364754

Mrs.
Sigourney and the Sensibility of the Inner Space Author(s): Ann Douglas Wood Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Jun., 1972), pp. 163-181 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/364754 . Accessed: 07/02/2014 19:01
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NEW ENGLAND QVARTTERLY

JUNE 1972
MRS. SIGOURNEY AND THE SENSIBILITY OF THE INNER SPACE
ANN DOUGLAS WOOD
THE
Dickinson,althoughtherewerehundredsof womenoffering theirpoetic "effusions" to the Americanpublic in the nineteenth Their valuelessand triteas they productions, century.? were eagerlywelcomed,largelyby feminine appear today, readers,and manyof theirauthorswere known throughout the United States. Consequently,their poetry,despite its esthetic is sociologically as an index insignificance, significant the to and cultureofnineteenth-century American psychology women. Mrs. Lydia HuntleySigourney, widelyhailed as "the sweet of and the most singer Hartford," popularpoetessin America
1For contemporary notices and selections see Rufus Griswold,editor, The Female Poets of America (Philadelphia, 1849), and Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record: or Sketchesof All Distinguished Women from "the Beginning" till A.D. r85o (New York, 1853). For attemptsto understand this sentimental tradition in American literature,see Gordon S. Haight, Mrs. Sigourney: the Sweet Singer of Hartford (New Haven, 1930); ChristopherLasch and William R. Taylor, "Two Kindred Spirits: Sororityand Family in New England, 1839-1846," NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY, XXXVI, 231-241 (1963); Helen Papasphvilly, All the Happy Endings: A Study of the Domestic Novel in America (New York, 1956); Ann Douglas Wood, "The 'ScribblingWomen' and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote," American Quarterly,xxIm(1971), 3-24163
critics would agree that therewas no important M OST AmericanpoetessbetweenAnne Bradstreet and Emily
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THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
before case study of thewiles theCivil War,offers a revealing the and waysof feminine school which sentimentalist-poetic she headed. No one could pretendthat her reputationwas merit.Her only modern by intellectualor literary justified admitted thathe was unable to Gordon Haight, biographer, one good poemamonghernumerous find works.2 Mrs.Sigourthe truth under the guise herself, ney accidentally disclosing of womanly that her had been muse modesty, acknowledged "a woman all in of work and an aproned waiter" the only "kitchen"of Parnassus.s The Rev. E. B. Huntingdon,one of her contemporary used her supposedmoral perbiographers, fectionsto mask her literary insisting"Her imperfections, made hergreat."4 goodness Thrownbackon hermoralvirtueas theproferred explanation forher success,one discoversthat it does not bear up muchbetter her thanherliterary By "goodness," pretensions. admirers meant,of course,thatshe was pure and pious, but also meant thatshewas a lady.When Mrs.Ann Stephens, they a popular novelist, thatLydia Sigourney remarked had never she in"sullied the erminethatnaturehad cast about her,"5 vestedherwithexciting of aristocracy. Yet Miss connotations hard and Huntleywas not born to the purple: she struggled Born in 1791 in Norwich,Connecticut, the daughterof a Mrs. attached herself gardener, Sigourney ardentlyto Mrs. her father's and aristocratic After wealthy Lathrop, employer. herpatroness' death,theyoungLydia Huntleyused herpoetry to get a footin the door of Norwichsociety:when a death occurred,a timelysympathetic poem would be sent to the and Miss usuallyelite family grieving by the tender-hearted Huntley. Sensibilitycut across class lines. After teaching
2 Haight, Mrs. Sigourney.. ., ix. 8 Sigourney,Letters of Life (New York, 1866), 376. Hereafter referredto as Letters. 4 Huntingdon, "Lydia H. Sigourney," in Eminent Women of the Age (Hartford, Conn., 1869), 85. 5Haight, Mrs. Sigourney..., 99-1oo.
ruthlesslyto wear it.
THE SENSIBILITY OF THE INNER SPACE
165
schoolsuccessfully someyears, in 1816she married well above to a and Hartford herself, merchant, precise prosperous CharlesSigourney, but thismarriagein no way satiatedher ambition.Childless at first, she was fertilein poetic verse, on the operating assumptionthat few people are modest to resist or rude enoughto slam thedoor on a flattery enough determined intruder. As a major contributor to the giftannuals and magazines for she became the soon ladies, designed of the American but matriarch business-minded blushing Alby Poe, and patronized byWhittier. poeticscene,flattered Mr. business his wife less lucrative, though Sigourney's grew continuedto do a brisktradein sentimental and moralwares In Mrs.Sigourney's critics own day,there werenotwanting of her role as a crude femaleFranklin.Jane Carlyle,one of herself forced manyliteration whomMrs. Sigourney during hertravels, described hervisitor: tartly at an age which farbehind-with leftcertainty tum-bare-necked that where in never ... longringlets grew they hung all glistening forblackstickingblacksatinas if shewerean apothecary's puff and staring hereyes outtogivethem plaster animation.7 Closer to home,Horace Greeley, asked to do a sketchof her forRufusGriswold's The Female Poets ofAmerica, wrotethe knowhow bad a job it is. As it won'tdo to saya wordof her real history, howwill it be possibleto sayanything?"8 These commentators causticallyhinted that Mrs. Sigourlike hersocial and literary one, was at ney'smoralreputation,
6 Biographical details here and elsewhere are drawn from Haight and Huntingdon, as well as from Mrs. Sigourney's autobiographical writings, Letters of Life and her memorial volume on her dead son Andrew, The Faded Hope (New York, 1853). Her unpublished letters,papers and diaries in the Sigourney Collection in the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford,Connecticut have also provided a fruitfulsource of information. 7 Haight, Mrs. Sigourney... , 58. 8 Haight, Mrs. Sigourney..., I11.
