"Shall I Fetter Her Will?": Literary Americans Confront Feminine Submission, 1820-1860

Abstract

The shrinking violet, one of most enduring symbols of Victorian femininity, imagines woman who neither thought nor acted for herself but turned to her father, husband, or clergyman for guidance and direction. She was hostage in home, constrained by excessive childbirths, masses of restrictive clothing, and an ideology that condemned her to silence and self-abnegation. While men were the movers, doers, [and] actors, women were the passive, submissive responders, an order fixed in Heaven.1 The ongoing appearance of books and articles espousing these interpretations testifies to this issue's vigor and appeal. In past, many scholars universalized notion of feminine behavior intended to apply only to white, privileged women and that was, furthermore, regarded merely as an ideal toward which women should strive but that few women actually attained. Gradually, alternative interpretations surfaced. Benefitting in part from those who demonstrated that many women were not fully trapped by passive, domestic role, small but influential group of historians and literary critics concluded that what Americans read was not passive, domestic ideal either. In her analysis of over 200 novels, stories, and essays written by leading women authors of nineteenth century, Mary Kelley discovered that most writers crafted strong, active and female characters. The stories they told constituted ultimate exercise of control and freedom. Helen Papashvily termed domestic novels handbooks of feminine revolt whose tales and encouraged pattern of feminine behavior so quietly ruthless, so subtly vicious that by comparison ladies of Seneca Falls appear angels of innocence. Nina Baym suggested that nineteenth-century women's fiction reflected a moderate, or limited, or pragmatic feminism, in which development of self-assured and distinctly individualistic heroine was common theme.2 Despite these challenges, scores of studies continue to defend and uphold belief that was perhaps most feminine virtue expected of women-3 Intrigued by their persistence, I conducted systematic analyses of 104 bestselling novels and stories published between 1820 and 1860.4 The sample was equally divided between male and female authors. Both computer and textual analyses demonstrated that obedient and dependent women were not ideal in either men's or women's fiction. When content analysis, for example, tested women characters' submission to all forms of authority, 68.4 percent of those sketched by male authors were depicted as not submissive compared to 73.1 percent created by women. Passive and dependent women represented mere 5.6 percent of sample (Table 1). A slightly larger number were described as submissive to men, with male authors depicting 15.8 percent of their characters in this fashion compared to 10 percent of those fashioned by women; yet both male and female writers (54.8 percent and 52.6 percent, respectively) described women who were not submissive to men (Table 2). Most noteworthy is consensus shared by writers of both sexes. This agreement is further supported by other questions that touched upon feminine dependence. Literary men and women crafted independent and self-reliant women (72.7 percent male authors/74.2 percent female authors) as well as strong-willed women (81.1 percent/82.3 percent) with resounding frequency (Tables 3 and 4). They celebrated ingenuity and resourcefulness in their heroines, pitied overly-submissive woman, chastened domineering man, and carefully delineated tragic consequences of boundless subjection. In Mabel Vaughan (1857), for example, author Maria Cummins insists Sabiah Vaughan's to her earthly parents was mistake that would lead to years of unhappiness as well as fate of ending her days as faded spinster. In her youth, Sabiah loved poor farmer's son who was studying for ministry, but her mother and father demanded she break her engagement to man with such lowly prospects. …