Yes, the end is in the end. Not the beginning, as the saying often goes. For when a semester of coursework ends, one does indeed reflect back on the beginning, but with a different set of eyes, eyes that have learned much and have a greater appreciation for what it sees again anew.
And that's enough with the cliches and purple prose, no? It was hard to pick three articles only to discuss here--I learned much from the searches I did every week, to be sure. But, to show I can follow directions, I did pick just three articles, and here they are, in summation and analysis:
1. "Reading." Farmer's Weekly Museum, 19 October 1805. This article is against novel-reading--it deems it a "sore malady"--but is not against reading because of the depravity it may bring to the female mind. In fact, the article asserts that "'tis foul slander to assert that the female mind is thus debased. . . . In the rolls of antiquity the name of Sappho, and in modern times a long catalogue of illustrious female writers completely refutes a notion entertained by many of inferiority." The article goes on to say that, as soon as women get the same educational rights as men, everyone will see that they, too, are capable of great genius and taste. I appreciated the proto-feminist slant to this article, especially as it ran in a paper that, according to founder/editor Joseph Tinker Buckingham's Specimen's of Newspaper Literature (1852), had no rival as a literary periodical during its run. Indeed, the Farmer's Weekly had a circulation that spanned from Main to Georgia and was the leading Federalist paper in the 1790s, though it remained influential until it was stopped in 1810.
2. "On Female Education." Philadelphia Album and Ladies Literary Gazette, 6 June 1827. I appreciate the strong rhetorical argument the writer makes--that we cannot and should not settle for some of the small improvements that have been made in female education, as America is a forward-moving, not a stationary, country. Were we stationary, "a republic would have had scarcely any other existence than in the pages of the Utopia." Yet even though the force of this argument is strong, the writer clearly recognizes that it will not be popular with all readers and thus concludes by offering a more "practical" reason to continue advancing the bounds of acceptable female education. A well-educated woman, says the writer, will make a far better wife to a man, as a man will have someone with whom he can have real conversation at the end of a long day, as opposed to merely being able to discuss matters such as children and the poultry-yard while staring vacantly into the fireplace. So, then, the article appeals to multiple kinds of readers for the same end: to advance female education.
3. "Original Criticism," The Tablet, 19 May 1795. This article states the mission of the periodical as a whole: to offer criticism on great literature of the day. "Our intention is to review every poet of eminence untouched by Johnson, and endeavour to point out his poetry. Nor shall we confine ourselves to poetry. . . . We shall endeavour to mark the excellencies and faults in the style of each author, and to make the reader acquainted with his peculiar manner." The article also welcomes readers to write in with their opinions, especially if they are different from opinions expressed by the publication. That such a paper started itself so early and genuinely wanted to create intellectual discourse regarding literature in the public sphere surprised and excited me. Clearly Americans wanted to distinguish themselves as legitimate proprietors of taste, not entirely dependent upon the decrees of the British when it came to selecting what counted as high art.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Affecting Anxiety: The Power of Sentimental Novels
I enjoyed reading Elizabeth Barnes's chapter--it provided a nice summation of many things we've been discussing (and I've been blogging about) throughout the semester while also offering a taste of something new.
The struggle for the novel to gain a true, unique national identity was rough, especially when you look at a work such as Charlotte Temple, with its ambiguous British/American label. (For more on my thoughts regarding Charlotte Temple, please refer to my blog post on that novel done earlier this year.) Barnes also highlighted the correlation between the promotion of American nationalism and the promotion of the "American" novel--was The Power of Sympathy truly worthy of being called "the first American novel," or was it simply an arbitrary label and nothing more? And did its failure on the market have anything to do with its inability to capture the essence of what Americans wanted in their novels? Perhaps it would have fared better had there not been the expectation of it being quintessentially American.
