Her Voice Will Be on the Side of Right , livre ebook

HER VOICE WILL BE ON THE SIDE OF RIGHT
AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM AND ANTISLAVERY
J OHN D AVID S MITH , SERIES EDITOR
The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America
GORDON S. BARKER
A Self-Evident Lie: Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom
JEREMY J. TEWELL
Denmark Vesey’s Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter
JOHN LOFTON NEW INTRODUCTION BY PETER C. HOFFER
To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement
CHRISTOPHER CAMERON
African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War
RICHARD M. REID
One Nation Divided by Slavery: Remembering the American Revolution While Marching toward the Civil War
MICHAEL F. CONLIN
Her Voice Will Be on the Side of Right: Gender and Power in Women’s Antebellum Antislavery Fiction
HOLLY M. KENT
Her Voice Will Be on the Side of Right
Gender and Power in Women’s Antebellum Antislavery Fiction
HOLLY M. KENT

THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Kent, Ohio
© 2017 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2017016131
ISBN 978-1-60635-317-2
Manufactured in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Kent, Holly M., 1981- author.
Title: Her voice will be on the side of right: gender and power in women’s antebellum antislavery fiction / Holly M. Kent.
Description: Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2017. | Series: American abolitionism and antislavery | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017016131 | ISBN 9781606353172 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781631012778 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: American fiction--Women authors--History and criticism. | American fiction--19th century--History and criticism. | Antislavery movements in literature. | Slavery in literature. | Power (Social sciences) in literature. | Sex role in literature.
Classification: LCC PS374.W6 K55 2017 | DDC 813/.3093552--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016131
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To my parents ,
NANCY KENT and DOUGLAS KENT
who always knew that I could
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: “How a Woman Touches the World’s Heart”: Women and Antislavery Fiction in the Antebellum Era
1 “Her Heart Was Touched with the Wrongs of the Injured Ones”: The Emergence of Women’s Antislavery Fiction, 1821–1832
2 “An Influence Comparatively Silent, but Deep, and Strong, and Irresistible”: Women’s Literature and the Rise of Radical Abolitionism, 1831–1839
3 “They Did Not Relinquish Freedom without a Struggle”: Violence, Empowerment, and Moral Suasion, 1839–1851
4 “We Women Will Set All Things Right”: Moral Suasion and Political Empowerment, 1851–1861
Conclusion: “The Duty of Woman in Aiding in Extending This Influence of Letters”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
W hen I was a junior in college, I had the remarkable (and totally inadvertent) good fortune to sign up for two classes that changed my life dramatically and permanently, on U.S. women’s history and antebellum America. These courses not only gave me my life’s work (sparking my desire to become a historian of women) but also planted the seeds for this project, as they introduced me to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the messy, complicated visions of freedom, femininity, and race that novel contains. Reading that book inspired me to learn more about how fiction shaped public dialogue about slavery in antebellum America—and lead me to the difficult, complex, and compelling texts this monograph examines.
This project’s path from undergraduate term paper to master’s thesis to dissertation to book has been a long and lively one, and it would be impossible to thank all of the people and institutions that helped guide and steady me through that process. Daniel W. Crofts and Ann Marie Nicolosi, my undergraduate mentors at The College of New Jersey, offered boundless support to an aspiring historian finding her way into the field, and the members of my dissertation committee at Lehigh University—my committee chair, Monica Najar, and my committee members, Gail Cooper, Dawn Keetley, and Jean Soderlund—were instrumental mentoring me through the research and writing process and teaching me to hold my work to the highest possible scholarly standards. Colleagues at the University of Illinois–Springfield kindly went to brown bag talks and offered comments on my book proposal, as my erstwhile dissertation started its journey into print. I am also deeply grateful to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UIS for providing me with two incredibly valuable course releases as I worked on editing my manuscript. My students at Lehigh University and The College of New Jersey (past) and at UIS (past, present, and, I have no doubt, future) have been and are not just a delight to teach, but also a constant inspiration to ask more complicated questions, steadfastly refuse easy answers, and recognize the tremendous importance of the stories that we tell about the past and the ways we tell them.
