Exactly Like My Father - Feminist Hermeneutic

"Exactly like My Father": Feminist Hermeneutics in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Non-
Fiction
Author(s): Eileen Razzari Elrod
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion , Winter, 1995, Vol. 63, No. 4
(Winter, 1995), pp. 695-719
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1465465
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Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXIII/4
"Exactly Like My Father":

Feminist Hermeneutics in
Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Non-fiction
Eileen Razzari Elrod
She Called me into her bedroom, where she stood before the mir-
ror, with her short gray hair, which usually lay in soft curls around
her brow, brushed erect and standing stiffly. "Look here, my
dear," she said; "now I am exactly like my father, Dr. Lyman
Beecher, when he was going to preach," and she held up her fore-
finger warningly.
-Annie Fields describing Harriet Beecher Stowe
ANNIE FIELDS' ANECDOTE about her friend Harriet Beeche

Stowe's debut on the lyceum circuit in 1872 serves as a fascinatin
emblem for Stowe's complicated relationship to her religious an
cultural inheritance as a daughter of Lyman Beecher, one of th
most famous American preachers of the nineteenth century. By
playfully imitating her father in front of Annie Fields, Harrie
Beecher Stowe seemed to acknowledge both her own and he
father's oratorical power. Preaching was as natural to her as it w
to her brothers and her father, and she had, of course, stepped
into the preacher's role long before she ventured into public spea
ing on the lyceum circuit. Writing had become for her a way o
appropriating the role to which she was destined both by birth an
inclination.' In her lyceum debut, twenty years after the phenom
nal success of Uncle Tom's Cabin launched her into a very public
career, she imagined herself as her father, demonstrating h
Eileen Razzari Elrod is Assistant Professor of English at Santa Clara University, Santa Cla
CA 95053.
1Mary Kelley has examined Stowe's response to her family legacy in her discussion of
teenth-century American women writers and domesticity: Private Woman, Public Stag
695

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696 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
understanding of her family legacy and of her own

preacher.
An investigation of Stowe's non-fiction religious works compli-
cates her response to the family legacy of religious discourse; she
both claims and subverts her father's tradition. Throughout her
work, Stowe reformed her father's Christianity, infusing it with
female models and metaphors.2 The result, seen most startlingly
in her non-fiction religious texts, is a faith vastly different not only
from her father's stern, and, for his era, regressive religion, but
from the conventional sentimental Christianity of her contempo-
raries as well. Here she posits alternative notions of interpretation
and authority, placing femininity and maternity at the very center
of the Judeo-Christian story she tells. Here, even more emphati-
cally than in her fiction-where she frequently suggests the superi-
ority and distinct character of female virtue-she plays fast and
loose with her own tradition, ultimately divulging a feminist her-
meneutic, a way of reading all texts-sacred and secular-that pre-
supposes a matriarchal Christianity, one that anticipates the
concerns of twentieth-century Christian feminists. This is most
clear in Woman in Sacred History (1873) and Footsteps of the Master
(1877), two non-fiction religious works where she addresses her-
self to what was by then a well-established family mission-persua-
sive religious speech-and rereads, evaluates, and corrects the
tradition of her father and brothers.
For the most part, Stowe's readers have consistently preferred
her fiction over her non-fiction. Even in 1876, she wrote to her
son, "I would much rather ... have written another such a book as
Footsteps of the Master, but all, even the religious papers, are gone
mad on serials" (quoted in 1896a: ix). Complaining about the
reading public's taste, Stowe expressed her own sense of the impor-
tance of her religious writings. And, indeed, she demonstrated the
primacy of her religious convictions throughout her fiction. Dur-
ing the period of her greatest literary productivity and fame, she
wrote to George Eliot that "art as an end, not instrument, has little
to interest me" (quoted in Rugoff:543). Stowe's belief in literature
and art as means of religious instruction remained consistent
throughout her career. She wanted, like her father and brothers, to
persuade others of her own religious and moral convictions.
2Joan Hedrick discusses the Beecher sisters' modification of their father's Christianity. See
especially chapter 22.

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Elrod: "Exactly Like My Father" 697
Indeed, Stowe's didactic style has irr

ers-from nineteenth-century white C
the sentimental Christian ideal too f
who effectively revealed and condemn
forgiving them and then dying at one
century readers, both sophisticated
Stowe as the most effective case in point
ing what she terms the "feminization"
in the nineteenth century. That is, the f
lectually rigorous Calvinism to a soft-
anity. And undergraduates in my Am
the theological discussions in, for exa
Minister's Wooing, alternately unnece
their otherwise pluralistic sensibilities
her proselytizing narratives about dom
ses of contemporary religious controv
of pious children, strike many reason
readers as heavy handed.
At the same time, many critics have
have taken into account the way Stowe
gion are integrally related. Stowe's p
has been appreciated as a site of invest
ing and often contradictory treatmen
Stowe's now clearly established creden
religious non-fiction, the body of crea
and where, finally, she puts her most
ily's and her culture's religion, has be
In order to appreciate these neglecte
read them in their general historical
3Fifteen years ago, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gu

"uniquely female plot" that allows Cassy to escape fr
(534). Elizabeth Ammons has argued that Uncle Tom
gious values, while Ellen Moers has described the
woman's work. Dorothy Berkson has examined the
gender in the New England novels and the later soc
gated religious ideas throughout Stowe's work. An
Mary Wilkins Freeman) to examine American women
nineteenth-century America. Jane Tompkins has dis
tion of American women novelists marked (and dismi
for their sentimentalism, piety, domesticity, and p
biography of Stowe, examines a number of Stowe's
ranks of privilege on which men stood" (279).

