Preliminary Bibliography, Part 2

I have found four more books that I think I can use for my research project. I am still trying to track down the chapter "The Feminization of American Religion, 1800-1860" from Barbara Welter’s book Dimity Convictions because it has already been checked out at the UCF Library. If no one from class has it checked out, then hopefully I’ll be able to request an interlibrary loan of that chapter since it isn’t due back until August of 2009 and our class ends in May!

Aresty, Esther B. The Best Behavior: the course of good manners – from antiquity to the present – as seen through courtesy and etiquette books. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.

Fetterley, Judith. “Introduction.” Provisions: a reader from 19th-Century American women. Ed. Judith Fetterley. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985. 1-40.

Martin, Judith. Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, freshly updated. New York: Norton, 2005.

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: the cultural work of American fiction 1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.

I also finally remembered to email Amanda from TCU about The Factory Girl (Hi Amanda!), so I can’t wait to see what she is working on and what sources she can recommend.

Focused Reading

Since the purpose of this blog is to chart our own research process, I thought I would upload the four pages of notes detailing keywords, descriptions and quotes I found interesting while reading The Factory Girl for the first time. I apologize for my sloppy handwriting, and have to mention there are probably misspellings all over the place, but this is what my research looks like. I still haven’t scanned my copy of The Factory Girl into PDF files, so I couldn’t just scribble in the margins of the text like I normally would, which was slightly frustrating.

You’ll notice I didn’t really detail the plot in my notes, with the exception of when Mary loses and then regains her cottage and land. The story is actually very simplistic in terms of plot, so I’m not too worried about this aspect. Later on, I’ll create a plot timeline of sorts for myself. I also didn’t write down major themes, such as industrial workers, class issues, religion, Sunday school/education, etc. I still have more detailed notes that I need to take, but I thought I’d post what I have so far.

These images are also available at my photobucket page: Conduct Yourself.



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Tangent #1

I was checking one of my favorite sites today, Tomato Nation, and had to laugh when I read Sarah D. Bunting's take on "the Oxford comma." If that little tidbit didn't satisfy your thirst for grammar related issues, then you can chime in on the debate over whether to use a single or double space after the period. Personally, I am a fan of the double space (which I'm pretty sure Blogger takes out, but don't quote me on that). I was taught in typing class that we had to use a double space - I did not know that some people had reverted back to the single space. Ahhh...the politics of grammar!

Her article titled "Sincerely Your's" is fun for literary geeks too. Lastly, my favorite piece by Sarah is "Yes, You Are" in which she tackles the label of feminist. Enjoy!

Preliminary Bibliography: The Factory Girl

When I did my initial search for research material available within the UCF Library, I used the Library of Congress Subject Headings listed below. I found a lot of books this way, plus, when I went to the shelves to retrieve the books, I often found more hidden gems with good old fashioned shelf browsing.

I actually had some trouble using the LCSH with the America: History & Life database. When I used “conduct of life” and “conduct of life in literature” nothing showed up. When I simply used “conduct” but set the era guidelines to 1800-1850, still nothing showed up. Removing the era guidelines showed that there were articles using the keyword “conduct,” but none of them were applicable to my research. I eventually only found two articles in the America: History & Life database when I used “Savage, Sarah” as my keyword and one of those articles I had to request via Inter-Library Loan. However, the Thomas B. Lovell article yielded three other sources when I looked through his works cited page, so I wasn’t too disappointed at only finding two articles in that particular database.

In the MLA database, using Sarah Savage as the primary subject author only yielded two articles, both by Lovell (one was a dissertation, and the other I already had). The use of The Factory Girl as the primary subject work yielded the same two Lovell articles plus an article that centered around Herman Melville’s The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids but also referenced The Factory Girl and three other novels featuring factory girls – I skipped this article. My most fruitful search occurred when I used “conduct” as the genre, as I found five articles. Most of my sources do not specifically related to The Factory Girl, but they do relate to other primary sources like The Factory Girl, and cover issues raised by the text.