As we see through the popularity of Charlotte Temple, and as makes sense given the prevalence of Enlightenment ideals, American readers wanted to feel something when they read their novels. Even if the plot was, as it was in The Power of Sympathy, something that could have (and did) happened on American soil, people wanted their affectations evoked. People wanted validation for their own feelings and emotions, and novels helped to give them that. Successful novels allowed readers to have a dialogue between the text and their emotional psyches, and in such novels, the anxiety of influence--which to me seems inescapable, then, now, always--mattered not at all.
The struggle for the novel to gain a true, unique national identity was rough, especially when you look at a work such as Charlotte Temple, with its ambiguous British/American label. (For more on my thoughts regarding Charlotte Temple, please refer to my blog post on that novel done earlier this year.) Barnes also highlighted the correlation between the promotion of American nationalism and the promotion of the "American" novel--was The Power of Sympathy truly worthy of being called "the first American novel," or was it simply an arbitrary label and nothing more? And did its failure on the market have anything to do with its inability to capture the essence of what Americans wanted in their novels? Perhaps it would have fared better had there not been the expectation of it being quintessentially American.
As we see through the popularity of Charlotte Temple, and as makes sense given the prevalence of Enlightenment ideals, American readers wanted to feel something when they read their novels. Even if the plot was, as it was in The Power of Sympathy, something that could have (and did) happened on American soil, people wanted their affectations evoked. People wanted validation for their own feelings and emotions, and novels helped to give them that. Successful novels allowed readers to have a dialogue between the text and their emotional psyches, and in such novels, the anxiety of influence--which to me seems inescapable, then, now, always--mattered not at all.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Reality of Representation: (Un)Defining the meaning of Female Authorship
So I've been thinking a lot about representation as of late. What representation really means, and whether it is in fact through representation that we can--and do--find the real.
How fortuitous, then, that Dobson and Zagarell's chapter on women writers in the early republic talks of--among other things--this very issue. Or at least the idea of representation. They don't further philosophize about it, which is fine. Leaves it open for me. According to Dobson and Zagarell, "by example and implication, the conventional writing that women produced expanded the representations of women in American culture itself" (369). My initial connotation of "representation" is not a particularly positive one, in that it makes me think of something artificial. And didn't women want to produce something real? But, in early America in particular, was there "a real thing" when it came to national identities, of men or women? It seems to me that was what was still being figured out, what people were looking for, and how were they to find it without any kind of model? In this sense, then, I do think that representations came before the real thing.
Of course, there was not any sort of clear cut representation of womanhood. Gender confusion and performativity are not issues new to us--they existed then, too. What did it mean to be a woman? And did writing genuinely answer this question? Dobson and Zagarell talk about the decision women (and surely we can extend this conversation to men, too) faced in regards to whether to use a pseudonym or their real name: what's in a name? As we've talked about in class before, money was so often a driving factor. Sigourney knew there was money in her real name (albeit not as much money as KeSha has in hers...), so she used it.
But did she, or other women, who were writing for money, write what they really wanted to write, or what would sell? Dobson and Zagarell tell us that "The construction of female authorship that emerged during the 1830s was increasingly restrictive" (377). Representations of women as domestic dominated (though they were not the only representations), and these representations served as a catalyst in the construction of female national identity.
Yet, perhaps because so much of women's writing dominated on local, not national levels, and because there were so very many marginal voices fighting to be heard, voices that did not adhere to the domestic trope, there was not a "uniform definition of female authorship by midcentury" (381). Is this a bad thing? And was there really a uniform definition of female authorship thereafter?
I think it shows how dynamic women were, that female authorship could not be defined in a boxed-up form, especially considering there seemed to be a correlation between the definition of female authorship and the definition of female-in-general.
The debate over the power of intellect in regards to gender has not disappeared in full today, and I think it is just as hard now to define what it means to be a "female author" and what it means to be a "male author." Quite frankly, I'd be more concerned and disheartened if such things were easy.