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the more specific context established by some of the ma

in nineteenth-century American Protestantism who wer
of her own famous family. Stowe's tradition, New Englan
anity, offered a mixed bag to nineteenth-century wom
one hand the elevation of the feminine, particularly the
as the highest cultural ideal conferred upon women a sp
tus and significance-power and recognition as the centr
tors of morality and virtue for their husbands, fathers and
Domestic Christianity, or the Cult of the True Woman,
tion of responsibility by men and women for woman's c
in redeeming the rest of the culture, fueled the reform
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But of
was a very limited kind of status and significance, accom
a severe corresponding set of boundaries. Domestic wom
valorized but homebound. Professional literary women
siderable success as writers of fictions about domes
romance (many of which asserted quite non-tradition
roles and included not very carefully veiled expressio
about the cultural restrictions faced by women), but th
fairly effectively prohibited from, or at the very least seve
cized for, stepping outside of the carefully prescribed spher
failing to manifest the familiar, appropriate female char
of purity, piety, domesticity, submission and silence.4
The "Woman Question" was particularly complex and
for Harriet Beecher Stowe because members of her own famous
family had delineated restrictive arguments concerning women's
roles and had defended those arguments with a set of by then well
used biblical texts. Lyman Beecher never hesitated to make his the
ological and social convictions clear, both outside and inside of the
Beecher family. His views concerning the role of women in minis-
try were no exception; he criticized and finally rejected the popula
revivalism of Charles Finney, at least partly as a result of this issu
(Rugoff: 74).
Even Stowe's sister, Catharine Beecher, a vocal advocate of pro-
gressive education for women, emphasized the potential dangers of
the loss of a proper sense of decorum for women. And, along with
her father, she expressed particular concern over the issue of
women's public speech. Catharine took specific issue with th
41 am drawing here on the pivotal studies of Welter, Cott, Kelley.

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Grimke sisters, insisting that women h

society to the other sex" and so should
domestic and social circle" (Cathari
Many ministers and their congregatio
even though women were to be central
ial reform, women's public speech and
their gender, resulting in a frightenin
ninity. Stowe would have felt the pow
many levels.
However when she prepared hersel
circuit in 1872, Stowe felt the force o
more powerfully than she felt his res
decision to go on the speaking circuit
model rather than censor. Imaginin
"exactly like" him, enabled her public
part of the Beecher clan. She had defi
reformer, notwithstanding her share
was, herself, a reformer) concerning t
women's influence. Despite what sh
should and should not do, she becam
woman, a literary and political celebrit
financial support for her very large fa
tory impulses-Stowe's (and her sister
upon and simultaneously subvert trad
ate female behavior-parallel her adher
religious tradition in her non-fictional
During Stowe's childhood, Lyman
ter's unusual energy, her intellect, an
metaphysical issues. He had more than
born male so that she could more effe
tance as his child. When she was seven
ter, "Hattie is a genius. I would give a
boy. She is as odd as she is intellige
Hedrick:29-30). Lyman's daughter fe
veyed by her father, and responded b
fulfill her sense of her family's callin
knew to be her prodigious talents, a
5At the same time of course, Catharine herself, an act

male) theological discourse, emblemized the contradi
Boydston, et al. and Sklar.

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notions of femininity held by her father, brothers, and

could not, like her brothers, go to seminary and become
ordained minister or a professor of theology, but she c
did, find a way to modify her family calling into an accepta
inine vocation.6 By her powerful and popular writings
achieve a level of notoriety and influence equal to, if no
ing, that of her brother Henry and her father Lyman. Furt
she was, from the start, decidedly unapologetic about h
ently didactic approach to her craft; she wanted to preac
chose a means appropriate to her own and her family
woman's sphere. And, despite Stowe's conscious insist
her adherence to traditional Christianity, her "sermons"
gious texts-suggest not only a transformation of the rea
but a transformation of her tradition as well.
In Woman in Sacred History (reissued as Bible Heroines in 1878)
Stowe retells stories of biblical women, juxtaposing each discus-
sion with an artist's representation of that particular woman. She
engages in myth-making and story-telling as she reproduces dra-
matic pictures and ultimately presents larger-than-life figures
whom her readers can claim as models from their own tradition.
And while in some ways the thinking in Woman in Sacred History is
consistent with the domestic religious values at the core of all of
Stowe's fiction, ultimately in this work she espouses a much less
conventional religion than one might expect. In the end Woman in
Sacred History is quite critical of prevailing cultural values as Stow
reinterprets female religious figures and questions the authority of
the Protestant tradition. Stowe uses three strategies to articulate
her religious vision in Woman in Sacred History: maternal imagery
and metaphor, reinterpretation of her own inherited tradition, and
an augmentation of that tradition with non-biblical materials
With each strategy, Stowe reforms her own tradition as she chal
lenges accepted interpretations of the scriptures and, finally, the
ultimate authority of the biblical canon itself.
The centrality of the maternal as a symbol for mid-nineteenth-
century American religion is well-established. William G.
McLoughlin (who describes Stowe's brother Henry Ward Beecher
as the "prime exponent of Romantic Evangelicalism") notes tha
home, hearth and motherhood were the central symbols of the sen
6Kelley observes that "Had Stowe been a male she undoubtedly would have followed her
father's example and embarked on a ministerial career" (82).

