In order to save some paper I decided to post my reader reviews on the blog.
Kassey George e- Revise and Resubmit
The purpose of this essay was well conveyed. You explained your thoughts about Rowson and then you gave direct quotes in order to prove your argument. One of your strongest points that caught my attention is when you made the bold statement “One of the main reasons that Rowson started writing her novels and opened her boarding school is that she felt that young ladies were not being taught all the things young men being taught.” Though I overall enjoyed this piece I felt that at certain places you were uncertain if you should be making that statement, that showed through your word choice but can easily be fixed and make your paper that much stronger.
The points for revision are small: change of word choice, punctuation, formatting. All those changes can be made easily and help strengthen your voice.
Alle Colen - Revise and Resubmit
Your rough draft certainly contains a good start however it needs more. The thesis does not present itself clearly. You need to make the idea of your paper more clear. Do you want to discuss why Rowson felt the necessity of teaching history, or why it was so important for her to educate women, or both? I would also like to see not only why Rowson felt the importance of educating women but how others in her era felt about it as well. And where Rowson’s ideas originated, and what her goals for her students contained. Your idea’s stand strong I just want to see more support and clarification.
Chelsey Cantin - Revise and Resubmit
Your paper is going in the proper direction, addressing all of the characters in Reuben and Rachel that display reflections of the education of conduct; however, you don't fully develop what their practices are in your discussion. A lot of good quotations from both the novel and critics are included but I was confused about what conduct you were specifically talking about, or in other words what Rowson thought was the most important idea to have understood by readers. Using her boarding school background, you show why Rowson thought conduct was greatly important, but I wanted to know what she suggests in order for young women to achieve success. Maybe delving deeper into some of the quotations will help you get the answers you are looking for. Great paper so far but slight revisions will make it stronger.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Reuben and Rachel Family Tree
Here's the family tree that Stephanie and I worked hard on:
Just click it to make it larger.
Just click it to make it larger.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Family Tree Coming Soon
Since it has been a while now that we have all finished Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times, Aimee and I have been working on a family tree of sorts. The characters in the novel all intertwine as families and we thought that it would be an interesting addition to the blog and project. Give us a few days to finish it, since we are also working on our papers, but it's going to be great. Bye for now.
Sorry and more
Hello there ! I know this blog has been slightly neglected by me, but there have been circumstances out of my control that have not allowed me to post as I would like. I am going post my proposal now that things have calmed down and I can do a proper job.
Stephanie Sabbath
Research Project Proposal
Reuben and Rachel: Rowson’s way of educating young American Women
Susanna Rowson’s novel Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times, she uses history to legitimize her fictional novel. She approaches this fictional novel by creating a fictitious history to teach the young women of America, which happened to be her target audience. Rowson, as a writer and teacher, always felt that women were being taught less than men at the time of her writing this, which is why she not only wrote this novel but opened her own female boarding school. Since Rowson is not a commonly read author today, it is interesting to analyze her novels and see how they added fuel to her interest in women’s education. This novel should not only be read by literature students that hope to learn about the start of America as a country and about women in our country, but it could even be suggested to be read by students majoring in history and education. In addition to being assigned Charlotte, Rowson’s other women centered novel, Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times should be included in the required reading.
Rowson had great intentions when she wrote this novel. As students and scholars of literature, research can be performed by looking into an array of background in subjects like: history, education in the 18th century, women’s education in the 18th century, Rowson’s idea about educating women, Rowson’s ideas about her novel, etc. to find out what her goals were for young women. Through different articles and documentation printed in scholarly databases and in Marion Rust’s Prodigal Daughters, readers and myself will discover the true meaning of Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times. The text in her novel demonstrates how strongly Susanna Rowson felt about not only educating women in subjects such as math, science, history; but also in wanting to teach them proper conduct and behavior. This is exactly what she does throughout her novel.
This book is not just about history, and it is not just a novel to entertain women. This novel is Rowson’s way of teaching the women about their conduct and behavior with a twist of history added to it. It uses historical characters, mainly women, who through the different experiences and problems they go through Rowson displays the correct behavior for American young women. This is extremely important for us, as students in American Novel, to understand since, not only is it an early American novel, but it teaches young women about the republic and the behavior that was expected of them. In order to understand this, it needs to be inspected and that is exactly what my paper will do.