How fortuitous, then, that Dobson and Zagarell's chapter on women writers in the early republic talks of--among other things--this very issue. Or at least the idea of representation. They don't further philosophize about it, which is fine. Leaves it open for me. According to Dobson and Zagarell, "by example and implication, the conventional writing that women produced expanded the representations of women in American culture itself" (369). My initial connotation of "representation" is not a particularly positive one, in that it makes me think of something artificial. And didn't women want to produce something real? But, in early America in particular, was there "a real thing" when it came to national identities, of men or women? It seems to me that was what was still being figured out, what people were looking for, and how were they to find it without any kind of model? In this sense, then, I do think that representations came before the real thing.
Of course, there was not any sort of clear cut representation of womanhood. Gender confusion and performativity are not issues new to us--they existed then, too. What did it mean to be a woman? And did writing genuinely answer this question? Dobson and Zagarell talk about the decision women (and surely we can extend this conversation to men, too) faced in regards to whether to use a pseudonym or their real name: what's in a name? As we've talked about in class before, money was so often a driving factor. Sigourney knew there was money in her real name (albeit not as much money as KeSha has in hers...), so she used it.
But did she, or other women, who were writing for money, write what they really wanted to write, or what would sell? Dobson and Zagarell tell us that "The construction of female authorship that emerged during the 1830s was increasingly restrictive" (377). Representations of women as domestic dominated (though they were not the only representations), and these representations served as a catalyst in the construction of female national identity.
Yet, perhaps because so much of women's writing dominated on local, not national levels, and because there were so very many marginal voices fighting to be heard, voices that did not adhere to the domestic trope, there was not a "uniform definition of female authorship by midcentury" (381). Is this a bad thing? And was there really a uniform definition of female authorship thereafter?
I think it shows how dynamic women were, that female authorship could not be defined in a boxed-up form, especially considering there seemed to be a correlation between the definition of female authorship and the definition of female-in-general.
The debate over the power of intellect in regards to gender has not disappeared in full today, and I think it is just as hard now to define what it means to be a "female author" and what it means to be a "male author." Quite frankly, I'd be more concerned and disheartened if such things were easy.
Monday, November 7, 2011
The Power of Property, or, The Triumph of (E)Masculinity
How interesting that, according to David Leverenz, "[Male] Writers used American manhood for fresh subject material" (350), when this very writing seemed to make them feel less, for lack of a better word, manly in the first place. It makes me wonder if male writers were in fact using their own sense of American emasculation--not American manhood--for fresh subject material. Using such material, however, with the intent of transforming it into something that came to have a more masculine connotation.
And maybe that's part of the reason why these men kept writing? I mean, the impetus to give up was there. It was hard to make money, hard to do the things that made one a bona fide man in early America--own property, have a wife, have children. Clearly there was something of the revolutionary spirit in these writers. They didn't stop. They may have felt emasculated, or that they were pursuing something that seemed more womanly, but they kept at it. And it was only through keeping at it that they were able to help the profession evolve into something that they (men) deemed as having a masculine connotation. Was that the dream all along, then?
Of course, the anonymity factor continued to play a role here. Poor Nathanial Hawthorne, who used his real name only to have it supposed to be a fictitious label. (What's that do to a writer's ego?)
But, as I talked about last week, what's in a label anyway? Hawthorne, among many others, were patrons of the U.S. government. What impact does getting paid by America have on what you write about? Does being a patron of the country brand a different label onto your writing? Or was the (masculine) reputation more important than the content anyway?
It seems to me that the writing itself and the writer's reputation were both important. Perhaps having to juggle and attempt to balance the two was a cause of the "flux of contrary moods and potential depressions" written about and felt by male writers (361).
If nothing else, the aura of vitality combined with volatility, as Leverenz puts it, was an aura that certainly continued to co-exist with male authorship in America. Does it still exist now? I'm not sure. Things seem far more fragmented to me, and I'm not comfortable with making such a judgment. If I owned some property, maybe I'd be willing to take a more assertive stance.