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timental Christianity of the age (17-1

Bible through a lens of maternal vir
motherhood throughout the script
maternal imagery and metaphor as a p
both Woman in Sacred History and the
Master (1877). Because Stowe, along
teenth-century Americans who endor
valued maternity so highly, and becaus
supreme feminine power, she recogni
imagery throughout the Old and Ne
extending her discussion to chastise h
failing to uphold a maternal ideal.
Consider, for example, her disc
women. After praising them for their
their families, she uses their examples
ies: "Whatever be the faults of these p
confessed that the ardent desire of
them is far nobler than the selfish, u
times, which regards children only as
den. The motherly yearning and moth
nity to these women of primitive ag
faults of imperfect development."7 As
maternal love and longing, is equiva
virtue. She affirms the "desire of motherhood" in the Old Testa-
ment stories, while at the same time chiding the women of "mod-
ern times" for their "selfish" and "unwomanly" behavior. Even
when Stowe affirms nondomestic endeavors for women, she heart-
ily disapproves of any threat to the domestic sphere. She consist-
ently bases her views regarding women and religion on her sense
of the virtue and cultural centrality of the domestic realm.8
7There are no page numbers in Woman in Sacred History. In the discussion that follows, I
identify the the section under consideration by topic.
81t is important to note that Stowe was not alone here. Late nineteenth-century women's
rights activists, for the most part, had no quarrel with the notion of female domesticity,
insisting instead not only on the significance of the domestic sphere, but also on the exclu-
sively female nature of that sphere. Even at the end of the century, suffragists were appeal-
ing to those feminine domestic values which had been established as part of the nineteenth-
century feminine ideal. Suffragists, like those who argued for the True Woman ideology,
argued that men and women were absolutely different. The suffragists contended that those
differences were the very reasons women must be enfranchised. Women would bring their
morally superior character, their sense of justice and humanity, and their concern for home
and children to bear on politics. Voting women would not destroy female domesticity; they
would protect and preserve it (Woloch:340).

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When she discusses "sacred and prophetic" women of

Testament, Stowe points out the difference between
women of other traditions and those within the Judeo-C
tradition: "They were uniformly, so far as it appears
women and mothers of families, and not like the vestal
antiquity, set apart from the usual family duties of wom
tradition is distinguished because in it maternity is sa
there is no conflict between being a holy woman an
mother. Motherhood was, in and of itself, a holy activity
thermore, holy women could and should become mother
selves. The notion of female sphere is important her
were holy and mothers. Rather than limiting women, Sto
to persuade her readers of the way maternity, ideally
women for other higher callings.
While her admiration of maternity is hardly surprisi
descriptions of various Old Testament figures as "mo
"motherly" are. For the most part, whenever and where
sees virtue, she perceives it in some way as maternal vir
describes Moses, for example, as "distinguished above all
read of in history by a singular absence of egoism. He w
mother in the midst of the great people whose sins, infirmit
sorrows he bore upon his heart with scarcely a conscious
self. He had no personal interests. He was a man so l
gentle of demeanor that all his associates felt free to ad
Moses' self-sacrifice, gentleness, and compassion, make h
parable to a virtuous mother; indeed Stowe magnifies Mos
by maternalizing him. Israel's leader and law-giver be
Stowe's vision, a selfless mother.
Stowe takes her discussion of maternity one crucial po
ther: not only are holy Jewish women actually mothers,
ones at that, not only is the patriarch Moses like a mothe
like a mother as well. In her description of Hagar, Abraha
cubine, Stowe describes how God sympathizes with Haga
nal feelings, how God understands her longings for h
Furthermore, in her discussion of Rebekah, Stowe admire
nest prayer of simpler biblical times, "when men felt as n
as a child to its mother." In Stowe's religious vision
imagery magnifies positive characteristics: not only is G
passionate, God is like a mother; not only did pious believ
earlier time feel a sense of God's nearness, they felt as chi
with their mothers. Stowe appeals to maternity as the

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most extreme metaphor for goodn

heroic stature by comparing him to a
ultimate praise for God in the same w
God was certainly not the image of t
from the tradition of Lyman Beecher.
tantism in Stowe's day was thoroughl
more generally feminine imagery, and
imagined as a feminine male, Protestan
God "the Father" in matriarchal term
rather easily, naturally extending h
goodness of maternal virtue to her tr
and in doing so, challenging orthod
traditions.
In Woman in Sacred History, Stowe also reinterprets the tradi-

tional accounts of biblical women, retelling Biblical stories in new
ways, feminizing familiar figures. She begins her work with the
Old Testament story of Sarah, noting that Sarah has typically been
viewed as a model of meekness and obedience to such an extent
that she is referred to (presumably for these qualities) in the Chri
tian marriage ceremony. But Stowe is interested in the disjunctio
between how Sarah has traditionally been viewed and what sh
believes the biblical record actually says about Sarah. Althoug
male Bible commentators have emphasized Sarah's submissiv
behavior, Stowe says that in the biblical record "no alarmin
amount of subjection is implied." She was actually "mistress and
empress of the man she called Lord." She expected Abraham t
"use his authority in the line of her wishes." She "didn't dispute
the title [Lord] or its authority because she possessed the reality
the sway." While Stowe recounts various rabbinic traditions and
legends surrounding Sarah, her main point in the chapter is her
sense of the difference between the way the church has viewed h
and what Stowe interprets about her from the biblical record
Stowe's position is clear. In this first chapter in Woman in Sacre
History, she begins her work with a corrective, reforming prevailing
religious notions regarding female behavior. She takes issue with
traditional interpretations of the biblical material, implicitly cha
lenging centuries of masculine biblical interpretation, even callin
into question the appropriateness of the use of this biblical text i
one of the most significant church rituals. Stowe establishes her
own text as a corrective, an attempt to redeem the truth of the
scriptures that tradition has obscured.

