The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in the Early Republic , and: “Circumstances are destiny”: An Antebellum Woman’s Struggle to Define Sphere (review)

Abstract

The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in Early Republic. By Timothy Kenslea. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, University Press of New England, 2006. Pp. xi, 269. Cloth, $29.95; Paper, $19.95.)Circumstances are destiny: An Antebellum Woman's Struggle to Define Sphere. By Tina Stewart Brakebill. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006. Pp. xx, 255. Cloth, $34.95.)Reviewed by Linzy Brekke-AloiseOn surface, these paired books appear to have little in common. Timothy Kenslea examines marriage and courtship among descendants of Federalist scion Theodore Sedgwick of western Massachusetts, drawing on their voluminous, multigenerational correspondence to reveal heart- wrenching story of mating and marrying in a period when ideals and expectations of married life were undergoing extraordinary transformation. Tina Stewart Brakebill, by contrast, focuses on singular struggles of Celestia Rice Colby, a frustrated and unhappy farm woman from Western Reserve of Ohio from 1827 to 1900. Yet Sedgwick children's romantic yearning for companionship and mutual from their spouses would have drawn a knowing and bitter laugh from Colby, whose marriage in 1848 was lifeless and unsatisfying virtually from start. The heady years of early national period nurtured great expectations for a post-Revolutionary shift from patriarchai families to more companionate and egalitarian ones, but interior lives exposed by Kenslea and Brakebill show that, like so many revolutionary hopes, this was often a dream deferred. Despite significant differences between subjects and themes under analysis - a large, well-to-do New England family's conception of marriage and a midwestern rural farm wife's frustrated ambitions - both authors strive to fulfill central goal of good microhistory: to draw from singular lives an allegory for broader issues affecting culture as a whole.1 Kenslea's engaging and richly researched The Sedgwicks in Love and Brakebill's narrow and awkwardly presented Circumstances are destiny both struggle with this charge. In process, they highlight enduring promises and perils of microhistorical and biographical approaches.Kenslea advances a clear and focused argument from outset: After American Revolution, within some limits, young people were expected to choose [their partners] on basis of affection (36). This point echoes a larger body of scholarship about decline of patriarchal family patterns and rise of romantic ideal advanced by Carole Shammas, Jan Lewis, Anya Jabour, and others. Yet Kenslea makes it clear that especially in affluent families, parents stubbornly maintained colonial pattern of exerting power and influence over their children's marital decisions. In case of Eliza and Frances Sedgwick, their father valued of business, men with sound material prospects (41) over their own romantic choices and went out of his way to select alternative candidates who met these criteria for his daughters. They both yielded, though not without a fight. Despite its ostensible success, Pere Sedgwick's manipulation revealed just how out of step he was with early republic culture, a culture that lauded romantic feeling and love as natural, and that considered the calculations of head (44) as unnatural and corrupt. The turbulent boom-and-bust cycles of economy of early nineteenth century proved just how disastrous choosing class interests over individual could be. Frances's husband Ebenezer Watson, selected specifically for his supposed financial prowess, went broke and failed in several speculative business ventures. Watson violently abused his wife throughout marriage, with Sedgwick clan nearly powerless to stop it. It is impossible to know whether Frances's life would have turned out differently if she had been able to marry man of her choice, but it is hard to imagine it turning out worse. …