LCSH used:
• Conduct of life in literature
• Didactic fiction, America
• Domestic fiction, America
• America - Literatures (then narrowed by 19th century and United States as geographical location)
• America – Early
• America – Bibliography

MLA database keywords:
• Genre: conduct book
• Subject terms: treatment of public life
• Savage, Sarah
• The Factory Girl


Microfilm:
Savage, Sarah. Advice to a Young Woman at Service: In a Letter from a Friend. Boston: Printed for the Trustees of the Pub. Fund by J.B. Russell, 1823.*
Keyword: Found in the works cited of the Lovell article.

*Requesting through ILL.


Articles:
Donawerth, Jane. “Nineteenth-Century United States Conduct Book Rhetoric by Women.” Rhetoric Review 21.1 (2002): 5-21. MLA International. 8 February 2009.
Keyword: Found with conduct as the genre in the MLA database.

Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. “The Dialogic Margins of Conduct Fiction: Hannah Webster Foster’s The Boarding School.” JASAT 25 (1994): 59-72. MLA International. 9 February 2009.*
Keyword: conduct as the genre in the MLA database.

Jacobs, Naomi. “In Praise of the Talking Woman: gender and conversation in the nineteenth century.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 14.1 (1990): 55-70. MLA International. 9 February 2009.*
Keyword: conduct as the genre in the MLA database.

Johnson, Nan. “Reigning in the Court of Silence: women and rhetorical space in postbellum America.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000): 221-42. MLA International. 9 February 2009.
Keyword: conduct as the genre in the MLA database.

Lovell, Thomas B. “Separate Spheres and Extensive Circles: Sarah Savage’s ‘The Factory Girl’ and the Celebration of Industry in Early Nineteenth-Century America.” Early American Literature 31.1 (1996): 1-24. America: History & Life. 7 February 2009.
Keyword: Savage, Sarah ‘The Factory Girl’ in America: H & L database.

Mahoney, Deirdre M. “‘More Than An Accomplishment’: advice on letter writing for nineteenth-century American women.” Hunting Library Quarterly 66.3-4 (2003): 411-23. JSTOR. 9 February 2009.
Keyword: Found with conduct as the genre in MLA database.

Moore, Margaret B. “Sarah Savage of Salem: A Forgotten Writer.” Essex Institute Historical Collections 127.3 (1991): 240-259. America: History & Life. 7 February 2009.*
Keyword: Savage, Sarah in America: H & L database. Also mentioned in the works cited for the Lovell article.

Morgan, Simon. “’A Sort of Land Debatable’: female influence, civic virtue and middle-class identity.” Women’s History Review 13.2 (2004): 183-209. MLA International. 9 February 2009.
Keyword: Found with “conduct of life in literature.”

Morrison, Lucy. “Conduct (Un)Becoming to Ladies of Literature: how-to-guides for romantic women writers.” Studies in Philology 99.2 (2002): 202-228. JSTOR. 9 February 2009.
Keyword: conduct as the genre in the MLA database.

Shaw, Margaret. “Reading the Social Text: the disciplinary rhetorics of Sarah Ellis and Samuel Beeton.” Victorian Literature and Culture 24 (1996): 175-92. MLA International. 9 February 2009.*
Keyword: conduct as the genre in the MLA database.

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood.” American Quarterly 18.2 (1966): 151-174. JSTOR. 7 February 2009.
Keyword: Recommended by Dr. Logan.

*Requesting through ILL.


Books:
Baym, Nina. Woman’s Fiction: a guide to novels by and about women in America, 1820-1870. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1978.
Keyword: Recommended by Dr. Logan.

Brophy, Elizabeth Bergen. Women’s Lives and the 18th-Century English Novel. Tampa: U of South Florida P, 1991.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

Davis, Cynthia J. and Kathryn West. Women Writers in the United States: a Timeline of Literary, Cultural and Social History. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

Kelley, Mary. Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002.
Keyword: Found in the works cited of the Lovell article.