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In her discussion of Moses's sister Miriam, Stowe con

reinterpret traditional readings of the Biblical mate
respect to women's roles. She admires Miriam's leade
"prompt self assertion and ready positiveness which ma
ship a necessity and a pleasure to her." More intriguing,
Stowe's description of Miriam's role in the shaping of O
ment law. She begins her description with an adage regar
inine influence: "As sunshine reappears in the forms of
and the flowers it has stimulated into existence, so muc
power of noble women appears, not in themselves, but in
who are gradually molded and modified by them. It was
mission of a prophetess [Miriam] to form a lawgiver [Mo
Miriam's influence, her "mold[ing]" and "modify[in
brother, is considerable. Stowe "cannot but feel" that it
Miriam that Moses "gained much of that particular kno
the needs and wants and feelings of women which in
instances shaped his administration." Miriam's influe
Stowe, resulted in Old Testament laws which favor wome
family. Attributing a remarkable amount of power t
Stowe concludes: "Thus a noble womanly influen
through Moses into permanent institutions. The nation
her with the Man who was their glory, and Miriam becam
tal in Moses." Ultimately, Stowe suggests that Jewish la
least in part from Miriam, not from Moses. She underc
tional notions of the law and of Old Testament histo
writes in a woman's influence.
In Stowe's discussion of Mary Magdalene, she describes the

equality between men and women during the time of the New Tes-
tament. The Christian era, says Stowe, "brought salvation to
women" as a result of the actions of "the son of Mary." Of all the
biblical titles available to her (notably including "Son of God" and
"Son of Man"), Stowe chooses this particular name for Jesus, reas-
serting the significance of Mary's role and influence, not only on
the person of Jesus, but on the idea of redemption, the cornerstone
of all Christian doctrine. In Stowe's scheme of things, salvation
occurs because of and for women.
She points out, furthermore, that Jesus treated repentant men
and women equally: "One of the earliest and most decided steps
in his ministry was his practical and authoritative assertion of the
principle that fallen woman is as capable of restoration through
penitence as fallen man, and that repentance should do for a fallen

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woman whatever it might do for a fa

Jesus' ministry with other "fallen wome
suggesting that Jesus' remarkable tre
demonstrates woman's equality, bu
divinity: "The absolute divinity of Je
stood above all men," she writes, "is n
he dared and did for woman, and th
power with which he did it." Stowe use
to prove men's and women's equality,
egalitarian treatment of women prove
In these re-interpretations of biblic
literal text of the scriptures stand. B
upon a corrective impulse: she recogn
ways the church has traditionally, mist
lical stories. Past interpreters have in
submissive behavior, she argues, failin
over Abraham. They have failed to re
role in shaping not only Moses, but M
overemphasized Mary Magdalene's sin
recognize the principle Jesus illustrat
and with other women in the gospels
taken in adultery as another example)
co-equals in sin, repentance, and res
reinterprets a traditional story she ch
tional male biblical interpretation. A
the essence of the stories, the truth that
looked, invoking the authority of the
than issuing any overt challenge to the a
Hers are the "true readings" of a st
stands with a long line of other femal
alternate readings have been obscured
weight of traditional readings.
In arguing for her own interpretati
authority of the Bible, Stowe followed
her father. In 1817 Lyman Beecher ha
ered one of his most important ser
Laws." Although the ordination of'a y
actual occasion for the sermon, Beech
argue against Unitarianism. In his A
how he viewed the opportunity: "I had
of the Unitarian controversy, and read

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that came out on the subject. My mind had been heating

heating. Now I had a chance to strike" (I, 257-58). Beeche
Unitarianism comes through clearly not only in his o
about the sermon, but also in the text of the sermon itself.
more, Beecher addresses himself to the young minister, g
advice concerning a pastor's authority-which he insists l
in his reliance upon the scriptures-and his need to be in
ent, to think for himself:
Your duty is plain. It is to explain and enforce the laws

divine moral government contained in the Bible. Receive, the
brother, that holy book with implicit confidence, as includin
commission and all you have to say. ... But remember that
is the office of an expositor of that divine book, and not of a le
lator, to revise and modify its sacred pages. Be not wise in
own conceit, and dare not be wise above what is written. .
you may understand the Scriptures, examine them for you
Receive no opinions upon trust, and allow no man to dictate
you shall believe. . . . Dare to think for yourself; and what
think, dare to preach, knowing that divine wisdom has reve
superfluous truths, and that all Scripture is profitable. (19
258-59)
Each of the next four paragraphs of the sermon begins with the
words "dare to think for yourself." Throughout the sermon
Beecher reasserts the foundation for Protestant faith: the authority
of the scriptures as interpreted by the individual believer. In her
interpretations of Sarah, Miriam, and Mary Magdalene, Stowe
seems to be acting out of a similar understanding of authority. She
takes her father's advice, "explaining" and "enforcing" the truths of
these Bible stories. She examines the scriptures for herself, and
then without hesitation, she "dares to preach," pointing out the
error of earlier interpreters' work.
While it is unlikely that Stowe would have remembered the
actual occasion of her father's sermon (she was six years old at the
time), she would surely have noted the text of the sermon and her
father's words regarding it in his autobiography, which she, along
with her brother Charles and her sister Catharine, compiled and
partially wrote for him in 1864. Moreover, she would have
absorbed these convictions from Lyman's controversial public
career in ministry. He first gained recognition in 1806 by taking a
controversial stand against dueling; he preached regularly against
Roman Catholicism in the 1830's, and he was tried by his presby-

