Loading...
The making of a more perfect union: reading, writing, and advocating for temperate citizenship in the long Nineteenth Century
Schumann, Larisa Ruth
Schumann, Larisa Ruth
Citations
Altmetric:
Soloist
Composer
Publisher
Date
2017
Additional date(s)
Abstract
This project recovers, identifies, and analyzes the literary and rhetorical strategies that nineteenth-century social reform authors in the United States used to promote a more perfect union -- or, their shared vision of inclusive, temperate citizenship. Three core practices of temperate citizenship, as examined in this project, are civility, sociality, and parity. Euro-American reformers used these practices to promote an inclusive body politic that affirmed all voices in civil discourse regarding the most contentious national problems of the long nineteenth century: slavery, intemperance, and unequal voting rights. Reform-minded writers engaging these three interconnected issues adapted varying genres and tailored them to address specific questions related to citizenship in action. For each of the social issues referenced above, I analyze a representative textual intervention grounded in the rhetoric of temperate citizenship. Poetry and prose published in one anti-slavery and abolition gift book, The Liberty Bell (1839-1858), modeled and memorialized practices of temperate citizenship, especially civility, for abolitionist readers as a response to the growing unrest caused by slavery. Temperance fiction, such as Our Homes (1881) by Mary Dwinell Chellis, advocated community engagement, caring, and sociality as a cure for overconsumption of alcohol (intemperance) and its resulting social ills. Public speeches by suffrage advocates Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1896) and Henry B. Blackwell (1898) before Congress promised better citizens, happier homes, and a stronger nation once women enjoyed parity in both public and private spheres through the elective franchise. All these authors argued for and modeled, through their literary texts, the ideology and practice of temperate citizenship, a means to transform the United States into more perfect union -- a caring community of independent and interdependent individuals.
Contents
Subject
Subject(s)
Chellis, Mary Dwinell.
Social reformers.
Temperance.
Slavery.
Women Suffrage.
Social reformers.
Temperance.
Slavery.
Women Suffrage.
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Genre
Dissertation
Description
Format
1 online resource (iii, 256 pages).
Department
English