backs reveal that Lutie has been struggling for years to achieve 'respect-
ability.' Having lost her mother at age seven, she was raised by her father
and grandmother, graduated from high school, and married at seven-
teen. Lutie and her husband, Jim, suffer the economic fate of most
working-class African Americans during the Depression. Due to racial
discrimination and the scarcity of jobs, Jim cannot find work, and the
couple struggles to pay the mortgage on the house left to them by Jim's
mother. Lutie takes in 'State children' to earn a little money, eventually
supporting five foster children, her own son, and her husband, 'feeding
eight people on the money for five and squeezing out what amounted to
rent money in the bargain' (171). The situation collapses when a social
welfare worker discovers that Lutie's father is having drunken parties on
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 219

the nights he persuades Lutie and Jim to go out, and the State takes the
foster children from her.
Desperate to save the mortgage, Lutie takes the job as a live-in maid
with the Chandlers in Connecticut, visiting Jim and Bub only every
month or two in order to save the train fare. When she learns that Jim
has taken up with another woman, Lutie returns to New York, takes her
few possessions and her son, and moves in with her father. Although she
cannot afford a divorce, the marriage is over. For four grueling years,
Lutie works as a handpresser in a steam laundry while going to night
school to study typing and stenography, buoyed by the promise of the
American dream: 'Every time it seemed as though she couldn't possibly
summon the energy to go on with the course, she would remind herself
of all the people who had got somewhere in spite of the odds against
them. She would think of the Chandlers and their young friends - "It's
the richest damn country in the world"' (55). Lutie's reward for this
labour and persistence is a job as a file clerk. The 'white collar job' of
which she has dreamed pays barely enough for her to support herself
and her son in their new apartment (56). The influence of the Frank-
linesque Chandlers has, in part, propelled Lutie towards taking the
unaffordable apartment despite her gnawing instincts. Once again,
then, she represses her intuitive 'reading' abilities and is willing to sus-
pend her disbelief when she listens to the 'texts' provided by the Chan-
dlers. The illusion of the 'miracle of a kitchen' inhabited by 'a girl with
incredible blond hair' intertwines with the text of the American dream
represented by the Chandlers. Together, they prove to be more seduc-
tive to Lutie than the oral and folk wisdom of her own experience.
While living in the building on 116th Street, Lutie learns that Mrs
Hedges, a fixture who sits continually in her window watching the events
on the street unfold, runs a brothel from her apartment and that life on
116th Street has pushed Jones, the building's superintendent, 'into
basements away from light and air until he was being eaten up by some
horrible obsession' (56). Yet Lutie does not fear the street's 'influence,
for she would fight against it' (56). 'Streets like 116th Street or being
colored,' she muses, 'or a combination of both with all it implied, had
turned Pop into a sly old man who drank too much; had killed Mom off
when she was in her prime,' but '[n]one of those things would happen
to her ... because she would fight back and never stop fighting back'
(56-7). At Junto's Bar and Grill, Lutie meets Boots Smith, who offers
her a singing job with his band. Lutie dreams that the salary will be her
ticket out of 116th Street, but after singing in a nightclub all night for a
220 Michele Crescenzo

few nights - and working all day at the office - she realizes that Boots is
not going to pay her. Unbeknownst to Lutie, Junto (who owns Junto's
Bar and Grill, the casino where Boots's band plays, the building on
116th Street, and apparently everything else in Harlem) has designs on
her and has ordered Boots to string her along with the singing job.
Jones, too, quickly becomes obsessed with Lutie, and his presence
becomes increasingly menacing. When he attempts to rape her, Mrs
Hedges, Junto's business partner, intervenes and tells Jones to stay away
from Lutie because 'it's Mr. Junto who's interested in Mis' Johnson'
(238). Jones develops a twisted scheme of revenge, employing Bub to
steal mail from the surrounding buildings, explaining that they are
helping the police to find a criminal. In Jones's fantasy, Bub will be
caught and removed to reform school, and Lutie, left alone, will eventu-
ally come to Jones for solace. When Bub is caught and taken to the Chil-
dren's Shelter, Lutie desperately applies to Boots for the money for a
lawyer. Boots assures her that he will help, and arranges a meeting in
her apartment. But when Lutie arrives, she finds Junto there waiting for
her, becomes hysterical, and orders Boots to send him away. Boots pri-
vately assures Junto that Lutie will 'come around,' and asks him to come
back later (423). Returning to Lutie, however, Boots decides to rape her
himself before Junto can 'have her.' In self-defense Lutie hits him with a
heavy candlestick, then, fueled by a 'lifetime of pent-up resentment,'
beats him to death (430). Realizing what she has done, she concludes
that the street has finally won. She decides to abandon her son, who is
still in the Children's Shelter, 'because the best thing that could happen
to Bub would be for him never to know that his mother was a murderer'
(433). Taking half the money from Boots's wallet, Lutie flees New York,
boarding a train for Chicago. 'It was that street,' Lutie tells herself on
the train, 'it was that god-damned street' (435).
Despite Lutie's interpretation, Petry establishes that, more than the
street, it is Lutie's own education, both in the public schools and from
her own reading, that fails her by seducing her to believe too strongly
in the American dream. Lutie, who probably encountered Benjamin
Franklin's autobiography in high school, is so well acquainted with it
that walking through Harlem with her purchase of rolls from the bakery
reminds her of the scene in which Franklin eats a roll while walking the
streets of Philadelphia:

[Fjeeling the hard roundness of the rolls through the paper bag, she
thought immediately of Ben Franklin and his loaf of bread. And grinned
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 221

thinking, You and Ben Franklin. You ought to take one out and start eating
it as you walk along 116th Street. Only you ought to remember while you
eat that you're in Harlem and he was in Philadelphia a pretty long number
of years ago. Yet she couldn't get rid of the feeling of self-confidence and
she went on thinking that if Ben Franklin could live on a little bit of money
and could prosper, then so could she. (63-4)

Ignoring her own caveat, Lutie fails to remember that she is 'in Harlem
and [Franklin] was in Philadelphia a pretty long number of years ago,'
and it is this failure that proves to be her downfall. Lutie's identification
with Benjamin Franklin obscures what Richard Yarborough identifies as
a major irony of the African-American experience in this country: 'the
disappointing fact that the society which claims to be founded upon the
principles of freedom and equality nonetheless supported a brutal chat-
tel slave system for over two hundred years' (33). In other words, the
principles to which Lutie subscribes are compromised from the start.
When a woman like Lutie, who really is born into 'Poverty and Obscu-
rity,' tries to change her material circumstances, her story is not quite as
simple as Franklin's. Nor is it as simple as the Chandlers'. Lutie fails to
see that the odds against 'the Chandlers and their young friends' are
minuscule, that none of them needed to work for four years at a gruel-
ling job, studying at night, to be awarded the privilege of a filing job that
still does not pay well enough to live decently.
Lutie nonetheless identifies more with these privileged whites than
with any other characters in the novel, a direct consequence of her read-
ing, or mis-reading, of Benjamin Franklin. The philosophy of the Chan-
dlers and their friends, 'this new philosophy' that Lutie absorbs from
listening to their conversations, probably appeals to her because, as a
presumed reader of Franklin's autobiography, she finds it familiar. Lutie
hears, in the Chandlers' home, 'Retire at forty' (43), just as Franklin
had retired from business at forty-two. Similarly, their frequent injunc-
tions to '[mjake it while you're young ... Outsmart the next guy. Think
up something before anyone else does' echo, albeit more crudely,
Franklin's own philosophy of success (43).
As Keith Clark writes, Lutie 'spends the entire novel trying to deci-
pher Franklin's encoded, phallocentric text - a "white" book blacks
were never meant to read in the first place' (501). Caught between oral
and literate cultures, between black and white, Lutie encounters this
phallocentric text without the perspective from which to read it. But,
importantly, Lutie's lack of perspective is only part of the problem. Petry
222 Michele Crescenzo

suggests that Lutie's reading of Franklin's autobiography has been com-

pounded by her distance from print culture more generally. Indeed, in
The Street one's proximity to print culture determines material success, a
theme conveyed through her implicit comparison of the Chandlers and
the Franklins. While Franklin claims in his autobiography that he was
born and bred in 'Poverty and Obscurity,' not only can he trace his
family in England back at least 300 years, but his father owned his own
business as a tallow chandler (414). Through her use of the name
'Chandler,' Petry links Franklin, who owns a printing press, with the
Chandlers, who own a paper factory - two families who are not self-
made but who believe in the myth of the self-made man - and essentially
draws a line between print culture and material success. Lutie, who can
read Franklin's autobiography only as a success manual, mistakenly
trusts that her relative proximity to print culture will guarantee equal
access to material gain. But her proximity is limited to that of a con-
sumer of print culture, while the Franklins and Chandlers have a hand
in its production. The tallow chandler, or candle maker, provides light
that enables reading at night, the owner of the paper mill provides the
raw material for books, and the owner of the printing press brings books
into existence. These professions - all of which depend on ownership -
allow control over how print culture is created and consumed.
Images of paper in the novel explicitly link the characters' distance
from or proximity to print culture with their material circumstances.
From the opening image of papers being blown by the wind, Lutie is
surrounded by paper. Yet much of what she is denied is based on paper
- paper money, a college diploma, a formal divorce, and the next civil
service exam. Furthermore, since her civil service classification denies
her the position of typist, Lutie, via her job as a file clerk, is simply the
caretaker of the written word: while the position of typist would have put
Lutie at the point of production and netted her better pay, she would
still only have copied what others wrote; and her position as file clerk
means that she remains a 'paper pusher' whose job is to file papers
upon which other people have written. And just as she remains simply
the caretaker of the written word at her job, she seems doomed to be
merely the caretaker of the self-reliant, up-by-one's-bootstraps philoso-
phy of Benjamin Franklin. In this economy she can consume and orga-
nize the printed page, but she stands little chance of actually producing
it. Although Lutie owns no printing press or paper factory, she founds
her own subjectivity on her identification with Franklin and thus over-
looks his subject position as a white male who, as a printer, owned the
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 223

means of production, just as the Chandlers own a paper factory. In

other words, she reads his story, but cannot critically 'read' her own. She
refuses to acknowledge that her own subject position as poor, black, and
female, combined with her hostile environment, make it nearly impossi-
ble for her to control the narrative of her own story. As the saying goes,
the injunction to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps assumes that one
has boots."
Lutie's dependence on print culture is also reflected in her efforts to
obtain work as a domestic. To find this employment, Lutie depends on a
newspaper want ad, a written reference, and her own ability to write a
good letter:

It was a good letter, she thought, holding it in her hand a little way off from
her as she studied it - nice neat writing, no misspelled words, careful mar-
gins, pretty good English. She was suddenly grateful to Pop. He'd known
what he was doing when he insisted on her finishing school. (31)

Lutie knows that Mrs Pizzini, her grocer, will provide the reference
because, since Lutie has an outstanding bill (another instance of paper's
pervasiveness in Lutie's life) at the Pizzinis' store, Mrs Pizzini would nat-
urally be happy to see Lutie employed. Although Mrs Pizzini cannot
write as well as Lutie, her economic position as a store owner provides
better access to print culture than Lutie's position: her reference will
count. Furthermore, the Pizzinis have done well enough to send their
daughter to college; the daughter, now a schoolteacher, composes the
reference for Lutie. The 'precious reference,' along with Lutie's letter,
are deposited among the other paper in the mailbox (33). It is ironic
that Lutie must depend on her education, or access to print culture, to
get a servant's job, and doubly ironic that what she learns at this job -
the pernicious influence of the Chandlers - also results from her liter-
acy. Perhaps this is another way in which Petry suggests that Lutie's
exclusive dependence on print culture contributes to her ultimately
tragic fate. In any case, it is clear that Lutie's material circumstances,
however still constrained, depend on the power of the letter.
Further underscoring this dependence, Petry invests paper in general
with a power of its own. When the police take Bub, for example, they
hand Lutie a piece of paper, which 'refuse [s] to stay still' when she tries
to read it (387). Like the 'Apartment for Rent' sign, which the wind
moves when Lutie tries to read it, this document literally moves in front
of Lutie's eyes, suggesting the protagonist's tenuous control over her
224 Michele Crescenzo

own reading. Similarly, the police paper - or its importance - seems to

impress itself on Lutie: 'The last thing she did before she left the apart-
ment was to put the stiff, white paper in her pocketbook. And on the
subway she was so aware of its presence that she felt she could see its out-
line through the imitation leather of the bag' (407). Nevertheless, Petry
makes clear again and again that the real power of paper is the power of
the people who control it. Lutie's lawyer is shown to be surrounded by
paper as he sits at his desk amid notes, envelopes, and the newspaper;
the Chandlers' money permits them to turn the suicide of Mr Chand-
ler's brother into an 'accident with a gun on the death certificate' (49),
and those who control print media can use paper to turn a thin, ragged
black boy into a 'burly negro' after he is killed by a white store owner
who claims he tried to rob his store. Lutie realizes that the reporter who
transformed this story 'couldn't see the ragged shoes, the thin, starved
body ... [seeing], instead, the picture he already had in his mind' (198).
Significantly, she compares the reporter to the Chandlers, 'who looked
at her and didn't see her' (199), a comparison that tries to construct
both the reporter and the Chandlers as mis-readers as well. Yet the irony
of Lutie's comparison is evident: while it is true that the Chandlers can-
not see Lutie for who she is, neither can Lutie see herself. In fact, she
seems to view herself only through the Chandlers' eyes - as someone
who could make it if she wanted to - despite the contradictory evidence
that is there on 116th Street for her to 'read' every day. Thus, while the
Chandlers' mis-readings gather credibility from their positions of power,
Lutie's own mis-readings are not assigned the same credibility.
Indeed, those people, like Lutie, who do not have power cannot
manipulate print culture for their own benefit. For Lutie's father, whom
the white system has turned 'into a sly old man who [drinks] too much'
(56), reading is an effort, and Lutie knows when she receives a letter
from him that there is 'something wrong for Pop to write' (52). For
Jones, the act of writing is also a painstaking effort, if it is even available:
when he attempts to complain to the police about Mrs Hedges's brothel,
a lieutenant who is obviously in Junto's pocket tears up the paper form
that Jones is attempting to fill out; in this case it is Junto who controls
the paper. For Bub, a young black male, access to print culture must be
'stolen' (stealing mail is the crime that puts Bub in the Children's Shel-
ter) . And for Lutie, who does seem to have at least some access to print
culture compared to the others, paper in the form of 'the gas bill and
rent bill and the light bill' still haunts her daily life (83). In fact, as she
struggles to support herself and her eight-year-old son on her salary, the
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 225

next civil service exam is her only means of doing better; marriage is not
an option because she cannot afford the piece of paper that signifies a
legal divorce. All of these documents, which represent the government
or the corporate world, control Lutie's life as powerfully as that other
'official' document of American culture, Benjamin Franklin's autobiog-
raphy.
Junto's name is another reference to Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's
Junto, or Leather Apron Club, was a group dedicated to self-improve-
ment and 'the "wish to do good" that would also bring them advantages,
or even profit' (E. Wright 37-8). Petry's implication is that Junto, as
a white man who has 'pulled himself up by his bootstraps,' is heir to
Franklin's values, no matter how far outside the law Junto may be. And
as a white man who owns nearly everything that controls Lutie's life, he
is also the personification of capitalism. Franklin's Junto club may be
thought of as the first working-class networking organization, but the
group was also in part a literary society. Perversely, by naming such a dis-
reputable character after this group Petry associates capitalist enterprise
with monopoly, self-improvement with 'helping oneself,' and print cul-
ture with power.
Furthermore, those who do have power - the Chandlers of the world
- have come so far beyond access to print culture that they can take
reading and education for granted in a way that Lutie cannot compre-
hend. Until she works for the Chandlers, who produce types of paper
that do not get written on, Lutie believes that 'whites wanted their kids
to be President,' and she is surprised to discover that education is not
important to the Chandlers. Although they attend Yale, Harvard, and
Princeton, afterwards they 'read nothing but trade magazines and news-
papers.' Products of the most elite schools in the country, wealthy
enough to have libraries in their homes, they are exposed as Philistines.
In fact, Lutie notices that the effort of Mr Chandler's reading leaves
'him a little tired, just like Pop or Mrs. Pizzini' (42). Mrs Chandler, who
can afford to buy 'fat, sleek magazines' and 'all the newest books' - and
who also has the leisure time in which to read them - passes them on,
unread, to Lutie. For Lutie, reading them is 'almost like getting a col-
lege education free of charge' (50). The Chandlers of the world are free
to read 'nothing but trade magazines and newspapers' or, like Mrs
Chandler, read nothing at all because their real education is in how to
become 'filthy rich' (43). They do this by exploiting 'new markets. If not
here in South America, Africa, India - Everywhere and anywhere' (43):
that is, by exploiting people of colour, and by extension Lutie herself.
226 Michele Crescenzo

Rather than identify with these exploited people of colour, Lutie

'absorb [s] some of the same spirit,' as '[t]his new philosophy [begins to
creep] into her letters' to her husband (43). Thus, while Lutie reads all
of Mrs Chandler's books and magazines, she fails to critically 'read' the
real story behind the Chandlers' success.
Yet Lutie is not always a naive or trusting reader. The first scene of her
reading, when she encounters the 'Apartment for Rent' sign at the
novel's start, shows her as a wary and cynical reader. Lutie reads the sign
- 'Three rooms, steam heat, parquet floors, respectable tenants. Reason-
able' (3) - and she immediately deconstructs this text:

Parquet floors here meant that the wood was so old and so discolored no
amount of varnish or shellac would conceal the scars and the old scraped
places, the years of dragging furniture across the floors, the hammer blows
of time and children and drunks and dirty, slovenly women. Steam heat
meant a rattling, clanging noise in radiators early in the morning and then
a hissing that went on all day ... Respectable tenants in these houses where
colored people were allowed to live included anyone who could pay the
rent, so some of them would be drunk and loud-mouthed and quarrelsome
... Reasonable - now that could mean almost anything. On Eighth Avenue
it meant tenements - ghastly places not fit for humans. On St. Nicholas
Avenue it meant high rents for small apartments; and on Seventh Avenue it
meant great big apartments where you had to take in roomers in order to
pay the rent... 'Reasonable' here in this dark, crowded street ought to be
about twenty-eight dollars, provided it was on a top floor. (3-4)

One of Lutie's many likeable qualities is her good-humoured, healthy

cynicism, a cynicism that is greatly at odds with her optimistic determi-
nation to transcend her circumstances. While Lutie clearly demon-
strates her ability to read the apartment sign critically, despite its
movement, she remains credulous and accepting of Benjamin Frank-
lin's autobiography and fails to accurately read the 'story' of the Chan-
dlers' success.
In contrast to Lutie, Mrs Hedges is presented as a good 'reader' who
knows how to survive on the street, and Min, the woman who lives with
Jones, is constructed as ultimately more resourceful than Lutie because
she has not renounced her ties to African-American culture. As black
women who survive outside of the environmental determinism of
Lutie's tragic fate, Mrs Hedges and Min represent alternatives for Lutie.
Keith Clark notes that Mrs Hedges and Min employ the techniques of
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 227

the trickster figure, subverting the quest for the American dream to
achieve their own, modified, version of it (496). Mrs Hedges, almost a
parody of the Horatio Alger archetype, is scavenging through garbage
cans in search of food when she meets Junto. Scavenging himself for
'broken bottles, discarded bits of clothing, newspapers,'Junto suggests
they work together, selling rags and junk from pushcarts (242). Eventu-
ally, it is Mrs Hedges who suggests that he 'branch out,' buying more
pushcarts and hiring more men. Junto's enterprise expands to real
estate; when he buys his first building, he hires Mrs Hedges as janitor
and rent collector. When Lutie moves to Harlem, Junto and Mrs Hedges
own apartment buildings, Junto's Bar and Grill, the casino where Boots
Smith and his orchestra play, and two brothels. While in the Alger
archetype a poor boy progresses from rags to respectability through
thrift, industry, honesty, and temperance - echoing the Benjamin Frank-
lin model - Mrs Hedges is a poor woman who progresses from rags to
disrepute through thrift, industry, illegal activity, and peddling young
women's bodies. She has, nonetheless, learned to survive, and through
her power in the role of Junto's 'overseer' is able not only to 'read' the
street, but to authorize and author its events.
Min, like Mrs Hedges, also appears at first glance to be ill equipped to
survive on the street. Uneducated and poor, she is abused by the white
women whose houses she cleans and by the men with whom she is
involved. When Min perceives that Jones is becoming obsessed with
Lutie, she resolves to take action, explaining:

I ain't never had nothing of my own before. No money to spend like I

wanted to. And now I'm living with him where they ain't no rent to pay,
why, I can get things that I see. And it was all right until that Mis'Johnson
come here to live. He'll be putting me out pretty soon ... I ain't goin' back
to having nothing. Just paying rent. Jones don't ask for no money from me
and he wasn't never this mean until that young Mis' Johnson come here.
And I ain't goin' to be put out. (119-20)

In 'the first defiant gesture she ha[s] ever made' (126), Min visits a 'root
doctor,' the Prophet David, using the money that she had been saving to
buy false teeth. 'Belief in magic is older than writing,' writes Zora Neale
Hurston in her anthropological work on black folk culture, Mules and
Men (183), and Min is plainly a product of this culture. She believes that
the Prophet David's root magic will keep Jones from putting her out.
Importantly, in contrast to Lutie who relies on eighteenth-century Euro-
228 Michele Crescenzo

pean rationalism, Min turns to root work, or hoodoo, or conjuring,

which originated in Africa.
The Prophet David, whose 'eyes were deep-set and ... didn't contain
the derisive look she was accustomed to seeing in people's eyes,' encour-
ages Min with his calm and patient manner to pour out her story (133).
He listens to her story, then instructs her to put one drop of red liquid
in Jones's coffee every morning, burn two white candles every night at
ten o'clock, hang a cross over her bed, and sprinkle a green powder on
the floor if Jones gets violent. But the Prophet's attention to Min does
more for her self-esteem than the prospect of conjuring: 'she thought
talking to him had been the most satisfying experience she had ever
known' (136). This is the first time anyone has listened to Min with full
attention - none of her husbands, her lovers, her 'madams' whose
houses she cleaned, or even her doctors had ever really listened to her
before. Helen Jaskoski claims that the Prophet David 'is the only adult
in the novel capable of a truly disinterested and sympathetic response to
another person. Min's encounter with him represents the only alterna-
tive the story even suggests to the failure of love, work, religion, family,
and every other element of an exploitative society' (103). In the end, it
is Min who decides to leave Jones: whether or not the conjure actually
works, Min has become empowered through her encounter with the
Prophet David, and although she will probably latch onto another man
for financial support, she has at least found a way to avoid Lutie's fate.
Other models of working-class women who do not resort to running a
brothel, as Mrs Hedges does, or to hoodoo, as Min does, are Lutie's
Granny and Mrs Pizzini. Minor characters compared to Min and Mrs
Hedges - to whose points of view the narrative occasionally shifts -
Granny and Mrs Pizzini adhere to more orthodox conduct. Although
nothing in the text suggests that the Pizzinis could have achieved as
much had they been African American or that Granny had 'made it' in
the Chandlers' sense of the phrase, these two women do suggest possi-
ble alternatives for Lutie. However, Lutie only sees their relative distance
from print culture and thus overlooks the value of both women.
Explicitly rejecting the folk wisdom and oral culture that are a part of
her heritage as an African American of her time and class, Lutie ignores
Granny's wisdom - which at times could have helped her - because
Granny is poor, black, and uneducated. Lutie also mocks the oral tradi-
tion, ridiculing Granny's '[t]ales that had been handed down and down
and down until, if you tried to trace them back, you'd end up God
knows where - probably Africa' (15-16). By apposing 'Africa' with 'God
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 229

knows where,' Lutie reveals her true feelings about her heritage; having
learned well her lessons in white supremacy, she seems to regard Africa
as an inscrutable heart of darkness. The product of a 'rational' educa-
tion, Lutie also learns not to trust her instincts. When she first looks at
the apartment, as noted above, she senses that the superintendent,
Jones, is a threat yet dismisses the feeling, telling herself that she is 'as
bad as Granny. Which just went on to prove you couldn't be brought up
by someone like Granny without absorbing a lot of nonsense' (15).
Lutie's instinct not to move into the apartment on 116th Street, how-
ever, is far from being 'nonsense,' and had she 'read' it properly, she
might have averted the novel's subsequent tragedy. Lutie also ignores
Mrs Pizzini's warning not to take the job in Connecticut: 'Not good for
the woman to work when she's young. Not good for the man' (53). Mrs
Pizzini's fears prove to be justified, as Jim, left with Bub for a month or
two at a time over a period of two years, eventually finds another woman
who will sleep with him and do his housework. The only white character
in the novel who is kind to Lutie, Mrs Pizzini functions as a kind of
proxy for Granny with her earthy wisdom and her 'dark, weather-beaten
skin1 (53). Suggesting that Mrs Pizzini has access to oral as well as writ-
ten traditions, Petry makes clear that she both 'listen [s] to Lutie's story'
and 'follow[s] the writing on Lutie's letter' (31). Since, until at least the
1920s, Italian Americans (as well as other southern and eastern Euro-
pean immigrants) were not considered 'white' by American culture, Mrs
Pizzini's ethnicity suggests a kind of bridge between black and white,
oral and literate. The text, then, links Mrs Pizzini, who admits that she
herself can't 'write so good' (33), with Granny through their folk wis-
dom and distance from print culture. And in ignoring their advice,
Lutie shows that her education has led her too far from the folk wisdom
of an oral tradition that equips the others to survive on the street.
Lutie's singing is another example of how she privileges literacy over
orality and the material over the spiritual. When, alone with Jones in a
dark hallway, she senses his menace, she unconsciously begins to hum to
herself an old song of Granny's, 'Ain't no restin' place for a sinner like
me' (17). Perhaps this is another instinctive warning, which she dis-
misses, not to take the apartment. Later, when she starts to sing along
with the jukebox record at Junto's Bar and Grill, her singing is so arrest-
ing that the crowd stops their drinking to listen to her. Lutie's 'voice had
a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song impor-
tant, that made it tell a story that wasn't in the words - a story of despair,
of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story all of them knew by heart'
230 Michele Crescenzo

(148). Boots, impressed by her voice, offers her a job singing with his
orchestra. When Lutie appears at the casino to rehearse, the musicians,
assuming she is another of Boots's 'girlfriends,' are skeptical. Yet when
she finishes the first song, they stand up and bow to her, 'their way of
telling her they were accepting her on merit as a singer, not because she
was Boots's newest girl friend' (222). The text implies that, under more
favourable circumstances, Lutie really could have succeeded as a singer.
Yet Lutie, who wants the singing job because it would pay well, shows no
regard for her voice as an outlet for self-expression or artistic creation,
just as she ignores Granny's voice in her head.
Another consequence of Lutie's education is the isolation that results
from her individualism. By no means a typical black woman for her
time, Lutie is socially mobile, has lived in better neighbourhoods in
Queens, and at one time she and her husband even had a small inheri-
tance in the form of his mother's house. Even during the Second World
War, when women had more access to jobs, it would have been unusual
for a black woman to have an office job, as only about 1.3 per cent of
African-American women were employed in clerical positions (Jones
200). Consequently, Lutie looks down on other working-class blacks in
her community. Although she perceives that their poverty and what she
would call their immorality are rooted in racism and an exploitive eco-
nomic system, she declares that '[n]one of [this] would happen to her'
(57). She judges other African Americans harshly, mentally jeering at
Jones's difficulty with writing, thinking of Pop's roomers as 'riff-raff and
of her neighbours as 'dirty, slovenly women' (23, 56, 3).
Like Emerson and his transparent eyeball, self-reliant Lutie observes
but remains detached: 'She reached the street at the very end of the
crowd and stood watching them as they scattered in all directions,
laughing and talking to each other' (58). Lutie's insistence that '[n]one
of these things would happen to her' suggests that she feels superior to
the other African Americans in her neighbourhood because she associ-
ates their poverty with personal failure. Lutie's detachment also pre-
vents her from establishing bonds with other women. She demonstrates
a remarkable grasp of women's commonalities as she projects her own
experiences onto her speculations about the women who work in her
office:

Remembering bits of conversation she had heard in the rest room, she
knew they had husbands and children and sick mothers and unemployed
fathers and young sisters and brothers, so that going to an occasional
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 231

movie was the only entertainment they could afford. They went home and
listened to the radio and read part of a newspaper, mostly the funnies and
the latest murders; and then they cleaned their apartments and washed
clothes and cooked food, and then it was time to go to bed because they
had to get up early the next morning. (395-6)

Yet Lutie feels no real kinship with these women: 'She didn't know any
of them intimately. She didn't really have time to get to know them well,
because she went right home after work and there was only a forty-five-
minute lunch period,' during which Lutie usually eats alone (395). Her
isolation is so complete that she cannot even comprehend an event as
commonplace as a woman joking with the butcher. While the other
women waiting in line laugh, Lutie gripes to herself, 'It's not even
funny' (61). To return to Walter Ong, Lutie has estranged herself from
the oral communication that spawns communal values, favouring
instead the solitary activities of literate culture that 'throw the psyche
back on itself (69). From Benjamin Franklin to Horatio Alger to
Andrew Carnegie, the American ideology of success has incorporated
secularism, humanism, and, above all, individualism. Lutie's foibles as a
reader of her own culture stem from the self-involvement characteristic
of literate cultures.
Most women in Lutie's situation would regard a female community as
a lifeline. In her history on black women and labour, Jacqueline Jones
emphasizes the community's role as an important resource for women
in Lutie's time (195, 198). Unlike her real contemporaries, Lutie is
proud that 'she had been able to get this far without help from anyone'
(63). Even Mrs Hedges and Min have a moment of communal bonding
when Min approaches Mrs Hedges for help in finding a root doctor. Mrs
Hedges, who knows everything about everyone on the street, tells Min
that her 'girls' recommend the Prophet David. Min is so grateful for
having found the Prophet David and so heartened by her visit with him
that she buys Mrs Hedges a houseplant in thanks, having noted while in
Mrs Hedges's kitchen that she is fond of houseplants. Lutie, it would
seem, barely speaks with other women, among whom the narrative for-
malizes only her interactions with Mrs Hedges and Mrs Chandler. The
only woman in the novel for whom Lutie seems to feel anything is her
grandmother, but Lutie's reminiscences of her are always tinged with
affectionate mockery of her folk wisdom. Clinging always to her 'phallo-
centric text,' Lutie can see no value in female affiliation. In her life and
in her reading, there is no place for women, just as there is no place for
232 Michele Crescenzo

the influence of African-American oral culture: Lutie's choice of texts

forestalls the realization of black, female subjectivity.
Although no one models herself on any one text, Lutie's wholesale
acceptance of the American dream and the up-by-one's-bootstraps phi-
losophy exemplified by Benjamin Franklin's text prove in the end to be
her undoing. She is a naive and accepting reader who fails to apply her
usual cynicism to Franklin's text; at other times, she fails to 'read' events
and people. Yet the assertion that Lutie wrongly chooses Franklin's auto-
biography as a model for her own success itself implies a choice. What
texts, instead, might she have chosen? Would another classic American
success story, the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, have been more
appropriate as an example of a successful American who has overcome
great odds, much greater than those faced by Benjamin Franklin? Jasko-
ski suggests possible answers to these questions when she notes the par-
allels between Min's visit to the root doctor in The Street and an incident
from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in which
Douglass carries a root in his pocket as protection against the brutalities
of a temporary master. Although Douglass is sceptical of the power of
conjure to solve his problem, with the root in his pocket he resists the
next beating, fights, and wins. Jaskoski concludes that conjure, in African-
American writing, 'is the power and wisdom of those who are denied
power and learning by an oppressive society' (107). While in The Street,
conjure functions to empower Min in the same way, Lutie's Age-of-
Reason scepticism prevents her from finding a similar solution.
More important, even if Lutie had been open to the possibilities of
conjure, Douglass's text probably would not have been available to
Lutie; it is unlikely that she would have encountered it in a public high
school in the 1930s. For a woman reader, furthermore, even Douglass's
autobiography would have its limitations. Books by female slaves, such
as Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859) and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl (1861), might have offered better templates for realiz-
ing female subjectivity, had Lutie had access to them, but it was not until
the 1980s that their authorship was verified and the books were
reprinted.3 Discounting works of fiction from Lutie's 'canon' - although
Lutie does live in Harlem at about the time the Harlem Renaissance is
winding down, it is inconceivable that she would encounter black writ-
ers among Mrs Chandler's cast-off books - there is no text comparable
to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. Lutie has no access to success
stories written by poor African-American women. Rather than seeking
alternative ways to survive, as Min and Mrs Hedges do, Lutie tries to do
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 233

it 'by the book.' Yet there is no book for her - no Horatio Alger stories
written for black girls. Her own proximity to print culture is reduced, by
the novel's end, to scrambling for a few pieces of paper as she steals
paper money to buy a paper train ticket. Moreover, Lutie's proximity to
print culture never progresses from the passive activity of reading to
writing, and despite her struggles to author and authorize her own story,
she is left, at the novel's end, drawing a series of circles - or zeroes - on
the window of a train. Ultimately she is permitted to write nothing, liter-
ally. As the circles she does write remind Lutie of the handwriting exer-
cises she practiced in grammar school, she recalls the teacher who told
her, 'Really ... 1 don't know why they have us bother to teach your peo-
ple to write' (435). Now, on the train, Lutie questions the deception
inherent in a public school education that provides Franklinesque mod-
els for success to the Lutie Johnsons of the world. 'What possible good
has it done,' asks Lutie, 'to teach people like me to write?' (436). 'Why
teach people to write,' asks Barbara Christian, 'why give them the illu-
sion that they are free when they are actually imprisoned? The street,
Petry concludes, is no different from the plantation, except that many
of the slaves do not understand that they are slaves' (67).
Frederick Douglass, in his Narrative, recalls an owner's reaction upon
discovering that his wife has been teaching the alphabet to Douglass:
'"Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read,
there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave"'
(36). As if tracing the effects of this legacy, in The Street Petry dramatizes
the persisting importance of the link between the material circumstances
of African Americans and their proximity to print culture in the twentieth
century. Lutie's literacy 'unfits' her to be a slave, yet her race, gender, and
class conspire, in the novel's overdetermined environment, to Tit' her for
nothing else. Thus, Lutie's reading results in limitation rather than liber-
ation. Petry is not, of course, saying that African-American women cannot
or should not have access to print culture; following the parameters of nat-
uralism, her novel is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Instead, she
implies that they must balance that culture with their own culture in order
to be successful in a white-controlled world. Lutie can be said to lack what
Du Bois called a double consciousness common among early-twentieth-
century blacks. A product of two distinct cultures, African-American and
American, Lutie turns her back on her black roots. Additionally, she is a
product of both male and female culture who turns her back on female
affiliation. The Street posits that identifying exclusively with 'white' and
'male' texts is a calamitous mis-reading for this reading woman.
234 Michele Crescenzo

NOTES

I am grateful to Barbara Foley and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese for generously shar-

ing their time and insights throughout the development of this essay.

1 For discussions of the Benjamin Franklin theme in The Street, see Clark,
McKay, and Yarborough.
2 Perhaps Petry had this in mind when choosing Boots's name: Boots has done
nothing to pull himself up by his bootstraps, yet he lives very well on his salary
from Junto. A bitter and cynical man who previously worked as a Pullman por-
ter, Boots owes his material success to a combination of luck and a willingness
to do anything it takes, including pimping Lutie for Junto, to maintain his life-
style. Boots takes the American ideal of individualism to an extreme, despite
his apparent distance from print culture. He succeeds, however, because he
avoids print culture and exploits what is available to his race and class (as do
Min, the woman who lives with Jones, and Mrs Hedges), whereas Lutie's
downfall is that she tries to imagine herself outside of those confines. It is
important to note that, as one of Lutie's sexual assailants, Boots also repre-
sents male power, which he is able to exploit to his own advantage.
3 The authorship of both books was questioned for nearly a century. Henry
Louis Gates, Jr, is credited with rescuing Our Nig from obscurity after he dis-
covered it in an antiquarian bookstore in 1981. He authenticated the author-
ship and published a new edition in 1983. The authorship of Incidents in the
Life of a Slave GzV/was likewise questioned, but a new edition published in 1987
by Harvard University Press named Harriet Ann Jacobs as the true author. See
Gates, Jr, introduction to Our Nig, by Harriet Wilson (xi-lv), andYellin (xiii-
xxxiiii).