Stephanie Sabbath
Research Project Proposal
Reuben and Rachel: Rowson’s way of educating young American Women
Susanna Rowson’s novel Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times, she uses history to legitimize her fictional novel. She approaches this fictional novel by creating a fictitious history to teach the young women of America, which happened to be her target audience. Rowson, as a writer and teacher, always felt that women were being taught less than men at the time of her writing this, which is why she not only wrote this novel but opened her own female boarding school. Since Rowson is not a commonly read author today, it is interesting to analyze her novels and see how they added fuel to her interest in women’s education. This novel should not only be read by literature students that hope to learn about the start of America as a country and about women in our country, but it could even be suggested to be read by students majoring in history and education. In addition to being assigned Charlotte, Rowson’s other women centered novel, Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times should be included in the required reading.
Rowson had great intentions when she wrote this novel. As students and scholars of literature, research can be performed by looking into an array of background in subjects like: history, education in the 18th century, women’s education in the 18th century, Rowson’s idea about educating women, Rowson’s ideas about her novel, etc. to find out what her goals were for young women. Through different articles and documentation printed in scholarly databases and in Marion Rust’s Prodigal Daughters, readers and myself will discover the true meaning of Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel; Or Tales of Old Times. The text in her novel demonstrates how strongly Susanna Rowson felt about not only educating women in subjects such as math, science, history; but also in wanting to teach them proper conduct and behavior. This is exactly what she does throughout her novel.
This book is not just about history, and it is not just a novel to entertain women. This novel is Rowson’s way of teaching the women about their conduct and behavior with a twist of history added to it. It uses historical characters, mainly women, who through the different experiences and problems they go through Rowson displays the correct behavior for American young women. This is extremely important for us, as students in American Novel, to understand since, not only is it an early American novel, but it teaches young women about the republic and the behavior that was expected of them. In order to understand this, it needs to be inspected and that is exactly what my paper will do.
Friday, November 21, 2008
(Very) Rough Draft
Female Identity and Mothers and Daughters
in the Early American Novel and the Nation: Rowson’s Reuben & Rachel
Many scholars who focus on eighteenth-century perspectives debate the “constitutional formulation of American citizenhood, which based political rights on gender, race, and class” (Kritzer). Sarah Hale, a political writer, has found “compelling evidence that women's activities at home, especially their domestic teaching, had a profound influence on the nation” (566). While some critics note that many white middle-class women in the Republic felt this citizenhood model failed to acknowledge women’s self-sufficiency, others like Linda Kerber, insist that “the small space allocated to women in evolving concepts of national identity was governed by the notion of ‘republican motherhood’” (“Constitutional” 24).
While most critics seem to agree with Kerber’s supposition that "the model republican woman was a mother," they appear to differ on the extent to which these women were recognized as part of the Republic ("Republican" 202). In her book Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women, Marion Rust addresses this concern. She says that during this decade, “the range of behaviors available to women expanded even as their attempts to avail themselves of these opportunities were increasingly stigmatized” (“What Thinks your Father of the Present Times?” 8). Another scholar, Dorothy A. Mays, believes that republican motherhood “preserved traditional notions of gender, but gave women and mothers credit for helping shape the minds and future of the nation” (279). Extending the work of Kerber and other critics by using Susanna Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel, mothers and/or mother figures in this text develop their daughters’ identities using Rowson’s ideals of sensibility and education.
Although Rowson was born in Portsmouth, England, her father moved the family to Boston after her mother died in childbirth. Her father remarried when she was four years old. As a child, she was instructed in the classics by scholar James Otis. She later married William Rowson who had numerous affairs and fathered a child with another woman whom Susanna raised like one of her own. Her major theme in many of her novels of the tragic heroine “being led astray by charming scoundrels can be attributed in part to William Rowson” (Mays 337).
Published in 1798 but set in the middle of the fifteenth century, Reuben and Rachel or Tales of Old Times presents widowed mother Isabelle who develops her daughter’s identity through Rowson’s ideal of sensibility. Kritzer asserts that in all the communities of women which Rowson writes about, there are “several unmarried young women and a middle-aged woman who functions as mother figure.” In Volume One of Reuben and Rachel, Isabelle fills the role of the middle-aged mother to daughter Columbia and their servant, Mina. The name Columbia is especially fitting. Davidson notes that while “Christopher Columbus may have discovered the continent…it was Columbia, the feminine personification of the new United States, who perpetuated it” (112).
