THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

the domestic sphere. 87 In response to Beecher, Grimké authored a series of letters, which
were published in the Liberator and the Friend of Man before being gathered into a
pamphlet. Grimké rejected Beecher’s restriction of women to the domestic sphere and
questioned her assertion of gender inequality, which Grimké argued was socially
constructed. 88
Beecher and Hale presented a more conservative vision of women’s role as it
related to abolitionism. Hale, like Chandler, believed that women must address moral
issues. However, Hale used female public culture to heal sectional rivalries as evidenced
in her 1852 revision of Northwood. In the new concluding section, Hale wrote: “Let us
trust that the pen and not the sword will decide the controversy now going on in our land;
and that any part women may take in the former mode will be promotive of peace, and
not suggestive of discord.” Ultimately, Hale’s desire for unity eclipsed her moral
objections to slavery. 89
In contrast, Chandler was troubled by women’s indifferent acceptance of
tradition, which perpetuated slavery. She embraced the moral absolutism of Heyrick and
urged women to use the values of women’s moral nature to reform society on a moral
basis. While Chandler did not take her arguments to the radical conclusion that Grimké
87 Catharine E. Beecher, An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with Reference to the Duty of
American Females (Philadelphia: Henry Perkins, 1837).
88 Angelina Grimké, Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, in reply to, An Essay on Slavery and
Abolitionism, Addressed to A.E. Grimké (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838).
89 Hale as quoted in J. Bradley Shaw, “The Pliable Rhetoric of Domesticity,” in The Stowe
Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ed. Mason I. Lowance, Ellen E. Westbrook, R.D. de
Prospo (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 91. See also Janet Gray, Race and Time:
American Women’s Poetics from Anti-slavery to Racial Modernity (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
2004), 64.
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