Several archives and libraries also made the research for this project possible (and so much fun to conduct, to boot). While working on my dissertation, I had the great good fortune to delve into collections at the Boston Public Library and the Ohio Historical Society, where the archivists could not have been kinder or more helpful. I was also honored to receive a Travel to Collections Award to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and to be a short-term Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, while undertaking my research. The impact of those archives, and of the wonderful scholars I got to work with and know at these institutions, on this project and on my work as a scholar overall is incalculable.
Presenting on this research as it evolved at the conferences of Historians Against Slavery, the Pennsylvania Historical Association, the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, and the Southern Association of Women Historians was also invaluable as I continued to fine-tune my arguments and ideas. I am also deeply grateful to director of Hastings College Press Patricia Oman for the chance to write an introduction for HCP’s beautiful edition of Madge Vertner (which, even as I try not to play favorites, I will confess is totally my favorite antebellum abolitionist novel), and to Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar for the opportunity to create a document project centered on antislavery women writers for the wonderful Women and Social Movements database. Reflecting on women’s fiction in these venues was greatly beneficial for me as I worked on this book, and was also a fantastic opportunity to bring these dynamic, complicated texts to a wider audience.
The anonymous reviewers for the Kent State University Press also offered incredibly insightful, detailed feedback about how to tighten my prose, sharpen my thinking, and generally make this book richer and more thoughtful. All of the editorial board and staff at KSUP have been unfailingly encouraging, inspiring, and helpful throughout the process of moving my project from a manuscript (e-mailed off with hope and crossed fingers), to a real, live, actual book. I couldn’t ask for Her Voice Will Be on the Side of Right to have a better home or to be in better company, as it joins the American Abolitionism and Antislavery series.
Friends who will listen to you talk about a “damned mob of scribbling women” for more than a decade are dear and precious friends, indeed, and I am very grateful for each of them. This project was in its infancy (and it sometimes feels like we were, too) when I met Christina Gillim, Kelly Holland, Colleen Martell, Kelli Oliver, and Melissa Yingling, and I am so very grateful for their many years of asking about the thesis / the dissertation / the book. Since becoming a midwesterner, I have been blessed to find not only remarkable colleagues but also wise and wonderful friends in Kathy Petitte Novak, Shannon O’Brien, and Julie Perino—women who care passionately about the academy and the vital, transformative work we can do here but who also know the value of stepping outside of this dear ivory tower of ours every now and again. I had the great good fortune of starting my career at UIS the same semester as Meagan Cass, and without her friendship, generous willingness to concoct beautiful gin cocktails on request, and wise encouragement to sometimes exchange staring at the computer for going thrift store shopping, that career (and this book) would surely not have been possible (or nearly as much fun). My sister and brother-in-law, April Kent and Brandon Kempner, have also been sources of unending support and wise counsel, as I sought to learn how to manage this whole “academic” thing (process still ongoing and doubtless to be lifelong.) Christianne Gadd made getting our masters’ actually doable, getting our PhDs actually enjoyable, attending conferences together reliable intellectual and culinary adventures, and every year I’ve had the great privilege of being her friend immeasurably better and brighter.
And finally, this book is dedicated to my parents, Nancy Kent and Douglas Kent. When I was a girl, I said I thought wanted to write a book one day, and they told me that of course I could, and that they were sure I would.
And so I did.
INTRODUCTION
“How a Woman Touches the World’s Heart”
Women and Antislavery Fiction in the Antebellum Era
I n 1853, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Theodore Parker delivered an address to an animated crowd in Boston on the contentious subject of “The Public Function of Woman.” Parker informed his audience that women would be instrumental in making the nineteenth century one of true gender and racial equality. In working for such radical s