LIT6009 / Dr. Logan
17 April 2009
Ruling by Love: A True Womanhood Approach to Education
Mary Burnam, the heroine of Sarah Savage’s The Factory Girl, is the most powerful character of the story, eventually imbuing more authority than the male town leaders and minister, Mr. Seymore. In The Factory Girl, it is women who provide the children of the town with the economic capital necessary to succeed, not men. The currency of this economic capital is education. The women of the text, especially Mary, are shaping the economic, social, educational and religious future of the town and in doing so, are placed in positions of power despite the supposed barring from participation in civic affairs. Mary takes on this position of power by adhering to Barbara Welter’s four virtues of true womanhood: “piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Welter 152). The novel also provides its readers with a glimpse of the brief window of opportunity and independence allowed a woman after she came of age, but before she married. The publication date of The Factory Girl, 1814, situates the text almost fifteen years ahead of the educational revolution of the 1830s. By examining this early example of the evolution of education, as represented in three generations, scholars can place The Factory Girl back into the early American cannon from which it has been excluded.
There are three distinct generations represented in The Factory Girl by the characters of Mrs. Burnam, the grandmother of Mary, Mary Burnam and her factory co-worker Nancy Raymond, and the poor factory children, her nephews and her two step-children. Noticeably absent are Mary’s parents - her father apparently died when she was young and before he had the opportunity to see to her education, but there is never any mention of her mother. Instead, the grandmother is charged by her son to see that Mary is educated: “Though you will have to work hard, mother, to get along, I know you will contrive to spare time to teach Mary (as you did me) to read the Bible, and talk to her about what it contains” (Savage 5-6). Mrs. Burnam is able to carry out her son’s instructions because, as the narrator informs the reader, “though her humble station has precluded her from the advantages of a refined education, [she] had an inquisitive mind, and by much observation had in some measure supplied the want of instruction” (Savage 14). Since Mary is the heroine of the story, the reader can safely assume that Mrs. Burnam exceeded her son’s expectations in regards to Mary’s schooling.
Mrs. Burnam is aware of the changes in women’s education since her own schooling: “I did not know how to express it; for I never had much schooling; when I was a young woman, we did not have the advantages they do now” (Savage 33). Though these advantages are never spelled out specifically, scholarship reveals that female academies were established as early as the 1780s (Kelley 276) in addition to already established mixed gendered schools and Sunday schools. Whereas Mrs. Burnam probably never had an opportunity for schooling outside the home, her grand-daughter did not face the same roadblock. Despite Mrs. Burnam’s lack of formal education, even Mr. Seymore, after listening to her describe the type of education she gave Mary, praises her: “Your method...was in my opinion perfectly correct” (Savage 36).
Mary’s role in The Factory Girl is that of one both educated and an educator. Taught under the guidance of her grandmother, the church and her own “uncommon industry” (Savage 40), Mary is equipped with the most important knowledge there is: that of the Bible. Her father’s dying wish confirms the importance of the Bible in a child’s education: “When Mary is grown up, she will, I am sure, want to return some of your goodness, (for the knowledge of the Bible, that you will give her, will make her dutiful;)” (Savage 6). Mary’s piety is her strongest virtue, and as Welter has stated, “[r]eligion or piety was the core of woman’s virtue, the source of her strength” (Welter 152). The Factory Girl upholds a strong connection between religion and education, with women as its enforcers.
Mary exhibits all the characteristics of a “true woman,” as defined by republican standards. Welter has narrowed these characteristics to four virtues: “piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Welter 152). Mary is pious, going to church every Sunday and memorizing the sermon so she can tell it to her grandmother, who cannot make the trip. She is also pure in that even while being courted by William Raymond, she is focused on his character traits rather than his physical appearance and the ways in which she can help improve him: “she would look forward with delight to the period when she might use the influence of a wife to lead the mind of William to clearer notions of the true spirit of Christianity, and more uniform consistency of conduct” (Savage 46-7). Even when Mary does marry Mr. Danforth, a widower, she becomes a mother without the ordeal of actual childbirth. Obviously the reader can infer that one day Mary might have children of her own with Mr. Danforth, however, the book ends before the fruit of marital labor is explicitly spelled out.