Aware of Columbia’s beauty, Isabelle is determined to instill her own virtues upon her daughter. While she appreciates Columbia’s vivacity, Isabelle is “fully sensible of the necessity…for checking those ebullitions of vanity, which, if suffered to pass unnoticed, would throw a shade over the really valuable qualities of good sense, good nature, and benevolence…” (Rowson 3). Rowson illustrates Isabelle as devoted to teaching the girls to be sensible in all aspects of their lives. Some critics argue about the women teaching in the Republic:
Women could more effectively teach children at their level and, by means of moral suasion and its gendered rhetorical tools, direct them to their future roles—if girls, motherhood, and if boys, education in school and training in the marketplace. That is, females were thought to have more skill at feeling-based teaching of the young precisely because they were emotional beings (Robbins 578).
As with other sentiment novels, “there is almost an obsession with the proper (and improper) means by which a daughter might pass into motherhood” (Davidson 118). Because Isabelle married out of her faith, she is persistent in providing her daughter with maternal advice about men. Rowson writes, “It was ever the care of Isabelle to impress on the mind of her daughter a proper sense of a wife…” (4). Isabelle’s mother once advised her in choosing a husband just as Isabelle is advising her own daughter. Her mother advised her not to marry for wealth or titles but instead “seek courage, honour, good sense, and polished manners” (Rowson 39).
Kritzer believes, “With the mother figures serving as guides and guarantors of choice, the young women explore the options available to them.” Although mothers may want opposing qualities in men for their children, daughters try to follow the instruction of their mothers. When Columbia is nearly eighteen, she falls for Sir Egbert Gorges and heeds her mother’s advice. Isabelle warns her to not let sensibility disable her, “Enter into no serious engagements with him, which hereafter may cause you much uneasiness” (83). Young women “use their freedom of movement to actively seek the company of a man they wish to marry” (Kritzer). The couple is allowed by Isabelle to exchange rings in remembrance of each other.
Isabelle’s advice is also an effort to prevent her daughter from being seduced. Davidson believes, “A good daughter of the Republic would refuse to be swayed by the blandishments of a seducer…” (119). However, while Columbia avoids seduction, the family’s servant, Mina does not. Mina is seduced into divulging information to a stranger which leads to the family’s capture. She is drawn by “her inexperienced heart, fascinated with his flattery” (Rowson 91). Chapters later, readers are introduced to Mina’s baby. Before she dies, she leaves her child, “the wretched offspring of shame and folly,” to Columbia’s care.
Just as Rowson’s plays “show the distinctively American young women exercising an apparently inalienable right to choose their own husbands,” her novels do as well. Throughout the period of his absence, Columbia is hopeful of his return. When he is reunited with Columbia, “her delighted, happy mother bestowed her hand on Sir Egbert Gorges with unfeigned satisfaction” (Rowson 123). Rowson’s plays also “acknowledge that motherly indulgence and the resulting independence of daughters have risks, especially for young women” (Kritzer). She notes that one of the risks is choosing the wrong husband. For Columbia, however, she employs good judgment in marrying Egbert, but she is guided by her mother along the way.
In Volume Two, readers are introduced to the hero and heroine, Reuben and Rachel who are distant relatives of Columbia. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and other critics describe this volume of the text:
A “‘sentimental novel’ complete with the traditional sentimental novel ending, in which every character is matched with the proper mate, and in which even the title female character recedes into ‘the domestic space the new American nation and the new American middle-class discourses have allotted to her as a subject female’” (Epley 48).
The twins are raised by their Aunt Rachel as infants whose minds were “perfect blanks, on which the hand of education might impress whatever characters the instructor pleased” (Rowson 174). Rachel is described as a delight to instruct because of the “rapid progress she made in every study in which she engaged” (Rowson 175).
