(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.

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.