Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Vor dem Sklaven, wenn er die Kette bricht,
Vor dem freien Menschen erzittert nicht
Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break.
[Schiller, “Woods of Faith”]
In slavery, acknowledged slavery, women are on a par with men. Each is a
work-tool, an article of property-no more! In perfect freedom, such as is painted in
Olympus, in Swedenborg’s angelic state, in rhe heaven where there is no marrying
nor giving in marriage, each is a puried intelligence, an enfranchised soul,—no
less!
Jene himmlissche Gestalten
Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib,
Und keine Kleider, keine Falten
Umgeben den verklrten Leib. [Goethe]
The child who sang this was a prophetic form, expressive of the longing for a
state of perfect freedom, pure love. She could not remain here, but was transplanted
to another air. And it may be that the air of this earth will never be so tempered,
that such can bear ir long. But, while they stay, they must bear testimony to the
truth they are constituted to demand.
That an era approaches which shall approximate nearer to such a temper than
any has yet done, there are many tokens, indeed so many that only a few of the
most prominent can here be enumerated.
The reigns of Elizabeth of England and Isabella of Castile foreboded this era.
They expressed the beginning of the new state, while they forwarded its progress.
These were strong characters, and in harmony with the wants of their time. One
showed that this strength did not a woman for the duties of a wife and mother;
the other, that it could enable her to live and die alone. Elizabeth is certainly
no pleasing example. In rising above the weakness, she did not lay aside the
weaknesses ascribed to her sex; but her strength must be respected now,as it was
in her own time.
We may accept it as an omen for ourselves, that it was Isabella who furnished
Columbus with the means of coming hither. This land must back its debt to
woman, without whose aid it would not have been brought into alliance with the
civilized world.
The inuence of Elizabeth on literature was real, though, by sympathy with
its ner productions, she was no more entitled to give name to an era than Queen
Anne. It was simply that the fact of a female sovereign on the throne aected
the course of a writer’s thoughts. In this sense, the presence of a woman on the
throne always makes its mark. Life is lived before the eyes of all men, and their
imaginations are stimulated as to the possibilities of woman. “We will die for our
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