Because Rowson uses a mother’s education to shape her daughter’s identity, the true lack of a mother in Volume Two presents the heroine with seemingly irreconcilable obstacles. While Rachel’s aunt acts as a mother figure for a number of years, she is a “motherless daughter” as Davidson points out. She sees a daughter without a mother as “unguided, uneducated, unprotected, but also unencumbered” (120). After hearing word of their father’s death, the twins are informed their estate will be taken to pay off his debt. Without either parent as a guide, Rachel cries, “Who will receive us? Where shall we find either home or support?” (Rowson 207).
When her aunt dies, Rachel is typically left to fend for herself without a mother figure’s watchful eye. Although Rachel is forced to move from setting to setting, Kritzer sees the women in Rowson’s works as having to “relate primarily to other women.” This observation is clear throughout the novel as Rachel, like the majority of Rowson’s women characters, “have no close involvement with a male during most of the action, either because they are single or because their husbands are absent” (Kritzer). Almost all of the women Rachel comes in contact with are unfit to be role models and unable to educate her in the proper sense. One friend, Miss La Varone is described as “the most improper companion she could have chosen” (Rowson 230).
Rachel eventually finds a man she hopes to marry, Hamden Auberry, but their union is forbidden by his aunt due to his wealth and status. On her visit to London to visit her friend, Jessy Oliver, she stays with a hostess who is “devoid of knowledge” (Rowson 230). Speaking of Mrs. Webster, Rowson writes, “From such a woman, Rachel had nothing either to hope or apprehend” (230). None of her companions or hostesses could have provided Rachel with the same care and education as a mother because “‘mothers’ and ‘teachers’ came to be spoken in one breathe” (Rust 264).
Daughters without mothers in America are inept to “establish themselves as stable individuals or capable mothers” (“Introduction” 112). Unlike Isabelle and Columbia’s close relationship in Volume One, Volume Two lacks the moral instruction necessary to shape Rachel’s identity. Over the course of the novel, she is accused of committing acts of theft and adultery. After she secretly marries Hamden who is described as a “feckless, clueless aristocrat,” he leaves on business and sends her to another unfitting hostess (Epley 48). Just as Rowson’s play depicts “the struggles of married women for happiness within their relationships,” the tale of Rachel does, too” (Kritzer).
While Rachel struggles to survive, she overcomes harsh trials and tribulations even without a mother’s example. However, if Rachel were to be guided by a mother’s command, her life may not have been filled with hardships. Since Hamden’s departure is longer than expected, she is left with no money and gives birth to a child. With no mother and/or mother figure to educate her, Rachel is nearly deceived by the landlords and roommates. For example, one woman offers Rachel a free trip in return to be her servant. On the other hand, one friend, Jessy, pitifully tries to instruct Rachel: “This mad-brained, harum-scarum husband of yours, although I think he little deserves such attention from us, yet we will e’en go after him” (Rowson 341).
As Davidson notes, the novels of the early Republic “seem to be a warning to a rootless young nation” (120). Near the end of Reuben and Rachel, Rowson writes that “our heroine was drinking very deeply of the cup of affliction; poverty was her constant companion” (327). Epley also believes that by reading Reuben and Rachel, readers see that Rowson views America as “consumed by greed, envy, corruption, and selfishness” (53). The selfish motives of many characters that Rachel comes in contact with verify this idea. However, the ending reads as a glimmer of hope.
Once the siblings are reunited, and both marry their choices of a partner, the sufferings of Rachel appear absent. The narrator says, “After this period, our heroine for many years enjoyed an uninterrupted series of felicity” (Rowson 361). Rachel’s future as a mother looks promising as well. Hamden is shown to devote “every leisure moment to the assisting of Rachel in the education of a beautiful rising family…” (Rowson 361).
Most critics argue that Rowson exemplifies republican motherhood in her works. As Rust believes, “The name Susanna Rowson has long been synonymous with the ideology of genteel female domesticity—familiar to most through such concepts as republican motherhood and separate spheres…” (264). Rowson’s consistent use of “mother-daughter combinations serve to both claim and extend the concept of republican motherhood” (Kritzer). By her portrayal of mothers/mother figures as educators, she illustrates the notion that “women should exemplify, teach, and guard the spirit of the republic within the family” (Kritzer).
