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INVISIBLE HOSTS
INVISIBLE HOSTS
Performing the Nineteenth-Century Spirit Medium’s Autobiography
Elizabeth Schleber Lowry
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
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Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lowry, Elizabeth Schleber, 1972- author.
Title: Invisible hosts : performing the nineteenth-century spirit medium’s autobiography / Elizabeth Schleber Lowry.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040638 (print) | LCCN 2017026636 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438466019 (e-book) | ISBN 9781438465999 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Women and spiritualism--United States--History--19th century. | Women mediums--United States--History--19th century. | Sex role--United States--History--19th century. | Autobiography.
Classification: LCC BF1275.W65 (ebook) | LCC BF1275.W65 L69 2017 (print) | DDC 133.9082/0973--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040638
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Contents
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
C HAPTER O NE Something in a Stranger’s Experience: Evangelical and Spiritualist Women’s Autobiography
C HAPTER T WO Intoxicating Notoriety: Why Mediums Couldn’t Quite Be ”True” Women
C HAPTER T HREE The Great Master Medium: Spiritualism, Casuistry, and Christian Discourse
C HAPTER F OUR Home Sweet Home: Constructions of Domesticity, Embodiment, and the Public Sphere
C HAPTER F IVE Pure Intentions and Filthy Lucre: Relationality and the Rhetorical Implications of Endorsement and Patronage
C HAPTER S IX Deep Trance: Corporeality, Dualism, and Submission
C HAPTER S EVEN Indecorous Indecorum: Prophetic Women, Travel Writing, and the Politics of Virtue
C ONCLUSION Autobiographical Ends
N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Maureen Goggin, Elenore Long, and Keith Miller for inspiring me and having confidence in me throughout the dissertation process. Much gratitude to Allison Coudert and Cathy Gutierrez for their kindness, their encouragement, and their scholarship. Many thanks to Nell Champoux, Valerie Fazel, and Christa Shusko for their generosity and insight, and thanks also to the Lowry family and Martin DeMarzo for their love and support. Much appreciation to Arleen Ionesco, who gave me permission to republish portions of chapter 6 that originally appeared in Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics 3:2, 2013. And, finally, many thanks to Amanda Lanne-Camilli at SUNY Press.
Introduction
We sat round a table in complete darkness, only we four women, with locked doors and bolted windows. Accustomed as I was to all sorts of manifestations and mediumship, I was really frightened by what occurred. The table was most violent in its movements, our chairs were dragged from under us, and heavy articles were thrown about the room. The more Mrs. Uniacke expostulated and Miss Robinson laughed, the worse the tumult became. The books were taken from the shelves and hurled at our heads, several of the blows seriously hurting us; the keys of the piano at the further end of the room were thumped and crashed upon, as if they would be broken; and in the midst of it all Miss Robinson fell prone upon the floor, and commenced talking in Flemish, a language of which she had no knowledge.
—Florence Marryat, There is No Death (ca. 1891)
C ERTAINLY NOT ALL SÉANCES were as chaotic as the one Florence Marryat describes here, but Marryat’s account is significant in that it represents some quintessential features of the nineteenth-century séance experience. The room is dark. The séance attendees are seated around a table that appears to have a life of its own. The medium is a middle-aged woman of modest means. The spirits make themselves known by playing the piano, throwing books, and “controlling” Miss Robinson, who begins to speak “in a language of which she had no knowledge.” Marryat does not specify how this particular séance began, but a typical nineteenth-century séance usually started with a hymn sung to “raise the vibrations”—in other words, to create optimal conditions for a spirit visitation. Eventually, the medium would go into a trance—and if the attendees were lucky—she would then be “controlled” by a visiting spirit who would ostensibly provide her with messages from the dead. However, the séance did not occur in ideological isolation, but as a practice central to a larger movement called Spiritualism. Not all mediums identified as Spiritualists, but all Spiritualists did engage in activities that involved mediumship—that is, alleged communication with the spirit world.
