The First Woman in the Republic (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

As a writer, publisher, journalist, and activist, Lydia Maria Child knew most of the prominent people of her time and all of the important controversies. She worked on issues of abolition, Indian rights, women’s rights, racism, old age, and poverty. Her corpus is voluminous: forty-seven books and a huge correspondence.

Karcher’s thesis is that Child has been wrongly erased from American literary history, even though her work pioneered in the development of the political novel, the short story, and children’s literature. Karcher hypothesizes that Child has been overlooked because she does not fit with the standard argument that nineteenth century American women writers were essentially domestic “scribblers,” writing insignificant money-makers. Nor does a feminist revisionist view that the domestic sphere was a source of inspiration for women apply to Child. All her life she chafed at the domestic drudgery that she performed daily (since she never had the income to hire servants regularly). She remained anti-aristocratic and was often uncomfortable in the fine houses of her upper-class friends. Her life, avers Karcher, illustrates many of the ambiguities with which intellectually ambitious nineteenth century women were faced: how to arrange a more egalitarian marriage (in the face of laws erasing a married woman’s legal existence); how to be a “good wife” and still have a career (she supported her husband); how to speak out on the great moral issues of the time and remain respectable; how to question received religious dogma and reconcile various religious traditions.

Karcher’s book is vast. It includes analyses of all the genres of Child’s writing, much of which is out of print. Hoping to re-situate Child in American letters, Karcher researches the contextual historical materials of the nineteenth century. Writing a “cultural biography,” she summarizes the various debates, clarifying how Child’s position was different from others.

The biggest defect in the book is Karcher’s tendency to read Child’s works autobiographically— whether they be fiction, essay, or journalism. Karcher gives no evidence for assuming that this or that character shows Child’s disappointment with her marriage or guilt over her mother’s death. Moreover, Karcher commits the ahistorical sin of “presentmindedness” by repeatedly lauding Child for anticipating late twentieth century concerns—multiculturalism, radical educational theory, old age, feminist scholarship.

Sources for Further Study

Choice. XXXII, May, 1995, p. 1513.

Journal of American History. LXXXII, September, 1995, p. 721.

London Review of Books. XVII, May 25, 1995, p. 16.

The New York Times Book Review. C, January 8, 1995, p. 25.

Nineteenth-Century Literature. L, June, 1995, p. 135.

Reviews in American History. XXIII, September, 1995, p. 408.

Women’s Review of Books. XII, April, 1995, p. 23.