Subversive Feminism: The Politics of Correctness in Mary Augusta Jordan's Correct Writing and Speaking (1904)

Abstract

n the introduction to The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925, John Brereton remarks that few signs exist of explicitly feminist rhetoric texts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the presence of many women composition teachers in America at this time. While Brereton acknowledges the contributions of women professors who authored innovative textbooks (the first reader to use student papers, by Francis Campbell Berkeley, for example, as well as one of the first handbooks, by Luella Clay Carson), he argues that feminist rhetoric texts are conspicuously absent from the history of rhetoric and composition. Brereton asks to what extent publishing houses may have restricted explicitly feminist modes of writing and speaking instruction. He suggests that feminist rhetoric texts and pedagogies by women during this period perhaps operated in a more subversive fashion, reflecting the conservative climate of the time, and he suggests that women's rhetoric texts (as well as their pedagogical artifacts) ought to be read in terms of the climate of the historical moment (20-21). With Brereton's remarks in mind, I wish to discuss Mary Augusta Jordan's Correct Writing and Speaking, a rhetoric text authored for women who studied writing and speaking outside of the formal academy. Jordan (1855-1941) is a rhetorician to be added to the list of other remarkable women professors who wrote textbooks for new audiences at this time. Her work makes a con-