Description

The purpose of this course is to give you a comprehensive introduction to women's writing in the United States during the nineteenth century. During the term, you will read works in a variety of genres (poetry, short stories, novels, essays, letters, a journal prospectus, a slave narrative and more) written by women and about women living during a period of massive social, economic and technological change. In what ways were women the agents of change? How did women in different situations and of different backgrounds respond to new social and legal practices they had little or no "official" voice in bringing about? In what ways did they find their own positions unchanged after a century that witnessed both an industrial revolution and a civil war? And most important for this course, how were such questions and responses to such questions translated into literary form during the nineteenth century? What was it to be a woman "author" without "authority"?

Although our major focus will be to reconstruct the voice and voices of women responding to these questions in the nineteenth century, we will also consider the more recent critical debates over the "feminization of American culture" and the literary value of the work produced by the so-called "scribbling women" of the period that have finally made courses like this one possible.

Texts:

Coursepack (to be purchased at SOS Printing, 5240 North Pulaski)

Requirements:

1. Papers. You will write four ONE-PAGE papers during the term, each a response to a quotation you choose from one of our course-texts in the above list. These are difficult exercises in close-reading and writing economy. On one hand, you will be expected to share original insight into the particular line or lines you have chosen to write on/out of, but on the other hand, the same quotation must suggest important general themes crucial to our understanding of the work or the writer's effort as a whole. Your challenge, in a single page, is to make both the quotation's unique meaning and its more general implications for the work clear.

Due dates (at class time!) for papers are as follows. YOU MUST WRITE AT LEAST ONE PAPER BEFORE THE MIDTERM.

A New England Tale: January 27
The Western Captive: February 3
Summer on the Lakes: February 10
Woman in the 19th C.: February 19
Woman and Her Needs: February 24
Uncle Tom's Cabin: March 24
Life in the Iron Mills: April 7
Work: April 14
Country of the Pointed Firs: April 21
Herland: April 28

2. Exams. There will be a midterm and a final, March 5 and May 5 respectively.

Grades:

Midterm, Final, each 20%. Papers (4) each 15%.

"B" grades are for good work. Brilliant students who do little work may get this grade. "B" writing is correct, easy to read, often insightful, but may miss the mark occasionally in its content.

C" grades are for average work. Most often this grade is given to students who can correctly return to me (on an exam or in a paper) what has been said in class, and no more. "C" writing may have some grammatical problems.

"D" grades are for students who are working at it, but most often not getting it. "D" writing is often full of grammatical errors and stylistic lapses.

"F" grades are for plagiarists or for no-shows and non-readers. That is, if you come to class only a few times before the midterm and read only one of the books, you will most probably fail that exam.

Academic Integrity

Over the past few years I have witnessed an increase in "borderline" cases of academic misconduct, mostly in the form of plagiarism. The University Student Conduct Code, available in the Deans Office, the Office of Student Activities and elsewhere on campus, defines plagiarism as

appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas, and[/or] thoughts of another author and representation of them as one's original work. This includes (1) paraphrasing another's ideas or conclusions without acknowledgment; (2) lifting of entire [sentences,]

paragraphs, chapters, etc. from another's work; and (3) submission as one's own work, any work prepared by another person or agency. Students found guilty of plagiarism--in even a single instance--may fail the assignment AND the course, and may be subject to disciplinary action after a Judicial Hearing at the University including suspension or explusion, depending on the student's current status.

IF YOU ARE NOT SURE WHAT PLAGIARISM IS, OR IF YOU ARE UNSURE IF WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN MAY BE CONSIDERED PLAGIARISM, SEE ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. "IGNORANCE" IS NOT AN EXCUSE IN THESE CASES.

FYI: My office is 2001, Classroom Building. E-mail: t-scherman@neiu.edu Office hours M 10-2 Tu/Th 2-4 or by appointment @x2724.