Through the characters of Isabelle, Columbia, and Rachel, mothers and/or mother figures in Reuben and Rachel develop their daughters’ identities using Rowson’s ideals of sensibility and education. This idea of republican motherhood is credited with reuniting the “state and family” (Robbins 564). When there is no mother and/or mother figure present, the daughter is left to become an independent person fighting against the odds. In Rachel’s case, luckily, she succeeds.
in the Early American Novel and the Nation: Rowson’s Reuben & Rachel
Many scholars who focus on eighteenth-century perspectives debate the “constitutional formulation of American citizenhood, which based political rights on gender, race, and class” (Kritzer). Sarah Hale, a political writer, has found “compelling evidence that women's activities at home, especially their domestic teaching, had a profound influence on the nation” (566). While some critics note that many white middle-class women in the Republic felt this citizenhood model failed to acknowledge women’s self-sufficiency, others like Linda Kerber, insist that “the small space allocated to women in evolving concepts of national identity was governed by the notion of ‘republican motherhood’” (“Constitutional” 24).
While most critics seem to agree with Kerber’s supposition that "the model republican woman was a mother," they appear to differ on the extent to which these women were recognized as part of the Republic ("Republican" 202). In her book Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women, Marion Rust addresses this concern. She says that during this decade, “the range of behaviors available to women expanded even as their attempts to avail themselves of these opportunities were increasingly stigmatized” (“What Thinks your Father of the Present Times?” 8). Another scholar, Dorothy A. Mays, believes that republican motherhood “preserved traditional notions of gender, but gave women and mothers credit for helping shape the minds and future of the nation” (279). Extending the work of Kerber and other critics by using Susanna Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel, mothers and/or mother figures in this text develop their daughters’ identities using Rowson’s ideals of sensibility and education.
Although Rowson was born in Portsmouth, England, her father moved the family to Boston after her mother died in childbirth. Her father remarried when she was four years old. As a child, she was instructed in the classics by scholar James Otis. She later married William Rowson who had numerous affairs and fathered a child with another woman whom Susanna raised like one of her own. Her major theme in many of her novels of the tragic heroine “being led astray by charming scoundrels can be attributed in part to William Rowson” (Mays 337).
Published in 1798 but set in the middle of the fifteenth century, Reuben and Rachel or Tales of Old Times presents widowed mother Isabelle who develops her daughter’s identity through Rowson’s ideal of sensibility. Kritzer asserts that in all the communities of women which Rowson writes about, there are “several unmarried young women and a middle-aged woman who functions as mother figure.” In Volume One of Reuben and Rachel, Isabelle fills the role of the middle-aged mother to daughter Columbia and their servant, Mina. The name Columbia is especially fitting. Davidson notes that while “Christopher Columbus may have discovered the continent…it was Columbia, the feminine personification of the new United States, who perpetuated it” (112).
Aware of Columbia’s beauty, Isabelle is determined to instill her own virtues upon her daughter. While she appreciates Columbia’s vivacity, Isabelle is “fully sensible of the necessity…for checking those ebullitions of vanity, which, if suffered to pass unnoticed, would throw a shade over the really valuable qualities of good sense, good nature, and benevolence…” (Rowson 3). Rowson illustrates Isabelle as devoted to teaching the girls to be sensible in all aspects of their lives. Some critics argue about the women teaching in the Republic:
Women could more effectively teach children at their level and, by means of moral suasion and its gendered rhetorical tools, direct them to their future roles—if girls, motherhood, and if boys, education in school and training in the marketplace. That is, females were thought to have more skill at feeling-based teaching of the young precisely because they were emotional beings (Robbins 578).
As with other sentiment novels, “there is almost an obsession with the proper (and improper) means by which a daughter might pass into motherhood” (Davidson 118). Because Isabelle married out of her faith, she is persistent in providing her daughter with maternal advice about men. Rowson writes, “It was ever the care of Isabelle to impress on the mind of her daughter a proper sense of a wife…” (4). Isabelle’s mother once advised her in choosing a husband just as Isabelle is advising her own daughter. Her mother advised her not to marry for wealth or titles but instead “seek courage, honour, good sense, and polished manners” (Rowson 39).