WORKS CITED

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Bantam, 1973.
Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-
1976. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1980.
Clark, Keith. 'A Distaff Dream Deferred? Ann Petry and the Art of Subversion.'
African American Review 26:3 (Fall 1992): 495-505.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
1845. New York: Dover, 1995.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: Dover, 1994.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography. 1868. In The Norton Anthology of American
 Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry's The Street 235

Literature, ed. Nina Baym et al., 3rd ed., vol. 1, 408-523. New York: Norton,
1989.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 'Writing "Race"—and the Difference it Makes.' In 'Race,'
Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr, 1-20. Chicago: U of Chicago
P, 1986.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. 1935. New York: QPB, 1990.
Jaskoski, Helen. 'Power Unequal to Man: The Significance of Conjure in Works
by Five Afro-American Authors.' Southern Folklore Quarterly 38 (June 1974): 91-
108.
Jones,Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, andtheFamily
from Slavery to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1986.
McKay, Nellie Y 'Ann Petry's The Street •and The Narrows: A Study of the Influence
of Class, Race, and Gender on Afro-American Women's Lives.' In Women and
War: The Changing Status of American Women from the 1930s to the 1950s, ed.
Maria Diedrich and Dorothea Fischer-Hornung, 127-40. New York: Berg,
1990.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York:
Routledge, 1988.
Petry, Ann. The Street. 1946. Boston: Houghton, 1991.
WTright, Esmond. Introduction to Benjamin Franklin: His Life as He Wrote It.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy, A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper,
1945.
- Native Son. 1940. New York: Perennial, 1966.
Wilson, Harriet. Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. 1859. New York:
Vintage, 1983.
Yarborough, Richard. 'The Quest for the American Dream in Three Afro-Amer-
ican Novels: If He Hollers Let Him Go, The Street, and Invisible Man.' MELUS8A
(Winter 1981): 33-59.
Yellin,Jean Fagan. Introduction to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by
Herself. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.
10 'One of Those People Like
Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath':
The Pathologized Woman Reader in
Literary and Popular Culture

JANET BADIA

Loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, the film 10

Things I Hate About You (1999) tells the story of Kat Stratford, a darkly
cynical and socially outcast teenager who has renounced dating after
losing her virginity to the untrustworthy boy now pursuing her younger
sister Bianca. Having completely and contemptuously rejected the con-
ventional high school scene, Kat is despised by her peers at Padua High
and frequently referred to as that 'heinous bitch.' While it is certainly
true that Kat occasionally behaves badly - on one occasion she pur-
posely smashes her own car into her former boyfriend's new convertible
- she is hardly the Midol-deprived, 'muling, rampallian wretch' her
peers and teachers make her out to be. Quite to the contrary, Kat sees
herself more as a nonconformist who simply locates her self-worth in
her rejection of both conventional high school life and the patriarchal
order that surrounds her. Emphasizing this aspect of Kat's character, the
film portrays Padua High's student body as a collection of absurd
cliques (the 'cowboys,' 'future MBAs,' and 'coffee kids' are a few) and
the patriarchal order as an oppressive apparatus effectively symbolized
by both Kat's father, whose initial 'house rule' forbids the two sisters to
date, and Mr Morgan, the English teacher who routinely sends Kat to
the principal's office for 'terrorizing' his class, including once after she
challenges the omission of important women writers in his lectures.1
But even as Kat regards herself as a nonconformist above the rigid
boundaries that shape her peers and her family, the film typecasts her in
another way: seething with sarcasm, grungily dressed, and a fan of riot-
grrl music, she is a millennial version of the angry feminist intellectual,
or at least one in the making.
The reason for my portrait of Kat Stratford at the opening of this essay
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 237

Fig. 10.1. Kat Stratford reading Plath's The Bell Jar, from the film 10 Things I Hate
About You (1999). ©Touchstone Pictures. All rights reserved.

is clear if one also considers another important fact about Kat: she is a
Plath reader. Indeed, it is Sylvia Plath, among other feminist writers,
whom Kat wishes to see added to Mr Morgan's syllabus. Underscoring
this initial allusion to the poet, the film also offers a revealing look at Kat
as she sits in a family-room chair reading Plath's best-selling novel The Bell
Jar. To insure viewers do not overlook the importance of the scene of Kat
reading, the camera carefully pans through the front window of the Strat-
ford home, resting directly on Kat and centring deliberately in its frame
the open cover of The Bell Jar (fig. 10.1). To those viewers who recognize
the novel Kat holds in her hands, the implication of the scene is unmis-
238 Janet Badia

takable: all that we need to know about Kat to prepare us for her current
behaviour in school and at home can be encapsulated by a single scene
that, in Hollywood shorthand, figures her as the quintessential Plath
reader. By referring to Kat as a Plath reader, then, I hope to point to the
image underlying the reality of her reading material, rather than simply
the fact that she is portrayed as someone who reads Sylvia Plath's writings.
That is to say, Rat is a Plath reader not simply because she reads The Bell
Jar but because she embodies an image that in many ways reflects the
stereotype of women readers of Plath's writing.
As a scholar who once devoured Plath's writings in daily doses, I am
intrigued by this figure of the Plath reader. How did she come about?
How exactly did a young woman reading one of the most important
bestsellers of the second half of the twentieth century come to signify so
much in a Hollywood movie? Even more important to my purposes in
this essay, what does her presence express about women readers, their
reading practices, and society's perceptions and valuation of both?
Underlying all of these questions, of course, is the assumption that Kat's
existence as a reader can and does tell us something important about
cultural attitudes, not only towards Plath and her readers, but towards
women readers more generally. In fact, the principal aims of my exami-
nation of Kat Stratford are to call attention to the cultural attitudes that
give her image its resonance and power and to trace the origins of such
attitudes within literary history itself. Specifically, I want to argue that
Kat Stratford - especially insofar as she and her reading are patholo-
gized in the film - reveals the nexus of anxieties that are often embed-
ded in both literary and popular representations of women readers,
anxieties about what women read, how women read, and the effects
both are perceived to have on the well-being of the reader herself and
society more generally.
Of course, this figure of the young Plath reader is hardly new, even in
Hollywood. In many ways, Kat Stratford is merely an updated version of
the image Woody Allen evokes in his 1977 film Annie Hall when Allen's
character, Ariel in hand, describes Plath as an 'interesting poetess whose
tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mental-
ity.' Expanding Allen's image to include Anne Sexton's readers as well,
Meg Wolitzer's 1982 novel Sleepwalking concretizes this college-girl men-
tality by chronicling the interactions of three Plath- and Sexton-obsessed
Swarthmore students who, the narrator explains, 'had banded together,
apparently drawn to each other by the lure of some secret signal as un-
intelligible to everyone else as the pitch of a dog whistle is to human
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 239

beings,' a lure that earns them a reputation on campus as 'the death

girls' (3). As the narrator's analogy suggests, the image of a band of
death girls who read Plath's and Sexton's poetry (while sitting around
candles in the dark, one imagines) is meant not simply to draw laughs
but also to elicit a particular response from viewers and readers, a nod
of recognition, a 'Yes, I know the type.' In other words, if the image is
funny, it gathers its humour from the cultural iconicity of the particular
woman reader evoked, for just as 'the death girls' are instantly recogniz-
able to the students on the Swarthmore campus, the Plath-Sexton
reader, as I would like to call this expanded figure of the Plath reader, is
instantly recognizable to us today, even without props like The Bell Jar.
And if she is recognizable, it is not entirely because of her cinematic
or fictional legend. Indeed, the Plath-Sexton reader owes her existence
at least partially to those notorious 'real' readers who have become vir-
tually synonymous with both poets' names, including the fans who have
persistently chiselled off the name 'Hughes' from Plath's gravestone in
England; the young women who have written editorials to the London
Guardian protesting Ted Hughes's alleged abuses as executor of Plath's
literary estate, as well as his neglect of her grave; the poet Robin Mor-
gan, who has written about Plath's 'murder' at the hands of Hughes;
and the hundreds of women who wrote fan letters to Sexton over the
course of her career.' All of which is to say, the Plath-Sexton reader's
presence is palpable and historical, even as she is circumscribed by ster-
eotype and cliche. Whatever the nature of her existence, two points
about her are clear: first, she is nearly as big a cultural icon as Plath and
Sexton themselves; arid second, like both poets, she has been defined by
her own apparent depression and obsession with death.
While hardly identifiable as one of Meg Wolitzer's 'death girls,' even
the rather sanitized Kat Stratford bears the trace of depression that sig-
nals she is more than simply a girl reading a book. When we see her
curled up in a chair holding her anniversary edition of The Bell Jar, it is
difficult not to impose an aura of depression and darkness around her,
especially since she is so effectively foiled by a sister appropriately
named Bianca. Often dressed in white, Bianca is, at bottom, everything
Kat is not: she is perky, popular, and for the most part superficial. Con-
trasted so sharply against Kat, Bianca foregrounds the darkness, one
might say melancholy, that lingers over Kat from the film's opening
scene when the blare of her Joan Jett music drowns out the pop song
coming from the car of a group of popular, Bianca-like girls. The impor-
tance of scenes like this one lies not only in how they prepare us for the
240 Janet Badia

moment of Kat reading, but also in how they prepare us to respond to her
as a woman reader by inviting us to see her as dark and depressed. The
film, in fact, counts on us to impose this aura of darkness and depres-
sion upon her. It hopes we do, I would argue, because only then can we
accept the transformation of Kat from boy-hater to love-driven teen that
is central to the film's closure as a romantic comedy. To insure this
response, then, the film constructs Kat as a young woman who not only
reads Plath's work but actually mirrors the much-accepted public image
of the poet herself: the abandoned daughter, the woman scorned by
male betrayal, and the intellectual who haughtily desires to be above it
all. As significant as these similarities are, the most revealing image of
Kat as a reflection of Plath comes towards the film's end when, in a ges-
ture towards the film's title, Kat recites a poem she has written for her
literature class. The poem, written for her new boyfriend Patrick after
she discovers he has been paid to date her, catalogues all the things she
hates about him, reveals the betrayal she feels, and all the while discloses
her desire to still be with him. It is a confessional poem modelled as
much after Plath's poetry as it is the Shakespearean sonnet Kat was
assigned to imitate, and importantly, it appears to owe its existence not
to Kat's innate creativity but to a boy who inspires the very emotions the
poem catalogues. In other words, it would seem that Patrick plays Ted
Hughes to Kat's Sylvia Plath.
As I hope this portrait of the Plath reader shows, Kat Stratford serves
as a particularly revealing example of a pathologized woman reader: a
woman whose reading practices are defined symptomatically, which is to
say, either as a sign of her illness or as a potential cause of it. Her con-
struction, then, grows out of cultural anxieties concerning what she
reads, how she reads, and what effects her reading might produce.
Throughout literary history, as I think many of the essays in this collec-
tion show, such anxieties have often rendered women 'bad readers' in
dire need of protection from the corrupting influence of certain kinds
of literature.
For the most part, Kat is no exception to this image. Towards the cli-
max of the film, for example, Kat is asked to the prom by Patrick and is
thus placed in a situation in which she must 'read' his motives for dating
her. The moment is especially important because it marks, for the first
time, Kat's doubts about Patrick's motives: oblivious to the fact that
Patrick is being paid to date her by the two boys scheming for Bianca's
attention, Kat simply cannot understand why he wants to go to the
prom, a symbol for her of the very high-school scene she and Patrick
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 241

have rejected.3 But she does decide finally to accompany him to the
dance, and when his financial motives are exposed at the prom, Kat
leaves in tears, a victim not only of the plot hatched by the young men
but of her own 'mis-reading' of Patrick. Reinforcing this image of Kat as
a 'bad reader/ her misjudgment of Patrick echoes a series of previous
misjudgments on her part, including her peer-pressured decision to
lose her virginity to the arrogant, self-absorbed Joey Donner. The film
suggests, in other words, that Kat not only misreads situations but that
her misreading has left her in an unhappy, if not altogether depressed,
state.
Importantly, the film alone conveys only a small part of the larger por-
trait of Kat I have been trying to reconstruct. As I think my own reading
of the film suggests, what makes Kat such a compelling example of the
Plath reader is the way our understanding of her depends on - and even
calls for us to apply to it - a pre-existing discourse about women readers
in general and the Plath-Sexton reader in particular. While it pervades
popular culture today, this discourse originates, I would argue, with the
reception of Plath's and Sexton's work within the literary establishment.
Indeed, I propose that what makes Kat so interesting and germane to
the questions raised in this collection of essays is the way her popular
image reflects literary constructions of the Plath-Sexton reader that
were first posited in the reception of both poets' work. To demonstrate
this relationship, I would like to turn first to a general discussion of
Plath's and Sexton's reception histories and then to a more focused
examination of those key moments that have given shape to the image
of the pathologized woman reader Kat so strikingly embodies.
As a close examination of the reception of Plath's and Sexton's work
reveals, critics have continually placed women readers at the forefront
of debate over the value of each writer's work, often regarding them as
either an obstacle to a serious consideration of Plath's and Sexton's
poetry or as evidence of its inferiority. In either case, a clear portrait of
the poets' readership had emerged by the 1970s, if not earlier: Plath's
and Sexton's readers were perceived to be young (implicitly white)
women who - in overprivileging the disturbed pathologies that ostensi-
bly fed the poetry - had 'misinterpreted' not only the tragedy of the sit-
uation but the work itself. Put more simply, the early reception of both
poets' work genders the Plath-Sexton reader female, diagnoses her as
depressed and sick, and assesses her as an uncritical consumer of bad
literature.
As I discuss in the larger study of Plath and Sexton from which this
242 Janet Badia

essay comes, the reception and critical histories of both poets' works
involve anxieties about genre, subject matter, and audience that are
often masked behind what appear to be purely aesthetic concerns. Of
particular interest to me in this essay is how these anxieties emerge spe-
cifically at the location of the reader. In fact, what emerges from a close
examination of reviews from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is a clear pre-
occupation with readers, who - even above the poet and the poetry -
turn out to be the principal object of concern for critics. Among those
critics who shared, if not engendered, this preoccupation within Plath
and Sexton criticism were Irving Howe and James Dickey, respectively.
Deeply troubled by the popularity Plath and Sexton had achieved, as
well as by the direction in which their brand of confessional poetry had
taken literature, Howe and Dickey set out to debunk what they saw as
the Plath-Sexton mythology pervading literary and popular culture in
the late 1960s and 1970s by dismissing both writers as mere cult-poets
whose work appeals only to the most narrow quarter of readers. How-
ever transparent their efforts may seem to us now, Howe and Dickey
nonetheless succeeded in establishing a powerful and pervasive dis-
course about Plath-Sexton readers that continues to inform and shape
our perceptions of them today. A close examination of their criticism
reveals, moreover, that in many ways Rat Stratford is merely symptom-
atic of the negative construction of Plath's and Sexton's women readers
that begins as early as the 1960s with Dickey.
Dickey's strong dislike of Sexton's poetry is almost legendary in some
literary circles.4 As probably most writers would, Sexton took his dislike
of her work very personally, often writing about it in letters to friends
and colleagues. In one such letter, written to her literary agent Cindy
Degener in 1974, Sexton refers to a group of poems she had hoped to
see published in a popular magazine only to advise Degener not to send
them to Esquire because, as she puts it, her 'arch enemy James Dickey
would vomit on the manuscript if he were in any way forced to publish
it' (416). Without knowing the history between Sexton and Dickey, one
might be tempted to dismiss Sexton's characterization of their relation-
ship as overly dramatic or, to borrow Charles Gullans's words, as another
instance of 'hysterical melodrama,' when in fact Sexton had good rea-
son to expect such a response from Dickey (497). Indeed, on at least two
occasions Dickey had responded to Sexton's work as if he were utterly
unable to contain his dismay as a reader. In his 1963 review of All My
Pretty Ones for the New York Times, for example, he delivered the follow-
ing pronouncement about the poet: 'It would be hard to find a writer
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 243

who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of

bodily experience, as though this made the writing more real, and it
would also be difficult to find a more helplessly mechanical approach to
reporting these matters than the one she employs' (50).5
In this statement, Dickey seems to suggest that Sexton's shortcomings
as a poet are the result of a lack of poetic skill; she simply does not pos-
sess formal mastery over her material. In this way, Dickey's assessment of
All My Pretty Ones echoes his earlier assessment of Sexton's first book, To
Bedlam and Part Way Back, which he describes as a collection that 'lack[s]
concentration, and above all the profound, individual linguistic suggest-
ibility and accuracy that poems must have to be good' (Babel 134). His
concern with Sexton's poor poetic skill is further evident in his review of
All My Pretty Ones when, later in the review, he complains that Sexton's
poetry is 'as contrived and mannered as any romantic poet's harking
after galleons and sunsets and forbidden pleasures.' Clearly Dickey has a
very specific complaint about the aesthetic quality of Sexton's poetry,
perhaps even a legitimate one. The complaint becomes suspicious, how-
ever, at the point at which Dickey identifies just what it is about Sexton's
poetry that seems 'contrived and mannered': its 'habitual gravitation to
the domestic and the "anti-poetic."'
As his irritation with Sexton might suggest, Dickey was one among a
host of critics who looked unfavourably on the direction of post-Second
World War poetry. While his general dissatisfaction is implied through-
out the New York Times review of All My Pretty Ones, it is reflected most
clearly in his opening statement, in which he complains, 'What poetry
needs nowadays is a new sense of consequence, a feeling that what is
said in poetry matters.' That he later points to what he calls Sexton's
gravitation towards the 'domestic' and '"anti-poetic"' certainly sheds
light on Dickey's idea of what matters. This idea is further illuminated
by his final assessment of Sexton's poetry: 'Miss Sexton's work,' he
writes, 'seems to me very little more than a kind of terribly serious and
determinedly outspoken soap-opera, and as such will undoubtedly have
an appeal in some quarters.'
Taken together, Dickey's characterization of Sexton's poetry as
'domestic,' '"anti-poetic,"' and 'outspoken soap-opera' certainly brings
his perception of Sexton's readership, as well as his sexist biases, into
focus. While Dickey never explicitly defines Sexton's readership, he
does identify it implicitly as a readership of women - women who appar-
ently consume Sexton's words along with their daily doses of soap opera.
The possibility that Sexton's poetry might appeal to this quarter of read-
244 Janet Badia

ers - indeed, might 'matter' to women - is not enough, apparently, to

warrant a serious consideration of how or why it might be appealing to
them not as 'outspoken soap-opera' but as poetry. With the thinly veiled
bias of Dickey's review exposed, it would perhaps be appropriate to offer
a critique of Dickey's shortcomings as a critic, to refute his reading with
a counter-reading that redeems the domestic of Sexton's poetry as
poetic; such refutations have in fact been the foundation of feminist
critics' efforts to recover Sexton's reputation and work. But for my pur-
poses here I wish instead to continue to focus on the construction of
readership that emerges out of Dickey's assessment of All My Pretty Ones
and, I would argue, gives shape to, even preoccupies, the larger critical
conversation about Sexton's work.
The influence of this construction begins to emerge in Charles Gul-
lans's 1970 review of Sexton's Live or Die. Like Dickey, Gullans is con-
cerned as much with the quality of Sexton's readers as he is with the
poetry itself, albeit in a much more explicit manner. Whereas Dickey's
negative characterization of Sexton's readers is only implied, Gullans's
negative characterization is explicit, serving in fact as the foundation for
his critique. Describing the feelings of pity the poems ostensibly pro-
voke in the reader, he implies that readers have allowed this feeling to
stand in for critical reading practice, and further argues that 'to mistake
such feeling for literary response implies a confusion among readers
and critics of cause and effect' (497). Sexton's poems, he further con-
cludes, 'are not poems, they are documents of modern psychiatry and
their publication is a result of the confusion of critical standards in the
general mind' (498). For Gullans, then, Sexton's readers are confused
readers who mistake 'suffering and sensitivity' as prerequisites for
poetry. However, even as he locates the confusion at the point of the
reader, he also suggests that the problem has been compounded by a
lack of readerly agency. That is, for Gullans Sexton's poetry is imposed
on readers in a way that appears to deny the reader her rights. In fact,
one of Gullans's major complaints is that he has been made 'third party'
to the poet's conversation with her psychiatrist 'without right.' Unlike
the general reader, one presumes, Gullans is able to escape Sexton's
subversion of his readerly agency through his own critical agency,
through his capacity for resisting the 'confusion' that Sexton's poetry
tends to produce in its readers. In this way, Gullans's concern with read-
erly agency seems to be an extension of some of the more innocuous
comments that have been made about literary judgment throughout the
reception of Sexton's work, comments like the one made by Hayden
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 245

Carruth in his rather reserved review of Live or Die in which he claims

that the literary quality of the poems is finally 'impossible to judge'
(698). In any case, I would argue that Carruth, in explaining the ques-
tion of the value of Sexton's work in this way, encapsulates the dilemma
posed by the poetry: how does one respond to a body of work that so
clearly resists conventional paradigms of reading, that exceeds available
discourse, and that seems to subvert any kind of judgment? For Dickey
and Carruth, the answer to the dilemma lies in a critique of readership,
whereby subject matter and audience are entangled in such a way that
to discount one is to discount the other. The fact that their approaches
to the critique differ - whereas Dickey's critique focuses on gendering
the reader, Gullans's focuses on assessing her as uncritical - matters lit-
tle since each serves to reinforce the singularity of the image of the
uncritical woman reader and thus her marginalization within literary
culture, a marginalization that gains significant momentum from the
critical conversations surrounding Plath's work around this same time.
In his seminal 1972 essay 'Sylvia Plath: A Partial Disagreement,' Irving
Howe echoes James Dickey's rhetoric of uncritical consumption, if not
also his sexist tone, and reveals his own harsh biases against Plath's read-
ers. Unlike with Dickey, however, Howe's biases are more subtle and
emerge out of a far less explicit link between the poetry's aesthetic value
and its readers.
Regarding the aesthetics of Plath's work, Howe is unquestionably
clear, describing Ariel's aesthetic shortcomings as 'a kind of badness
that seems a constant temptation in confessional poetry, the temptation
to reveal all while one eye measures the effect of the revelation.' Con-
tributing to the 'badness,' Howe explains, is what he sees in a poem like
'Lady Lazarus' as 'a willed hysteric tone, the forcing of language to
make up for an inability to develop the matter' (90). For Howe, then,
Plath is simply guilty of cutting literary corners. This suggestion is fur-
ther evident in his discussion of 'Cut,' a poem in which Plath seems to
mistake rhetorical posturing for poetic achievement, demonstrating in
the process her 'inability to do more with her theme than thrust it
against our eyes, displaying her wound in all its red plushy wounded-
ness' (90). As his comments about 'Cut' and 'Lady Lazarus' demon-
strate, Howe would have us think that the fault he finds with Plath
results from the recurring problem she has with developing theme and
subject matter. Yet his reading of another poem, 'Daddy,' suggests that
there is in fact little Plath could have done poetically to redeem the
poems. Describing 'Daddy,' Howe writes:
246 Janet Badia