And maybe that's part of the reason why these men kept writing? I mean, the impetus to give up was there. It was hard to make money, hard to do the things that made one a bona fide man in early America--own property, have a wife, have children. Clearly there was something of the revolutionary spirit in these writers. They didn't stop. They may have felt emasculated, or that they were pursuing something that seemed more womanly, but they kept at it. And it was only through keeping at it that they were able to help the profession evolve into something that they (men) deemed as having a masculine connotation. Was that the dream all along, then?
Of course, the anonymity factor continued to play a role here. Poor Nathanial Hawthorne, who used his real name only to have it supposed to be a fictitious label. (What's that do to a writer's ego?)
But, as I talked about last week, what's in a label anyway? Hawthorne, among many others, were patrons of the U.S. government. What impact does getting paid by America have on what you write about? Does being a patron of the country brand a different label onto your writing? Or was the (masculine) reputation more important than the content anyway?
It seems to me that the writing itself and the writer's reputation were both important. Perhaps having to juggle and attempt to balance the two was a cause of the "flux of contrary moods and potential depressions" written about and felt by male writers (361).
If nothing else, the aura of vitality combined with volatility, as Leverenz puts it, was an aura that certainly continued to co-exist with male authorship in America. Does it still exist now? I'm not sure. Things seem far more fragmented to me, and I'm not comfortable with making such a judgment. If I owned some property, maybe I'd be willing to take a more assertive stance.
Monday, October 31, 2011
On Magazines, Space/Time (but not space-time), and Peeling Labels
I must say, I enjoyed Andie Tucher's section on Newspapers and Periodicals--I would have been cool with it being a little longer, even. (Crazy, I know.)
Tucher's "Magazines and Reviews" made it into my "top two favorite sections" rankings, at least in part due to the fantastic opening line: "Magazines, unlike newspapers, had to work hard to find love" (397). I enjoy having my sympathy evoked for a material form, and I found it intriguing--but simultaneously unsurprising--that early American magazines were seen as "pale imitations" of their British counterparts.
Unsurprising because starting with things more British and using that as a springboard to work gradually into something that is truly American rather seems to have been, for lack of a better turn of phrase, the way America and the concept of what it's like to be American came into being, on all counts.
Intriguing because, given the risky nature of running a periodical in early America in the first place, it would seem like a great form and forum in which to experiment with creating something that is, from the very start, essentially American. (If you're going to fail, fail big, right?)
But then, as Tucher tells us, periodicals did not have the same appeal to writers in America as they did to writers elsewhere. And I wonder what that says about Americans and their conceptualization of time. Did the voice of the American public sphere not find itself best heard in periodicals, as the British voice so very much did, because we did not have the same anxieties concerning temporality? British periodicals created and fed off such anxieties, but in America, spacial, not temporal, anxieties, seemed to be a bigger factor.
Certainly, disseminating a singular novel across the country was more feasible. I can only imagine the anxieties that would have arisen had periodicals here had (or maybe they did?) a Magazine Day, where all the monthlies put out their next issue. How would that issue get to everyone on the same day? An issue would have to be done and printed that much sooner to be transported to all parts of the country in time for distribution day. Just thinking about how difficult that would have been makes me anxious, and I'm here in the good ol' 21 century.
Yet I can understand the rise of periodicals for very niche readerships of which Tucher speaks--people were attempting to bring their voices into an enormous public space, so that their voices could perchance become part of the--but not the--public sphere. These publications were of the middle-class variety, but that certainly does not negate the potential for readership from people of other classes. And it is periodicals of this sort, as Tucher says, that finally helped to "revolutionize the profession of authorship" in America (399). Great American writers were getting paid to write for these niche periodicals, and it is from their readership here that their work outside the periodical realm rose in popularity and esteem.
