Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education

Abstract

Researchers interested in same-sex romantic relationships in the nineteenth century have spent decades productively mining archives for evidence of these relationships, often finding personal correspondence and diaries to be particularly fruitful sources for information. In Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education, Pamela VanHaitsma offers an important divergence from these well-worn paths as she focuses on how the norms of romantic epistolary writing in the nineteenth century were queered. This distinction between same-sex individuals and queer practices is critical for the project of this book, allowing for a conceptual shift in emphasis from historical subjects themselves to the effects of their discourse.Amidst an extended discussion of her methodological approach in the introductory chapter, VanHaitsma explains that she uses “queerness” to refer to “relational and rhetorical practices that were nonnormative within the context of nineteenth-century manual instruction in cultural norms and genre conventions” (italics original; 12). In keeping with recent queer scholarly work, VanHaitsma thus uses queer as a practice, not an identity. This approach lends itself particularly well to the intervention this book seeks to make in rhetorical historiography because the focus of analysis is the writing itself and what it suggests for how historical subjects navigated cultural norms of epistolary rhetoric.To explain the construction and transmission of conventions for epistolary rhetoric, VanHaitsma focuses on “rhetorical education for romantic engagement,” which she defines as “the teaching and learning of language practices for composing romantic relations” (italics original; 9). The source of this education, letter writing manuals, is the focus of the first chapter. These manuals, often called “complete letter writers,” not only offered practical instructions and advice for letter writers, but they also provided samples that readers were encouraged to adapt for their own purposes (23). What VanHaitsma discovers from these manuals is that the sections focused on romantic correspondence provided a rather thorough rhetorical education on heteronormative relations. This included lessons about the gender of the sender and recipient, the timing and pacing of the correspondence, the importance of communicating feelings, and the purpose and intended outcome of the exchange (what VanHaitsma refers to throughout the book as the telos of marriage). While VanHaitsma provides ample evidence that these manuals were widely available and quite popular, it is interesting to consider whether they were generally read in their entirety or instead consulted as a resource (as one might use a dictionary, for example) and how these varying uses might influence their impacts.The next two chapters offer extended examples of how nineteenth century letter writers navigated heteronormative expectations for romantic epistolary rhetoric. The second chapter focuses on two African American women, Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus, who were from different socio-economic classes and whose correspondence documented an intense and lasting romantic relationship (though only Brown’s letters exist). Rather than continuing to pursue the questions that have occupied historians concerning the nature of the relationship between Brown and Primus, VanHaitsma focuses instead on the content of their letters to develop an argument about the queer epistolary rhetoric they employ. Drawing upon the norms of rhetorical education presented in the first chapter, VanHaitsma here identifies and discusses a number of queer epistolary practices, including the intensity and urgency of the exchanges, the political dimensions of the letters, the use of literature to convey emotions, and the transgressions of gender norms.While VanHaitsma takes pains to distinguish queer practices from same-sex identity throughout the book, this distinction is perhaps most poignantly accomplished in chapter three, which focuses on Albert Dodd’s “commonplace book turned diary” (74). Dodd was a highly educated, privileged white man who chronicled his passionate love for and correspondence with men and women in his personal diary. Though little of Dodd’s correspondence has been preserved, VanHaitsma closely attends to the diaries to reveal Dodd’s genre-queer epistolary practices. The chapter details how “Dodd’s practices were genre-queer because of how he transferred his learning from civic to romantic domains, transgressed generic lines with a critical awareness that recognized generic distinctions but refused their boundaries, and, perhaps most important, did both in order to compose romantic relations that subverted the norms and conventions taught during the postal age” (75). VanHaitsma carefully maneuvers between Dodd’s diary accounts discussing his correspondence and the (almost entirely absent) correspondence itself, offering an inventive handling of a significant methodological challenge. Given the level of detail and personal revelations preserved in the diaries, this chapter also opens up important ethical questions facing all archival researchers working with highly personal materials that were presumed to be private when they were created.Perhaps the most formidable obstacle that this study navigates is the elusiveness of the historical record itself. In both case studies, the archival traces of the historical subjects’ writings are tantalizingly limited, though VanHaitsma adeptly mines all that is available. There is also a dearth of archival evidence of the effects that queering epistolary rhetoric may have had (beyond the personal relationships it facilitated, certainly). While VanHaitsma was savvy to build this book around an understanding of queer as non-normative, it is interesting to consider whether these case studies might exemplify queer epistolary rhetoric that is anti-normative, if only there were ways of tracking down such effects. In other words, did such queerings of rhetorical education have any transformative effects on rhetorical education itself or the more particular norms of epistolary rhetoric?As a book that capably straddles feminist, queer, and rhetorical scholarship, readers will find a great deal to appreciate in this concise monograph. The text’s primary contribution is to rhetorical historiography, where it offers an innovative methodological approach to confronting archival absences and accounting for queer rhetorical practices that are notoriously elusive.