MacLeod, Anne Scott. A Moral Tale: Children’s Fiction and American Culture 1820-1860. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1975.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

More, Hannah. Cœlebs in Search of a Wife: Comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals. Ed. Patricia Demers. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Editions, 2007.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

O’Keefe, Deborah. Good Girl Messages: How Young Women Were Misled by Their Favorite Books. New York: Continuum, 2000.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

Opdycke, Sandra. The Routledge Historical Atlas of Women in America. NY: Routledge, 2000.
Keyword: Found while retrieving the Ryan book.

Ryan, Mary P. The Empire of the Mother: American Writing about Domesticity, 1830-1860. NY: Haworth Press, 1982.*
Keyword: Found in the works cited of the Lovell article.

---. Womanhood in America: from colonial times to the present. NY: F. Watts, 1975.
Keyword: UCF did not have the book listed in the Lovell article, but it did have this one, so I grabbed it.

Vietto, Angela. Women and Authorship in Revolutionary America. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

Wagner-Martin, Linda, and Cathy N. Davidson. The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

Wechselblatt, Martin. Bad Behavior: Samuel Johnson and Modern Cultural Authority. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1998.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

Wright, Charlotte M. Plain and Ugly Janes: the rise of the ugly woman in contemporary American fiction. NY: Garland, 2000.
Keyword: Found via shelf browsing when I was retrieving the Kelley book.

Zaczek, Barbara Maria. Censored Sentiments: letters and censorship in epistolary novels and conduct material. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1997.
Keyword: Found via the LCSHs mentioned above.

*Requesting through ILL.

Sharing my rhetorical analysis

Rhetorical Analysis: The Factory Girl

For modern readers, the most striking aspect of the title page for The Factory Girl is the lack of a named author. First published in 1814, Sarah Savage was not listed as the author of the text; instead, the novel is written “By A Lady.” Because there is no dedication page included in the novel, the reader must use other literary clues embedded in the front matter and the text to discover the intentions of the “lady” author. Luckily, the reader does not have to look far, as on the title page, there is a quote from Galatians 5 22-23: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle-/ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. St. Paul” (Savage n.p.). The last part of verse 23 is not included: “against such there is no law” (BibleGateway).

The inclusion of a Biblical reference on the title page is evidence of the (implied) author’s intention, as the commentary on BibleGateway states that Galatians 5: 22-26 describes “freedom for moral transformation” and that “the fruit of the Spirit is the moral character developed by the power of the Spirit” (BibleGateway). Furthermore, “Paul’s list of moral qualities produced by the Spirit provides assurances that those who ‘live by the Spirit’ will actually fulfill God’s requirements for his people” (BibleGateway). The Factory Girl will serve as a guidebook, showcasing how Mary Burnam, the heroine, lives by the Spirit and is rewarded, while those who do not love, have joy, peace, patience, etc. are not living by God’s will and therefore suffer.

The first chapter opens with a quote from Robert Burns’ poem “A Winter Night”: “The heart benevolent and kind/ The most resembles God” (Savage 3). The poem as a whole invokes Christian charity in the image of giving shelter during a winter storm. The theme of moral transformation apparently begins with having a “benevolent and kind” heart, and as chapter one reveals, these pious thoughts must also be put to action. Because there is no dedication, the intended audience of The Factory Girl must be extrapolated from the text itself. If the quote from Galatians is placed on the title page, literally opening the text, then it can be assumed that the audience not only needed this clue but also needs moral and religious guidance. The author is taking it upon herself to provide an example of how to cultivate this moral transformation, or if some of her audience is already like Mary, then the text offers confirmation of their righteous path.

The demographical statistics of this audience can only be guessed at as there is no subscription list at the back of the text, but I believe the audience is comprised of young men and women (teenagers and older) who are Christian, middle or working class, white and American. Because of rising literacy rates in early America, it is possible that lower class readers had access to the work as well, but were not necessarily intended to be the proper audience of the text. Mary, the heroine, is a middle class orphaned girl and Christian, and only takes to work in a factory in order to provide niceties for her grandmother, such as tea and other “little luxuries” (Savage 10) that are no longer available in their “declining life” (Savage 10). They are not the poor middle class who must work to put a roof over their head, and in fact own their own house.