What we have here is a revenge fantasy feeding upon filial love-hatred, and
thereby mostly of clinical interest. But seemingly aware that the merely
clinical can't provide the materials for a satisfying poem, Sylvia Plath tries
to enlarge upon the personal plight and give meaning to the personal out-
cry by fancying the girl as victim of a Nazi father. (90)

As those familiar with Howe's discussion of 'Daddy' might guess, Howe's

complaint here serves as preface to one of his larger concerns: Plath's
adoption - some have argued co-optation - of the Jewish-Holocaust
experience. More important to the purposes of this discussion are his
characterization of the poem as being 'mostly of clinical interest' and
the concomitant tension that pervades Howe's reading of the larger cor-
pus of Plath's poetry. When looked at as a piece, Howe's readings of
individual poems become hard to reconcile with each other: he faults
Plath for not developing the theme and subject matter of the poems
even as he suggests that the subject matter, insofar as it is 'merely clini-
cal,' cannot be the basis of a 'satisfying poem' (90). Such tensions lead
one to question the nature of Howe's complaints. Indeed, one cannot
help but ask, what is it about Plath that really bothers Howe?
For starters, Howe is troubled by what he describes, in a (mis) appro-
priation of Elizabeth Hardwick's words, as the '"deeply rooted"' and
'"little resisted"' '"elements of pathology"' central to her work (90).6 As
my quotation of Howe ventriloquizing Hardwick makes clear, Howe sim-
ply cannot stomach what he identifies as Plath's vision for her poetry.
This vision, to summarize Howe, is predicated on 'the personal-confes-
sional element' that seemingly dooms the poetry to being no more than
'local act' (89). His choice of the phrase 'local act' is critically important
to the question I have been exploring here. For Howe, good confes-
sional writing by nature begins as 'local act' but arrives at larger mean-
ing through 'sustained moral complication' and 'the full design of
social and historical setting' (89). Insofar as the lyric form does not
allow for either, the confessional poem, it follows, can only fail to trans-
form confession from local act to larger meaning. Certainly for a social-
minded critic like Howe, this relegation of poetry to the status of mere
'local act' undermines the raison d'etre of the literary project. By his or
her very nature, the confessional poet from Howe's perspective cannot
but fail to reflect society sufficiently and thereby transform it through
his or her writing.
But to understand Howe's relegation of Plath to 'local act' as a mere
reflection of his preoccupations as a social critic would be to overlook a
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 247

second tension that pervades the review: Howe's own discussion of Plath
makes clear that she is unquestionably more than a local act, if I may
play with his use of the term. Howe's own words - including his descrip-
tion of 'the noise' that surrounds this 'darling of our culture' - suggest
that Plath has reached more readers than Howe would care to admit
(88). His discussion of these readers and his correlative casting of Plath
as a cultural 'darling' reveals, moreover, that Howe, while bothered by
Plath's confessional tendencies, is equally troubled by her ability to
attract a large reading public. To be sure, the very project of Howe's
essay - 'A Partial Disagreement,' he calls it - is to take issue not only with
Plath but with those readers who have elevated her above the status
she truly deserves as 'an interesting minor poet.' The question then
becomes, who are these readers?
Howe himself suggests an answer to this question in the opening para-
graph of the essay when he explains: 'A glamour of fatality hangs over
the name of Sylvia Plath ... It is a legend that solicits our desires for a
heroism of sickness that can serve as emblem of the age, and many
young readers take in Sylvia Plath's vibrations of despair as if they were
the soul's own oxygen' (88). The issues that emerge out of Howe's rhet-
oric here are myriad. Most interesting perhaps is the rhetoric of con-
sumption so central to his characterization of Plath's readers, for just as
Howe transforms Plath from serious poet into glamour girl and 'priest-
ess' (88), he also transforms her young readers from serious readers
into cult followers: Plath, no longer perceived as a poet, puts out life-
sustaining 'vibrations' that are taken in, not read, by those who admire
her. In other words, for Howe, the very act of reading and the critical
faculty it involves have been supplanted by a mystical process of con-
sumption that leaves the young intellectually and emotionally crippled,
one presumes, by the lack of real oxygen.
It is with this suggestion of mystical consumption that we begin to see
the two parallel concerns that run throughout Howe's essay: his con-
cern with Plath's exaggerated status as a poet and his concern with the
corruption of legitimate reading practices responsible for the exaggera-
tion. This link between his two concerns is crystallized when, later in the
essay, he dismisses Plath's admirers altogether, arguing vis-a-vis the
poem 'Daddy' that 'one must be infatuated with the Plath legend to
ignore the poet's need for enlarging the magnitude of her act through
illegitimate comparisons with the Jewish-Nazi holocaust' (90). Issues of
Plath's Holocaust imagery aside, Howe's characterization of the reader
here reveals, I would argue, a kind of rhetorical desperation on his part.
248 Janet Badia

Aware that his position as a dissenter leaves him vulnerable - indeed, in

his own words, at the risk of 'plunging into a harsh kulturkampf - Howe
establishes a defensive stance from the essay's outset (88). His weapon,
as his description of the Plath reader makes clear, is circular logic dis-
guised in simple aesthetic concerns: those who find 'Daddy' an aestheti-
cally worthy poem, one not rendered undeserving of the merit
bestowed upon it because of its imagery, must be too preoccupied with
the glamour of Plath as icon to be good readers of her poetry.
Given the importance Howe places on the poet's 'need for enlarging
the magnitude of her act' (remember, it is in this respect that Plath's
poetry fails), the implications of Howe's statement about the reader are
in no way small. On close examination, in fact, what emerges from
Howe's essay is the sense that he might be inclined to agree with a posi-
tive assessment of Plath's work if it were not for the way she has been cel-
ebrated as an 'authentic priestess' and thus transformed into an icon by
her readers. At the very least, it is clear that Howe, despite his own
admission at the essay's opening that to do so would be unjust, allows his
own 'irritation with her devotees to spill over into [his] response to her
work' (88).
I think, then, that we have gotten to the bottom of what bothers Howe
about Plath. In tracing it as I have here, I have tried to show the intricacies
of an argument about Plath that is driven first by deep anxieties about
who reads Plath and how and why they read her, and second by a desire
to contain Plath as poet - to put her back in her place as a 'minor' woman
poet. The possibility that Plath could be both icon and serious poet never
appears to enter Howe's mind, or if it does, it is not a possibility he wishes
to entertain. His understanding of confessional poetry, in fact, precludes
the possibility insofar as he sees the confessional poem as an unfortunate
emblem of a culture preoccupied with 'self-exposure, self-assault, self-
revelation,' the very qualities a good poem shuns (89). For Howe, more-
over, these are the same qualities that in readers' minds lend Plath her
authenticity as priestess and icon. In this way, Howe's argument reflects
the common assumption that pervades Plath criticism, and this includes
criticism written both in her favour and against it: Sylvia Plath, the poet,
has to be extricated from the romanticized, one might say Holly-
woodized, icon she has been transformed into by an adoring readership,
for only then can the actual merit of her poetry be determined. The most
common strategy for debunking the myth is one Howe himself employs
in his own critique: expose the typical Plath reader as an uncritical con-
sumer who is as sick as the poet herself.
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 249

As my concluding point about Howe's and Dickey's concern with the

corruption of legitimate reading practices, I want to emphasize just how
far their rhetoric went towards establishing a discourse about the Plath-
Sexton reader by turning, though only briefly, to Susan Wood's review
of Words for Dr. Y., a volume of Sexton's uncollected poems published in
1978. Demonstrating the force of Howe's and Dickey's formulation of
the Plath-Sexton reader and further eliding the woman reader in her
own way, Wood writes:

Who will buy this book? I think, from hearing them speak at poetry read-
ings and in poetry workshops, it is primarily young girls and women who
admire Sexton for all the wrong reasons, making her a martyr to art and
feminism; who seem, out of their own needs, to identify with her patholog-
ical self-loathing and to romanticize it into heroism. It has very little to do
with poetry and it does neither poetry nor Anne Sexton a service. (3)

If my review of the criticism thus far left any doubt about the construc-
tion of Sexton's and Plath's readership as a body of uncritical, mis-
guided, and pathological women, Wood's review must certainly answer
it. What her review does in fact is bring together and make explicit the
connections among the many anxieties that were often only implicit in
the critical history up to this time, including a worrying over the pub-
lic's book-buying habits and, more importantly, a concern for the young
women readers who presumably read, if not incorrectly, then certainly
for the 'wrong reasons.' That these anxieties are present in a review that
seeks to recuperate or at least preserve Sexton's reputation, rather than
dismantle it, shows perhaps just how ingrained the very terms of the
debate, especially concerning women readers, had become.
That these anxieties are also present, if only residually, in the film
character Kat Stratford shows the full force of the terms as well. As I
tried to suggest earlier, Kat, in all of her evolutions, brings to the fore-
front a culture's anxieties about women readers. Because she is so thor-
oughly grounded in these anxieties, it is not at all surprising to find that
by the film's end Kat, an avid reader of women's writing, appears to have
relinquished her books for a prom gown. I say appears, because I think
the film leaves the slightest room for a second, albeit perhaps counterin-
tuitive, reading. Most notably, while Kat dons the normalizing garb of
the prom gown for a night, she eventually abandons it too and returns
by the film's end to her dark but artistically and intellectually expressive
self (one who plays guitar, draws, and plans to attend Sarah Lawrence
250 Janet Badia

College in the fall), a return that is easily overshadowed by the final cou-
pling of her and her paid date by the end of the film. Perhaps, then, the
character of Kat Stratford opens the door, if only slightly, for a recupera-
tion of the figure of the woman reader I have been discussing here. I
like to think so, and I think other recent constructions of the Plath-Sex-
ton reader work towards a similar recuperation.
Take, for example, the recent works by cultural critic Elizabeth Wurt-
zel. Apparently intent on casting herself as the consummate autopathog-
rapher, Wurtzel constructs herself as the quintessential Plath-Sexton
reader in her 1994 memoir Prozac Nation and again in 1998's Bitch. In the
prologue to the first of the two, the then twenty-something-year-old Wurt-
zel previews her struggles with depression and her ambivalent attitude
towards the drugs that keep her from 'constant-level hysteria': 'I've been
off lithium less than a month and I'm already perfectly batty. And I'm
starting to wonder if I might not be one of those people like Anne Sexton
or Sylvia Plath who are just better off dead, who may live in that bare, min-
imal sort of way for a certain number of years, may even marry, have kids,
create an artistic legacy of sorts, may even be beautiful and enchanting at
moments, as both of them supposedly were' (8). That Wurtzel should
compare herself to Plath and Sexton - and in the process implicitly con-
struct herself as someone who has read their work - is perhaps not all that
surprising. Evoking the poster-women of what Wurtzel herself calls 'ach-
ing, enduring suicidal pain' underscores the extent of Wurtzel's illness
and drives home the point of the prologue, which is after all entitled T
Hate Myself and I Want to Die.' At the same time, the comparison allows
Wurtzel to accomplish a less obvious goal, one interwoven with her own
identity as a writer. Indeed, if Wurtzel is like Plath and Sexton because
she, too, may be better off dead, she is also like them because she shares
their desire to 'create an artistic legacy of sorts.' As her qualification of
the legacy indicates, Wurtzel is well aware of the constructedness of
Plath's and Sexton's authorial identities, of the way they 'supposedly
were.' Such hedging on her part also suggests she is just as aware of the
constructedness of the Plath-Sexton reader, especially of the way she, too,
can construct herself as one and thus capitalize on the image of the poets
themselves. Her evocation of Plath and Sexton, therefore, serves as a kind
of masterful incantation that establishes her authority not only as a
reader but as a writer with an astute awareness of her subject matter. In
this way, the image of the Plath-Sexton reader for Wurtzel is an image of
empowerment, one that helps to explain her narrative, certainly, but also
one that authorizes her identity as a reading and writing woman.
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 251

Kat Stratford, I would argue in closing, resembles Wurtzel in more ways

than one. Most obviously, she shows signs of Wurtzel's depression. At the
same time, she displays a similar empowerment that comes in part at least
from her reading of women's writing, most notably Plath's. Kat, in fact,
could well serve as another example of the difficult and unruly women
Wurtzel celebrates in Bitch. Even in the presence of such promise, how-
ever, one cannot overlook the fact that Kat is based on the figure of the
shrew in Shakespeare's play and, like her Shakespearian namesake, is des-
tined to be tamed by a boy precisely because she is unruly and empow-
ered. Casting her as a Plath reader, then, appears to be simply another
way for the film's writers to put her and her reading back in their place.
Still, while her empowerment is undoubtedly constrained first by the
film's own limitations as a Hollywood romantic comedy based on a
Shakespearian play and second by previous constructions of women read-
ers, the tension she embodies suggests an evolution in the image of the
Plath-Sexton reader, one that commandeers the very discourse critics
once used to dismiss this reader and, in the process, begins to challenge
deeply embedded cultural expectations about women readers and their
reading practices.

NOTES

1 Kat's contempt for and rejection of patriarchal society is brilliantly dis-

played in one of the first scenes of the film, which, in addition to con-
taining Kat's critique of Mr Morgan's syllabus, depicts an in-class
confrontation between Kat, Mr Morgan, and other students from the class.
The exchange begins when one of Kat's classmates responds to the
teacher's invitation for discussion about The Sun Also Rises by calling Hem-
ingway a 'romantic.' Dripping contempt, Kat responds to the comment by
calling Hemingway 'an abusive, alcoholic, misogynist.' When a late-arriving
student interrupts the discussion to ask what he missed, Kat quickly inserts,
'the oppressive, patriarchal values that dictate our education.' Pointing to
the irony of Kat's own position as a privileged white woman - and, one
wonders, her protests that (privileged white) women writers have been
ignored in favour of writers like Hemingway - Mr Morgan, an African-
American man, sarcastically thanks Kat for her point of view, especially, he
notes, in light of 'how difficult it must be for [her] to overcome years of
upper-middle class, suburban oppression.' Of course, Mr Morgan's own
position as a black man complicates any straightforward reading of his
252 Janet Badia

character as a symbol of patriarchy: on the one hand, it is clear that his pri-
mary role in the film is that of the male authority figure who keeps Kat in
line. On the other hand, the fact of his race suggests that his character is
also meant to underscore Kat's privileged position and thus undercut her
claims to oppression.
2 One might say that the figure of the Plath-Sexton reader is a kind of fictional
composite of the 'historical' readers who have made headlines over the years
through their actions. Further explanation of the readers I discuss here fol-
lows: Plath's gravestone has been vandalized four times; each time the van-
dal(s), who are presumed to be Plath 'fans,' have chiselled off the name
'Hughes' from the stone so that it reads simply 'Sylvia Plath.' After each
instance, Ted Hughes had the stone removed for repair, often leaving Plath's
grave site unmarked for a period of time. College students Julia Parnaby and
Rachel Wingfield wrote to the editor of the Guardian describing their experi-
ences as they tried to find Plath's unmarked grave and excoriating Hughes for
'failing to replace the headstone and thereby leaving Plath's grave unidentifi-
able,' thus denying and devaluing 'her place in the tradition of women's liter-
ature.' The letter appeared in the 7 April 1989 issue of the paper and was
followed by a flurry of responses, many in support of the young women's let-
ter, as well as one from Hughes entitled The place where Sylvia Plath should
rest in peace' (Guardian, 20 April 1989). In his letter Hughes explains the
delay in replacing the stone and accuses Parnaby and Wingfield of 'living in
some kind of Fantasia.' Robin Morgan is author of the now notorious poem
'Arraignment,' which accuses Hughes of, among other things, Plath's mur-
der. The poem appears in Monster: Poems (1972). Finally, during the fifteen-
year period between her emergence as a poet and her death, Sexton received
close to a thousand letters that for all intents and purposes are best described
as 'fan letters,' the majority of which were written by women. The letters are
housed with other archival material from Sexton's career at the Harry Ran-
som Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. I discuss
the letters in more depth in my dissertation.
3 Because the girls' father has forbidden Bianca to date until Kat does (a new
house rule he imposes because he thinks it will prevent both girls from dating
since Kat had previously renounced boys altogether), one of Bianca's devo-
tees, Cameron James, develops a scheme to get Kat to date so he can then take
out Bianca. As part of the scheme, he offers to broker a date between Bianca
and Joey Donner, another boy who is also interested in Bianca, though for less
innocent reasons, and who has loads of money to offer Patrick in exchange
for taking out Kat. Once Kat begins dating Patrick, Cameron is able to ask
Bianca to the prom.
 The Pathologized Woman Reader 253

4 In fact, Dickey's dislike of Sexton has been the subject of an essay by Carrie
Martin recently published by The James Dickey Newsletter. Entitled '"There are
more important things than judgment involved": James Dickey's Criticism of
Anne Sexton and the Search for Self,' the essay essentially sets out to justify
[Dickey's] damnation of Sexton's poetry' by explaining it as the natural result
of his basic 'tenets' for good poetry, thereby denying any possible gender
biases that, I argue, clearly inform his criticism (17).
5 All subsequent quotations from Dickey's review of All My Pretty Ones are from
p. 50, unless otherwise noted.
6 The uncontextualized quotation of Hardwick in Howe's essay is rather dis-
turbing when Hardwick's words are placed back in their original context. In
her work on Plath, she writes, Tn Sylvia Plath's work and in her life the ele-
ments of pathology are deeply rooted and so little resisted that one is disin-
clined to hope for general principles, sure origins, applications, or lessons'
(100). Howe's quotation of only those words I have requoted in my discussion
leads the reader to think Hardwick would agree with Howe's reading, when in
fact her reading of Plath's poetry is much more positive than Howe's own.

WORKS CITED

Annie Hall. Dir. Woody Allen. MGM Pictures, 1977.