Kritzer believes, “With the mother figures serving as guides and guarantors of choice, the young women explore the options available to them.” Although mothers may want opposing qualities in men for their children, daughters try to follow the instruction of their mothers. When Columbia is nearly eighteen, she falls for Sir Egbert Gorges and heeds her mother’s advice. Isabelle warns her to not let sensibility disable her, “Enter into no serious engagements with him, which hereafter may cause you much uneasiness” (83). Young women “use their freedom of movement to actively seek the company of a man they wish to marry” (Kritzer). The couple is allowed by Isabelle to exchange rings in remembrance of each other.
Isabelle’s advice is also an effort to prevent her daughter from being seduced. Davidson believes, “A good daughter of the Republic would refuse to be swayed by the blandishments of a seducer…” (119). However, while Columbia avoids seduction, the family’s servant, Mina does not. Mina is seduced into divulging information to a stranger which leads to the family’s capture. She is drawn by “her inexperienced heart, fascinated with his flattery” (Rowson 91). Chapters later, readers are introduced to Mina’s baby. Before she dies, she leaves her child, “the wretched offspring of shame and folly,” to Columbia’s care.
Just as Rowson’s plays “show the distinctively American young women exercising an apparently inalienable right to choose their own husbands,” her novels do as well. Throughout the period of his absence, Columbia is hopeful of his return. When he is reunited with Columbia, “her delighted, happy mother bestowed her hand on Sir Egbert Gorges with unfeigned satisfaction” (Rowson 123). Rowson’s plays also “acknowledge that motherly indulgence and the resulting independence of daughters have risks, especially for young women” (Kritzer). She notes that one of the risks is choosing the wrong husband. For Columbia, however, she employs good judgment in marrying Egbert, but she is guided by her mother along the way.
In Volume Two, readers are introduced to the hero and heroine, Reuben and Rachel who are distant relatives of Columbia. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and other critics describe this volume of the text:
A “‘sentimental novel’ complete with the traditional sentimental novel ending, in which every character is matched with the proper mate, and in which even the title female character recedes into ‘the domestic space the new American nation and the new American middle-class discourses have allotted to her as a subject female’” (Epley 48).
The twins are raised by their Aunt Rachel as infants whose minds were “perfect blanks, on which the hand of education might impress whatever characters the instructor pleased” (Rowson 174). Rachel is described as a delight to instruct because of the “rapid progress she made in every study in which she engaged” (Rowson 175).
Because Rowson uses a mother’s education to shape her daughter’s identity, the true lack of a mother in Volume Two presents the heroine with seemingly irreconcilable obstacles. While Rachel’s aunt acts as a mother figure for a number of years, she is a “motherless daughter” as Davidson points out. She sees a daughter without a mother as “unguided, uneducated, unprotected, but also unencumbered” (120). After hearing word of their father’s death, the twins are informed their estate will be taken to pay off his debt. Without either parent as a guide, Rachel cries, “Who will receive us? Where shall we find either home or support?” (Rowson 207).
When her aunt dies, Rachel is typically left to fend for herself without a mother figure’s watchful eye. Although Rachel is forced to move from setting to setting, Kritzer sees the women in Rowson’s works as having to “relate primarily to other women.” This observation is clear throughout the novel as Rachel, like the majority of Rowson’s women characters, “have no close involvement with a male during most of the action, either because they are single or because their husbands are absent” (Kritzer). Almost all of the women Rachel comes in contact with are unfit to be role models and unable to educate her in the proper sense. One friend, Miss La Varone is described as “the most improper companion she could have chosen” (Rowson 230).
Rachel eventually finds a man she hopes to marry, Hamden Auberry, but their union is forbidden by his aunt due to his wealth and status. On her visit to London to visit her friend, Jessy Oliver, she stays with a hostess who is “devoid of knowledge” (Rowson 230). Speaking of Mrs. Webster, Rowson writes, “From such a woman, Rachel had nothing either to hope or apprehend” (230). None of her companions or hostesses could have provided Rachel with the same care and education as a mother because “‘mothers’ and ‘teachers’ came to be spoken in one breathe” (Rust 264).
Daughters without mothers in America are inept to “establish themselves as stable individuals or capable mothers” (“Introduction” 112). Unlike Isabelle and Columbia’s close relationship in Volume One, Volume Two lacks the moral instruction necessary to shape Rachel’s identity. Over the course of the novel, she is accused of committing acts of theft and adultery. After she secretly marries Hamden who is described as a “feckless, clueless aristocrat,” he leaves on business and sends her to another unfitting hostess (Epley 48). Just as Rowson’s play depicts “the struggles of married women for happiness within their relationships,” the tale of Rachel does, too” (Kritzer).