until her death in 1865.-
with rouge and pomapoetess-beplastered ... an over-the-water
editor: "I shall tryto plaster over Mrs. Sigourney ... but you
166
least open to question. Mrs. Sigourneywas generous(especiallywithgiftcopies of her books),and seemsto have been as well as shrewdness. But she capable of warm-heartedness lived the she liked herself. of to to She hardly up picture paint advertised herself as a devotedwifeand mother, nestlingat her own hearthside, of her pouringout the poetic effusions feminine and leavingherhome onlyat the imperious nature, calls of Christian her personallifewas unduty.In actuality, her own doing. Her dryand happy,perhapslargelythrough exacthusbandwas distasteful to her,as werehis daughters by a previous and she repeatedly but vainlyaskedhim marriage, fora separation.Her only son, Andrew,whom she tried to smother with affection, turnedviolently againsther, before of Not she dying consumption. surprisingly, used her literary careeras a way to leave her home and to meet more sympathetic unlikeableperhaps, but cerpeople. CharlesSigourney, not a her her for virtual desertion of fool, tainly upbraided him. In a long letterin 1827, he mercilessly describedher careerin terms of sexual desire:she evinceda "lust of praise, whichlike theappetiteofthecormorant is not to be satisfied," and wasguilty ofan "apparently passionofdisunconquerable herself." Resentful of the she carried flirtations playing open on withwriters and editors, he remindedher of her own prethat woman "like should be thesun behinda cloud, givcept life & warmth to all comfort unseen." He & around,itself ing that hermuseservedas a pretext forexhibitionism, a charged kind of vicariouspublic prostitution: "Who wants, or would of value," he asked,"a wifewho is to be the public property thewhole community?"' Withtheseamy underside ofMrs.Sigourney's lifeso clearly to agreewithGordonHaight'sopinlaid bare,one is tempted ion that her successis a lesson in successful She hypocrisy. loved to strike a note of tranquilly orderedyetbusystability as characteristic of her life-style, but her franticbackstage belied hergracious bickering public pose. And yettheonstage
9 Letter of Oct., 1827 in the SigourneyCollection, 2, 6.
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act worked.Greeleymayhave grumbled, but he knew Grisher. Domestiwold's anthology would be incomplete without she was nonetheless cally unhappy,demandingand difficult, toutedas an exemplarof feminine virtue;born in the lower middle class,she fought her way to a positionin the upper ranksof Hartford Yet a talentforhypocrisy does not society. she Mrs. it clear needed for is that too fully explain Sigourney, to deceive herself. withits almost The sensethather poetry, for bland serenity, hysterical striving conveysis not one of so much as strenuous sublimation.As she aggreshypocrisy men chased and her sively way to fame,she poured pushed forthan endlessseries of tributesto femininemodesty, deculIn Mrs. Sigourney's sensibility. pendence,and shrinking was evidenceof sense,not inture,thiskind of schizophrenia forsentimental effusions were the mostapprovedway sanity, for a woman to succeed,10 and open competitive aggressiveoffered ness, whethersexual or career-oriented, only a sure road to failure. The clearest, and mostcentral evidenceof thenarfrankest, rowlimitsplaced on feminine can be foundin self-expression the publishedviewsof nineteenth-century Americandoctors about femalebiologyand sexuality. Mrs. Sigourney and her sister had in largepart poetslived in an age whenphysicians Freud's discoveries of and anticipated supposed penis-envy in like had branded Freud, castration-complex women,and, thesetendencies as unhealthy, and evenas evil. Their analysis, which may at first seem an unlikelyguide to the workof a woman like Mrs. Sigourney, in actualityprovidesessential for and even offers a paradigmforits curious background it, tensionsand patterns.The sexual repressionwhich their theoriesimposed on women under the guise of biological could of course foster necessity political and social sublimait also tion, but could appear as artisticsublimation.Mrs. demonstrates thatitnotonlycould,but did. Sigourney circulated and popularmedicalmanuals Readingthewidely
10
For a developmentof this idea, see Wood, American Quarterly,passim.