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tery for heresy in 1835. While much o

cal scholarship on the Beechers reco
Lyman and his children, not enough h
riet was empowered by her father's ex
consciously claimed his oratorical powe
gious individualism as well. Stowe's st
in Woman in Sacred History repres
gendered appropriation of Lyman's fi
Lyman's notable influence notwiths
adopted a strategy quite different fro
issued a challenge to the authority of
Probably encouraged by some familiar
criticism, Stowe implicitly questions t
text by canonizing non-canonical texts
heroines in Woman in Sacred History.
cussion to the female figures who app
of scripture, Stowe enthusiastically in
phal tales and legends from the Jewish
One does not have to read far to under
for doing so. She turns to legends (
quently calls them) as she continues to
dition. She describes and commen
feminine models within the biblical a
goes outside of the Protestant biblical
tional examples, thereby launching an
tradition. Given what we know of Stow
Protestantism, she probably would no
sion of the biblical canon, or for a d
nonetheless she treats non-canonical texts as authoritative and she
does so with a surprising sense of ease throughout her non-fic-
tion.'0 By adding to the biblical account, Stowe writes into her text
a challenge to the adequacy of biblical authority, going to the very
root of Protestant notions of authority and inspiration.
Stowe's fascination with legend is one of the most striking fea-
tures of Woman in Sacred History. In her retelling of Miriam's
9For more on the Beecher family, see Rugoff's The Beechers: An American Family in the
Nineteenth Century, Caskey's Chariot of Fire: Religion and the Beecher Family, Boydston et al.
on the Beecher sisters, and Hedrick's outstanding new biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
10Regarding Woman in Sacred History, Stowe's biographerJoan Hedrick says Stowe "fiction-
alized the Bible much as she had biblicized her most famous fiction, Uncle Tom's Cabin
(388).

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story, for example, she appropriates material from the ra

dition, and then concludes by comparing it to her own
.. "in contrast to their ornate narrative is the grave a
simplicity of the Scripture story." She notes with appar
pointment that although Miriam was a prophetess, we do
any of her writings. Stowe describes another extra-bibl
about Miriam wherein a spring of living water followed in
steps during the time the nation of Israel was in the wi
After her death the spring ran dry. Stowe comments that
touching proof of a nation's affectionate memory can be g
a legend like this. Is it not in a measure true of every nob
erly woman?" Her celebration of maternal virtue remain
tent: Miriam's spring graphically illustrates her nur
motherly influence on the nation of Israel. And while Sto
academic contemporaries were challenging supernatural
biblical stories, Stowe retells and endorses a supernatural
outside the canon of Protestant scripture. Stowe had
accepted the supernatural, and not only as it was evi
Christian revivalism. She had pursued an interest in spir
the occult throughout her life (Foster:129-131, 163). Her
in Miriam's story lies not in debunking the miraculou
establishing the authority of a non-biblical account o
woman, an account which attributes to her supernatural
Stowe's valorization of Miriam is especially noteworthy
of what she does not emphasize. Miriam and her broth
were the chief participants in a rebellion against Moses. B
her part in the rebellion, Miriam was punished with lepro
was only after Moses and Aaron interceded on her behal
was healed and reunited with the community (Numbers
Commentators typically remember her rebellion and pu
as the most remarkable feature of her story. Stowe not o
lenges the canon by including apocryphal legends about
she also takes issue once again with traditional interpret
she transforms Miriam from a rebel who is punished in
heroine.
Just as Stowe augments the biblical story with non-canonical

legends in her discussion of Miriam, she freely includes a charac-
ter who is outside the Protestant canon of scripture in her discus-
sion of Judith. Again, she draws from Jewish literature, giving high
praise to a story from outside her own tradition: "No female type
of character has given more brilliant inspiration to the artist or

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
been made more glaringly alive on

apocryphal book, is, in fact, one of th
thetic literature among the Jewish nat
Judith is indeed memorable. When Ho
general, lays siege of her town, the piou
him into inviting her into his tent. A
drunk, she decapitates him. Of course
fascination with Judith's story; it ha
works of art. But Stowe's enthusiastic
lence and power provides a sharp cont
tury ideal, the domestic woman whos
purity, piety, obedience and silence.
Stowe acknowledges that Judith's sto
Protestant tradition, reliable. She says
romance... it illustrates quite as powerf
and heroic type of womanhood which
institutions, and the reverence in whi
the highest authorities of the nation." Th
as Stowe says, true, does not matter t
truth, one Stowe wants very much to e
women were part of the biblical tradit
nation with the story lies in Judith's a
her "womanly" triumph over a strong
ine: "Poetess, prophetess, inspirer, lead
power by which the helpless hold the
triumph in his strength, she becomes
While Stowe's revisionary strategies
ing of these biblical figures, her subv
gion goes even further in her reclam
both Footsteps of the Master and Wom
1877 devotional text, Footsteps of the M
ers through various events of the gos
her rather un-Protestant fascination
defending the Madonna, criticizing he
tion of the Virgin, while ultimately b
Church for having provoked that reje
the Roman Church with respect to th
Stowe writes, "have tended to deprive
11Hereafter page numbers of citations from Footsteps

and Poems, vol. 15 of The Writings of Harriet Beecher

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
great source of comfort and edification by reason of th