Badia, Janet. Private Details, Public Spectacles: Sylvia Plath's and Anne Sexton's
Confessional Poetics and the Politics of Reception. PhD diss., Ohio State
University, 2000.
Carruth, Hayden. 'In Spite of Artifice.' Review of Live or Die, by Anne Sexton.
The Hudson Review 19 (Winter 1966-7): 689-98.
Dickey, James. Babel to Byzantium: Poets and Poetry Now. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1968.
- 'Dialogues with Themselves.' Review of All My Pretty Ones, by Anne Sexton.
New York Times, 28 April 1963: 50.
Gullans, Charles. 'Poetry and Subject Matter: From Hart Crane to Turner
Cassity.' Review of Live or Die, by Anne Sexton. Southern Review 6 (Spring
1970): 497-8.
Hardwick, Elizabeth. 'On Sylvia Plath.' In Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia
Plath, ed. Paul Alexander, 100-115. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
Howe, Irving. 'Sylvia Plath: A Partial Disagreement.' Harper's, January 1972:
88-91.
Hughes, Ted. Letter. 'The place where Sylvia Plath should rest in peace.'
(London) Guardian, 20 April 1989: n.p.
254 Janet Badia

Martin, Carrie. "There are more important things than judgment involved":
James Dickey's Criticism of Anne Sexton and the Search for Self.' The James
Dickey Newsletter 15:2 (Spring 1997): 17-24.
Morgan, Robin. Monster: Poems. New York: Random House, 1972.
Parnaby, Julia, and Rachel Wingfield. Letter. (London) Guardian 7 April 1989:
n.p.
Sexton, Anne. Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. Ed. Linda Gray Sexton and
Lois Ames. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
10 Things I Hate About You. Dir. Giljunger. Touchstone Pictures, 1999.
Wolitzer, Meg. Sleepwalking. New York: Random House, 1982.
Wood, Susan. 'Words for Dr. Y: Uncollected Poems by Anne Sexton.' Review of
Words for Dr. Y., by Anne Sexton. Washington Post Book World, 15 October 1978:
E3.
Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
- Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. New York: Riverhead Books,
1994.
11 The 'Talking Life' of Books:
Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club

MARY R. LAMB

Reading is solitary, but that's not its only life. It should have a talking life as
well.
- Toni Morrison

Feminist scholars from a range of fields have written about The Oprah
Winfrey Show to determine its feminist significance. Some argue for the
talk show's feminist work, some for the limits of this feminist work.1 In
September 1996, Winfrey launched Oprah's Book Club, her first tele-
vised book club, which featured approximately one book a month until
April 2002, when the original club ended. She initiated a new 'classics'
version of the club in February 2003 and soon after announced John
Steinbeck's East of Eden as the first work of the revived club. While both
book clubs complicate the task of assessing the potential feminist work
of her show, in this essay I will focus specifically on the cultural work of
the original club, examining Winfrey's performance as the book club's
host and the construction of women readers that emerges from the dis-
cussions she moderated.
Although the original book club has received enormous popular
attention, it is only beginning to be studied by academic scholars. R.
Mark Hall, for example, observes the importance of 'individual and cul-
tural advancement' in Winfrey's literacy practices (646). While Hall
notes that Winfrey succeeds as a 'literacy sponsor' for her promise of
uplift, he also argues that she overlooks the complex aspects of literacy,
namely, the relationship between literacy, race, and power in America
(662). Missing from Hall's account are the gendered implications of
Winfrey's popular version of literacy, implications that John Young
256 Mary R. Lamb

begins to examine. He argues that 'we should consider Toni Morrison's

appearances on "Oprah's Book Club" as a register for the new cultural
avenues Winfrey has created for Morrison and other women writers of
color' (4). In other words, Oprah's club deserves attention because
through it, she created a popular cultural space for celebrating women
writers, including women writers of colour. It also deserves attention for
its performance and celebration of reading practices aimed at an audi-
ence constituted primarily of women. Indeed, Winfrey blended rhetori-
cal strands from primarily white American women's oral consciousness-
raising as well as African-American women's rhetorical oral tradition to
celebrate the importance of reading. While she popularized and advo-
cated literacy as empowering and transformative, her performance of
reading limited women's reading practices in troubling ways. Specifi-
cally, her show advocated for women readers a reading practice conso-
nant with a mediated, apolitical version of consciousness-raising that
emphasizes individual adjustment to social ills rather than critical imag-
ining of social alternatives.
For each televised meeting of the original book club, Winfrey selected
a few readers from viewers who wrote in about their experiences read-
ing the novel. Those selected attended a dinner party with the author
where they also discussed the novel. Segments of the dinner party were
then aired on the show. In addition to discussion of the novels them-
selves, the book club episodes devoted considerable airtime to reading
practices in general. For example, on 18 October 1996, Winfrey
describes Toni Morrison's response to her query about whether it is cus-
tomary for readers to have so much difficulty with texts that they have to
go over and over the words: 'That, my dear, is called reading' ('New-
born' 24). Discussing Paradise, the second Morrison novel chosen for
the club, Morrison responds to Winfrey's insecurity about the necessity
of a study group to understand the novel: 'Novels are for talking about
and quarreling about and engaging in some powerful way ... Reading is
solitary, but that's not its only life. It should have a talking life, a dis-
course that follows' ('Book Club' 9). Winfrey's venue, then, emphasized
the 'discourse that follows' rather than the texts themselves, primarily
because her televised venue could highlight and promote only certain
aspects of reading even as it celebrated reading in general. Thus, Win-
frey demonstrates that rather than thwart print literacy, electronic
media might simply shape what properties of reading are emphasized,
in this case the social, rhetorical aspects of reading and its role in
women's self-improvement.
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 257

Rhetorical Reading

Winfrey's literary interpretation engages in what Kenneth Burke calls

the rhetorical parlour of ideas, in this case, pertinent cultural conversa-
tions on feminism typifying our era (110-11). Steven Mailloux persua-
sively expands Burke's premise in his rhetorical history of texts, defining
rhetoric as the 'political effect of trope and argument' (59), a definition
I use here to illustrate the cultural context and political implications of
the gendered claims in Winfrey's interpretation. Rhetoric, then, is a
framework for describing the political effect of Winfrey's 'trope and
argument' in her book club, an effect that popularizes a version of the
woman reader and her literacy practices. In this way, I move beyond the
common reader response topos of examining how texts produce read-
ers to how Winfrey's interpretive rhetoric produces women readers.
Since, as Janice Peck notes, 76 per cent of Winfrey's audience are eigh-
teen years of age and older (134), it is clear that her rhetoric is primarily
aimed at women. In addition, she develops her rhetorical ethos as a
woman speaking to other women about similar problems. One premise
for this study, then, is that Winfrey's literary interpretation both reflects
and shapes ideas about gender. Indeed, Patrocinio P. Schweickart
argues for such rhetorical properties of interpretation when she urges
us to recognize 'validity not as a property inherent in an interpretation
[but] rather as a claim implicit in the act of propounding an interpreta-
tion' (56). Schweickart's rhetorical view argues that 'validity is contin-
gent on the agreement of others' and frames the problem for feminism
in general and feminist literary criticism in particular as one of persua-
sion and assent (56). According to this view, since Winfrey acts as a pop-
ulist critic who interprets books in hopes of garnering a large audience
of women, her popular success indicates not necessarily audience agree-
ment with all her claims, but rather audience interest in the cultural
values and issues discussed.3 In this scheme, Winfrey's rhetoric both
reflects social attitudes and constructs her ideal woman reader as emo-
tional, relational, and inexperienced with complex literature, reading
primarily for the improvement of self and family.
Winfrey's program raises generic expectations about the book club
and, subsequently, shapes the rhetorical possibilities of Winfrey's ideal
woman reader. As Lynn Spigel explains, daytime television program-
ming facilitates 'women's work,' the cultural work traditionally associ-
ated with women, which includes their constant selfrimprovement for
the betterment of family, self, and society and the increasing profession-
258 Mary R. Lamb

alization of their roles as wife, mother and, often today, career woman.
The economic drive of television replicates Betty Friedan's claims that
the media of the 1950s capitalized on (white, middle-class) housewives'
'guilt over the hidden dirt' (217) in order to secure an audience who
needs the advertisers' 'solutions' (products) to their 'problems.' While
today television producers recognize roles for women other than that
of homemaker, they nevertheless aim advertising and programming
towards women who try simultaneously to be professional mothers,
wives, and paid workers. Indeed, Elayne Rapping explains that 'advice
makes up most of the daytime programming between 10 a.m. and 5
p.m. - after the men and kids leave ... To view these shows is to be aston-
ished at what women are expected to integrate and absorb. While men
are to be informed and children handled, women must do, do, do'
(134). Because the book club operated within this televisual genre tradi-
tionally reserved for people doing women's work, it is not surprising to
find that Winfrey's rhetoric advocates literacy as a means for improving
women's lives.
In addition to its televisual constraints, Winfrey's potential cultural
work is limited by social expectations about book clubs and public
speaking about literature. Crucial here is that Winfrey calls her project
a 'book club,' evoking all the cultural connotations of such a reading
experience. In many ways, because of her media-created membership
and wide, geographically dispersed audience, the club functions like
the Book of the Month Club or a book list, such as those created by
the New York Times Book Review or Women's Review of Books. While analy-
sis of how the club functions in this regard is warranted, in this essay I
analyse the rhetorical performance of Winfrey's book discussions dur-
ing her televised dinner party and with her studio audience to illumi-
nate the literacy she advocates. This performance is similar to the face-
to-face clubs Elizabeth Long notes have been in America since 1813,
when women in Charlestown, Massachusetts, met to discuss literature
('Women' 591). At the turn of the century, book clubs grew out of the
women's club movement and perpetuated the cultural work of the
clubs (Long, 'Women,' 591). Today, although more men are joining
book clubs to offset limiting, specialized jobs, club members are still
predominantly made up of women, who focus primarily on the per-
sonal growth and social interaction literature brings (Long, Textual,'
498). Familiar with this pragmatic use of literature for personal and
social interaction, Winfrey grew up speaking in her church and recit-
ing poetry, which continues a tradition Shirley Wilson Logan has
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 259

traced in her work on nineteenth-century African-American women

who spoke out against social subordination.
While Winfrey's discussion draws on these cultural precedents, it is
also shaped by televisual characteristics. In fact, Dixon argues 'this com-
bining and blurring of genres is Oprah's highest achievement' (173). In
Winfrey's mediated club, readers become 'members' by watching the
program after reading the book; they may even join virtual conversa-
tions on her web site. Thus, Winfrey simulates the experience of a face-
to-face book club, drawing on what Janice Peck calls television's 'medi-
ated intimacy,' its ability to create a sense of 'intimacy and immediacy'
that produces a sense of participation rather than passive viewing in the
audience ('Mediated' 137). In fact, drawing on historical book club
practices and television's intimacy, Winfrey encouraged readers in the
club to recognize the social, intimate aspects of reading rather than the
solitary ones usually associated with reading. Her emphasis on sharing
books over food further reinforces social interaction, conjuring images
of the African griot sharing oral stories replete with communal knowl-
edge and women talking around kitchen tables rather than individuals
reading silently in isolated study carrels in the library. Her discussion
focused on recipes, historical information, and readers' responses
rather than on the actual text primarily because of historical precedent
and because she recognized this social aspect of reading was more easily
televised than textual exegesis and private reading. Nevertheless, Win-
frey's televised reading clearly seeks to offset the isolation of print liter-
acy with the simulated intimacy of television. Underscoring this quality
of her book club, Winfrey said that 'books connect us and bring us all
closer' ('Oprah's,' 25 September 1998, 3), an interpersonal quality of
book clubs that Peck argues media simulate. Similarly, in defending her
treatment of literature against critics - including David Streitfeld at The
Washington Post who accused her of including too much about food and
not enough about books - Winfrey retorted, 'Just like books, food is a
shared experience' ('Oprah's,' 22 September 1997, 12). Following Win-
frey's lead, women readers approach the books with a sense of immedi-
acy and emotional involvement and anticipate discussion with others,
either on the show itself, virtually on web message boards and discussion
groups, or vicariously by watching the show. Thus, Winfrey's club posits
women as social and relational rather than solitary readers. In con-
structing women readers in this way, Winfrey's rhetoric further suggests
that novels can actually draw families together since reading can be a
shared, social activity - a suggestion that not only mitigates any guilt
260 Mary R. Lamb

women might feel because they are spending time away from their fam-
ily but also reinforces social norms that women are first and foremost
relational beings obligated to various familial demands. In line with
women's 'work,' then, Winfrey invites women readers not to read as an
escape from their problems, as Janice Radway argues women romance
readers do, but as a way to adjust to their problems and to improve self
and family.

American Feminist Consciousness-Raising

This cultural work of sustaining community and familial connections

evokes for readers the feminist historical precedent of women meeting
together to share personal stories and experiences - feminist conscious-
ness-raising. Consciousness-raising, a practice prevalent in the late 1960s
and 1970s, grew out of the idea that social change would happen if
women could merely recognize that their personal frustrations and
problems result from systemic sexism rather than their personal weak-
ness or misfortune.4 The practice is also associated with religious testify-
ing and the African-American civil rights movement, both of which
assume the primacy of sharing personal experience. In fact, in her study
of African-American women's literacy practices, Jacqueline Jones Roys-
ter notes, 'bearing witness functions vibrantly in the creation of a "true"
and honorable self. A valuing of "truth," "authenticity," and the "genu-
ine" creates a pathway that is knowable, and it makes transformative
power available for the writer and for her audiences' (67). Sharing per-
sonal experience was central to the form of consciousness-raising devel-
oped by the New York Radical Women that achieved greatest popular
praxis for the women's movement. The Redstockings split from the New
York Radical Women and further codified consciousness-raising prac-
tices. The Redstockings Manifesto' proposed developing a 'female class
consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the
sexist foundations of all our institutions,' but the practice was troubled
from the beginning both by its own tendency to universalize its shared
experiences to all women, thus eliding differences among women, and
by critics who called it apolitical and ineffectual (535). Nevertheless,
consciousness-raising helped spread feminist ideas and enlarged the
women's movement. The belief in the importance of sharing individual
experience, the awareness of women as a class of people, and the con-
current recognition of the limited political efficacy of these ideas
achieved vast cultural currency.
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 261

Salient here for assessing Winfrey's interpretive claims are conscious-

ness-raising's rhetorical properties - discursive practices aimed at
attitudinal persuasion through the sharing of personal experience. Con-
sciousness-raising seeks first to persuade to a state of mind or attitude
rather than to a certain political position or course of action. In her essay
delineating a rhetorical genre of women's liberation, Karlyn Kohrs
Campbell argues that '"consciousness raising" is a rhetorical mode of
interaction or a type of rhetorical transaction uniquely adapted to the
rhetorical problem of feminist advocacy' (78). According to Campbell,
the rhetorical features that achieve consciousness-raising include use of
'affective proofs and personal testimony,' 'participation and dialogue,'
'self-revelation and self-criticism,' the shared goal of 'autonomous deci-
sion making through self-persuasion,' and techniques for 'violating the
reality structure' (82). The personal stories of particular oppression cen-
tral to consciousness-raising function rhetorically to 'translate public
demands into personal experience and to treat threats and fears in con-
crete, affective terms' (83). These strategies are similar to Winfrey's read-
ing strategies, which advocate reading as a form of consciousness-raising.
In fact, many consciousness-raising goals and strategies - especially
those focused solely on personal improvement - permeate mainstream
fiction, film, and popular media. Television mediates much of our expe-
rience with public and political life, including feminism, with its pre-
dominant argumentative narrative mode.5 In particular, Lisa Maria
Hogeland, in her analysis of the consciousness-raising novel's role in the
women's movement, locates talk shows as 'one of the primary arenas in
United States culture for the self-help versions of "soft" CR' (163).
According to Hogeland, 'soft' consciousness-raising validates personal
experience without theorizing it, while 'hard' consciousness-raising the-
orizes women's oppression in order to promote political action (27).
Although Winfrey's book discussion often simulates some consciousness-
raising moves, her rhetoric repeatedly advocates reading as soft con-
sciousness-raising. To illustrate the feminist implications of how these
strategies operate in Winfrey's venue and how they construct women
readers, I will analyse a variety of transcripts from the book club episodes.
However, I will focus mostly on the club's discussion of The Reader, written
by German author Bernhard Schlink. The novel traces the sexual roman-
tic relationship between a fifteen-year-old boy, Michael, and his middle-
aged lover, Hannah, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard. The novel's
themes are Michael's coming of age and his experience learning of Han-
nah's past during her trial for war crimes. Although the novel is not
262 Mary R. Lamb

explicitly feminist in content or theme, Winfrey's discussion calls forth a

community of women readers and encourages reading strategies conso-
nant with an apolitical form of consciousness-raising.

Reading Women in Winfrey's Book Club

Winfrey's interpretive claims draw on affective proofs and personal testi-

mony, important rhetorical moves in consciousness-raising designed to
validate individual experience. Performing this testimonial element of
consciousness-raising, Winfrey often features authors on her show and
treats novels as evidence of their lives shared for the benefit of readers.
One example of this is the 18 November 1996 episode featuring Toni
Morrison. Winfrey, delightfully nervous about Toni Morrison's visit to
the book club dinner at her house, rhetorically enlists the audience in
viewing Morrison as a celebrity. Despite the fact that they are good
friends, Winfrey gazes into the camera, paces across the stage, and says,
'She's here! Agh! She's here. I don't know, shall we salute? What should
we do?' ('How'd They Do That?' 12). Later, Winfrey shifts from treating
Morrison as a celebrity to treating her as an average person sharing her
personal experience with the audience. For example, Winfrey explains
that Morrison's house burned on Christmas morning just weeks after
the author won the Nobel Prize. Emphasizing the author's connection
to her audience, Winfrey explains that '[t]he original MS of Song" was
gone. But like Milkman [Dead], it, too, has learned to fly. From the
burned ashes of Toni's home to a place where it always belonged, the
best-seller list' (13). Winfrey follows through on the notion of the novel
as shared experience with readers, noting, 'To give it a new life that is
larger than its original life is a revolution' (13). While Winfrey empha-
sizes an author's ideas being shared with others, her rhetorical strategy
of celebrating readers' participation advocates a personal relationship
between readers and authors. Morrison creates, but the audience's read-
ing brings the novel to full fruition - it becomes 'more' than original.
Further remarking on this co-creation, Morrison muses: 'Oh, I love to
hear it when they say this remarkable thing: "I had to read every word."
And I always wanted to say, 'Yeah - and I had to write every word"' (13).
Winfrey gently chides, 'that, my dear, is called writing' (16). As this one
episode illustrates, readers are encouraged to view novels as 'personal
testimony' from authors, with whom they are in conversation. Conse-
quently, Winfrey emphasizes women's affective relationship with texts as
extensions of authors' lives, an important consciousness-raising use of
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 263

fiction. The positive result is that Winfrey fosters women readers who
view books as gifts from the author to be experienced in dialogue rather
than as self-contained objects for consumption.
Unfortunately, Winfrey denies the complexity of readers' responses by
staging simplistic interpretive questions that not only retain an audience
eager to hear the next response, but also limit the consciousness-raising
potential that occurs during the discussion or in readers' minds later. In
'hard' consciousness-raising, the tension between conflicting interpreta-
tions might provoke theorizing or testing out claims based on individual
experience against larger social institutions and experiences. Here, how-
ever, television's qualities thwart this type of theorizing and instead pro-
vide the requisite solvable dilemma that retains viewers interrupted by
childcare and housework. In addition, in order to produce viewable
action and conflict, Winfrey stages hermeneutic questions that the
author can answer, such as when she queries author Alice Hoffman about
whether the latter intentionally 'writes about women getting lost and find-
ing their way back' ('Oprah's,' 9 April 1998, 12). Hoffman, however,
resists using authorial intention as a standard for interpretive claims,
explaining, 'I didn't kind of plan for things to happen. These characters
just took over and things happened' (12). Hoffman continues to posit the
romantic version of authorship: 'my intentions for this book was [sic]
completely different than where it wound up' (20). Winfrey, in turn, is
duly impressed with this version of writing. Her reading paradigm plays
out like this: authors are real people who write books to share with others,
but the texts take on social connotations beyond the control of the
author; readers bring to texts their own experiences and concerns, which
further shape the meaning of the text. Since Winfrey accepts authors'
personal experience to support interpretive claims about books, she must
subsequently accept their word when they insist textual meaning is
beyond their control. Thus, Winfrey encourages women to draw their
own conclusions about textual meaning even as the interpretive dramas
she stages to engage audience interest ultimately constrain interpretive
possibilities. At the same time, her rhetoric construes an uncritical, begin-
ning woman reader who does not examine the suppositions of the fiction
beyond her own personal reaction to the fiction. While this response is a
valuable part of our experience with literature, Winfrey encourages few
variations in emotive responses. Furthermore, she limits responses to
individual feelings and adjustment to problems rather than critical, imag-
inative readings that might lead women to transform their worlds.
Similarly, Winfrey's emphasis on novels as authors' testimony advo-
264 Mary R. Lamb