While Rachel struggles to survive, she overcomes harsh trials and tribulations even without a mother’s example. However, if Rachel were to be guided by a mother’s command, her life may not have been filled with hardships. Since Hamden’s departure is longer than expected, she is left with no money and gives birth to a child. With no mother and/or mother figure to educate her, Rachel is nearly deceived by the landlords and roommates. For example, one woman offers Rachel a free trip in return to be her servant. On the other hand, one friend, Jessy, pitifully tries to instruct Rachel: “This mad-brained, harum-scarum husband of yours, although I think he little deserves such attention from us, yet we will e’en go after him” (Rowson 341).
As Davidson notes, the novels of the early Republic “seem to be a warning to a rootless young nation” (120). Near the end of Reuben and Rachel, Rowson writes that “our heroine was drinking very deeply of the cup of affliction; poverty was her constant companion” (327). Epley also believes that by reading Reuben and Rachel, readers see that Rowson views America as “consumed by greed, envy, corruption, and selfishness” (53). The selfish motives of many characters that Rachel comes in contact with verify this idea. However, the ending reads as a glimmer of hope.
Once the siblings are reunited, and both marry their choices of a partner, the sufferings of Rachel appear absent. The narrator says, “After this period, our heroine for many years enjoyed an uninterrupted series of felicity” (Rowson 361). Rachel’s future as a mother looks promising as well. Hamden is shown to devote “every leisure moment to the assisting of Rachel in the education of a beautiful rising family…” (Rowson 361).
Most critics argue that Rowson exemplifies republican motherhood in her works. As Rust believes, “The name Susanna Rowson has long been synonymous with the ideology of genteel female domesticity—familiar to most through such concepts as republican motherhood and separate spheres…” (264). Rowson’s consistent use of “mother-daughter combinations serve to both claim and extend the concept of republican motherhood” (Kritzer). By her portrayal of mothers/mother figures as educators, she illustrates the notion that “women should exemplify, teach, and guard the spirit of the republic within the family” (Kritzer).
Through the characters of Isabelle, Columbia, and Rachel, mothers and/or mother figures in Reuben and Rachel develop their daughters’ identities using Rowson’s ideals of sensibility and education. This idea of republican motherhood is credited with reuniting the “state and family” (Robbins 564). When there is no mother and/or mother figure present, the daughter is left to become an independent person fighting against the odds. In Rachel’s case, luckily, she succeeds.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Food for Thought
For my paper, I will be looking at the female identity within the mother/daughter relationship. I find it interesting how the mother is either deceased or not present in many of the novels we've read in class. Using Reuben and Rachel, I will look at the concept of motherhood in the Republic. One critic who also talks about this issue is none other than Cathy Davidson. Her chapter entitled "Mothers and Daughters in the Fiction of the New Republic" opens with a quote from the October issue of Parent's Magazine in 1840. It reads, "Compared with maternal influence, the combined authority of laws and armies and public sentiment are little things." This quote fits in well with my argument that mothers or mother figures develop their daughters' identities. Davidson even uses an example of Charlotte Temple to illustrate that a "good daughter of the Republic" would have not been seduced as she was. Further discussing this idea of a "good daughter of the Republic," she says that "instead, she would settle for the simpler homespun pleasures of connubial bliss and maternal satisfaction." In Charlotte, for example, if she had heeded the maternal advice, there would have been no actual seduction in the seduction novel.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Food for Thought
By reading more of this novel, I've realized what Rowson's intentions and motives were in writing it. She was writing for an intended young, female audience in hopes of acquainting them with American history. The book seems pretty similar to Charlotte Temple in that they both can be seen as guide books. Both include characters that are victims and villains. I've noticed a few lessons that Rowson expends and I'm sure more will come.
It's both confusing and interesting to connect the family ties in the novel. Rowson takes the reader on a history lesson of several generations of the family beginning with Christopher Columbus.
It's both confusing and interesting to connect the family ties in the novel. Rowson takes the reader on a history lesson of several generations of the family beginning with Christopher Columbus.
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