Schedule:

week of Jan 13: Introduction

week of Jan 20: A New England Tale

week of Jan 27: The Western Captive (coursepack)

week of Feb 3: Summer on the Lakes

week of Feb 10 (no class Feb 12): Woman in the Nineteenth Century

week of Feb 17: finish Woman/19th; Woman and Her Needs (coursepack)

week of Feb 24: Emily Dickinson (handouts)

week of March 3: Open, MIDTERM (in class) March 5

week of March 10: Uncle Tom's Cabin

week of March 17: Uncle Tom's Cabin

week of March 24: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

week of March 31: SPRING BREAK

week of April 7: Life in the Iron Mills

week of April 14: Work

week of April 21: Country of the Pointed Firs

week of April 28: Herland

Tuesday, May 5, 6:00-7:50pm: FINAL EXAM

An asterisk (*) indicates the book has been recently acquired by NEIU.

I. Selected Primary Sources

Child, Lydia M. An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. New York: Arno, 1968.

---. Hobomok and Other Writings on Indians. Ed, Carol L. Karcher . New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1986.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York, W.W. Norton, 1976.

Davis, Rebecca Harding. Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories. Ed., Tillie Olsen. New York: Feminist Press, 1985.

---. Margaret Howth. New York: Feminist Press, 1990.

Dickinson, Emily. Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson. Ed., Robert N. Linscott. New York: Doubleday, 1959.

---. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed., Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960.

Foster, Hannah. The Coquette. New York: Oxford, 1986.

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Ed., intro., Bernard Rosenthall. New York: W.W. Norton, 1971.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Reader. Ed., Ann Lane. New York: Pantheon, 1980.

*--Journey from Within: The Love Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1897-1900. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1995.

Grimke, Angelina, and Sara Grimke. The Public Years of Sara and Angelina Grimke: Selected Writings, 1835-1839. New York: Columbia UP, 1989.

*Griswold, Rufus. The Female Poets of America. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1848.

Harper, Frances. A Brighter Day Coming: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader. Ed., Frances Smith Foster. New York: Feminist Press,1990.

*Hopkins, Pauline. The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins. New York: Oxford, 1988.

*Jones, Vivian, Intro. The Young Lady's Pocket Library, or Parental Monitor. Bristol: Thoemmes P, 1995.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. The Silent Partner. Eds., Mari Jo Buhleand Florence Howe. New York: Feminist Press, 1983.

*--The Story of Avis. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1985.

---.Dr. Zay. Ed., Michael Sartisky. New York: Feminist Press, 1987.

Smith, Elizabeth Oakes. Woman and Her Needs. New York: Fowler Wells, 1851.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. New York: Source Book Press, 1970.

--- and Susan B. Anthony. Correspondence, Writing, Speeches. New York: Schocken, 1981.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. New York: PocketBooks, 1963.

---. Pink and White Tyranny: A Society Novel. Intro. Judith Martin. New York: Signet, 1988.

Warren, Mercy Otis. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, Interspersed with Biographical, Political, and Moral Observations. Ed. Lester H. Cohen. Indianapolis, 1989.

Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction. New York: Bantam, 1987.

Wilson, Harriet. Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a FreeBlack. Ed., Henry Louis Gates Jr.. New York: Random House, 1983.

II. History and Criticism

Bardes, Barbara and Suzanne Gossett. Declarations of Independence: Woman and Political Power in Nineteenth Century American Fiction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1990).

Basch, Norma. "Invisible Women: The Legal Fiction of Marital Unity in Nineteenth Century America." Feminist Studies 5 (Fall 1979): 346-60.

*Baym, Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1995.

--Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984.

---. Feminism and American Literary History: Essays by Nina Baym. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992.

---. Women's Fiction: A Guide to Novels By and About Women in America, 1820-1870. 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.

---. "Mercy Otis Warren's Gendered Melodrama of Revolution." South Atlantic Quarterly 90/3 (Summer 1991). 531-54.

Brodski, Bella and Celeste Schenk, eds. Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.

*Coultrap-McQuin, Susan. Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: NorthCarolina UP, 1990.

Davidson, Cathy. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.

De Jong, Mary. "Her Fair Fame: The Reputation of Frances Sargent Osgood, Woman Poet." Studies in the American Renaissance, (1987): 265-83.

Donovan, Josephine. New England Local Color Literature: A Women's Tradition. New York: F. Ungar, 1983.