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of thedaydealingwithwomen,one is struck by themale doctors'distrust of the clitoris. They are fullyaware thatit is a feminine versionof the penis and show a morbidfearof its into masculineproportions. Dr. Frederpotentialforgrowth ick Hollick, one of themostsensibleof thesedoctor-authors, devotespages to the problemof hermaphrodites, discussing themas if theywereall womenwho had turnedinto men. In his medicalpractice, he has foundan over-development of the clitorisquite common.The resultof this trendto the maswhichirresistibly impels the individual to seek gratification of consequences."This is not, however,an irreregardless mediable problem,for,as Hollick explains in a passagestarthe clitoris"can readilybe amtlingin itsmatter-of-factness, more or . . less and its be reduced.This . excitability putated withentiresuccess.""' operationI have frequently performed Dr. William Alcottof Boston,anotherspecialistin women's diseases, is also familiar with this "surgical operation."12 of gynecology, concludesthat HarveyGraham,in his history "many"Americandoctorsof the period "practicedexcision to use "contraptions of theclitoris," althoughsome preferred of fine-mesh wirewhichlooked like directdescendents of the mediaevalchastity belts."'3 to alleviate theirown anxThe same doctors, in an effort liked to that stress women were all womb. Since the ieties,
11Frederick Hollick, The Marriage Guide, or Natural History of Generation: A Private Instructorfor Married Persons and Those About to Marry Both Male and Female (New York, 186o), 35-36, 41. For a discussion of the marriage manuals, see Michael Gordon, "From Procreation to Recreation: Changes in Sexual Ideology 1830-1940,"a paper read at the 1970 meeting of The American Sociological Association and to be published in James Henslin, of the genesis and nature editor, The Sociology of Sex. For a fuller treatment of nineteenthcenturyAmerican medical opinion on women, see Ann Douglas Wood, "The Fashionable Diseases: Women's Complaints and Their Treatment in NineteenthCenturyAmerica,"forthcoming in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 12William A. Alcott, The Young Woman's Book of Health (Boston, 1850), 217. 13Harvey Graham, Eternal Eve: the History of Gynecologyand Obstetrics (New York, 1951), 435-
culine is, in his opinion, aggressive sexuality, a "madness
THE SENSIBILITY
OF THE INNER SPACE
169
uterusis an organunique to the female,to emphasizeits imher reassuring was to underscore disportancein her system numberof tancefromthe male. In an era when a staggering women died frompulmonarytuberculosis, and childbirth, but in these ailments little attention received breast-cancer, standardbooks on women'shealth. Dr. William Alcott,for example,in his Young Woman'sBook ofHealth, devotesone tocancerofthebreast, none toconsumption, and some chapter menstrual and to such thirty malfunctionings probchapters lems as "Uterine Dropsy,""CauliflowerExcrescenceof the Uterus,"and "Uterine Madness." Anotherdoctor,Professor a medicalsociety in 1870, Hubbard ofNew Haven,addressing thatit seemed"'as iftheAlhis hearers goesso faras to inform in creating the femalesex, had takenthe uterusand mighty, built up a womanaround it."'"14 There wereseveralattractions in thisnearly completeidentification of woman with her womb. For one thing,it condemnedas unnaturalany tendencies on her partto whatone the in an interesting call clitorial sensibility-branded, might combinationof ideas, as aggressive, sexual, and masculine. For another, it diminished thethreat posedbywomanas a posto the lord of the species,by implying sible competitor that, ifshewas all womb,shewas all disease.The womb,in contemin its powers. medicalthought, was seen as pestilential porary in itself Menstruation wasregarded as an illness. As Dr. Walter readers,"everywoman should Taylor remindshis feminine as an invalidonce a month."'5 look upon herself This conflict in feminine sexual identity betweenthe agand the gressive(clitorial) passive (womb-derived) impulses whichthemid-nineteenth-century doctorfound,or American theone Mrs. to resolvewas precisely imposed,and attempted
14 M. L. Holbrook, editor,Parturition Without Pain: A Code of Directions for Escaping from the Primal Curse (New York, 1875), 95. 15Walter C. Taylor, A Physician'sCounsels to Woman in Health and Disease (Springfield,1872), 285. For a recent article on Victorian attitudes towards menstruation, see Elaine and English Showalter, "Victorian Women and Menstruation,"VictorianStudies,xIv, 83-89 (1970).
