In mid-July 1829 the editor of the New York Observer offered his readers piece of gossip from Washington: Mrs. Royal [sic] has been presented to the Grand Jury as nuisance, and bill has been found her. Assuming his readers' acquaintance with Royall, the editor reported that she had come into the court to obtain list of the Grand Jury. Such was her reputation, the editor suggested, even the respect and honor due to the Grand Jurors' office would be little protection against the vituperative powers of this giantess of literature. She menaces them with fearful visitation of her displeasure, and her menaces seldom evaporate into thin air. Undeterred, few days later the Grand jury presented an indictment Anne Royall accusing her of being a common scold.1The employment of such an archaic and largely obsolete charge highlighted the fact that Royall, novelist, journalist, and travel writer, had been highly controversial in the ways she conducted herself publicly. As an author her subject matter and writing had been equally contentious. Her books were filled with unflattering descriptions of people and places, and her language was frequently unrefined. As one reviewer of her novel, Tennessean, commented: If it were not ungallant to apply terms of disapprobation to the production of female, we might add, that the 'Tennessean' contains some phrases of profanity, which in our opinion give no interest to the work and had better have been omitted. Royall had reputation for writing books filled with local color and her own forceful opinions: The works of Madam Royall are we grant an exception, for her style is so highly seasoned, her love of country so predominant, she gives so much of local topics and applies the lash so unsparingly to her enemies, that her books like her manners are resistless. Yet, at least in part, Royall may also have been on trial because of the friends and enemies she had made. She was associated with the new Democratic administration of Andrew Jackson, and John Eaton, Jackson's secretary of war, was to be witness on her behalf at the trial. She was also tireless and abusive opponent of evangelical religion. Her trial, as well as her career generally, therefore shed considerable light on the problems and opportunities facing women at this time when they entered the public sphere in order to take active positions on both political and religious matters. fact that she was generally considered sharp-tongued and critical, together with the nature of the legal accusation made her, also emphasized the discursive constraints many men of the day attempted to impose on independent-minded women.2Royall's career, moreover, does not fit easily within existing paradigms of women's history. emphasis by historians on the nineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres, in which men command the public sphere of work and politics, and women the private sphere of home and family, gives the impression that Royall was merely eccentric. Her trial as common scold can, in this light, easily be explained as the result of her unwillingness to conform to prevailing constructions of womanhood. But historians have recently begun to question such rigid constructions of women's sphere and to explore the ways in which women exploited certain flexibility in their roles. This article seeks to place Anne Royall the background of the ferment of political culture of the 1820s and suggests that Royall was neither an eccentric nor even virago, but an active participant in the party politics of the time-in short, woman politico. Her prosecution as common scold commands no easy explanation, however. Certainly, it was an attempt to humiliate and control her by labeling her as an unruly woman, but by 1829 Royall was more than mere scold who disrupted the peace of her neighbors. She was well-known public figure and woman who exercised some influence through the national audience she had gained for her writing. …
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Jun 1, 2007
Tommaso M Milani 
Open Access