Mary’s submissiveness is never called into question as she obeys her grandmother, never giving her a reason to be disappointed. Mary suppresses her submissiveness, or as the narrator terms it, her “usual timidity” only to tell Dr. Mandeville, “I wish I were capable of performing such a delightful task” (Savage 38) when he’s lamenting the lack of applications for a Sunday school teacher. However, even this breach of submissiveness, if it can be called that, only occurs so that Mary can be of service to others. In taking care of her grandmother, her aunt, her nieces and nephews while also working at the factory and teaching Sunday school, Mary is a study of domesticity perfection. Her home is never neglected in favor of her physical labor (the factory) or her intellectual pursuits (teaching Sunday school).
Mary’s status as a true woman is recognized by the male authority figures in her town. This recognition of her potential to be an educator and the transition to actual educator gives Mary the type of authority her grandmother could never have for herself. Mary Kelley affirms the power that female educators had over American society: “[i]n educational improvement and social reform, as in writing and editing, women played an influential role in the making of public opinion before the Civil War” (Kelley 246). Dr. Mandeville tells Mary, “[y]our ability, my good girl...is fully equal to the duty [of instruction]” (Savage 39) and the narrator assures the reader that “[a] humble station could not obscure from the discerning eye of Dr. Mandeville good sense and virtue, and wherever he found those qualities, he honoured and esteemed the possessor” (Savage 40). What is of importance in Dr. Mandeville’s beliefs is the lack of assigned gender roles to “good sense and virtue” - both men and women can be assigned these character traits and be rewarded with respect, and possibly authority.
However, even without the townsmen’s validation, Mary is an educator of those in her own generation, specifically her fellow factory workers. She shares with Nancy Raymond her habit of rising early in the morning in order to read the Bible before leaving for work, and Nancy having tried it out, tells Mary of the benefits: “I have found the advantage of it already, for I have got so used to my work in the factory, that it don’t take up my attention, and foolish thoughts would come into my mind; but now I can drive them out, by reflecting on what I have read” (Savage 21). Mary also teaches William, Nancy’s brother, about the virtue of charitable giving to the poor.
Mary’s true authority comes to the fore when she is asked to teach the poor factory children at Sunday school. This authority is twofold: Mary will have the influence to shape their love for God, and to give them the skills to further their own education. The latter is particularly important because as Mary Kelley claims “an advanced education opened the door to economic self-support” (Kelley 5). The economy of post-Revolutionary America forced parents to get creative: “Once able to provide sons with farms and daughters with dowries, parents found it increasingly difficult to sustain these traditions. Those who looked to education as an alternative endowment...contribut[ed] their economic, social and cultural capital to the education of children” (Kelley 4). The family history of Mary in The Factory Girl supports the historical accuracies of the time period: her dying father, unable to leave his mother and Mary with cold hard cash begs for only one thing, that Mary be educated. That Mary, not the factory children’s parents, becomes a giver of economic capital is a vital contribution to her authority in the township and showcases the value of education in the early nineteenth-century. In becoming a teacher, a woman “committed herself to preparing [children] for adult lives as informed and engaged citizens” (Kelley 44). Quite literally, the future of America is in Mary’s capable hands.