cates the consciousness-raising goal of violating the reality structure by

providing positive examples of women's achievements despite social
restrictions, but the move falls short of achieving its full potential.
According to Campbell, women's liberation rhetoric uses 'confronta-
tive, non-adjustive strategies designed to "violate the reality structure"'
(81). These strategies 'violate the norms of decorum, morality, and
"femininity"' (81). In Winfrey's version, although she venerates authors'
craft and the labour of their accomplishments, she tends to praise tradi-
tional notions of feminine attributes rather than challenge our think-
ing about these qualities. For example, her hyperbolic celebration of
authors' writing as personal accomplishment casts in sharp relief the
material conditions of women writers, who often face duties as primary
caregivers of children, and reiterates the importance of women's voices
in our literary and cultural conversations.6 This hyperbole is evident in
Winfrey's decision to host Jacqueline Mitchard, who wrote Deep End of
the Ocean as a widow with five children to support, as well as in her con-
versation with Morrison when she emphasizes that Morrison wrote while
raising her two sons. Morrison herself shares that her son spit up orange
juice on the manuscript: 'and I distinctly remember writing around it
because I thought I had this really perfect sentence that might not come
back if I stopped and wiped up his puke' ('How'd They Do That?' 13).
Reiterating feminist work that describes the particular working condi-
tions of women, Winfrey downplays inspiration and talent and instead
praises Morrison's 'resolve' for receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in
1993. Morrison agrees: 'It's remarkable. A young black girl growing up
in a steel town in the Depression goes on to win the Nobel Prize. That is
a story' (13). Here, Winfrey encourages women to 'violate the reality
structure' by lauding oppositional examples of women's success despite
a racist, sexist society. However, her valorization of women who manage
to do more than full-time childcare may merely reinforce stereotypes
that women - and only women - are responsible for childcare, a cultural
belief still evident in child-rearing practice despite the women's move-
ment and slowly shifting attitudes about men's roles in child rearing.
Even when she praises Wally Lamb, one of the few male writers in the
club, for writing between folding laundry and picking up children from
school, she does so as a laudable exception to social practices, which, in
turn, reinforces the stereotype that women are 'naturally' more nurtur-
ing. Although her emphasis on women's accomplishments may indeed
inspire some viewers to reconsider entrenched stereotypical attitudes,
the strategy most likely simply reinforces gendered thinking patterns
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 265

that women are responsible for childcare. While Winfrey's essentializing

move might have been laudable and progressive two or more decades
ago, today, given the current cultural climate, her strategy resounds with
the post-feminist premise identified by Bonnie J. Dow that 'patriarchy is
gone and has been replaced by choice' (95). In such a scenario, femi-
nism's systemic analysis is unnecessary since problems women face can
be overcome by personal choices alone.
Another way Winfrey advocates but fails to deliver on violating the
reality structure is through her creation of female class consciousness
that homogenizes rather than complicates our notions of gender and
gendered literacy practices. Indeed, as Hogeland argues, consciousness-
raising's goal to create class consciousness as women has been achieved
and permeates all of culture; but this consciousness is often used to cre-
ate marketing niches rather than to propel creative alternatives to
restrictive social institutions. For example, Winfrey celebrates the 'valid-
ity of personal experience,' but features only mass-produced and thus
limited variations of this experience. She does this in part by excluding
from the discussion responses that indicate cognitive difficulty in decod-
ing the text, and instead privileges difficulty brought about by the inten-
sity of emotional investment the novel is likely to arouse in readers. For
instance, she announces Mitchard's novel with a caveat: 'It's really
intense. It's not like beach reading. Mother's worst nightmare' ('Preg-
nant' 23). However, for many readers, the novel is perfect beach read-
ing not because of content but because of its straightforward narrative
and adherence to the tenets of realism. Here, she denies the possibility
that readers might actually have cognitive difficulty reading the text and
circumscribes her audience by assuming shared values of emotional
investment with the narrative. When one reader does not find the novel
as intense as she did annoying because of the main character's self-
absorbed, egocentric mourning at the expense of her other children,
Winfrey fails to address this complication of stereotypical feminine car-
ing. Rather, she maintains the novel's 'difficulty' based on the emo-
tional work of empathizing with Beth's predicament. Even as she
foregrounds empathy and introspection, she limits possible responses to
stereotypically feminine emotions, excluding others such as anger, frus-
tration, and indignation. Furthermore, she elides other types of literacy
practices, like intellectual challenge or critique of America's ideology of
motherhood. By limiting these responses, Winfrey assumes the role of
women in society is unchangeable though individual women can alter
their emotional responses to this role.
266 Mary R. Lamb

Although Deep End of the Ocean lends itself to addressing an audience

of women who share experiences similar to those of its female protago-
nist, Winfrey also elicits gendered responses to novels with male protag-
onists, such as Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. While the novel focuses
on a male protagonist 'reading' the life of his female lover, in the show
featuring The Reader Winfrey rhetorically creates an audience of women
who experience social problems similar to those in the novel. First, she
frames the novel in terms of a gendered moral dilemma: 'He was 15, she
was 36, a forbidden affair, one heated book discussion' ('Oprah's,'
31 March 1999, 1). Next, she dissolves geographic and temporal barri-
ers by airing clips from readers (mostly women) over the past three
years from all over the world, including Australia, the Caribbean, Can-
ada, South Africa, and Zambia (1-2). In addition to assuming common
concerns across geographic and political boundaries, she creates an
audience based on gendered emotional responses by highlighting
points from the previous month's discussion of Jewel, a novel about a
mother's relationship with a daughter inflicted with Down's syndrome.
These clips air responses from parents - all women - who gave up a
child with Down's syndrome for adoption. Reinforcing the gendered
rhetorical community who share maternal feelings, Winfrey brings the
discussion back to The Reader, stating: 'Nobody ever says this - they never
say this - and I think I've heard just about everything - and [Schlink is]
probably going to get a lot of letters, I'm sure' and 'From - a lot of
women who feel - feel like [the characters] do' (3). Here, Winfrey
frames the theme of the current novel, The Reader, by reminding the
audience of the previous selection, Jewel, an uncommon tactic on the
show that works to focus the cultural work of The Reader in gendered
terms -judging the morality of the relationship from a woman's point
of view. Thus, Winfrey posits her women readers as capable of only
certain responses and interested in only 'women's issues' related to
mothers raising sons.
Again, this 'class consciousness' as women is precisely what feminist
consciousness-raising hopes to instil. Winfrey's rhetoric proffering
books for an audience of women who are suffering, lonely, and in need
of the companionship of books seems to lead to the first goal of
consciousness-raising: the recognition that patriarchal practices hurt
women. However, if Winfrey's discussion evokes a community of women
readers who share similar anxieties and problems, it does not analyse
the problems in terms of either biological imperative or patriarchal or
misogynist social practices. Rather, her discussion assumes women's suf-
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 267

fering as inevitable and proffers the solution of reading for personal

growth as a means of individual emotional adjustment to social prob-
lems. Furthermore, because Winfrey performs a form of mediated con-
sciousness-raising typical of talk shows, which, Hogeland argues, retain
'tight control' over performances that air only 'analyses of individual
pathology' (164), any systemic analysis that may result from individual's
sharing stories is glossed over in favour of individual emotional
responses to novels. In other words, even when Winfrey does suggest a
social 'cause' of women's suffering in the form of the episode's theme,
she does not suggest a cure beyond individual adjustment, achieved in
this case through reading, nor does she provide a social or aesthetic
framework for arriving at interpretations of the reading. This lack of
analytical framework for assessing the narratives in the novels as well as
those of the guests and audience may perpetuate what Donald Lazere
calls 'a mood of at least passive assent' to the current oppressions facing
Americans (292). As a reading strategy, this means that Winfrey posits
the importance of individual interpretation while her mediated version
fails to give full play to these interpretations.
In the case of The Reader, this tactic of both praising individual read-
ings while simultaneously limiting the possibilities of such readings is
evident as Winfrey models using books for deepening self-knowledge
but then fails to fully debate the moral, social, or political implications
of such an interpretive premise. For instance, after reading from a letter
by two schoolteachers who call her choice of The Reader 'reckless'
because the novel is about a fifteen-year-old boy who has an affair with a
thirty-six-year-old woman ('Oprah's,' 31 March 1999, 5), she simply
states her personal belief rather than argue her case:

I - I - you know, I expected all of this, but you know, I've been around - I
have been a reader for a long time. This is all I have to say about it. And
there are lots of things that I have read about - racism, devastation, horri-
ble things happen to people in many books that I read that I consider to be
part of the literature landscape. But I don't, you know, disown them or not
embrace them because they are stories that are not comfortable for me to
hear. That's all I have to say about that. (6)

Here, her rebuttal admirably denies the 'censorship' approach to litera-

ture and posits the reader's role in constructing and resisting 'lessons'
and meanings, but she also refuses debate about social or political
frameworks for interpreting novels. Instead, she assumes an extreme
268 Mary R. Lamb

individualism that posits readers as active participants rather than help-

less imitators of books who read stories that 'are not comfortable for us.'
However, Winfrey does not encourage the expanded discussion that
such active participation elicits. For example, to illustrate her version of
active reading during the discussion of The Reader, Winfrey features a
comment from a reader who was 'bothered' by the relationship but who
'had a better appreciation of it after our book club discussed it' (6).
Rather than use the cognitive and emotional dissonance novels produce
to critique social practices or imagine social alternatives, however, Win-
frey's rhetoric merely suggests readers adjust emotionally, using books as
one means of personal change. In this way, she locates the interpretive
work with the readers - determination of textual lessons and their
morality - but also disallows debating a social or moral context that
might help readers make sense of the fictional claims.
In addition to curbing discussion about the complexity of moral,
political, or social issues, Winfrey limits consciousness-raising's theoriz-
ing potential by discouraging debates about the exact tenor and artistic
casing of meaning. Her performance determines both the issues in the
book open for discussion and the type of acceptable responses to these
issues, even as she ostensibly praises individual reactions. After two read-
ers criticize The Readers choppy style and lack of imagery, Winfrey
returns to the moral dilemma, noting, 'You can love the book without
loving the relationship' (6), and features a woman who articulates Win-
frey's reading theory:

Because I'm German ... And that was the first time something really, really
made me think about what my family did, what my relatives did, what my
grandparents did ... I didn't read books about it. And now I'm very,
very interested and I've started asking my father questions. I've asked him
about - my grandfather who served in the war with - with - with the army
and I - I - for that reason, I thought it was a wonderful book. (7)

Winfrey reinforces this affective reading response, saying 'well, if

[Schlink] just did that, that is - well, then it doesn't matter if she didn't
like it ... or thought it was choppy or what - after that' (7). Here, the
interpersonal use takes precedence over stylistic and formal consider-
ations of the book. Notice also that because Winfrey's normative state-
ment dismisses a reader's response to the novel's formal qualities,
Winfrey assumes 'meaning' is a stable quality of the novel. Winfrey
elides readers' responses that indicate any reading other than 'realistic'
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 269

ones, thus advocating this strategy for women readers. Further, Win-
frey's interpretation delineates the tenor of the 'realistic' knowledge
that readers should apply to personal problems. In fact, it is not uncom-
mon for Winfrey to stop encouraging open-ended responses when she
has an approach she would like to reinforce. During the discussion of
The Reader, for example, she asks four open-ended questions to the audi-
ence, four to Schlink. Of the four posed to the audience, about half ask
for general reactions; the others pose a specific issue. Twice she asks the
audience 'Why?' and once she elicits examples with 'Like?' However,
eleven of her questions require only yes/no or factual data as answers.
Eleven other questions merely repeat what people have said or ask for
clarification of their response. In this way, Winfrey constrains a sus-
tained discussion of the issue, here society's complicity in the Holocaust
and other atrocities.
A clear example of how Winfrey exercises control over the discussion
occurs when she reinforces one woman's response to the novel because
it suggests using the novel to explore our reactions to the Holocaust:

Winfrey: So if it made you for the first time, after all that's been written
about the Holocaust...
Woman #17 [self-identified German]: Yes.
Winfrey: ... after the Academy Award ...
Woman #17: Right. Right.
Winfrey: ... and Schindler's - Schindler's List, after everything that's been
written about the th -
Woman #17: I didn't want to watch it. I didn't want to think about it.
Winfrey: You didn't want to, right. But you pick up this book, that's what's
beautiful about a great story.
Woman #17: Right.
Winfrey: ... is it makes you think about them as real people.
Woman #17: Every line, especially in the second half of the book, makes
me think about it. He questions, questions, questions. And I just spent
hours really looking back and thinking about what I had not asked and
what I need to ask.
Winfrey: Well, there you have it. There you have it. My God! (7)

Certainly, this reflective reading strategy is not meant to produce better

or more complex literary interpretations, but rather 'self-persuasion' in
the sense of deeper self-knowledge about moral issues. Moreover,
Winfrey continues to direct readers to engage these moral issues only
270 Mary R. Lamb

on the individual level, asking, 'isn't there a double standard? Now all of
my friends with sons ... felt that it was abuse ... And I think - and in some
European countries, there is a double-double standard in terms of the
seduction of young males' (9-10). Readers follow, debating whether the
relationship is wrong or not. One reader tries to bring up systemic
issues, that boys seem to be 'groomed' for this, but Schlink thwarts dis-
cussion by simply stating that this morality question is only 'in American
discussions' (10). Winfrey does not contradict him or pursue the
reader's comment, as she is wont to do in other discussions if she agrees
with the audience member. In this way, Winfrey discourages readers
from debating either aesthetic grounds for literary judgment or a moral
framework for arriving at a consensus or imaginative alternatives to the
status quo. Instead, since she has excluded any theorizing potential,
what follows is one individual response after another to the moral issue
she has identified. Thus, while Winfrey's discussion admirably praises lit-
erature's ability to induce critical thinking about social issues, it does
not fully model a discussion that encourages such thinking.
From here the discussion of The Reader dissolves into the moral ques-
tion of why Schlink 'made' the boy fifteen (as if Schlink himself
engaged in the affair), thus portraying an unhealthy relationship, until
one reader brings up another moral question - what she would have
done in the Holocaust. The segment ends with Winfrey: 'OK, if you
were a Nazi, I'll let you answer when we come back' (13). After the com-
mercial break, she refocuses the work of the club as individual responses
to social issues: 'OK. We love books because they make you question
yourself. For instance, what would you have done if you lived in Ger-
many during the war, forced to take sides, forced into life and death
dilemmas?' (13). Readers muse on what they might have done in Hit-
ler's Germany, but Winfrey resists closure, stating, 'We don't know the
answer to that question' and 'None of us really knows the answer to that
question' (14). Once again, then, while she encourages reflection on
the issue she has proposed, her relativism offers no moral or rhetorical
framework for adjudicating these narratives, just solicitation after solici-
tation of 'What do you think?' However, she does provide an implicit
means of answering the moral questions raised by The Reader: literacy.
In order to advocate for the importance of reading, Winfrey empha-
sizes the personal and social costs of illiteracy through her treatment of
the novel. In The Reader, Hannah is on trial for war crimes during the
Holocaust. Her young lover Michael, now grown, married, and a lawyer,
attends the trial. Through the proceedings, he learns that Hannah is
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 271

illiterate. Central to the case is a report she 'wrote' that implicates her in
war crimes. Admitting her illiteracy might have expunged her guilt or at
least provided mitigating circumstances, but instead she chooses to hide
her 'shameful' illiteracy. In their discussion of the novel, the audience
debates whether she should have confessed her illiteracy and whether
Michael should have informed the judge in order to save her. In an
apparent non sequitur, Winfrey intervenes: 'But I did - and you're going
to see in Remembering Your Spirit today, I mean, I - we deal with peo-
ple all the time who live with the shame of not being able to read' (15).
After people who are illiterate are 'outed' on a video segment, Winfrey
argues 'it frees them' (15). When a reader tries to continue to debate
the moral implications of the trial, Winfrey concludes discussion by sim-
ply agreeing, 'that would have been the best thing' (15). What follows is
a series of exchanges between Schlink and Winfrey that more or less
close down the debate because Winfrey has another agenda: 'OK, OK,
OK, another question. When did you first know - when did you first
know that she couldn't read?' (16). One reader resists Winfrey's tactic
and attempts to pursue the moral debate, protesting vehemently ('as a
black person') that illiteracy 'does not absolve you from losing your
humanity' (16). However, Winfrey disallows the debate by focusing on
the 'psychic energy' and 'the secret' of illiteracy.
Since she is constrained by the televisual genre, she focuses on the
quick solution - praising individual growth through literacy - without a
discussion of the cultural and economic variables of literacy acquisition.
To promote her ideal reader, she features John, who agrees with her.
John praises the book for its questions and for its being 'unsettling'
(18). When Winfrey repeats, 'What would you have done?' (18), readers
shade their answer with the previous discussion about literacy, illustrat-
ing they have learned from Winfrey's rhetoric. One reader, for example,
admits that illiteracy may have affected Hannah's moral choice: 'And
then the other part was not being able to read. I don't know what I'd
ever do if I - I wasn't able to read because when I - I saw that she
couldn't read, I just closed the book and I had tears in my eyes' (18).
Another offers that 'being German,' she knows she would have followed
orders because German children are 'brought up' 'following rules, not
questioning' (19), implying that literacy is a necessary first step to 'read-
ing' authority and questioning moral assumptions. After showing sev-
eral people who admit they cannot read, Winfrey praises one as an
'inspiration for everybody who thinks they can't turn their life around
or can't change. I can't imagine what it is to start to learn to read at 98'
272 Mary R. Lamb

(20). Since the moral and social costs of illiteracy are so great, Winfrey
offers literacy as a means for women to participate fully in democratic
(and moral and ethical) society. Clearly, then, Winfrey sees moral and
social benefits in this version of literacy in which women readers use
novels only as means of personal adjustment to endemic social ills. Since
the framework in which she works, though, remains solidly relative and
individualistic, the practices are not likely to lead directly to creative
imaginings of political alternatives.
Beyond The Reader, Winfrey encourages this populist literacy through
support systems and philanthropy, a valuable liberal-feminist approach
that emphasizes working within social systems to improve equal access to
social means of power.8 For her 22 September 1997 anniversary show,
Winfrey included both celebrity and noncelebrity guests who testify that
Winfrey's support inspired reading: 'It's been 20 years since I read a
novel'; 'I just want to tell you it's the first time I've read a book in about
12 years' ('Oprah's'). Foregrounding the social impact of her book
club, Winfrey says:

We got readers. We changed the face of the best-seller list. Troubled little
girls from Ruth [Book of Ruth] to Delores [She's Come Undone] to Trudy
[Stones from the River] were transformed to literary lions. You-all made it
happen, and the book world took notice. In late summer, our humble book
club got as big as life. Who knew? ... So to honor everybody who bought or
checked out a book last year and to ring in our second year, we're having
ourselves a book club anniversary party. Come on in and let's celebrate
books! (2)

Note here that Winfrey emphasizes that 'troubled little girls' now get a
share of popular reading attention. Here, she highlights the democratiz-
ing aspect of literacy for women who may be underrepresented in other
reading communities and its role for subordinate groups as a means of
achieving social success and full participation in existing social systems.