extreme to which Protestant reaction has naturally g
Stowe acknowledges here that "Mariolatry," what many P
saw as the height of the sin of idolatry-the veneration
was to nineteenth-century Protestants one of the more
and essential of Roman Catholicism's heresies. So while she is
deeply drawn to the mythic power of the figure of the Virgin,
has to qualify her interest by referring to the more expected a
tudes of Protestants toward Mary. In her discussion of Mar
Footsteps, Stowe reports an anecdote about John Knox, who, w
traveling aboard a ship manned by "Popish" sailors, was asked
kiss an image of the Virgin Mary. He responded by throwing
image overboard, challenging the Virgin to save herself by learn
to swim. Stowe explains Knox's behavior: "To have honored
Virgin Mary, even in thought, was shrunk from by the Protest
of those times as an approach to idolatry. An image or a pictur
her in a Puritan house would have been considered an approach
the sin of Achan. Truth has always had the fate of the shuttlec
between the conflicting battledoms of controversy" (1896a:
Here Stowe calls upon biblical texts (Joshua 22:20 and 1 Chr
cles 2:7) recalling how Achan violated the sacrificial ban after
assault on Jericho, stealing gold, silver and fine clothing, and h
ing them. In her allusion to the story, Stowe envisions Protest
interest in Mary as tantamount to stealing goods from the co
quered heathen.
Stowe's argument in Footsteps recalls and demonstrates t
Roman Catholic preoccupation with Mary has long been a prob
for Protestants.12 Certainly other nineteenth-century Protesta
besides Stowe found it difficult to talk about the Virgin Mary w
out condemning Roman Catholicism's devotion to her. Indeed,
the anti-Catholic controversy, as on the issue of women's publ
speech, Stowe's family members were vocal participants. In
summer of 1834 Lyman Beecher delivered a series of lectures
121n the twentieth century, church historian and theologian Rosemary Radford Rue
explains three reasons for the historic Protestant reaction against Marian devotion. F
Protestants' insistence on the sole authority of scripture caused them to reject many of
extra-biblical legends concerning the Virgin (her assumption into heaven, for example
ond, when the Protestant reformation abolished monasticism, the result was the rejectio
celibacy as the ideal form of Christian commitment. Instead, marriage and the fa
became the basis for Christian community and this reaffirmation of married sexual
caused the Virgin to become a less important figure. Third, Protestantism has resiste
feminine as a symbol of the human nature of the church in relation to God (1977:70

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
which he warned his audience against

Catholics who were beginning to pop
the Pope, he contended, were unable t
consequently would make very poor c
democracy. They would vote the way
and their priests were anti-republica
delivered his lecture in Boston an anti-Catholic mob burned down
a convent just across the river in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Catholics held Beecher responsible. Ultimately, Beecher tempered
his views slightly in A Plea for the West, the work that grew out of
these lectures, but he still insisted that Catholics ignored the sepa-
ration of church and state and would always act out of religious
rather than republican loyalty (Rugoff:152-53). Edward Beecher,
one of Harriet Beecher Stowe's brothers, articulated a more
extreme anti-Catholic argument in The Papal Conspiracy Exposed in
1855, charging that the Roman Catholic church was engaged in a
plot to infiltrate American schools and accumulate American land.
Furthermore, said Beecher, the Pope was a tyrant and his church
was a selfish, grasping corporation which endangered the very
essence of American democracy.
Despite the Anti-Catholicism in her family and the fear of
"Mariolatry" in her culture, Stowe was particularly interested in the
figure of Mary.'3 Her description of the Virgin in Woman in Sacred
History demonstrates both her willingness to appropriate extra-bib-
lical materials (already evidenced in her discussions of Miriam and
Judith) and her fascination with the figure of Mary. She devotes
two chapters to the Virgin in Woman in Sacred History: "Mary the
Mythical Madonna," and "Mary the Mother of Jesus." In the former
chapter, describing Roman Catholic "Mariolatry," Stowe explains
Mary's popular appeal: Mary has been "the goddess of poverty and
sorrow, of pity and mercy; and as suffering is about the only cer-
tain thing in human destiny, she has numbered her adorers in
every land and climate and nation. In Mary, womanhood, in its
highest and tenderest development of the mother, has been the
object of worship. Motherhood with large capacities of sorrow,
with the memory of bitter sufferings, with sympathies large enough
13Stowe is not alone here, of course. Warner, in Alone of All Her Sex, notes the complicated
and contradictory facets of the myth of Mary, and explores the power and pervasiveness of
this compelling female figure, one who represents, "a central theme in the history of western
attitudes to women" (xxv).

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
to embrace every anguish of humanity: such an object h

ceivable power." There is no hint of censure here. Rathe
acknowledges and explains Mary's appeal, demonstra
understanding of Mary's symbolic power, the intrig
mythic stature. She includes a wide variety of myths
Virgin, all of which emphasize her uniqueness and her e
nary power, and most of which parallel New Testament
the life of Christ. She recounts a legend of Mary's miracu
and then gives a detailed account of Mary's resurrection
sion into heaven, complete with the apostle Thomas e
doubt and asking for proof of the Virgin's supernatural
Stowe then explains how these legends became so fasc
that they finally eclipsed the stories of the savior: "On
the current of enthusiasm for the Madonna passed all bo
absorbed into itself all that belonged to the Savior of ma
the pity, the mercy, the sympathy of Jesus were forgotten
shadowed in the image of this divine mother." After ha
fully recorded this variety of Virgin myths, Stowe fina
word of judgment regarding "Mariolatry." She quot
sources to describe the history of the "cultus" of Mary
that Mary worship came to supplant the worship of Go
the end, even as she condemns Mary worship, she wants
the Protestant dismissal of the Virgin that has occu
response to the "Romish" church's excessive veneratio
Noting that the church fathers criticized Mary for
presumptuousness, and aggressive behavior, Stowe says
kinds of comments "must be painful to the sensibility of
who never cherished for her a superstitious veneration. N
of delicate appreciation of character can read the brief na
the New Testament and not feel that such comments
injustice to the noblest and loveliest among women."
She ends her chapter on "Mary the Mythical Mad
directing her readers back to the scriptural Mary (whom
discuss in the next chapter), while denouncing the un
excesses of both Roman Catholic "mariolaters" and re
Protestants who have dismissed her altogether. She urges
ers to return to the biblical Mary, but undercuts her ow
regarding scriptural authority by placing this exhortat
end of a long, detailed account of the Mary legends
shown her own fascination with the apocryphal stori
including them in Woman in Sacred History, she endorse