In this sense, the transformation of periodical culture into something more American resulted in a phenomenon that could certainly be labelled "British," too. Which makes me wonder if we lose the point and the power of history when we try to label things as British or American, domestic or sensational, middle-class or lower-class, etc. One of my favorite lines from Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf comes from Honey, when she's sitting drunk on the bathroom floor, peeling the labels off of bottles of alcohol. "I peel labels," she says, and in the context of the play, as in the context I'm discussing here, it makes you think of how often our labels don't hold, how they really cannot seem to get at--and in fact take away from--"The Real Thing," to borrow the title of Henry James's fabulous short story. From this perspective, labeling something and then neatly filing it away into its "proper" place really doesn't seem so proper.
Tucher's "Magazines and Reviews" made it into my "top two favorite sections" rankings, at least in part due to the fantastic opening line: "Magazines, unlike newspapers, had to work hard to find love" (397). I enjoy having my sympathy evoked for a material form, and I found it intriguing--but simultaneously unsurprising--that early American magazines were seen as "pale imitations" of their British counterparts.
Unsurprising because starting with things more British and using that as a springboard to work gradually into something that is truly American rather seems to have been, for lack of a better turn of phrase, the way America and the concept of what it's like to be American came into being, on all counts.
Intriguing because, given the risky nature of running a periodical in early America in the first place, it would seem like a great form and forum in which to experiment with creating something that is, from the very start, essentially American. (If you're going to fail, fail big, right?)
But then, as Tucher tells us, periodicals did not have the same appeal to writers in America as they did to writers elsewhere. And I wonder what that says about Americans and their conceptualization of time. Did the voice of the American public sphere not find itself best heard in periodicals, as the British voice so very much did, because we did not have the same anxieties concerning temporality? British periodicals created and fed off such anxieties, but in America, spacial, not temporal, anxieties, seemed to be a bigger factor.
Certainly, disseminating a singular novel across the country was more feasible. I can only imagine the anxieties that would have arisen had periodicals here had (or maybe they did?) a Magazine Day, where all the monthlies put out their next issue. How would that issue get to everyone on the same day? An issue would have to be done and printed that much sooner to be transported to all parts of the country in time for distribution day. Just thinking about how difficult that would have been makes me anxious, and I'm here in the good ol' 21 century.
Yet I can understand the rise of periodicals for very niche readerships of which Tucher speaks--people were attempting to bring their voices into an enormous public space, so that their voices could perchance become part of the--but not the--public sphere. These publications were of the middle-class variety, but that certainly does not negate the potential for readership from people of other classes. And it is periodicals of this sort, as Tucher says, that finally helped to "revolutionize the profession of authorship" in America (399). Great American writers were getting paid to write for these niche periodicals, and it is from their readership here that their work outside the periodical realm rose in popularity and esteem.
In this sense, the transformation of periodical culture into something more American resulted in a phenomenon that could certainly be labelled "British," too. Which makes me wonder if we lose the point and the power of history when we try to label things as British or American, domestic or sensational, middle-class or lower-class, etc. One of my favorite lines from Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf comes from Honey, when she's sitting drunk on the bathroom floor, peeling the labels off of bottles of alcohol. "I peel labels," she says, and in the context of the play, as in the context I'm discussing here, it makes you think of how often our labels don't hold, how they really cannot seem to get at--and in fact take away from--"The Real Thing," to borrow the title of Henry James's fabulous short story. From this perspective, labeling something and then neatly filing it away into its "proper" place really doesn't seem so proper.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Dear America,
Dear America,
I miss you. I mean, I know I live here--in Texas, one of the United States, but you're probably still upset that I seemed to break up with you, academically speaking, a couple of years ago. You see me as a formerly loud and proud Americanist who allowed herself to be wooed by those pesky English with their digestives, meat pies, and fancy hats.
Well, I'm here to tell you that I have done no such thing. (Family, friends, and former colleagues can attest: they still ask me questions and send me stuff about Hemingway all the time, and he's one of your greats!) I'm just checking out the other side of the pond, trying to see things from their perspective. Many of your finest modernist writers lived overseas back in the day; it's seems fitting that I, who aspire to be one of your finer (finest would be pushing the ego envelope) writers of scholarly criticism, then, should see what's up in that neck of the woods. Yes, yes, I've gone back to the nineteenth century, I'm a Victorianist--but my new position will help me do what they call a "sneak attack" in war, no? I've got to surprise the American modernists from behind. Trust me, it's brilliant. I've got it all worked out.