Conclusion

Clearly, Winfrey's original book club both realized and thwarted read-
ing qualities and, subsequently, offered a limited view of women read-
ers. On the one hand, her club popularized reading and literacy on a
mass scale not previously possible and undoubtedly invited many reluc-
tant readers to read more. Admirably, Winfrey's use of emotional
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 273

response revised the mainstream rhetorical proof to include emotive,

personal experience, important qualities in responding to literature. In
this sense, her show indicated the popularization of values and habits
traditionally labelled feminine - a discourse made visible largely
through second-wave feminist efforts but also by an electronic medium
that by its nature exhibits characteristics traditionally labelled femi-
nine. In addition, since she staged various, sometimes contradictory
responses to literature, Winfrey highlighted reading as an active, con-
structive process, an important reading habit especially for less experi-
enced readers. Alternatively, since Winfrey could only perform reading
rhetorically on television, she emphasized only viewable reading proper-
ties. These included discussion and debate about people's reactions to
novels staged in simplistic terms of solvable hermeneutic dilemmas. Fur-
thermore, the televisual necessity of self-improvement that characterizes
the talk show genre means that Winfrey emphasized limited parts of the
texts, which often resulted in didactic, lesson-driven discussions focused
on limited emotional responses. Thus, her emphasis naturally elided
other valuable reading qualities, including critical thinking, concen-
trated observation of printed passages, and textual exegesis. In short,
then, she celebrated debate, but did not model sustained dialogue and
scrutiny of rhetorical appeals; she praised the importance of reading,
but did not teach the critical skills necessary for engaging texts fully; she
recognized the validity of individual experiences, but did not provide
the rhetorical skills needed for adjudicating competing individual
demands on social resources.
The gendered implications for the venue follow from these reading
characteristics. Winfrey's ideal woman reader in the original club per-
formed the traditional cultural work of nurturing family, sustaining
emotional health, and encouraging literacy. While Winfrey's liberal-
feminist work limits our recognition of alternative social structures as
well as differences among women, she nevertheless adapted her rhetori-
cal practice within a powerful medium to celebrate cultural work tradi-
tionally associated with women and to popularize social discourses
related to gender, family structure, and child rearing. Unfortunately,
since televised reading must focus on discussion and staged dilemmas,
the woman reader modelled here reinforced social attitudes that
women are more relational and emotional than men. Certainly, Win-
frey's rhetorical reading strategies reinforced these qualities, valorizing
important qualities that have been called feminine. However, since Win-
frey aimed her practice at an audience of women, these gendered strate-
274 Mary R. Lamb

gies became normative, perpetuating stereotypes that women alone are

emotional and responsible for interpersonal relationships.
In addition, Winfrey's book discussions tended to focus on inexperi-
enced women readers, thereby construing women as less 'literate' and
needing emotional and interpersonal 'support' for the difficult reading
tasks at hand. Her appeal to nonreaders is also borne out in her show
'Oprah Goes On-Line,' whose premise is that Winfrey's gentle approach
can reach computer neophytes intimidated by the technical complexity
of the web. Since her network is dubbed 'Television for Women,' we
again are faced with a woman writer similar to Winfrey's original book
club woman reader who is inexperienced and less capable of navigating
technological literacy than men. Certainly, feminist literacy work should
seek to address all types of readers and writers, but Winfrey's media for
women tend to paint us all as barely literate and daunted by technology,
intellectual critique, and critical thinking. Subsequently, she offers little
in the way of aesthetic, moral, or political frameworks - other than gen-
eralized self-help individualism - for helping women read the ideologi-
cal claims in the narratives. Instead, Winfrey's mediated use of fiction as
consciousness-raising - and her subsequent popularity - indicates that
many feminist discourses have reached mainstream media and function
now as entertainment. More troubling, however, is that Winfrey's use
of these strategies and discourses indicates that many women still face
low self-esteem, abusive relationships, and thwarted opportunities. In
response to these systemic problems, her mediated club advocated little
beyond individual adjustment. As bell hooks argues about Naomi Wolf's
concept of 'power feminism,' Winfrey's club takes part in what hooks
labels as a popular media trend that 'turns the movement away from
politics back to a vision of individual self-help' (98). As such, her work
cannot aim towards the rhetorical work of persuading people to certain
political views or actions or even to the 'joy of feminist transformation'
resulting from visionary and critical thinking (hooks 100).
Although Winfrey's original book club only simulated the barest out-
line of such work, it nevertheless made a cultural space accessible for
women and fostered the realization of the power of narrative to work
through complicated social issues. Further, her approach invited reluc-
tant readers to read more novels about women's experiences and may
have raised women's awareness that 'what were thought to be personal
deficiencies and individual problems are common and shared, a result
of their position as women' (Campbell 79). Since Winfrey encouraged
women to read not for escape but for self-improvement, readers could
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 275

ultimately move beyond the club's simplistic gendered insights to more

complex, critical imaginings about their role in social issues. In this way,
Oprah's original book club laid the groundwork for further critical fem-
inist theorizing by inviting readers to enter the conversation about how
gender, class, power, and education intersect in the personal, social, and
political discourses of their lives.

NOTES

1 For favourable assessments of Winfrey's feminist work, see Haag, Masciarotte,

and Squire. For arguments about the limitations of that work, see Epstein and
Steinberg, Nudelman, Peck, and Shattuc.
2 As of 21 April 2004 works in her new 'classics' book club included Stein-
beck's East of Eden, Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country, Marquez's One Hundred
Years of Solitude, and McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. While the rhetor-
ical work accomplished in this new book club remains to be seen, the club
does seem to extend reading practices beyond emotional responses and har-
nesses the electronic power of the Internet to animate printed text. Links
from the Internet companion to Oprah's book club, such as 'How Do You
Read It,' explain generic, literary, and historical features as well as critical
reception and tips for twenty-first-century readers of classic texts. Even more
delightful is Winfrey's use of visual rhetoric to celebrate, disseminate, and
explain print texts, such as the link for East of Eden that features scenes of the
countryside as words from the novel scroll across the screen and Oprah reads
the text. Thus, rather than thwart print literacy, her electronic rhetoric seems
simply to change some of our reading strategies and our relationships with
texts.
3 I concentrate on her construal of an ideal woman reader within the context of
American third-wave feminism. The episodes air both assent and disagree-
ment to Winfrey's interpretations, producing a staged, collective interpretive
drama for the audience. I do not claim that Winfrey's popularity indicates
audience assent to all the disparate ideas presented on the show or in the nov-
els, but rather the audience's high interest in the social problems treated. For
a discussion of how these ideas function as epideictic rhetoric that is propae-
deutic for political action, see Lamb. Social factors combine with the show's
rhetorical constraints to shape potential meaning and audience reception of
her performance.
The case for a range of audience meanings is made persuasively by a variety
of scholars; see especially Tompkins (122-4 and 147-50) and Radway, Reading
276 Mary R. Lamb

and 'Reading.' In addition, noted television critic John Fiske argues that
'negotiations of meaning' occur in audiences watching television (293); see
also Fiske and Hartley. Analogous to Judith Fetterley's formulation of the
resisting reader, Fiske notes that some readers are 'ideologically cooperative'
and 'read "with" the structure of the text' while others go '"against" the text to
deconstruct the dominant ideology' (297). For an argument about the rhetor-
ical limits of possible audience constructions of meaning, see Celeste Condit's
formulation of 'polyvalence,' whereby audiences agree on the meaning in
texts but not on the value of that meaning. For ethnographic studies of how
readers actually 'use' texts, see Simonds (self-help books), Radway (romance
readers), Heide (television), and Shattuc (television talk shows). This valu-
able ethnographic approach would undoubtedly deepen our understanding
of Winfrey's club. Following Mailloux, however, I provide here a rhetorical
description of Winfrey's practice that is sensitive to cultural and political fac-
tors in order to argue for the potential meaning for her audience.
4 My discussion of consciousness-raising in the women's movement is indebted
to histories of the movement by Alice Echols and Flora Davis, and to Anita
Shreve's history of consciousness-raising.
5 For a fuller discussion of television's narrative argumentative mode, see Berlin
(54),Jamieson (13), Shattuc (89), and Lamb (52-62) and (100-12).
6 Feminist and black literature scholar Barbara Christian decries the current aca-
demic propensity for philosophical theory that denies literature's relationship
to the lives of human beings. This critical discourse, she argues, 'surfaced,
interestingly enough, just when the literature of peoples of colour, of black
women, of Latin Americans, of Africans began to move to "the center"' (151).
Thus, in away, Winfrey's celebration of authors' accomplishments contributes
to Christian's call for affirming language 'as possible communication, and play
with, or even affirmation of another' rather than the current academic cyni-
cism about language's ability to communicate (150).
7 Her celebration of the accomplishments of African-American (Maya Angelou,
Pearl Cleague, Morrison), Haitian-American (Edwidge Danticat), and Ger-
man-American (Ursula Hegi) women writers contributes to the cultural work
of revising racial and gendered stereotypes and encouraging a variety of sto-
ries - the ones of the authors' lives as well as the fictional ones they write.
8 For a discussion of types of American feminism, see Donovan. I locate Win-
frey's political position on women's equality within the Enlightenment liberal
feminist tradition traceable to Mary Wollstonecraft, Sarah Grimke, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and NOW's mission that assumes women are
rational, responsible agents who deserve equal legal and political protection
(Donovan 1-25). More recent feminist work troubles the notion of legal
 Women Readers in Oprah's Book Club 277

equality and suggests broader cultural changes than equal political and eco-
nomic opportunity. For a discussion of how Winfrey's rhetoric draws on this
more recent feminist work valorizing women's epistemology, see Lamb (112-
47).

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Afterword: Women Readers Revisited

KATE F L I N T

In a poem written in the early 1830s, the young aristocrat George

Howard (who was to become seventh Earl of Carlisle in 1848) addresses
an absorbed woman reader:

What is the book, abstracted damsel, say:

The last new novel, or the last new play?
Some tale of love, whose soft and melting tone
Reveals its passion, and recalls thine own,
Thy thoughts diverging as thou readest on ... (89)]

Is she, perhaps, escaping into Walter Scott, 'the wizard of our unen-
chanted age' (89)? Or 'does Cooper lure thee o'er the western deep/
Where red men prowl and boundless prairies sweep' (90)? Perhaps she
is hooked by suspense, wondering if Bulwer Lytton's heroes will escape
hanging; or she may be chilled by the gothic terrors of The Mysteries of
Udolpho; or captivated by the romantic fortunes of Frances Burney's
characters. A more earnest reader might be attracted by Maria Edge-
worth's 'sober humour and serene advice' (91). Other women may be
drawn to Lady Morgan's 'friskier pen' (91), or 'Brunton's high moral,
Opie's deep-wrought grief (91), or 'all perfect Austin' [sic] (91). The
library tour of popular fictional choices concludes with some words of
advice, delivered in an air of mock superiority:

Yet still, whate'er the tale, fond maid take heed

How seldom ill-assorted loves succeed;
Mark well what crosses wait the trusting fair;
List not too rashly to the suitor's prayer,
282 Kate Flint

Calm the wild tumult, probe the vain desire,

And - more than all - don't set the bed on fire. (92)

This feeble rhyme of Howard's final couplet conjoins some of the most
frequently expressed anxieties concerning the Victorian woman reader:
that her imagination, even her expectations, may be stimulated in a way
that is totally incompatible with her daily life; that she will become so
distracted as to ignore the perils of her immediate environment (or, in
other contexts, her duties); and - although I am not sure how far
Howard intended the implication - that she will be dangerously sexually
stimulated by the print she consumes.
Howard's views represent an orthodox position in relation to women
readers in the nineteenth century, an anxiety about woman's use of her
leisure time that, as several contributors to this volume attest, continued
to be aired in the twentieth century. It is a position that, when research-
ing The Woman Reader 1837-1914, I found reiterated time and time
again - in creative writing, in advice manuals, in periodical articles, in
medical handbooks, in memoirs. It was voiced by women as well as men;
it represented an urgent desire not just to monitor behaviour, and the
ingestion of ideas and attitudes and role models, but to wrest control
over subjectivity. Yet at the same time, the practices of individual read-
ers, so far as one can both gain access to, and trust, the autobiographical
accounts of such consumers of print, suggest a very different story.
Reading becomes an avenue for escape, for personal exploration and
expansion, for the acquisition of knowledge: a means of enhancing
one's sense of one's own identity and developing a consciousness of
one's possibilities, both actual and imaginative. This continuous dialec-
tic, between constraint and release, is one that is found many times over
in the pages of this current collection. As these essays amply demon-
strate, this dynamic is not one that disappeared with the nineteenth cen-
tury, nor is it limited to a particular country or to specific class or racial
groups. The icon of the woman reader - whether in the form of an
actual image of an intensely absorbed subject, or invoked as a figure
designed to prompt readerly identification within a text - is an endur-
ing one.
This volume encompasses two centuries of American as well as British
reading practices, and there is plenty of room for future studies to
widen geographical boundaries still further. What - we might ask, for
example - parallels and what contrasts are to be drawn between scenes
of reading in post-colonial contexts and those within countries who
 Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 283

occupy a dominant power position? What ideas about femininity, pro-

priety, and cultural authority are invested in the objections that the par-
ents of the rebellious, anorexic Nyasha, in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous
Conditions, hold towards their daughter reading D.H. Lawrence's Lady
Chatterley's Lover'? '"I read those books at postgraduate level," Maiguru
[her mother] continued. "I know they are not suitable books for you to
read"' (75). Set in Zimbabwe in the late 1960s, this novel, blending
nationalist with familial issues, and hence continually interrogating the
meaning of authority and literal or symbolic parenthood, traces no
developmental model of enlightened attitudes towards reading passing
down a maternal line. Maiguru's apparently thwarted intellectual ambi-
tions have become sublimated into an acceptance of the viewpoints of
her headmaster husband. Or what of the independent travelling, in her
imagination, of Annie John, protagonist of Jamaica Kincaid's first auto-
biographical novel?

My most frequent daydream now involved scenes of me living alone in Bel-

gium, a place I had picked when I read in one of my books that Charlotte
Bronte, the author of my favorite novel, Jane Eyre, had spent a year or so
there. I had also picked it because I imagined that it would be a place my
mother would find it difficult to travel to and so would have to write me let-
ters addressed in this way:
To: Miss Annie Victoria John
Somewhere,
Belgium. (92)

If homebound girls in Britain frequently borrowed their brothers'

adventure books, or read works of travel, in order to stretch their men-
tal surroundings and explore the exotic, what promise, if any, did the
mundanity of Belgium (seen from an English perspective) hold out to
the girl from Antigua? Or are national identities, whether or not filtered
through an imperialist-oriented school syllabus, of less importance than
the very fact of distance? What, indeed, do we know of reading patterns
and their relation to regionalism, whether to Scottish, Welsh, and Irish
identity in the British Isles or to the mixed cultural inheritance of the
American Southwest?
To ask questions like these is to engage with the relationship between
reading and place, in a broad sense: In what ways do texts travel? Does
one read a book differently in a location away from its national or
regional origin, or away from one's own home? How do these issues
284 Kate Flint

intersect with the material history of the book and with patterns of pub-
lishing, distribution, and education?2 More narrowly, we might ask:
What difference does it make to one's reading process if one is consum-
ing a volume in the privacy of one's own room or sharing the reading
with others (as around, say, the Victorian fireside)? What difference
does it make if one anticipates discussing and sharing what one has just
been reading, whether with friends or family, in a reading group (and
this volume draws our attention to the enduring power of the commu-
nal textual consumption and discussion that has taken place in these
diversely formed organizations), or in school or university?
These are questions with implications both for our understanding of
the relationship between individual subjectivity and the politics of the
institution, and for what one might call the phenomenology of reading:
the spatial positioning of the reading body. For if reading is dependent
on the eye - and on occasion the ear - one should perhaps ask about
the extent to which the immediate stimuli of sight or sound (or for that
matter smell) interpenetrate the emotional and cerebral affects of the
text. Whilst this is going to be conjectural at best, in terms of recon-
structing historical reading moments, even reminding oneself of these
variables is a way of opening up the most important fact of all when it
comes to considering reading: the fact of its variability from person to
person. To read a novel, or poem, or book of essays, or scientific study,
or travelogue, or biography (and the variety of responses evoked by such
heterogeneity should never be underestimated) is to engage not just
with the contents, the rhetoric and the conventions of that particular
work, but with the context in which one encounters it - a home, a
snatched moment at work, the domed space of the old British Museum
Reading Room. This context, in turn, is continually in the process of
forming an individual's personal history, establishing the grounds of
her emotional and cultural memory. Cultural memory, in this context,
involves the accumulation and mental arrangement of not just some-
one's experiences, but of her projections and imaginary identifications,
at once similar to those of others who have read the same texts, and
uniquely filtered through, and simultaneously mediating, her own cir-
cumstances and desires.3
It is the nature of these desires, moreover, and the fact that reading
opens up the possibility of exercising these desires in a safe and private
space, that makes the activity potentially transgressive - as so many com-
mentators anxiously noted in alarmist terms that it is dangerously easy
to relish repeating in order to stress the difference between earlier
 Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 285

times and our own. It can be hard, retrospectively, to know quite how
much weight to accord some of the more extravagant apprehensions
about the corrupting power of texts. What, after all, might a commenta-
tor make, a hundred and fifty years from now, about the hysterical
antagonism to Harry Potter and his fellow trainee witches that has been
shown in some quarters? ('Not only do you NOT want to read these
books to your children, you surely do NOT want Public School teachers
assigning these books as required reading; but, Satan surely wants to
condition your precious children to accept his values, his religion, and
his world view' (Cutting Edge Ministries). But as Judy Blume - herself
sometimes banned for what has been seen as the overrealism of her
depiction of the angst and activities of teenage girls in her popular fic-
tion - has put it in the National Coalition Against Censorship's newslet-
ter, 'with Harry Potter, the perceived danger is fantasy.' This has always
been the peg on which would-be normative social authorities have hung
their fears: the possibility that a reader - a woman, a member of the
working classes, one belonging to a presumed-inferior race, a child -
might dare to dream to be otherwise.
To imagine being other than one is involves calling the frames of
one's identity into question. Projecting oneself into a space beyond the
one that one customarily occupies may very well entail the dismantling
of one's borders of gender or race, of temporal period or age, of nation-
ality or religion. It may be a radical gesture - and that is how we often
wish to look at it, particularly if we are hypothesizing women of the past
as constrained by their circumstances - but of course it may also be a
very conservative one, dreaming after the apparent security or ease that
comes with occupying a slot that is well rewarded and highly esteemed
within a particular society. What remains true, however, is that reading
allows one to recognize one's capacity for plurality.
Recognizing plurality, as I have been noting, is a crucial component
of the analysis of reading practices. This volume is valuable, among
many other reasons, for its repeated acknowledgment of the different
motivations and desires that lie behind reading: self-improvement and
education as well as escape, assertion of individuality, and a means of
reaching out to others. Discussing books, moreover, helps to break
down the distinction between speech and writing, and encourages one
to explore the intersections of oral and written forms (as in the consid-
eration of Zora Neale Hurston's autobiographical writing). At the same
time, due weight is given to the fact that the actual effect on readers of a
particular text may be other than that which was hoped for (Uncle Tom's
286 Kate Flint