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usedherpoetry andwhich sheunconsciously faced Sigourney tocontrol. ErikErikson hasargued thatchildren use game-constructs In a tomirror andexamine ownphysiological their sexuality. nowfamous he found boysbuilding experiment, apparently His and womb-like structures ones.16 girlsbuilding phallic if for such individual can use worksuggests an that, games usethehighly heorshecanprobably game complex purposes,
ofartforsimilar ends.In a curiousway,Mrs.Sigourney found in herwritings and bioa wayto express, the explore, exploit sex. to As and structures to her sexual logical supposed belong will be apparent, shetook,at leastforpublic purposes, the terof Erik has called "the inner what Erikson ritory space" as her in found a rather morbid and her world, imaginary inspiration Contentto sacrifice the clitoristo the spiritof sublimation. was and fiction whose mise-en-scene womb,she wrotepoetry an enclosure, whether a convent, a grave,or simply the suffoand whose cating atmosphereof the femininesensibility, and heroinewas herself, but emptiedof conflict, sublimated, desexualized.In essence, she used her poetry to advertise herofthewomb.The resulting selfas a docileand willingprisoner herown veryreal poetictableauprovideda wayofalleviating sexual and personalconflicts and reaping the rewardsof a And it was token professionof womanly submissiveness. of notlife, a gameshecould playto relievethetensions poetry, her own existence even while it afforded her a suitablecover of selfunder which to continueher unacceptableactivities inBut its own it also offered satisfactions, aggrandizement. it was releaseforthe veryaggressiveness cludingan indirect to exorcise. pledged
"Inner and Outer Space: Reflections on Womanhood," 1e Erik Erikson, Daedalus (Spring, Eriksonapparently that claims,moreover, 1964),582-606. "innate"sexualand personal thesegamesexpress certain differences: boysare moreaggressive, and so on. The children, are however, girlsmorepeaceful, too old (io, 11,and 12),i.e.,toosocialized, to makethisviable.It is worthwhile thatthe tableauhis littlegirlsconstructed, a docilefeminine however, noting, at a piano)within an enclosed seated liketheone area,is strikingly figure (often setsup. Mrs.Sigourney's workso obsessively
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If Mrs. Sigourney was to keep at bay her "masculine"agshe could, in imagination, if not in life,also exgressiveness, clude the real thing-man.If her game-world was to be that of her own womb,she could emphasizethat no male could and thatitsresources wereessential to life. enjoyitsresources, In hershort a "The she man, Father,"'7 story, Byronic depicts in character, and excitablein disposition, rigid tempestuous and proud in will, who spendshis life alternately educating and worshipping his delicate,chaste,and subdued daughter. When she dies unexpectedly, he suffers unan agonyof grief, taut unable with to or to he throws til, hysteria, weep, sleep himself on hergraveand apparently triesto exhumeher.It is not too muchto saythatMrs.Sigourney is hereunconsciously the and of masculinity: the dramatizing sterility deprivation in his unyielding father and rigiddespairis almostsymbolic of an erection His masprolongedto the pointof nightmare. has become and kind of a sexual arid," culinity "parched the and him is the available to womb, rigormortis, onlysolace to enter. symbolized by the gravewhichhe futilely attempts of Mrs. Sigourneyand her sentimental The main efforts were not wastedon theagoniesoftheexcluded however, peers, male, who at best was but a gueststarin theirwork,but insteadwerelavishedon thetranquilcharms of thefigure at the center oftheinnerspacescenewhichwas to greethis famished was capable ofmanyvariations, but the eyes.The sceneitself was alwaysthesame: a smallfigure, pattern usuallyfeminine, in thecenter ofan enclosedworld.This littlefigure is notonly and often but weak, diseased, seeminglysubmissive,suband half-automaton. Yet, like an merged,half-hypnotized autisticchild,she is also totally and existsin a self-sufficient, stateofwarmsatiation withtheplenteous ofherown products sensibility. thisfigure foritsauthorFrequently, appearedas a stand-in in like theillustrations ess,a picture, printed popular anthol17
5-17.
The Young Lady's Offering: or Gems of Prose and Poetry (Boston, 1849),
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yethopeogies of poetesses, highlyidealized and sublimated, advertised fully by its originalas an authenticlikeness.Mrs. lifeand poetic loved towrite about herownliterary Sigourney but alwaysin a stylethatremovedthemfromthereal efforts, world of labor, deadlines,and monetary reward.Indirectly she was an inhabitant she was demonstrating thatas a writer, of her own innerspace and owed her inspiration solelyto its The backdropand inspiration thatshe,withmost resources. no matter womenwriters oftheday,likedto claimforherself, her poetry how erroneously, was thehome,and she described on thedomestic ofa womanhappilyimmolated as theeffusion altar.Yet thehome,as it existedin contemporary sentimental to her if not in bore resemblances fact, descriptions, striking It was depictedas the typepar excelown internal structure. whichthe feminine lenceofthatsecret and sealed recessfrom was its silent to exert mysterious, nonaggressive, sensibility of Godey's editress power.SarahJosephaHale, theinfluential "A in woman sit her own that Book, may Lady's explained ... she may her love her ... and and faith by by quiet room, out will . make the world better and . . send influences that happier."'8In Woman in America,Maria Jane McIntosh,a demonstrated thatwoman,as the popular Southernnovelist, the of of livingsymbol "passive"aspect life,hiddenat home, like naturein secret, "unseen herself, working .... regulates in pure and temperate itspulsations and sendsforth the flow, current.""9 life-giving The backdropof the home,however, was occasionallyreMrs. with of an and her the setting by Sigourney peers placed even the more than domestic convent, imaginary satisfying of purity scenein itssuggestions and inaccessibility. Mrs. Sigalmostall busy housewives, friends, ourneyand her literary to each otheras though werefondofreferring werevestal they off from cut the world. Protestants Staunch almost virgins,
18 Hale, Manners, or Happy Homes and Good SocietyAll the Year Round (Boston, 1868), 16. 19 McIntosh, Woman in America-Her Work and Her Reward (New York, 1850), 25-26.
