Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth‐Century U. S. Women's WritingLauraLaffrado. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009.

Abstract

Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century U. S. Women's Writing Laura Laffrado. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009. In Laura Laffrado's feminist study it might be more expected for her to point out all the ways the women she includes are ahead of their time. Instead, Laffrado showcases the ways these women took pains to align themselves with conventional class and gender expectations of their eras. Even as Sarah Kemble Knight is mistaken for a prostitute because she is traveling alone, she looks down upon the women who are acting out of their positions, talking too much, or not eating with proper etiquette. Uncommon Women is a study in how these white middle-class women were able to transcend society's boundaries by painting themselves within the lines of the socially acceptable. Although Laffrado's focus is on both gender and class, her main interest is not where these authors lie within social divisions but how they represent themselves within those categories. Laffrado sees these women representing themselves as conventionally normative in the same moments as they act outside of convention. Laffrado is careful to state that she is not making a monolithic statement about the role of autobiography in the nineteenth century; she is instead looking at women who, in their self-narratives, simultaneously reveal how they are outside the normal. By using the discourse of the conventional, these women are able to circumvent the hostility often aimed at those outside traditional boundaries and become accepted in mainstream culture. All of the texts Laffrado examines were first published in the nineteenth century, though one was actually written much earlier. Sarah Kemble Knight's Journal, the focus of the first chapter, was first published in 1825; however, Knight wrote it shortly after 1704-1705 trip to New York and New Haven, and then circulated it among family and friends. By placing the Journal as a nineteenth-century text, Laffrado uses it to examine less Knight's identity and more the moment in which it is published. Laffrado is careful to not overstate her claims about the state of women in the nineteenth century. She does not suggest that Knight's Journal, or the other works she examines, was brought to print because the publisher was a protofeminist, particularly promoting women's writing. Instead, the publishers of these works recognized a valuable piece history to be shared, or merely a story that would sell well. In the same vein, Laffrado also does not claim a transformation of the way women viewed themselves with the publication of these texts. Instead, these books were published at a moment when women's places in society were beginning to shift. Through their writing, these women displayed the inadequacies of existing frameworks. By providing this context, Laffrado uses the chapter on Knight to foreground the terms of discussion for the remainder of the book. Throughout the work, Laffrado continues to use the historical and cultural context to make her argument about these women's self-representations. In contrast to the first chapter's focus on Knight's single text, the second chapter takes up Fanny Fern's periodical oeuvre spanning the years 1851-1854. According to Laffrado, the nature of Fern's genre calls for very different ways of constructing identity; each article she published allowed for a new redefinition of self. Fern's anonymity allowed her relative freedom to address and adopt many different personas. Because each of these articles was written in the same voice, making it evident there was only one author, readers often wondered whether Fern was male or female, young or old, etc. By so successfully inhabiting each of these subject positions, Fern made it evident that one narrow category was not enough to define her or any other woman. In this chapter, as in the others, Laffrado is sure to acknowledge other contributors to Fern scholarship and relates some of what they argue about Fern, but, importantly, also establishes where she stands in relation to that work and adds her own insight and research. …