The context of The Factory Girl is made clear by the intention of the text as a guide to moral transformation. The implied author would not have written and published the text unless she felt it necessary to provide this moral and religious guidance to those she felt were in need of it. The novel includes both good and bad examples of moral and religious conduct, and these distinctions are not subtle in the least. The format and style of the title page is neither flashy nor ostentatious, in keeping with its intentions. The title page makes good use of the white space, and the Galatians quote sits right in the middle of the page.

The novel is about Mary, whose birthday opens the novel. It is revealed that this eighteen year old girl wishes to better provide for her grandmother, Mrs. Burnam, and begs her permission to work at a local factory, spinning cotton. While other scholars look to The Factory Girl as an industrial text with the first female laborer protagonist, I find that the text very clearly lays out the correct and incorrect conduct of living for young people of the time through the example of pious Mary, and unfaithful and frivolous William Raymond.

In keeping with moral guidance as the author’s intention, the goal of the novel is show by explicit example via Mary the proper conduct for young people. For example, Mary’s motivations for getting a job are not selfish, instead her grandmother explains “for I know it is not to get fine clothes for yourself, but comforts for me, that makes you so desirous to go out to work” (Savage 4). Once Mary is given permission to work at the factory, we are told that “[t]he glow of filial benevolence kept her unusually cheerful through the day” (Savage 10). The implications are that being too cheerful for no good reason is not proper conduct, and that acting in accordance to filial benevolence can affect a person emotionally (cheerfulness) and physically (the glow). Mary’s behavior is commended by her co-worker Nancy Raymond, who after knowing her for one day exclaims,

And though she does not laugh and talk, as much as some do, I dare say she is never gloomy and ill-tempered. I minded when her spools were tangled, she did not get angry with them, as some girls do; but when she was almost out of patience, she turned round and looked at me with such a good-humored smile, it made her look quite handsome (Savage 12-13).

In short, Mary is a goody two-shoes, but within the context of this novel, that is a good thing and worthy of imitation.

Proof of Mary’s excellence can be found in the author’s descriptions of Mary. She is regularly described as being industrious, dutiful, brimming with filial benevolence, cheerful, engaged in healthful activity, naturally timid, has a “modest, pleasing manner” (Savage 11), good-humored smile, uniform pleasantness, and is good-tempered and obliging. Furthermore, she has a “conciliating manner and an innocent conformity to general customs” (Savage 22), and an “unbroken cheerfulness of temper” (Savage 23). Perhaps most importantly though, Mary is described as a “beauty of the mind” (12) rather than having physical beauty.

The language used to describe Mary is intended to inspire the audience to imitate her actions, so it is safe to assume that being described as industrious or obliging, especially if you are a young woman, was highly complementary and desirous during the author’s time, at least in the eyes of authority. Authority comes in the form of Mary’s elders in the novel, such as her grandmother, Mrs. Holden (Mary’s aunt), Mr. and Mrs. Danforth (“the good judges of correct behaviour”), Dr. Mandeville (their former boarder) and Mr. Seymore, the new clergyman in Hamden, who is the religious authority for all of them.

The author cleverly intertwines voices of authority by opening each chapter of the novel with a quote from authors and poets that her audience from the “real” world of early America would be familiar with such as Robert Burns, Mrs. Steele, Mrs. Chapone, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, and William Cowper. The narration style is third person omniscient, so the voice of the narrator does not intrude but rather lets the characters of The Factory Girl tell their own tale, though it is apparent through language and the plot that the readers are to follow in Mary’s footsteps rather than stray from the path of moral transformation.


Works Cited:
Savage, Sarah. The Factory Girl. Boston: Munroe, Francis & Parker, 1814.

The Zondervan Corporation L.L.C. “Galatians 5: Commentaries: Freedom for Moral Transformation.” BibleGateway. 1 February 2009. http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/index.php?action=getCommentaryText&cid=7&source=1&seq=i.55.5.8.

The Zondervan Corporation L.L.C. “Galatians 5: King James Version.” BibleGateway. 1 February 2009. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=55&chapter=5&version=9/.