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withoutexception,theyapparently could pay each otherno than witha nun. Elizabeth a highercompliment comparison Oakes Smith,author of "The Sinless Child," in her autobiographydescribedSarah Helen Whitman,so admired by Poe, as "gentle-toned, cultured,living in a nun-likeseclusion." Anotherpoeticfriend, ElizabethEames,alwayswore a lace veil whichgave "a nun-like to herappearance."20 sanctity Mrs. Sigourney stroveearnestly to create the conventatmoshe sphere.Planninga retreatin which to writeher poetry, in a littleroom explainedthatshewishedto courtinspiration "witha neatlyornamented in ceiling gothicapartments ... and a littleadditionalgothic ... placed windowofstained-glass highup in ye gable."21 liked to the poeticimpulse,as Mrs. Sigourney Predictably, describeit, had no outside source: it hailed fromGod and sounded like anotherspontaneous vibrationfromthatsensitive organ,whichwas believed to have such "extensivesymand capacitiesfor"influence."23Mrs. Sigourney expathies"22 the in visitations of her muse her plained autobiography: in myattempts at poetry wasI mysterious and sensitive. Especially I knownothow.Waking It cameto mefrom thebeginning, from I a with sometimes received few and thanked lines, downy sleep, their ethereal . strange giver ...24 rapture The workshe producedunder thismysterious spell certainly bore no trace of any outside influences. Like the idealized, realmof the innerspace,her imaginary world calm,timeless is eventless, in a mesmerized Mrs. existing Sigourpassivity.
20 Selectionsfromthe Autobiographyof Elizabeth Oakes Smith,editor,Mary Alice Wyman (Lewiston, Maine, 1924), io2, 96-97 (italics mine). 21 Letter quoted in Haight, Mrs. Sigourney... ,44-45. The theme of a girl shutting herselfoff from the world in a convent (or some retreat strikingly like it) was a frequentone in the work of Mrs. Sigourneyand her peers. See especially Mrs. Sigourney, Myrtis With Other Etchings and Sketches (New York, 1846), 18522 Hollick, The Marriage Guide ... , 81. 23 William P. Dewees, A Treatise on the Diseases of Females (Philadelphia, 1843), 14. 24Letters, 142.
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at a novel,Lucy Howard's Journal,is fasney'sone attempt in its inabilityto workup an incident.Lucy's relicinating oftena sourceof crisisin literature as well conversion, gious her as in life,is totally In as tells minister, painless. fact, she shedid notknowitwashappening,25 a description whichcould of hope when coverthewhole ofher life.There is a glimmer it looks as if her lover is interested in someoneelse, but our heroineextinguishes it withthe calm resignation thatrefuses to see a crisiswhen it stares her in the face.Lucy has but one note-one of totalblandnessand evenness, a tenacity of sublimationalmosthorrific in its strength whichshe calls piety; to have more,and Mrs. Sigourney she would be embarrassed shared her feeling.Monotonyoffered her mespresumably mericpowerstoo valuable to relinquishforthepale pleasures of variety. Mrs. Sigourney composed,accordingto her own account, in a stateof calm hypnosis. but not surprisingly, Significantly Dr. Hollick understood the abilityto be hypnotized as recepto a of sexual sublimated sort excitement,26 tivity precisely offered what Mrs. Sigourney's herself and her readers. poetry revealedthisunderlying tenJuliaWard Howe unconsciously sion whenshe wrote, in "The Joyof Poesy,"that"Like child is fullofawe to me."27Poetry divineto mortal maid,/Mygift was imaginedby thesewomenas a kind of immaculateconwhich excluded the male and charmed ception,a creativity into quiescence theirown sexuality.The sentimental songin her own fantasy life was not simplya nun: she was stress the Virgin Mary herself, living on the bountyof her sponfertile womb. taneously The poetess withhersublimated, and tranced untouchable, in than her own in the other power appeared manyguises
27Julia Ward Howe, Passion-Flowers(Boston, 1854), 148. Mary Baker Eddy came to see Science and Health as a similar productof Immaculate Conception. See Edwin Franden Dakin, Mrs. Eddy: The Biographyof a VirginalMind (New York and London, 1929), x92-193.