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Furthermore, even in the following

of Jesus," as Stowe directs her readers
tures, she cannot limit her attention to t
ord. She begins by announcing an
purpose for her chapter: to find the "
New Testament: "From out of the clou
ing, and religious romance, we grope
story of the New Testament, to find,
the lineaments of the real Mary, the m
as she gropes back to the simple story
not overcome her interest in the myt
another account of an extra-biblical le
in which Mary touches a perfumel
endowed with sweet perfume. The leg
"lovely allegory of the best power of
woman." Stowe subverts the authori
adding to it, by discussing non-biblic
even after explicitly announcing her i
sion to the biblical account. Her assertions in Woman in Sacred
History regarding what Protestants ought to do, and what she will
do with the Virgin, are conventionally Protestant; what she actually
does, however, is not. So compelling was the myth of the Virgin for
Stowe that it caused her not only to expand Protestant notions of
Mary, but also to challenge Protestant authority itself by aug-
menting the biblical canon.
Mary's most important virtues for Stowe are, finally, maternal.
In her second essay on the Virgin, "Mary the Mother of Jesus," she
summarizes her discussion: "In short, Mary is presented to us as
the mother, and the mother alone, seeking no other sphere."
Although these words flatly contradict the portrait of Mary that
Stowe established in her preceding essay on "The Mythica
Madonna," they serve as an appropriate reminder of Stowe's most
fundamental values regarding women's concerns. Even Stowe's
most radical challenges to her tradition arise out of her unfailing
commitment to a maternal ideal.
In Footsteps of the Master (after all of her acknowledgments
regarding Protestant opposition to the Virgin), Stowe places Mary
in an even more powerful position than the one she traditionally
occupied for Roman Catholics as she envisions Mary as the ulti-
mate fulfillment of the nineteenth-century domestic ideal. While
Catholics had offended Protestants by worshipping Mary, attribut-

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
ing God-like qualities to her, Stowe claims that Mary is be

a goddess: "This is no goddess crowned with stars, but so
nobler, purer, fairer, more appreciable-the One highly fav
blessed among Women"(31). Mary, says Stowe, is a real hi
figure who lived out the domestic ideal, embodying it in
satisfying way than most nineteenth-century women exp
it. Stowe describes Mary primarily in domestic terms.
important because of the role she played in the family, esp
the unique relationship she had with her son: "He was enti
own;" "She had a security in possessing him;" "she had
that accident, or sickness, or any of those threatening caus
give sad hours to so many other mothers, would come betw
and her." "Neither was she called to separate from him."
to adore, to possess the beloved object in perfect security,
by a divine promise-this blessedness was given to but one
of all the human race" (31-32). Stowe's emphasis on the
possession of her son seems to indicate not only Stowe's fr
with her own uncertain maternal lot, but also a fascinati
power, with possession.'4 Stowe turns the romantic mode
head, presenting the woman not as love object, but as pos
and here the woman possesses not merely a human lover, b
Therein lies the meaning of Mary's "blessedness" for Stow
was the one human being who had the right of ownership
mate oneness with the Beloved. . .he was hers alone" (34).
a model of perfect domesticity, of maternal peace and secu
also, finally, of possession and control.
Furthermore, in Stowe's conception of things, Jesus com
the perfect domestic model that Mary begins. Stowe c
describes Jesus' domesticity, showing her readers ho
actions reveal his mother's influence: "Many little inci
Christ's life show the man of careful domestic habits. He was in all
things methodical and frugal" (34). She notes that he gathered up
the left-over pieces after miraculously feeding the crowd. His para-
ble of the leaven convinces her he had watched his mother make
bread, while the parable of the woman and the lost coin demon-
strate that for Jesus "every penny [had] its value" (34-35). Clearly,
Jesus had absorbed his mother's domestic virtues and values. "His
illustrations," Stowe says, "show the habits of a frugal home," and
"[m]any little touches indicate, also, the personal refinement and
141n 1849 Stowe's son died of cholera, and in 1857 her oldest son, Henry, drowned.

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
delicacy of his habits, the order and pur

ways" (34-35). Stowe speculates that "
human nature was in this respect peculi
of his mother" (35). She goes on to admi
acteristics: his quietness, his love of sol
him to be out in the hot glare and dust of
the crowded ways of life, as to the mo
As twentieth-century readers, we are
limits of what Stowe is doing here; the
somewhat quaint, and perhaps amusing
ceived notions of gender reveal her sele
mation of "feminine" qualities. Her se
domesticity both skews and limits he
events. Consequently, Footsteps of the
subtle, and not very complicated. But u
orthodox Protestantism altogether, rec
becoming "man"-into feminine terms.
Throughout her discussion of the V
Mary's role, Mary's power, Mary's in
explains Jesus' domesticity by pointing
his mother. But finally, Stowe's sense o
primacy of the figure of Mary: "He was
of her flesh-his life grew out of her im
primary position here is unmistakabl
that what is important about Jesus is
Mary-ness. He is substantially like her
level; but further, he derives his life out o
Assuming Mary's immortality, she argue
bled Jesus' existence. Stowe, of course, l
in this passage out of the Genesis cre
after naming all of the animals, sees Ev
similarity to himself, saying "this is n
flesh of my flesh; she shall be called
taken out of Man" (2:23). But while the
sizes Adam's primacy (he is first; Eve c
compares her to himself), in her accoun
emphasizes Jesus' likeness to Mary. Mar
pared to her. Stowe appropriates the fam
from the creation story which had typic
the subordination of women (Adam is fi