---. Sarah Orne Jewett. New York: F. Ungar, 1980.

Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture. 1977. Rpt. New York: Anchor Press, 1988.

*Farr, Judith. The Passion of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992.

Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap,1975.

Foster, Charles H. The Rungless Ladder: Harriet Beecher Stowe And New England Puritanism. New York: Cooper's Square,1970.

Geissler, Kathleen M. "Needles and Pens: The Social Meaning of Women's Literacy in Nineteenth-Century America." Diss. U Southern California, 1987.

Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Gura, Philip. "Poe, Hawthorne, and One of Those Scribbling Women." The Gettysburg Review (Winter 1993).

Haight, Gordon. Mrs. Sigourney: The Sweet Singer of Hartford. New Haven: Yale UP, 1930.

Jelinek, Estelle C., ed.. Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. 1980.

Johnson, Gayle. "Women in Publishing." Perspectives on Publishing. Eds. Philip G. Altbach and Sheila McVey. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1976. 259-72.

Kelley, Mary. "The Sentimentalists: Promise and Betrayal in the Home." Signs 4/3 (Spring 1979): 434-46.

---. Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-century America. New York: Oxford, 1984.

*Koppelman, Susan. Two Friends and Other Nineteenth-Century Lesbian Stories by American Women Writers. New York: Meridian, 1994.

Laue, Judy Myers. "Rufus Wilmot Griswold's The Female Poets of America: The Politics of Anthologizing."Diss. U Southern California, 1988.

Machor, James L. Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century Literature and the Contexts of Response. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.

Manning, Carol S., ed.. The Female Tradition in Southern Literature. Chicago: U Illinois P, 1993.

Marchalonis, Shirley, ed.. Patrons and Protegees: Gender, Friendship, and Writing in Nineteenth-century America. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 19??

Melder, Keith E. The Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Woman's Rights Movement, 1800-1850. New York: Schocken Books, 1977.

Miller, Nancy K. "Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader." Feminist Studies/Critical Studies. Ed. Teresa de Lauretis. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 102-20.

Papashvily, Helen Waite. All the Happy Endings: A Study of the Domestic Novel in America, the Women Who Wrote It, The Women Who Read It, in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper and Bros, 1956.

*Robinson, Victoria. Introducing Women's Studies: Feminist Theory and Practice. New York: NYUP, 1997.

*Rowold, Katharina, Ed. Gender and Science: Late Nineteenth-Century Debates on the Female Mind and Body. London: Thoemmes P, 1996.

Scherman, Timothy H. "Authorship." The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. New York: Oxford, 1995.

Scherman, Timothy H. and Cameron Nickels. "Elizabeth Oakes Smith: the Puritan as Feminist," Femmes de conscience. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1994.

Smith, Henry Nash. "The Scribbling Women and the Cosmic Success Story." Critical Inquiry I (September 1974): 47-70.

Speth, Linda E. "The Married Women's Property Acts, 1839-1865: Reform, Reaction, or Revolution?" Women and the Law. Ed. D. Kelly Weisberg. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1982. I:69-91.

Sterling, Dorothy. We Are Your Sisters. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.

Stern, Madeleine B. We the Women: Career Firsts of Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Schulte, 1963.

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.

Tuchman, Gaye with Nina E. Fortin. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers and Social Change. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.

---. "When the Prevalent Don't Prevail: Male Hegemony and the Victorian Novel." Conflict and Consensus: A Festshrift in Honor of Lewis A. Coser. Eds. Walter W. Powell and Richard Robbins. New York: Free Press, 1984. 139-58.

Walker, Cheryl. "Feminist Literary Criticism and the Author."Critical Inquiry 16 (Spring, 1990): 551-71.

---. The Nightingale's Burden: Women Poets and American Culture before 1900. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.

*Walker, Nancy. The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition. Austin: U Texas P, 1995.

Wallace, James D. "Hawthorne and the Scribbling Women Reconsidered." American Literature (June 1990).

*Warren, Joyce. Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992.

Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. Austin: U Texas P, 1977.

*Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787). New York: Oxford, 1994.

Wood, Ann D. "The 'Scribbling Women' and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote." American Quarterly 23 (1971): 3-24.