25 Lucy Howard's Journal (New York, 1858), 106-107. 26 Hollick, The Marriage Guide ... , 361.
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work of Mrs. Sigourneyand her peers.28 One of her most was that of a blind girl. Locked in popular manifestations the darkness, girl,like the poetess,can foreswear vibrating All her men and theworld,and feaston her own sensibility. with the blind, deaf,and was fascinated life,Mrs. Sigourney and the recipidumb,who became the subjectsof her poetry withDr. Samuel Howe, She corresponded entsofher charity. head of the Institution forthe Blind in Boston,and teacher of Laura Bridgman, the Helen Keller of the mid-nineteenth When Laura century.29 Bridgmanwas broughtfora visit to a similar Institute to Hartford, there,she was takento Mrs. home as a matter of course.She actuallywrotea Sigourney's "The Marriageof the Deaf and Dumb," poem celebrating word! no "No sound! But yeta solemnrite/Probeginning ceedeth throughthe festivelightedhall."30She patronized rival of Laura Bridgman,and was Julia Brace, Hartford's Alice attached to Cogswell,a deaf and dumb student deeply ofherown. Mrs. Sigourney was by no means alone in her absorption withthosethushandicapped.3s These people,cut off the from
28The little child and the very aged person were also popular. Both were pictured as being totallypure, tranquil, and involved in their own inner lives. There are countless examples of both in this literature, but see especially Elizabeth Oakes Smith, The Sinless Child and Other Poems (New York, 1843), and Mrs. Sigourney,Letters to Mothers (Hartford, 1838), 224-227, and Past Meridian (New York and Boston, 1854),passim. 29Their correspondencecan be found in the SigourneyCollection. 30Selected Poems (Philadelphia, 1854), 241. of the theme which I do not utilize here, see 31For interestingtreatments Ellen Louise Chandler, "My Blind Baby" in This, That and the Other (Boston, 1854), 245-246; Maria Cummins, The Lamplighter (Boston and New York, 9goo); Emma Embury, Constance Latimer: or The Blind Girl With Other Tales (New York, 1838); Hannah Gould, "The Blind Man" in Poems (Boston, 1836), 127-128; Mrs. Julia H. Kinney Scott, The Blind Widow and Her Family (Hudson, New York, 1837); Mrs. Ann Stephens, "The Blind Pastor" in The and New Year's Presents,edited by Mrs. L. H. Religious Souvenir for Christmas Sigourney (Hartford, n.d.), 221-249. These blind heroines usually refused all masculine attention. There were a significant number of blind poetesses who seemed almost morbidlyaware of the role theywere to play in the feminine of the day. Fanny Crosby,a famous blind composerof hymns,in her sensibility autobiography,Fanny Crosby's Life Story by Herself (New York, 19o3), expressed her gratitude to God for making her blind because her handicap has
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were autistic, world,livingin nightand silence,unwillingly foritspracof theinnerspace sensibility almostembodiments titioners. were like the mesmerized as Julia creator, for, They Ward Howe wrote,"The poet at his song is blind."32 They in the eyesof theireulogiststhe totallyanestherepresented tized, sublimatedcreatureswhose freedomfromtension a normal and healthywoman could only approximate.The ladies who wrote about them repeatedlyemphasizedtheir it yielded.Here ofinnerexperience isolationand therichness the blind is Mrs. Sigourney "Fanny": eulogizing lifeis thine,The silent The eardivorced from sound, ofthought fount Yetmany a tuneful Is in thy nature found, are there, Deep melodies affections sweet wave, Thy dreams Andangelsteachtheein thy Theirdialectoflove.33 combinedtwoluxuriesby Visiting Liverpool,Mrs.Sigourney going to hear "Divine Serviceat the Churchforthe Blind." There she cheerily consolesthe blind because theylack only thesightof evil while seeks musing contemplation Well pleasedyourbosom'sinmost cell, train Andmemory laudstheprecious Whoguard hergoldso well.34
enabled her to be closer to Him and to remain ignorant of the world's evil who was married,widowed and blinded within a (p. 14). Mrs. S. H. de Kroyft monthdescribedher experiencesin A Place in Thy Memory (New York,c. 1849), which is the high-watermark of the blind-poetess-sensibility. See also Mary L. Day, Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl (Baltimore,c. 1859),an autobiographical account of another blind poetess, and William Artman, and L. V. Hall, Beauties and Achievements of the Blind (Auburn, New York, 1860). Mrs. more than any of her seeing poetic sisters, writesexactly Sigourney, stylistically in the vein and manner of the blind poetesses. 32 Howe, Passion Flowers, 148. 33 Handwritten poem in the SigourneyCollection. 34 Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands (Boston, 1842), 24.
