Making a Match in Nineteenth-Century New York: The Courtship Diary of Mary Guion

Frank, acerbic, and detailed, the 1800-52 diary of Mary Guion (1782-1871) provides historians an unusual window on the early national period. Begun when Guion was seventeen, it grew to 387 pages; with 340 of those pages focusing on her search for a husband between 1800 and 1807, it is primarily a courtship diary. Her journal chronicles the daily life of an upper middle class woman in North Castle, Westchester County, New York: friends entertained, balls attended, books read, things bought, work done, and, most prominently, suitors pondered. The content initially seems to feature what a contemporary called Triffles. But Guion was chronicling no trivial subject. On the contrary, she faced women\u27s most critical question: whom would she marry? At a time in which common law gave husbands control of family property and divorce was socially disapproved and extremely difficult to obtain, women needed to choose a spouse with great caution. Well aware that either happiness or misery would result from her choice, Guion wrote with a sense that this was a significant period of her life which deserved detailed documentation

\u27The Fatal Effects of Parental Tyranny\u27 and Other Fantasies of Daughter/Father Relationships, 1780-1840

Popular late 18th and early 19th c. American stories of daughter/father relationships feature either malicious and tyrannical or sweet and incompetent fathers, both concerned with whom their daughters will marry. I will explore the meaning of these stories, their relationship to reality, and shifts in daughter/father imagery in American print culture between 1780 and 1840

The Work of the Heart: Emotion in the 1805–35 Diary of Sarah Connell Ayer

Through analyzing the 1805–35 diary of Sarah Connell Ayer and employing sociological concepts of feeling rules, this article examines how women shaped and reshaped their emotions to fit their evolving roles as daughter, wife and mother. It finds that sentimental literature taught young women to cultivate tenderness, control anger and admire one’s goodness. Emotion work increased as husbands explicitly corrected women’s emotional expression. Together, motherhood and Calvinism created the most demanding feeling rules: this Massachusetts diarist felt compelled to control every facet of her behavior lest she imperil her children’s salvation. Although female friendship allowed young women free expression, in adulthood religious and maternal demands constricted that freedom. This essay concludes that “emotion work” was highly gendered, set different tasks as women’s class and relationships changed, mirrored characteristics of women’s physical labor but was distinctive in the degree to which it threatened the boundaries of self

The Work of the Heart: Young Women and Emotion, 1780-1830

How did young American women construct and express their emotions between 1780 and 1830? Before Oprah and therapy, how did they reconcile society’s demanding and often contradictory expectations? In The Work of the Heart: Young Women and Emotion, 1780-1830, Martha Tomhave Blauvelt looks to the often spirited diaries written by young women in America’s early republic, arguing that the continuous, demanding, and often unnoticed emotional labor of women exemplified their uneasy position within society.Employing the concept of emotion work, Blauvelt argues that despite the fact that the amount of physical labor may have declined for these young women, the popularity of fiction, desire to display genteel refinement, need to deflect criticism of women’s academy education, and resignation in marriage created multiple emotional tasks requiring highly skilled labor. In her detailed examination of fifty young northern women’s diaries during this time period, the author shows that while this work entailed attempts at suppressing inappropriate feeling, it also invited self-consciousness and a sense of competence as these women addressed society’s often contradictory expectations. In a variety of settings, emotion work was the means through which women constructed a fluid and negotiated self, while their diaries provided a mirror and tool of this labor.Showing work where none seemed to exist, The Work of the Heart suggests emotion work as a key measure of women’s status, whether for the twenty-first century or the eighteenth, and offers an analytical tool for historians exploring the self.https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/history_books/1009/thumbnail.jp

This Altogather Precious tho Wholy Worthless Book : The Diary of Mary Guion, 1800-1852

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Mary Guion (1782-1871), a seventeen-year-old living in rural Westchester County, New York, began to keep a diary. Like many young women, she began with brief, unrevealing entries; but her journal, unlike most, burgeoned into 387 closely written pages, 340 of them covering her courtship years from 1800 to 1807. Guion chronicled the everyday life of a young woman of the early American republic in almost overwhelming detail[…]It is impossible to read this flood of words without asking why Guion needed to record her life in such detail. What did writing mean to her? Did she experience the ambivalence or “anxious power” so common to female writers

Women, Words, and Men: Excerpts from the Diary of Mary Guion

In recent years, scholars of both women\u27s history and literature have turned to the diary as a major source. Publication of full-length journals such as Martha Farnsworth\u27s, 1882-1922, and Emily Hawley Gillespie\u27s mid- and late-nineteenth century diaries have allowed us to hear women\u27s personal stories in their own voices. At the same time, they have provided detailed, day-by-day evidence of how women negotiated their way in a patriarchal society. The as yet unpublished 1800-07 courtship diary of Mary Guion (1782-1871) takes us into the everyday world of a young New York State woman living near New York City, much earlier in the nineteenth century. Most significantly, it shows a woman using literature – the public literature she read and the private literature she wrote – to empower herself in her relationships with men. During the years of her courtship, from the ages of 17 to 25, Mary Guion\u27s public voice gained strength through the private medium of her words

Women and Revivalism

Scholars have largely neglected the role of women in nineteenth century evangelicalism. Their studies have noted female participation in revivals, but their interpretations of the origins of mass religious fervor have characteristically concentrated on men. Yet church membership records show that women – mainly women under age thirty – comprised about two-thirds of those joining New Jersey Presbyterian, New England Congregationalist, and Southern evangelical churches during the Second Great Awakening (1795-1830). Moreover, revival accounts, religious magazines, and clerical correspondence reveal that females often acted as evangelists within their homes and communities and helped instigate the century’s frequent revivals. Women’s prominence as both revival subjects and promoters invites further investigation. Why were females more susceptible to the evangelical message than males? What methods did women use to foster religious interest in others? An examination of women’s role in early nineteenth century revivalism suggests some answers

Women and Revivalism: The Puritan and Wesleyan Traditions

This chapter explores how Puritan women, such as Sarah Goodhue, Deborah Prince, and Sarah Osborn – at first privately and tentatively, then publicly and more confidently – worked to spread the evangelical tenets of their faith. It shows women in the more activist Wesleyan tradition, such as Barbara Heck and Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, organizing Methodist societies, establishing chapels and seminaries for training Methodist preachers, directing missions, and performing many of the functions of evangelical ministers. The experience of the Spirit within enabled these women to pursue such activities despite the protests of male clerics who could not envision the radial implications of evangelicalism. In this sense colonial revivalism witnessed an awakening of women’s power as well as of religion and prepared the way for women’s much wider participation in evangelicalism in the nineteenth century

Women and Revivalism: The Puritan and Wesleyan Traditions

[The following] explores how Puritan women, such as Sarah Goodhue, Deborah Prince, and Sarah Osborn – at first privately and tentatively, then publicly and more confidently – worked to spread the evangelical tenets of their faith. It shows women in the more activist Wesleyan tradition, such as Barbara Heck and Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, organizing Methodist societies, establishing chapels and seminaries for training Methodist preachers, directing missions, and performing many of the functions of evangelical ministers. The experience of the Spirit within enabled these women to pursue such activities despite the protests of male clerics who could not envision the radial implications of evangelicalism. In this sense colonial revivalism witnessed an awakening of women’s power as well as of religion and prepared the way for women’s much wider participation in evangelicalism in the nineteenth century.Book Description:Americans as a religious people experience both tension and indecision as they wrestle with a variety of critical issues every day. American society continually struggles with its religious past. The primary and secondary materials included in this volume track religious America\u27s efforts to articulate its identity and destiny and implement its religious creeds and ideals in an ever-changing society