But, as you know, I had never looked back into your literary history, either: Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe (love those guys) were about as far back as I'd gone. I'm hoping you're pleased with me for taking the time to do so this semester.
I cannot, however, say that I'm as pleased with you. Richard D. Brown continues the conversation Gross started in his introduction to Extensive Republic regarding the public sphere, and I just don't like that women were so marginalized. Yes, yes, I know, it's all a process, these things take time. But why? Why did it have to take time? Why was the notion of a female intellectual so unacceptable? Why--how--did these constructed gender binaries get created? Sure, you'll say, "don't look at me--such things were in place before everyone came over here." But you know what? I am looking at you. America was supposed to be about change, about progress, about doing things in non-British ways. Why couldn't you have extended these non-British ways to your treatment of women? Seems like common sense to me, but I guess the only Common Sense you had was in the form of a pamphlet by one Thomas Paine. That was enough radical thinking for your vast terrain, ay?
What's that? Oh yes, I know, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a hot commodity--I can read Brown's chapter just fine on my own, thank you. I'm literate. But you were satisfied to let the feminist thinking of a British woman circulate--why didn't you let the voices of American women be more readily and easily heard in your public sphere? Why were they silenced?
I already know how you'll respond: you'll tell me I'm being silly, cliche, and certainly not very erudite. But I operate within a scholarly framework all the time, and I wanted to use some "rude diction," Paine-style. See where that got me.
It's only gotten me a wee bit frustrated, as I know all too well that placing blame won't get me anywhere.
Just know, America, that I appreciate the ways in which you strove to better yourself and make advancements as a nation in the 18th century. I only wish the advancement of women had been a part of your original agenda, too.
Your faithful inhabitant,
M. J. Couchon, the first.
p.s. Are you formally affiliated with Peter Simes's "America: The Blog?" If not, you should talk to Mr. Simes about being a sponsor; I really think it would help your street cred.
I miss you. I mean, I know I live here--in Texas, one of the United States, but you're probably still upset that I seemed to break up with you, academically speaking, a couple of years ago. You see me as a formerly loud and proud Americanist who allowed herself to be wooed by those pesky English with their digestives, meat pies, and fancy hats.
Well, I'm here to tell you that I have done no such thing. (Family, friends, and former colleagues can attest: they still ask me questions and send me stuff about Hemingway all the time, and he's one of your greats!) I'm just checking out the other side of the pond, trying to see things from their perspective. Many of your finest modernist writers lived overseas back in the day; it's seems fitting that I, who aspire to be one of your finer (finest would be pushing the ego envelope) writers of scholarly criticism, then, should see what's up in that neck of the woods. Yes, yes, I've gone back to the nineteenth century, I'm a Victorianist--but my new position will help me do what they call a "sneak attack" in war, no? I've got to surprise the American modernists from behind. Trust me, it's brilliant. I've got it all worked out.
But, as you know, I had never looked back into your literary history, either: Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe (love those guys) were about as far back as I'd gone. I'm hoping you're pleased with me for taking the time to do so this semester.
I cannot, however, say that I'm as pleased with you. Richard D. Brown continues the conversation Gross started in his introduction to Extensive Republic regarding the public sphere, and I just don't like that women were so marginalized. Yes, yes, I know, it's all a process, these things take time. But why? Why did it have to take time? Why was the notion of a female intellectual so unacceptable? Why--how--did these constructed gender binaries get created? Sure, you'll say, "don't look at me--such things were in place before everyone came over here." But you know what? I am looking at you. America was supposed to be about change, about progress, about doing things in non-British ways. Why couldn't you have extended these non-British ways to your treatment of women? Seems like common sense to me, but I guess the only Common Sense you had was in the form of a pamphlet by one Thomas Paine. That was enough radical thinking for your vast terrain, ay?