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If Mrs. Sigourney was attracted by the blind girl,she was obsessedwiththe dyingor dead girl (or child),and exploited her constantly and rallyingpoint for as a stand-in, symbol, her own sensibility. of sister her Many poets also acted as amateur obituary-columnists. A brotherof Sara C. Lippinwho underthenomde plumeof "Grace Greenwood"becott, came one of the most popular writers of her day, quipped: "Firstthe undertaker, thentheminister, thenSara."35 But no one could rivalMrs.Sigourney's in line. this mortuary powers In lookingoverher poetry, at the high proone is staggered and Other Poems, forexamportionof elegies.Zinzendorff is almost even includingverseson verse, solidly funerary ple, the death of the VenerableBede. Of course,Mrs. Sigourney receivedcountlessrequestsfromunknownand bereaved femaleslike Eliza Bankswho wrotein March,1842, begging the sweet singerto "pour Balm and Oil in a deeply wounded heart-and be entitled to its everlasting gratitude."36 The ratewas staggering. Of Mrs. Sigourney's mortality eighty-four femalepupils, by her own count, twenty-seven died before middle age from consumption,childbearing,or related causes. One findsin Mrs. Sigourney's unpublished"Record of My School" twoand threenamesin a row ofgirlswho died in theirmid-teens. of pulmonary Yet the factof consumption insufficient deaths seems account the fondness for to frequent with which Mrs. Sigourneyand other poetesseslike Alice workthetopic. Cary,Hannah Gould,and theDavidsonsisters It is ratherthat,in theirpoetic fantasies, the dead girl has found in the tomb the perfect analogue for the mysterious, darkand enclosedwomb,and in her death,the finalformof anesthetized sublimation. It is curioushow thinis the line Mrs. Sigourney drawsbetween the livingand the dead woman. She picturesone deceasedfairmaiden,lying"In calmendurance, like thesmitten
35
Quoted in Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press (New York and London, 1936),
327-
36 Letter in the SigourneyCollection.
178
The dead woman is lamb/ Wounded in flowery pastures."37 in anesthetizing the one has succeeded who completely simply in sublimating her desires,in becomingthe perfect herself, the There and receptivesensibility. of suffering expression fulfill is even a convictionthata woman cannot completely has been herpurposeuntilshe is dead. Mention made already of the unseen,secretmoral "influence" womenwere to exert thehome,and one discovers witha senseofshockthatit from in "The Moral Inwhat one writer described exactly parallels fluence oftheDead": Fromthem Of thesewe we mayconfidently hope forsympathy. in their and desire our thoughts; think we trust consolation from . of their emulate watchfulness. guardian examples, ... We think of early them and are made better; aroundthescenes we linger association.38 This echoes closelythe wordsof a writerlike Mrs. Tuthill, an etiquetteexpert,urgingwoman to exercise "the silent, and to be resistless influence of home and the affections," her loved ones fromthe hardening "sedulous" in protecting and searingimpactof the outsideworld.39 In herfascinated withdeath,Mrs.Sigourney reveals toying a willingness untoreal life,to playher to projecther fantasies a and to make her actual selfthecenter on scale, games bigger of a ritual takingplace in a real landscape. Yet the whole realizationof the scene she createdwas but a larger-than-life feminine with its sublimated tableau central inner-space in her her in 1816, she After marriage figure depicted poetry. in but she Mrs. Sigourney her 1822 school, began to gave up in the woods duringthe sumhold reunionsforher students mer season. From her account in the unpublished "Record was celeof My School," we learn thattheir"rural festival" bratedin whatMrs. Sigourney loved to call "our consecrated (1830).
and Other Poems (New York, 1836), 111. SrZinzendorff 38 C. E. L., "The Moral Influenceof the Dead," The Ladies' Magazine, III, 61 39Louisa C. Tuthill, The Young Lady's Home (Philadelphia, 1848), 99.
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whileherstudents' underthe"sweetly trees," shadowy grove," and reclin"forms" wereto be seen "glidingamongthe trees, river." the octhe the banks of Significantly, ing upon green forthe Blind were invited Institute cupantsof the Hartford on theseoccasions, to heraccount, and,according usuallycame in a procession, tone.The the to funerary contributing nicely talks Mrs. talks themselves consisted of by Sigourney, meetings whichfocused almost who had on those"flowerets" exclusively fadedduringthepreceding year.40 Even more morbid and interesting, was Mrs. Sigourney's desireto supplantthe positionof the luckydead girl of the minisas chiefmourner, year,and to function simultaneously and first At in deceased. the ter, reunion, presumably her usual plump and ruddygood health,she nonetheless urged herlisteners to go on meeting annuallyeven if "thevoice that now addresses you should be silent,the lip thathas uttered for shouldbe sealedin thedustofdeath." prayers yourwelfare thatsincethey In 1823, she tellsherhearers have lastmet,she has been sick,has been "(at least in thought) on the confines of the abode of spirits," and has broughtback solemnwords ofwisdom. To haveall thevirtues ofthedead-in otherwords, a sublimated of the order-and yetstillrefemininity highest tain the life with which to boast of it was Mrs. Sigourney's idea offelicity. In a curiousway,Mrs.Sigourney of such achieveda version she was not it. able savor Her autoto happiness,although in Letters written the last of her life, ofLife, years biography, was not publisheduntil afterher death in 1865. She got her chance,afterall, to speak fromthe grave,and the book presentsthe "sweetsinger"as thoughalreadydrenchedin memand sublimated withdeath.It was Mrs. Sigourory,sanctified to place her own idealized figure withinan ney'slast attempt innerspace landscape, and in somewayshermostinteresting. She pictures as havinggrownup in whatshe calls elseherself
40 Mrs. Sigourney also published several funerary memoirs for deceased girls, the most interestingof which is probably The Lovely Sisters Margaret and Henrietta (Hartford,Conn., 1846).