Cabin failed to promote the concerted political action of which Stowe

dreamed, despite its powerful sentimental affect), or - and Ann Petry's
The Street provides a fictional dramatization of this - reading may lead a
woman to adopt unwieldy or inappropriate role models. The more
detail one has of acts of reading, the harder it becomes to generalize, or,
at the very least, the more cautious one has to be about one's generaliza-
tions. Yet the very diversity of examples discussed here shows that the
fact of gender, however appropriated, or addressed, remains a constant
in much discussion of the practice.
It is in attending to plurality that we find not just the direction of
future research, but our own obligation to our contemporaries, and to
future generations, to record and scrutinize our own reading histories.
In his book The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, Jonathan
Rose has demonstrated the wealth of information to be found in pub-
lished and unpublished autobiographies concerning the sites and oc-
casions of reading, and the availability and impact of texts, in the
Victorian period and the early part of the twentieth century. He notes,
however, how many more of the accounts from working-class people
concerning their reading experiences are by men than by women,
something that was strikingly apparent to me in researching The Woman
Reader. Whilst the reasons for this are easy enough to establish, having to
do not just with literacy patterns but with degrees of comfort in using
the written word and with the backgrounds of those who believe their
lives to have been worthy of record, the fact is nonetheless somewhat
frustrating, even if mitigated by the number of upper-middle-class
women, in particular, who left accounts of their childhood and adoles-
cent - but far less often adult - reading habits. The fact remained, how-
ever, that it was in my own reading of autobiographical accounts, from
whatever quarter, that I felt that I was coming closest to what it was like
to have been a Victorian woman reader (if you like, I was continually
imagining myself into a range of Victorian reading positions). Necessar-
ily I was aware of the pitfalls of autobiography as evidence: the fact that
each individual is framing herself, rewriting her life, for an audience
sometimes of family (many Victorian women's autobiographies are spe-
cifically penned for daughters to read), sometimes of unknown strang-
ers, and almost certainly, at some level, for herself. But whatever the
absolute veracity or otherwise of the experiences recounted, two things
came across very strongly indeed: the extraordinary variety of reading
material consumed by women - often reading two or three very differ-
ent sorts of books simultaneously - and the danger of generalizing
 Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 287

about women readers from the extraordinary variety of responses, pat-

terns of identification, and stimuli to action that were recounted. As
more than one reviewer quite rightly pointed out, in stressing this plu-
rality I effectively undermined the unifying principle suggested by my
own title, The Woman Reader.
Because I acknowledged how imaginatively stimulating, as well as
informative, such autobiographical accounts could be, giving an accu-
mulation of what would be termed in anthropology 'thick description,' I
initially wanted to preface my study with an account of my own reading
history. Whilst, with the recent autobiographical turn in academic
prose, there would not nowadays be anything particularly unusual in
this, I was certainly dissuaded from such personalized rhetoric by my
publisher. As it is, only a trace remains in the Preface, where I describe
how the impetus behind the book came out of my editing Anthony Trol-
lope's Can You Forgive Her? for Oxford University Press's World's Classics
series, and my deliberations around Trollope's purposefully provocative
title. It seemed to me that the question would inevitably be a very differ-
ent one for women and for men in 1864—5, given the lack of parity in
gender expectations, and, indeed, a possible difference in expectations
about how both women and men would respond to what they read.
Researching the context for this novel, I discovered that Trollope had
himself written on the topic of gendered reading difference in two lec-
tures that he delivered shortly after writing Can You Forgive Her?, 'The
Higher Education of Women' (1868), and 'On English Prose Fiction as
a Rational Amusement' (1870). The book, I maintained, took off from
there.
But of course the story went much further back. I find it hard to imag-
ine that I would have been so strongly drawn as I was to the topic of
woman as reader if I had not already possessed a powerful awareness of
the importance of reading not just to the directions that my own intel-
lectual history had taken, but to the very formation of my sense of self,
and to the role that books played in this. Belatedly, therefore, I offer
what I might have said by way of preface to The Woman Reader, and in
doing so, offer an illustration of how any one person's reading history
may be seen to be both of its time and sharply individualized, hence
confirming the insight that I arrived at by the end of my book - and one
reiterated several times in this current volume - that reading's function
is one that is both communal, forging an identity with others, and
extremely personal.
My very early reading probably differed little from that of other
288 Kate Flint

English children in the 1950s who were born into families where their
parents valued and enjoyed books, and where books formed an easily
accessible part of the furnishings of the home. On my first birthday, I
was given a copy of Hans Andersen's fairy tales, inscribed to me and
bearing the legend 'Her first birthday. Her first book.' I was never offi-
cially taught to read, but my mother read aloud to me, following under
each word with her finger, and I picked up the practice easily enough -
certainly before I was three, I had been found reading out loud from
the Times and I had been enrolled in the junior branch of Wimbledon
Public Library. The first book I borrowed - and the first book I can
remember reading for myself - was Phyllis Krasilovsky's The Cow Who Fell
in the Canal. During the summer of my fourth year - my birthday falls in
February - I remember enjoying Winnie the Pooh (given me to keep me
quiet on a long car journey: I sat in the back of the Triumph Mayflower
as we drove from London to North Wales and became familiar with Tig-
ger and Eeyore and Wol) and Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit books.
Thinking back to all of these, I can remember the pictures, but not the
stories: for all that these were books, perhaps my visual sense was being
as strongly formed as my literary one. One thing is certain: I have no
sense of anything being gendered in its appeal, or in its effects, at this
time. My patterns of identification were with animals rather than
humans, and crossed the heavily demarcated gender boundaries of the
Uttley books in particular with no difficulty whatsoever.
Then, when I was three and a half, everything changed completely.
We moved from suburban London to the north of Cumberland - now
Cumbria -just south of Hadrian's Wall, to the wild border country east
of Carlisle. My father had a job working on Spadeadam range, on the
site where the Blue Streak rocket was being constructed (Britain's ill-
fated contribution to the space race). My parents looked for somewhere
suitable to rent: first a room in a farmhouse, which still was lit by gas
lamps and where the two witch-like women who owned it tossed surplus
chicks onto the fire; then a dreary semi-detached modern house on the
edge of a small village, which had the novelty, to me, of television; and,
finally, Morpeth Tower, in Naworth Castle, which dated back to the fif-
teenth century. This was one of four solid towers built around a central
courtyard, with a Victorian addition round the back, perched on the
edge of a ravine and surrounded by woods and moorland. It was an
extraordinary privilege to spend four years of my childhood there. It was
also extremely isolated. At times, there were other children living in
rented accommodation in the castle, but only spasmodically. The near-
 Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 289

est school, several miles away, consisted of only one class - and in any
case, I was not old enough, when we arrived, to attend it. My mother
taught me from the educational programs broadcast by the BBC, rang-
ing from 'Stories in World History' to 'Singing Together,' and from a
small number of Beacon readers, activity books, italic handwriting man-
uals, and 'B & A Arithmetic.' She also subscribed to a magazine called
Child Education, although the only item of lasting value that I remember
this supplying was a fail-safe recipe for scones.
Reading, it need hardly be said, became extraordinarily important to
me, and, since I had no other children to play with, was central in form-
ing my sense of contact with the world. We lacked a television -
although 'Childrens' Hour' on the BBC's Home Service was a daily treat
- and so my experience of living in books was somewhat atypical of that
of many children in the late fifties and early sixties. Books were given to
me as Christmas presents or bought with book tokens, and I built up a
good collection of Puffins; they were taken from my parents' shelves
and borrowed from Carlisle Public Library. A library van used to call
weekly, pulling up in the outer courtyard of the castle, and one could
request books through this. On rare but memorable occasions, my
mother and I would walk half a mile up the castle drive and catch the
bus twelve miles into Carlisle, and go to the library itself, its shelves full
of promise: above all, I remember the shelves of rather dated children's
encyclopaedias and anthologies, whose appeal lay in the very sense of
diverse knowledge that they contained - the lure of hard facts, of some
kind of mastery. There were neighbours, too, in the castle: Miss Donald-
son-Hudson, who had a copy of Enid Blyton's The Castle of Adventure that
I earnestly commended to my parents as being of far higher literary
quality than the Blyton fiction aimed at younger children; Mrs Wright
Brown, who had a copy of Thor Heyerdahl's Aku-Aku, which I read end
to end twice over, fascinated not just by the otherness of the lives of Eas-
ter Islanders (what I made of their phallic worship I cannot begin to
think) but by the fact that their lifestyle, complete with rituals, was one
that appeared simple, with elements that a six year old could very
readily imagine emulating.
Above all, it was through books that I tried to learn to be a child, or,
rather, to learn what it meant to be a child. I was fascinated by a book
called The Intelligent Parents' Manual - which my own parents must have
bought as a how-to book when I was expected - and which took one
through, chapter by chapter, stages of pregnancy, birth, babyhood, the
early years of childhood, and on into adolescence (at which point its
290 Kate Flint

subjects became too remote from any experience that I could ever imag-
ine myself partaking in, and hence boring) .4 What particularly appealed
to me were the little vignettes of childhood tantrums, of sandpit jeal-
ousy, of bedwetting and obstinacy. Whilst I knew that I wasn't like these
children, they were, nonetheless, my proxy peers. Peter and lona Opie's
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren - which I think my mother bor-
rowed from the library, initially, but which I soon fixed upon - likewise
greatly broadened my imagined sense of the world of children that
existed, somewhere, out there. But what I really enjoyed was what I took
to be realist fiction. Although I read books like Alice in Wonderland, The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Hobbit, fantasy held little appeal
when there was another, more immediate world that was almost as inac-
cessible to me, except through books and the radio. So my sense of who
I wanted to be like was formed by Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Ama-
zons books, about two families of children in the English Lake District;
by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; and by a series of stories by Anthony
Buckeridge, set in a boys' prep school (in English terms, this means a
boarding school for boys between seven to eleven) and beginning with
Jennings Goes to School. If Jennings, Darbishire, and Venables in these
books built a hut, I built a hut. If they started a newspaper, I started a
newspaper. By the time I was nearly seven, and knew that we would be
moving back to London, I used them to prepare me for what school
would be like. Borrowing my father's old Latin primers, I dutifully
learnt my declensions and conjugations - the serious academic cur-
rency at Linbury Court, where Jennings and his friends were at school.
It was a shattering disappointment when, at the first day at my junior
school, I had to make a tissue paper fairy.
What is notable about all these books is that their protagonists were
either boys or, in the case of Ransome's more interesting female charac-
ters, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, unequivocally rebellious tomboys. Most
girls' fiction simply did not interest me: it was sissy, unadventurous, over-
filled with piety (if written in the past), or girls were relegated to a sup-
porting position: plucky, perhaps, but nonetheless less prominent than
the male leads (and often narrators), whether in E. Nesbit's The Story of
the Treasure Seekers or Marjorie Lloyd's Fell Farm Campers. When research-
ing The Woman Reader, I was hardly surprised to find how many girls in
the nineteenth century openly preferred their brothers' books, with the
active role models that they offered. I can remember encountering very
few factual accounts of contemporary female role models either. The
autobiographies of the show-jumper Pat Smythe - Jump for Joy and One
 Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 291

Jump Ahead - provided one exception, as did that of the three-day even-
ter Sheila Wilcox and the show-jumper and motor rally driver Pat Moss:
what is unclear, retrospectively, is whether I was drawn to all of these
because they contained horses or because the equine world was one in
which women were permitted to be successful and that carried an attrac-
tive energy, competitiveness, and physicality with it. Certainly pony sto-
ries, which I read hungrily - Ruby Ferguson's Jill's Gymkhana and its
successors; the novels by Josephine, Diana, and Christine Pullein-
Thompson - offered not just lively, enterprising, and resourceful girls at
their centre, but a world of specialist knowledge in which one could
become authoritative. And they offered the possibility of identifying
with some spirited horses, too.
Yet apart from a drive towards mimetic realism, which very possibly
drew me towards the nineteenth century and towards fiction in particu-
lar, can I see any continuity between my early reading and my subsequent
academic interests? Not easily - and yet there is a definite connection
between these interests and the surroundings in which I spent four years
of my childhood. Living in a castle certainly established an interest in his-
tory: perhaps, indeed, the very fact of its being a castle had a debunking
effect when it came to fairy tale, since there could be little of the distant
and magical for me in the idea of a castle. But much more than that,
Naworth Castle, seat of the earls of Carlisle, had been the home of
George Howard, ninth earl (and nephew of the author with whom I
opened): a painter and friend of artists and writers. So I was familiar with
the photograph of Tennyson on a seat in the walled garden where I used
to play; with carved friezes by Burne-Jones; pre-Raphaelite windows in
the local parish church. It was said that the great carved wooden fish -
the Crowned Salmon of Dacre - under whose fins I used to go in and out
of our front door daily, was the original for the Fish Footman in Tenniel's
illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Working on the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, periodically encountering the
name of the ninth earl; or the name of his wife Rosalind, who was
extremely active in feminist issues; or, indeed, the name of the seventh
earl, who chaired the banquet of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association
at which Dickens warned the audience against overcomplacency at the
time of the Great Exhibition in 1851, I experience occasional small
shocks of familiarity, somewhere between serendipity and coming home.
And serendipity, of course, led me to the poem on women readers with
which I opened. I ordered up the volume earlier this year, compelled by
curiosity and nostalgia after seeing it in a library catalogue. The nostalgia
292 Kate Flint

was fed by Howard's poem to the jasmine bush that grew on the front
steps leading up to the Great Hall at Naworth; the connection with my
research - and hence the renewal of the sense that there is some hidden
plot underpinning at least the early trajectory of my academic interests -
is obvious enough. More objectively, one could point out that these
apparent coincidences serve to show very well the interpenetration of
different strands of Victorian culture.
The lesson to be extracted from my own reading history - and, doubt-
less, from the reading history of each one of us - does, therefore, very
much follow the lines of The Woman Reader and of very many of the
essays in this volume. The history of women's reading is made up of the
conjunction of individual, circumstantial detail and of broader factors:
the availability and distribution of texts, the dominant and counter-
hegemonic ideological currents of a period. If some broad outlines con-
cerning the last two centuries have, by now, been laid down with respect
to both sides of the Atlantic, much detailed work remains to be done to
see how reading helps to develop and inflect identities. 'What genre are
you if you were literature,' asks second-generation beat poet Anne Wald-
man. Tf you were a formal composition./If you were a constitution./If
you were a priest. What gender are you?/If you were a scholar what kind
of a book would you be?' (81). The process of absorption and ingestion
and formation that reading can involve is like a Mobius strip: one takes
one's expectations and desires to what one reads; one temporarily may
inhabit its covers, and in turn it shapes one's being, one's attitudes. But
just as genres may be jumbled together on a bookshelf, on a bedside
table, in a reading journal, so may one's identity - including one's sense
of a gendered self - become, through reading, mutable, temporarily
destabilized. Research on reading - as this volume shows - provides
more than a record of cultural practices and preferences: it encourages
us to examine the very concept of identity itself.

NOTES

1 Howard's sisters date the poem to c. 1833 or 1834.

2 I address some of these questions in my piece in // romanzo, a comprehensive
history of the novel, edited by Franco Moretti.
3 The literature concerning cultural and collective memory is a growing one:
although she does not engage directly with the part that reading might play in
the establishment of such memory, my own thinking on the matter is particu-
 Afterword: Women Readers Revisited 293

larly stimulated by Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, especially Part 1,

'Hypochondria of the Heart: Nostalgia, History and Memory.'
4 I now find that I wasn't learning to be an English child, but an American
child: Florence B. Powdermaker and Louise Ireland Grimes's The Intelligent
Parents' Manual: A Practical Guide to the Problems of Childhood and Adolescence
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953) was first published in the United States in
1944 as Children in the Family.

WORKS CITED

Blume, Judy. 'Is Harry Potter Evil?' National Coalition against Censorship Newsletter
76 (Winter 1999-2000). 17 September 2001. http://www.ncac.org/
cen_news/ cn76harrypotter.html.
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Cutting Edge Ministries. 'Harry Potter Books - Another Superb Reason to
Pull Your Precious Children Out of Public Schools.' 17 September 2001.
http://www.cuttingedge.org/ news/n!377.cfm.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. London: Woman's P, 1988.
Flint, Kate. 'Librio in viaggio: Diffusione, consumo e romanzo nell' Ottocento.'
In II romanzo I. La cultura del romanzo, ed. Franco Moretti, 537—66. Torino: ITA:
Einaudi, 2001.
- The Woman Reader 1837-1914. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1993.
Howard, George. 'The Lady and the Novel.' In Poems by George Howard, Earl of
Carlisle. London: E. Moxon, 1869.
Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. London: Picador, 1985.
Rose, Jonathan. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. New Haven: Yale
UP, 2001.
Trollope, Anthony. Four lectures. Ed. Morris L. Parrish. London: Constable,
1938.
Waldman, Anne. 'My Life a Book.' In A Book of the Book: Some Works and Projections
about the Book & Writing, ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay, 80-3. New
York: Granary Books, 2000.
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Contributors

Suzanne Ashworth is an assistant professor at Otterbein College in Westerville,

Ohio, where she teaches early American literature, women's literature, and
queer studies. Her research interests include the history of reading, pop culture
and media studies, and the history of medicine. Her work has been published in
ESQ Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and Legacy.

Janet Badia is an assistant professor of twentieth-century American literature at

Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. She is currently completing a
book manuscript entitled 'Confessional Poetics, Women Readers, and the Poli-
tics of Reception.' Excerpts from this project are included in Reading Women, a/
b: Auto/Biography Studies and in a forthcoming collection of essays on Sylvia
Plath. In addition to their work together on Reading Women, she and Jennifer
Phegley have co-written several conference papers on women faculty in aca-
demia.

Michele Crescenzo is an assistant professor of English at Mississippi Valley State

University in Itta Bena, Mississippi.

Elizabeth Fekete Trubey is a lecturer in English and a college adviser at North-

western University, where she completed her PhD in 2001. Her dissertation, '"I
Felt Like the Girls in Books": Sentimental Readership in America, 1850-1870,'
focuses on the relationship between sentimental readership and nineteenth-
century ideals of femininity. Her current research focuses on the complexities of
sentimental discourse in the South in the years surrounding the Civil War. She
has published articles on The Wide, Wide World and on St. Elmo.

Kate Flint is professor of English at Rutgers University. As well as The Woman

296 Contributors

Reader 1837-1914 (1993) and The Victorians and the Visual Imagination (2000), she
has published widely on Victorian and modernist literature and cultural and
visual history. She is currently completing The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930.

Barbara Hochman is associate professor of American literature at Ben Gurion

University in Israel. She has published widely in nineteenth-century American
fiction. Her most recent book is Getting at the Author: ReimagingBooks and Reading
in the Age of American Realism (2001). Her current project, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin
and the Reading Revolution,' explores the relation between fiction and reading
practices in the nineteenth-century United States.

Ruth Hoberman is a professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. She is the

author of Modernizing Lives: Experiments in English Biography 1918-1939 (1987)
and Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth Century Women's Historical
Fiction (1997). She is a co-editor, with Kathryn N. Benzel, of Trespassing Bound-
aries: Virginia Woolf's Short Fiction (2004). Her most recent work involves the
interrelationship of museums, commodification, and literary modernism; essays
on these topics have appeared in Victorian Literature and Culture, Feminist Studies,
and Victorian Periodicals Review.

Mary R. Lamb teaches writing and rhetoric courses at Georgia State University,
where she also serves as associate director of Lower Division Studies. Her
research includes feminist rhetoric and composition; rhetorical studies, espe-
cially feminist and new media; writing program administration; and teacher
training.

Antonia Losano teaches nineteenth-century literature and women's studies at

Middlebury College in Vermont. She is currently finishing a book on representa-
tions of women painters in the works of Victorian women writers.

Jennifer Phegley is associate professor of nineteenth-century literature at the

University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is the author of Educating the Proper
Woman Reader: Victorian Family Literary Magazines and the Cultural Health of the
Nation (2004).

Currently affiliated with Yale University, Tuire Valkeakari holds a PhD in English
from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her areas of expertise include Ameri-
can literature and the anglophone literatures of the Black Atlantic. Her articles
have appeared in Crossings, The Atlantic Literary Review, The Nordic Journal of
English Studies, and in Finnish publications.
 Contributors 297

Sarah A. Wadsworth is assistant professor of English at Marquette University. She

specializes in nineteenth-century American literature and early American print
culture. Her research on Alcott has also appeared in The Lion and the Unicorn
and Harvard Library Bulletin and figures prominently in a book she is currently
preparing for the University of Massachusetts Press.
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STUDIES IN BOOK AND PRINT CULTURE

General editor: Leslie Howsam

Hazel Bell, Indexes and Indexing in Fact and Fiction

Heather Murray, Come, bright Improvement! The Literary Societies of
Nineteenth-Century Ontario
Joseph A. Dane, The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence,
Textuality, and Bibliographical Method
Christopher J. Knight, Uncommon Readers: Denis Donoghue, Frank
Kermode, George Steiner, and the Tradition of the Common Reader
Eva Hemmungs Wirten, No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property
Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization
William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus
Sian Echard and Stephen Partridge, eds, The Book Unbound: Editing and
Reading Medieval Manuscripts and Texts
Peter Stoicheff and Andrew Taylor, eds, The Future of the Page
Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern
Identity
Elizabeth Sauer, 'Paper-contestations' and Textual Communities in
England, 1640-1675
Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley, eds, Reading Women: Literary Figures
and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present