Modern American Spiritualism has been described as an esoteric religion, a social movement, a philosophy, a form of demonology, an elaborate hoax, and the greatest blessing ever to befall humankind. Scholars of nineteenth-century Spiritualism disagree as to whether Spiritualism was mainstream or marginal, conservative or progressive—but at its core, Spiritualist practice was unambiguous. The central tenets of Spiritualism held that, with the help of a mediator, or “spirit medium,” the living could communicate with the spirits of the dead. Uriah Clark, a nineteenth-century Spiritualist practitioner contemplates how to best define Spiritualism:
Spiritualism, in its modern, restricted sense, may mean nothing more than the mere fact of spirit existence and spirit intercourse. But the term is often also applied to a system of philosophy or religion based on this cardinal fact; a system embracing all truth relating to man’s spiritual nature, capacities, relations, duties, welfare and destiny. 1
What Clark refers to as “spirit intercourse” typically occurred within the context of a séance—that is, a gathering facilitated by a medium for the purpose of communicating with the spirit world. What Clark does not mention is that Spiritualism was a vexed concept, and the medium—in particular the female medium—was an intensely controversial figure. She collected money for engaging in what were widely considered to be “occult” (and therefore blasphemous) practices, and she also entered the public sphere to sell her services, thus violating gendered nineteenth-century standards of decorum. The white middle-class nineteenth-century woman was expected to adhere to a model of femininity known as “True Womanhood,” which promoted the “four virtues” of piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. 2 The True Woman was obliged to be modest, reticent, fragile, retiring, and devoutly Christian. However, given her line of work, it was difficult for the female nineteenth-century spirit medium to appropriately emulate these virtues.
Invisible Hosts examines nineteenth-century mediums’ autobiographies for indicators of how these women performed gender identity with respect to negotiating nineteenth-century cultural prohibitions. I focus on autobiography because, as historian Marina Warner observes, there remains a need to “illuminate the interior life and thinking of the mediums, themselves … from their point of view.” 3 Although there is much scholarship on the early Evangelical women autobiographers from whom Spiritualist women most likely took textual cues, scholars such as Alex Owen join Marina Warner in noting that there is a dearth of scholarship on the autobiographical experiences of female mediums. 4 Hence, Invisible Hosts contributes to scholarship on nineteenth-century American women and spirituality by considering the “interior life and thinking” evidenced by Spiritualist women’s autobiography with a view toward understanding how these women made their work socially acceptable and the moves they made toward breaching social boundaries.
The goal of this study is not to theorize autobiography, but to use autobiography to examine how Spiritualist women broke away from the restrictive expectations of the True Womanhood model and drew on other models in order to transform prevailing nineteenth-century gender ideals for middle-class white women. Hence, the subjects of this study are four white female Spiritualist autobiographers: Leah Fox Underhill, the eldest of the three Fox sisters known for beginning “Modern American Spiritualism” in 1848; Amanda Theodosia Jones, a poet, scientist, and inventor; Nettie Colburn Maynard, who claimed to be a Spiritualist adviser to Lincoln during the Civil War; and the British-born Emma Hardinge Britten, who began to practice Spiritualism while visiting New York City. I consider how these women used their autobiographies to bring enduring legitimacy to otherwise ephemeral Spiritualist practices, how they combined autobiography with other genres to recount tales of their triumph over adversity, and how they became political activists.
Invisible Hosts holds that, as spirit mediums, the autobiographers discussed in this study were considered to be “impure” and, therefore, precluded from meeting the ideals of True Womanhood. For this reason, the women were forced to draw on other models of femininity. Specifically, I argue that the women in this study drew on what Frances Cogan has termed “Real Womanhood,” a model of nineteenth-century femininity that is often overlooked by historians. 5 The Real Womanhood model (which will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter), promoted strength, confidence, and practicality. Alth