What's that? Oh yes, I know, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a hot commodity--I can read Brown's chapter just fine on my own, thank you. I'm literate. But you were satisfied to let the feminist thinking of a British woman circulate--why didn't you let the voices of American women be more readily and easily heard in your public sphere? Why were they silenced?
I already know how you'll respond: you'll tell me I'm being silly, cliche, and certainly not very erudite. But I operate within a scholarly framework all the time, and I wanted to use some "rude diction," Paine-style. See where that got me.
It's only gotten me a wee bit frustrated, as I know all too well that placing blame won't get me anywhere.
Just know, America, that I appreciate the ways in which you strove to better yourself and make advancements as a nation in the 18th century. I only wish the advancement of women had been a part of your original agenda, too.
Your faithful inhabitant,
M. J. Couchon, the first.
p.s. Are you formally affiliated with Peter Simes's "America: The Blog?" If not, you should talk to Mr. Simes about being a sponsor; I really think it would help your street cred.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
A Temporal Meditation on Gross’s Introduction to An Extensive Republic (Occuring Within This Specified Space)
Robert A. Gross begins his introduction by telling readers that “An Extensive Republic charts the expansion of print culture in a new nation rapidly gaining in population and spreading across space” (1, emphasis added). He later talks about the “tyranny of distance” in regards to how long it took to disseminate information across the vast terrains of America.
But I wonder if the real culprit--though is there a culprit, really?--is in fact time; after all, distance is something that can be conquered, that technological advances can help us to overcome. We cannot, however, overcome time in quite the same sense, though time and space are, as we commonly view them, inextricably linked.
What seems most illuminating about the 50-year time span on which Extensive Republic focuses is how much growth there was in such a short temporal segment on the timeline of that intangible entity we refer to as history. And where this growth came from was (1) the exponential rise of print culture and (2) the multiplicity of public spheres that arose at least in part as a response to the rise of print culture.
Gross expands on Habermas’s idea of the public sphere, asserting that there is also a “public sphere of civil society” (11). But I think there is more expanding to do than that—to assume and think of the public sphere as a collective—or here a binary collective—entity is simply to default back to the notion of there being one and only one way to define American nationalism, one and only one way to define American ideology. Print culture offered itself to multiple, fragmented sectors of the public that were in fact, by themselves, not so fragmented at all. Print culture helped, for instance, women to have voices. They developed their voices, however, because they made space for themselves when they saw the so-called universal public sphere was leaving them out. But even there, we could divide the category of women down by factors of class, race, and geographical location.
Each divisional public sphere, in and of itself, existed in a fugal harmony with other public spheres; different, yes, but with the same overarching goal: to build personal and national identities, to learn about one's self and one's nation. Not being too general and offering materials that were sufficiently localized was a balancing act print culture in America had to deal with, and it dealt with it fairly well. Certainly, space was important, for, as Gross points out, Americans thrived on localism. What concern had farmers in rural North Carolina for the public sphere that existed among New York entrepreneurs? A public sphere of one’s own—that’s what Virginia Woolf would have called for had she lived in this time (and space), I should like to think. And while Gross gets closer to this idea than Habermas did, he’s still missing the mark.
In this regard, I wonder about the “campaign by many writers, editors, and artists to bring forth a distinctive literature and culture expressive of the nation as a whole” that arose in the 1830s (13, emphasis added). Gross uses the word “expressive” instead of “representative," and I'd like to think he was savvy enough to have chosen his diction here quite carefully. A singular literature and/or culture that could stand up as a representation of America’s diverseness surely would have been difficult; if nothing else, such a representation would have taken up too much space. But an “expressive” literature and/or culture suggests a more linguistic way of signifying a nation, which, if we are inclined to agree with Bahktin’s assessment of novels (and I suppose I am so inclined), is in fact a way the varying voices of America could be heard. Assuming we're willing to take the time to listen.
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