http://h-net2.msu.edu/logs/showlog.cgi?ent=31&file=h-survey.log9803a&list=h-surv
ey
 
From H-Net's H-Review
 
   [x H-REVIEW] Kuhlman on Gifford, _Writing Out My Heart_
>
> Author: H-Net Review Project <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:24:48 -0500
>
> Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:14:04 -0500
>  From: H-Net Review Project <[log in to unmask]>
>     [posted by David Parker]
>
>
>  H-NET BOOK REVIEW
>  Published by [log in to unmask] (February, 1998)
>
>  Carolyn De Swarte Gifford, ed.  _Writing Out My Heart:  Selections
>  from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855-96_.  Women in American
>  History.  Urbana:  University of Illinois Press, 1995.  xxvii + 474
>  pp. Illustrations, bibliographical references, and index.  $29.95
>  (cloth), ISBN 0-252-02139-8.
>
>  Reviewed for H-Women by Erika Kuhlman <[log in to unmask]>, Idaho
>  State University
>
>       "A Daguerreotype of My Mind":  Frances E. Willard's Journal
>
>  This is a patiently edited volume containing selections from the
>  journals of nineteenth-century reformer and Woman's Christian
>  Temperance Union leader, Frances E. Willard.  The editor, Carolyn De
>  Swarte Gifford, divides her selections into five parts, which cover
>  Willard's early adulthood, her two-year journey overseas, and her
>  final journal entries two years before her death.  Like all editors
>  of historical diaries, Gifford faced difficult choices in the
>  selections she made from the forty-nine volumes--eight thousand
>  pages--of Willard's journals, which were discovered in a pantry in
>  the Woman's Christian Temperance Union library in 1982.  Willard
>  kept a journal in order to "make a daguerreotype of my mind," and
>  that is also part of Gifford's purpose; the other part involves
>  Gifford herself.  The dialogue between Willard and Gifford forms the
>  structure and content of this book.  In describing her goal, Gifford
>  writes, "I had long ago given up the notion that as an historian I
>  must or could be objective.  But I thought it should be possible to
>  meet her (Willard) across generations and present that meeting to
>  readers" (p. xv).
>
>  Three interrelated themes appear and reappear throughout this study.
>  Willard's journal sheds light on Victorian notions of the strict
>  division between one's public and private lives, and on intimate
>  friendships between women.  Willard conceived of her life in two
>  separate parts:  the inside, private life of the mind, and the
>  outer, public self she presented to others.  Her journal reveals the
>  occasional tension between her private feelings and what she
>  perceived to be "proper" public behavior.  During her European
>  travels, for example, the licentious public behavior of Paris
>  prostitutes upset her, and yet, as Gifford notes, she painstakingly
>  described every detail in her journal (p. 273).
>
>  Secondly, Willard both conformed to and resisted nineteenth-century
>  attitudes regarding intimacy.  She accepted the notion that intense
>  loving friendships between girls must finally give way to mature
>  love between men and women.  Yet she found that the love she shared
>  with her friend Mary Bannister--a love she expressed physically and
>  verbally--became an obstacle in the path of her engagement to
>  Charles Fowler.  Willard finally broke her engagement because she
>  could not return Fowler's physical displays of affection, which she
>  felt must be present in a marriage.  Furthermore, her aspirations of
>  fame precluded the submissive behavior she knew would be expected of
>  a married woman.
>
>  A third theme, though less apparent, is Willard's public life as a
>  reformer as she revealed in her journal.  Willard's restless need to
>  do good in the world shaped her private thoughts at an early age.
>  She enjoyed watching a circus performance, but worried that "no good
>  resulted from it" (p. 30).  On her twentieth birthday, she lamented
>  that she had "been of no use in the world" (p. 45).  It was during
>  her trip to Europe that she resolved to work for the betterment of
>  womankind, or, as she put it, to "extend my sphere someday" (p.
>  206).
>
>  But readers looking for a complete analysis of Willard's political
>  ideology and evolution of her feminism will be disappointed.  In
>  addition, the transition between her return from Europe in 1870 and
>  her last journal entries beginning in 1893 may be too abrupt for
>  readers unfamiliar with Willard's WCTU activities.  This, of course,
>  is not part of Gifford's intent.  Willard's political attitudes were
>  part of her public persona, not her inner self.  Researchers
>  interested in how Willard's private life related to her ideas about
>  temperance reform and feminism may find Suzanne M. Marilley's
>  "Frances Willard and the Feminism of Fear" enlightening when read in
>  conjunction with her journal.[1]
>
>  But the rough transition does not detract from the enjoyment of
>  looking in on the active and rich inner life of perhaps America's
>  best-known nineteenth-century reformer.  Gifford presents readers
>  with the years she spent reading and researching Willard's journal
>  in careful, thoughtful annotations, beautifully-written interpretive
>  introductions, and illuminating photographs.
>
>  Notes
>
>  [1].  Suzanne M. Marilley, "Frances Willard and the Feminism of
>  Fear,"  _Feminist Studies_ 19, no. 1 (Spring 1993):  123-46.
>
>       Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved.  This work
>       may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
>       is given to the author and the list.  For other permission,
>       please contact [log in to unmask]