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
they model the divinely appointed order for all males and
and then inverts its significance for the story of the inc
Stowe further emphasizes the distinctively feminine q
Jesus' human nature, reminding her readers that Jesu
mortal father," and further, that "[a]ll that was human i
her nature; it was the union of the divine nature with the
a pure woman. Hence there was in Jesus more of the pu
nine element than in any other man. It was the feminin
exalted and taken in union with divinity" (36). Jesus' m
obscured by the significance of Mary in both the incarna
and in the development of Jesus' character. The incarna
becomes the blending of the divine and the feminine. T
femininity, which Stowe emphasizes throughout this ch
great significance, and it supports the domestic ideal sh
endorses. But furthermore Stowe builds upon Jesus's fem
feminist Christianity in which Mary, as the ideal domest
(that problematic image for twentieth-century readers, but
female image that Stowe or most of her contemporaries c
ter) takes precedence over the savior. Stowe glimpses
based upon a hierarchy wherein maternity/femininity
masculinity, and even divinity. At this point, Stowe's vis
Virgin is much closer to what Ruether describes as the t
Roman Catholic view than she is to her own Calvinist inheritance.
Here she envisions Mary as not only mother and Virgin, but
ways similar to those that twentieth-century Christian femini
have emphasized, as Queen or Goddess, one of the several image
explored by Marina Warner in Alone of All Her Sex.
Stowe shared the commitment to independent thinking that h
father preached and lived out, and this-part of her inheritance
Beecher-enabled her not only to see her tradition in a fresh wa
but also to articulate a fundamentally reformed vision of that tr
tion, shaped by but ultimately more progressive than the domes
religion of her era. Stowe did more than she knew. By naturall
extending her matriarchal focus, she suggested alternative notio
of authority, and she challenged the adequacy of the bibli
canon's representations of women. And despite the fierce Prote
tant resistance to the figure of the Virgin that characterized h
family, region and culture, Stowe insisted upon ascribing to Mar
central theological location: the incarnation becomes a divi
extension of maternity. In these non-fiction works, Stowe engag
in a radical reading of her own tradition-a reading that emerge

152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC
out of her critical and complex relation

Here we see how Stowe made sense of
and her own critique of that religion
feminist biblical hermeneutic, a way o
tradition that makes central female m
cerns, and that disorients the masculine orientation of her
tradition.
REFERENCES
Ammons, "Heroines in Uncle Tom's Cabin." Critical Essay

Elizabeth Harriet Beecher Stowe, 152-165. Ed. by Eliz
1980 Ammons. Boston: G.K. Hall.
Beecher, Catharine An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with ref

1837 to the Duty of American Females. Philadelphia: P
kins.
Beecher, Edward The Papal Conspiracy Exposed. New York: Do

1855
Beecher, Lyman Autobiography. Ed. by Barbara M. Cross. 2 vols.

1961 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
1835 A Plea for the West. Cincinnati: Truman and Smith.
Berkson, Dorothy "Millennial Politics and the Feminine Fiction of

1980 Harriet Beecher Stowe." Critical Essays on Harriet
Beecher Stowe, 244-258. Ed. by Elizabeth Ammons.
Boston: G.K. Hall.
Bible Authorized King James Version. Nashville: Thomas

1975 Nelson.
Boydston, Jeanne, The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher

Mary Kelley, and Women's Rights and Woman's Sphere. Ch
Anne Margolis University of North Carolina Press.
1988
Caskey, Marie Chariot of Fire: Religion and the Beecher Family.

1978 New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Cott, Nancy The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere

1977 England, 1780-1835. New Haven: Yale Univ
Press.
Douglas, Ann The Feminization of American Culture. New York:

1977 Knopf.
Fields, Annie Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston:

1898 Houghton, Mifflin.
Foster, Charles The Rungless Ladder: Harriet Beecher Stowe and

1954 New England Puritanism. Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press.
Gilbert, Sandra M., The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and
and Susan Gubar the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New
1979 Haven: Yale University Press.
Hedrick, Joan Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. New York: Oxford

1994 University Press.
Kelley, Mary Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in

1984 Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford
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Kimball, Gayle The Religious Ideas of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New

1982 York: Mellen.
McLoughlin, The American Evangelicals, 1800-1900. New Yor

William G. Harper & Row.
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Moers, Ellen Literary Women. New York: Doubleday.

1976
Morey, Ann-Janine Religion and Sexuality in American Literature. Cam-

1992 bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruether, Rosemary Mary, the Feminine Face of the Church. Philadel-

Radford phia: Westminster.
1977

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Ruether, Rosemary Women of Spirit: Fem

Radford, and and Christian Traditions. New York: Simon &
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McLaughlin, eds.
1979
Ruether, Rosemary Women and Religion in America, The Nineteenth

Radford, and Century. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Rosemary Skinner
Keller, eds.
1981
Rugoff, Milton The Beechers: An American Family in the Nineteenth

1981 Century. New York: Harper & Row.
Sklar, Kathryn Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domestic-

Kish ity. New York: Norton.
1976
Stowe, Harriet Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. Bos-
Beecher ton: Jewett.
1852
1873 Woman in Sacred History. New York: J.B. Ford.
1877 Footsteps of the Master. New York: J.B. Ford.
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and Poems. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. Vol. 15 of
The Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Riverside
Edition. 16 vols.
1896b Household Papers and Stories. Boston: Houghton,
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Stowe. Riverside Edition. 16 vols.
Tompkins, Jane P. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of Americ

1985 Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford Universit
Press.
Warner, Marina Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and The Cult of the
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Woloch, Nancy Women and the American Experience. New York:

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152.118.24.31 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:45:54 UTC

Exactly Like My Father - Feminist Hermeneutic

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