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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
The names of nations are feminine. Religion, Virtue, and Victory are
feminine. To those who have a superstition as to outward signs it is not without
signicance that the name of the Queen of our mother-land should at this crisis
be Victoria. Victoria the First. Perhaps to us it may be given to disclose the era
there outwardly presaged.
Women here are much better situated than men. Good books are allowed with
more time to read them. They are not so early forced into the bustle of life, nor so
weighed down by demands for outward success. The perpetual changes, incident
to our society, make the blood circulate freely through the body politic, and, if not
favorable at present to the grace and bloom of life, they are so to activity, resource,
and would be to reection but for a low materialist tendency, from which the
women are generally exempt.
They have time to think, and no traditions chain them, and few conventionalities
compared with what must be met in other nations. There is no reason why the
fact of a constant revelation should be hid from them, and when the mind once is
awakened by that, it will not be restrained by the past, but y to seek the seeds of
a heavenly future.
Their employments are more favorable to the inward life than those of the men.
Woman is not addressed religiously here, more than elsewhere. She is told to
be worthy to be the mother of a Washington, or the companion of some good man.
But in many, many instances, she has already learnt that all bribes have the same
aw; that truth and good are to be sought for themselves alone. And already an
ideal sweetness oats over many forms, shines in many eyes.
Already deep questions are put by young girls on the great theme, What shall I
do to inherit eternal life?
Men are very courteous to them. They praise them often, check them seldom.
There is some chivalry in the feelings towards “the ladies,” which gives them the
best seats in the stage-coach, frequent admission not only to lectures of all sorts,
but to courts of justice, halls of legislature, reform conventions. The newspaper
editor “would be better pleased that the Lady’s Book were lled up exclusively by
ladies. It would, then, indeed, be a true gem, worthy to be presented by young men
to the mistresses of their aections.” Can gallantry go farther?
In this country is venerated, wherever seen, the character which Goethe spoke
of as an Ideal. “The excellent woman is she, who, if the husband dies, can be a
father to the children.” And this, if rightly read, tells a great deal.
Women who speak in public, if they have a moral power, such as has been felt
from Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelly , that is, if they speak for conscience’ sake,
to serve a cause which they hold sacred, invariably subdue the prejudices of their
hearers, and excite an interest proportionate to the aversion with which it had been
the purpose to regard them.
A passage in a private letter so happily illustrates this, that I take the liberty to
make use of it, though there is not opportunity to ask leave either of the writer or
owner of the letter. I think they will pardon me when they see it in print; it is so
good, that as many as possible should have the benet of it.
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