18o
as hissoldiers.")3 In thistranced and we as muchofautomatons and narrowworldin whichall action has become ritual,she has totally herown aggressive will. exorcised the Finally,aftertransposing restof her life into the same monotonous and hypnotic closeswith key,the autobiography Mrs. Sigourney in an enclosedgarden.This garden,withits choice flowers hands, readyto be plucked by pure feminine was standard in thesentimental literature of the iconography and serves here the as ultimate the of inner day, symbol space landscape to which Mrs. Sigourneyhas committedherself. The book endsexactly whereit began-in a garden-and that thepoint.In thistimeless and totally self-involved is,ofcourse, world in which "past, presentand futureconcur like three therecan be no progress, harmonies," nothingexcept cere41For her best descriptionof this scene popular with all the writersof her school, see "The Patriarch," in The Young Lady's Offering, 247-264. For another sentimentalizedtreatmentof the world of her childhood, see Sketch of ConnecticutForty Years Since (Hartford,1824). 42Letters,34. 43Letters,130o, 125 (italics mine). Gail Parkernotes the same patternin Mary Baker Eddy whom she compares with Mrs. Sigourneyin an impressivearticle, "Mary Baker Eddy and SentimentalWomanhood," NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY,
XLIII, 3-18 (1970).
"Hermetically where the "patriarchal sealed,"in society."4" herwords, this little is rural and community simple preindusandordered. The young trial, hierarchical, Lydia, growing up in happy with theflowers herfather innocence is nearly tends, in herdocility. manic Shefollows herfather's commands with obsessive and and alacrity, constantly producesstockings tokens ofherlovein a kindofexcess, other unsolicited almost in itsnature, sexual ofjoyous sheadmits that Indeed, servility. "ambition never moved me to transcend these limitations or after other she her to thirst course Of obeyed pastor, joys."42 herteacher, andherdancing-school master with equal fervor, The moreimperative theirtone,the moreshe and fascist thrilled: thechoir director hadthe"eyeofa commander," her teacher was "as ... the as Frederick Great dancing imperative
181
monious repetition. of masProgresssmacksof excitement, culinity;a feminineripenessis all Mrs. Sigourneydesires. thereis no one leftin herimaginary worldwith Furthermore, her-no dangerous male intruders, not even a ghostfrom her own suppressed enhas denied and aggressive She sexuality. and she alone revelsin herself. With a caressing trance, long of the "Sweet Hartford" takes of leave shot, Singer panning her imaginaryand sublimatedself, a little figuregetting smalleras the book nearsits end, tranquilly occupied within in her docile gratitude her innerspacelandscape,luxuriating to her all-powerful and in the "richness"of her own creator, Her is complete, self-anesthetization mellowing on-stage age."44 and the sentimental so successfully saga of Mrs. Sigourney, sold to thefeminine American is over. public, Mrs. Sigourney was neither a brilliant woman,nor an unuone. She was consciously and no strategist, suallyintelligent forthe studentof Americanculturestemsfrom her interest her unconsciousand uncannyabilityto adapt herself to the laid out for the women of her day, and to exploit patterns Amerithem.She, like her sister poets,providedmiddle-class can womenwitha manyfold she used to gain example: poetry it used an advertisement for social mobility, she as pietyand as a homesubstitute forchurchritual;but equally important, she used it as a meansfora kind ofmilitant sublimation. Her readersmaynot have knownof the conflicts whichhelped to Mrs.Sigourney's own process of public self-mesmerengender ism,but theyknewsimilarones of theirown and werebeing like forms ofrepression. Like thesweetsinger pushedtowards of Hartford, theycould hardlyachieve such sublimationin foundits vicarioustriumphin actual life,and undoubtedly Mrs. was neveran outliterature doublysatisfying. Sigourney for her but she countrywomen's rightspokeswoman rights, wastheshining exampleand tireless championoftheirfantasy life.
44Letters,401-402.

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Mrs.

NEW ENGLAND QVARTTERLY

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ruthlesslyto wear it.

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until her death in 1865.-

with rouge and pomapoetess-beplastered ... an over-the-water

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For a developmentof this idea, see Wood, American Quarterly,passim.

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culine is, in his opinion, aggressive sexuality, a "madness

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36 Letter in the SigourneyCollection.

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