The narrator likens Mary to “a general, directing an immense army” (Savage 52), an emperor, a king, and military hero while describing her work as a Sunday schoolmistress. All of these positions are held by males, rather than females but Mary’s position of power allows her to transcend these gendered limitations. The difference between Mary and the king/military rulers is motivation: “for it was unsullied by the recollection of cruelty, and unalloyed by a thirst of fame. Her love of glory was satisfied with the sound of one still small voice, that whispered she was doing service acceptable for heaven” (Savage 52). Even Mary’s motivation is couched in terms of self-sacrifice and service for others that female advocates of the nineteenth-century frequently deployed. Kelley explains, “Claims to deference such as Beecher’s masked women’s newly acquired agency with the rhetoric of subordination. Behind this rhetoric existed a larger social reality in which thousands of women were steadily enlarging upon the power they wielded in civil society” (Kelley, 227). Mary’s ever expanding circle of influence is non-threatening to the male town leaders because her actions are cloaked by the four virtues of true womanhood.
The method Mary employs in her teaching is distinctly feminine: “[s]he found little difficulty in governing, for she ruled her scholars by love” (Savage 53). She motivates her students, all XX of them, to work hard with simple rewards, such as a flower or the position of assistant during the lessons. There is no mention of physical beatings or yelling at the children for their mistakes. Mary continues to teach Sunday school despite the fact that “though the profits of it were beyond her expectations, they did not meet her expenses” (Savage 99) and “she was often obliged to deny herself the common necessities of life” (Savage 99) after selling the family cottage did not relieve enough of their debt. Her dedication to teaching and to others is far beyond the hardships of others in the text.
Mary takes responsibility for the religious and educational upbringing of her four nephews after their mother dies (their father is a sailor, currently at sea). When George Holden reappears almost a year later, he is astonished to find his sons so happy and healthy. The eldest informs his father, “Cousin Mary has taken care of us...and learnt us to read and to spell; and next month I am going to learn to write, if I am good, cousin Mary says, and don’t tease grandmother” (Savage 103). Despite George’s attempts to thank Mary, she refuses to his gratitude and states that instead, “God is the proper object of your gratitude, my dear cousin, you owe me nothing” (Savage 103). When George marries Nancy Raymond, Mary’s teaching skills are not allowed to rust as she soon marries Mr. Danforth, a widower with two young children. Despite knowing that the duties of “a second mother are not always easiest, or the most pleasant to perform” (Savage 109), Mary “made it her constant endeavour to overcome these little selfish feelings...and considering herself always happiest, when most useful” (Savage 109) takes on the challenge of becoming a stepmother. Her commitment to domesticity pays off, as she approaches motherhood “knowing she could not reasonably expect their love, unless she gave them her own” (Savage 110). This approach parallel’s Mary’s teaching style of ruling her scholars by love, and her reward is the children’s gratitude, love and a surprise present of a portable writing-desk, handsome Bible and a rose attached to the passage “Her children rise up and call her blessed” (Savage 112). Even if Mary has retired from Sunday school teaching after marrying Mr. Danforth, her circle of influence still includes her children, husband and friends.
Despite the fact that the newly formed republic “denied women access to participation in the public sphere of organized politics, it left civil society fully open as a public sphere in which first white and then black women were able to flourish as never before” (Kelley 7). It is important to note, as Kelley and other scholars have, that the white women mentioned belonged to the middle class, such as Mary, but not the lower class, such as the parents of the factory children. The Factory Girl contributes to the evidence that “[i]nstead of restricting them to the household, the Republic’s establishment facilitated the entry of women into this rapidly expanding social space” (Kelley 7), often in the form of school teachers. Women such as Mary, and Sarah Savage as an author, contributed to the educational revolution of the 1830s by wearing the mask of the four virtues while steadily forcing their way into positions of power within civil society, all with the blessing of the patriarchal authority they sought to abscond.
Works Cited
Kelley, Mary. Learning to Stand & Speak: women, education, and public life in America’s republic. Williamsburg, Virginia: U of North Carolina P, 2006.
Savage, Sarah. The factory girl. By a lady. Boston: Munroe, Francis & Parker, 1814.
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood.” American Quarterly 18.2 (1966): 151-174. JSTOR. 7 February 2009.
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