Women, Revolution, and the Novels of the 1790s

Abstract

Women, Revolution, and the Novels of the 1790s. Edited by Linda LangPeralta. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999. Pp. xv, 192. $21.95.) The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation: A Call for Socio-Political Reform. By Donna R. Bontatibus. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999. Pp. 126. $16.95.) Taking as their cue Abigail Adams's request that her husband and his colleagues remember the ladies, women's historians have assessed the American Revolution's effect on newly American women in terms of its failure to instigate significant social and legal changes in women's condition. Linda Kerber and others have noted the ambiguous nature of the gains women did make (or receive) in the wake of the Revolution, particularly in the area of education. Discussions of education for women were powerfully linked to broader discussions of education in general as a means of producing virtuous Americans capable of upholding the new republic. If, in the new nation, boys' educational experiences were increasingly intended to shape hard-working citizens, for American girls, education was linked to the preservation of sexual innocence prior to marriage and to monogamous and procreative sexuality following marriage; the fairer sex required instruction as a means of directing her behavior. In The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation, Donna Bontatibus examines four popular American novels of the 1790s written by women authors for female audiences. Drawing on the work of Jane P. Tompkins, Cathy N. Davidson, Jan Lewis, and others, Bontatibus argues that these novels used the theme to do specific cultural work. Not merely cautionary tales, these novels sought to prepare young women for the difficulties they would face in a post-Revolutionary society unwilling to apply revolutionary tenets to its own women. The authors Bontatibus treats-Judith Sargent Murray, Susanna H. Rowson, Hannah Webster Foster, and Tabitha G. Tenney-were active participants in the cause of women's education, and Bontatibus shows how the curricula urged by these women were intended to teach American girls critical thinking skills. Influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft's calls for rational education, these authors hoped that such an education, including their own texts, would enable young women to protect themselves from sexual predators. As conservative theorists feared, a turn towards education for women could lead American girls as well as boys to believe that independence was their birthright. According to Bontatibus, these authors shared that concern and used their stories to portray the consequences of American women's disenfranchisement. As Hannah Foster's The Coquette demonstrates, a young woman eager to apply revolutionary tenets to her own life placed herself at risk of seduction; ironically, the sole supporter of Eliza Wharton's republican ambitions was the libertine who ruined her. At the core of Bontatibus's argument is these authors' hope that republican wives- and mothers-to-be would find their declarations of independence affirmed by virtuous men and women. An important signifier of such support would, of course, have been the abolition or the substantial erosion of coverture. Finally, Bontatibus argues that the failure of American men to support women's dreams of independence after the Revolution reflects a larger desire for colonization: as British domination was overthrown and the American continent itself conquered, so were American women mastered. A claim for neocolonialist in the postrevolutionary United States would require a broader range of historical evidence than Bontatibus offers, including some discussion of the experiences of other groups of women, particularly African-American women. Additionally, in spite of Bontatibus's clarifications of the terms, seduction (17) and rape culture (17, 83) are occasionally too easily conflated in her analysis. Then and now, while critical thinking skills may help a woman avoid seduction, physical violence can trump mental dexterity. …