Claiming the Pen

Catherine Kerrison

Description

In 1711, the imperious Virginia patriarch William Byrd II spitefully refused his wife Lucy's plea for a book; a century later, Lady Jean Skipwith placed an order that sent the Virginia bookseller Joseph Swan scurrying to please. These vignettes bracket a century of change in white southern women's lives. Claiming the Pen offers the first intellectual history of early southern women. It situates their reading and writing within the literary culture of the wider Anglo-Atlantic world, thus far understood to be a masculine province, even as they inhabited the limited, provincial social circles of the plantation South.Catherine Kerrison uncovers a new realm of female education in which conduct-of-life advice-both the dry pedantry of sermons and the risque plots of novels-formed the core reading program. Women, she finds, learned to think and write by reading prescriptive literature, not Greek and Latin classics, in impromptu home classrooms, rather than colleges and universities, and from kin and friends, rather than schoolmates and professors. Kerrison also reveals that southern women, in their willingness to "take up the pen" and so claim new rights, seized upon their racial superiority to offset their gender inferiority. In depriving slaves of education, southern women claimed literacy as a privilege of their whiteness, and perpetuated and strengthened the repressive institutions of slavery.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Local history
• History of the Americas

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 11 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801454332
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

0= Claiming the Pen l;;'

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CLAIMING THE PEN

Women and Intellectual Life in

the Early American South

Catherine Kerrison

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Cornell University Press

i t h a c a a n d l o n d o n

Copyright © 2006 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2006 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kerrison, Catherine, 1953– Claiming the pen : women and intellectual life in the early American South / Cather- ine Kerrison. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-4344-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8014-4344-X (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Women—Southern States—Intellectual life—18th century. 2. Women—Books and reading—Southern States—History—18th century. 3. Women authors, Ameri- can—Southern States—History—18th century. 4. Women and literature—Southern States—History—18th century. 5. American literature—Southern States—History and criticism. I. Title. HQ1438.S63K47 2006 305.48'9630975—dc22 2005016063

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materi- als to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine- free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Justin, Sarah, and Elizabeth

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

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Contents l;;'

1. Toward an Intellectual History of Early Southern Women

2. “The Truest Kind of Breeding”: Prescriptive Literature in the Early South

3. Religion, Voice, and Authority

4. Reading Novels in the South

5. Reading, Race, and Writing

Conclusion: The Enduring Problem of Female Authorship and Authority Postscript Abbreviations Notes Index

vii

ix xi

1

34

70

105

139

185 195 199 201 259

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Illustrations l;;'

1. “Fair Lady Working Tambour,” London, c. 1770 2. “The Conversation Group,” English, c. 1775 3. “Lady’s Toilette: The Wig,” English, c. 1802 4. “Maternal Advice,” London, 1795 5. “Correspondence,” London, 1760

ix

16 58 62 113 172