******************************************* Jack Blocker History, Huron College, University of Western Ontario London, Ontario N6G 1H3 Canada (519) 438-7224, ext. 249 /Fax (519) 438-3938 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 07:52:08 -0700 From: Phil VanderMeer <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: book review: Blair on Mattingly, Well-Tempered Women H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [log in to unmask] (September, 1999) Carol Mattingly. _Well-Tempered Women: Nineteenth-Century Temperance Rhetoric_. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998. xv, 213 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8093-2209-9. Reviewed for H-SHGAPE by Karen J. Blair <[log in to unmask]>, Department of History, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington Tactics for Temperance Carol Mattingly, a professor of English at Louisiana State University, has dissected aspects of the nineteenth century American women's temperance movement that have not previously been examined by temperance historians and biographers Mary Earhart, Ruth Bordin, Jack Blocker, Barbara Epstein, Ian Tyrell and Janet Giele. Building on the foundation of their scholarship, she has explored the rhetoric that activist women employed in their advocacy of temperance in speeches and novels, particularly in the middle years of the nineteenth century. She convincingly persuades the reader, via analysis of generous quotations from Women's Christian Temperance Union records, city newspaper accounts of temperance rallies and conventions, and popular fiction by women authors, that alcohol abuse politicized women to address the inequities they faced. They did so in a non-threatening, "lady-like" manner, aruguing they had a duty to expose the vicitimization of women and children. To do so, they consciously kept a distance from women's rights radicals, and instead launched an "ethical appeal." (p. 5) Yet to dismiss temperance literature as conservative, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony did in their history of women's suffrage, is to underestimate women's willingness to bare such critical matters as physical abuse, infidelity of husbands, women's lack of control over their own bodies, and women's economic, legal and social dependency on men, according to the author. In fact, Mattingly argues that they were savvy and successful reformers because their arguments "exhibit an exceptional understanding of language use within the cultural contextof their time." (p. 1). Following a summary of mid-nineteenth century temperance activism by women, the author studies three aspects of reform rhetoric. Part one examines speeches delivered by women that antedate the formation of the large and powerful WCTU. Rejecting the Stanton/Anthony dismissal of temperance advocates as progressive activists, she enumerates the individuals, among them Amelia Bloomer, Antoinette Brown and Clarina Howard NIchols, who were plainly comfortable in both camps, at ease discussing dress reform, divorce, property rights and suffrage along with temperance. Professor Mattingly next rejects our assumptions that 1870s reformers unfailingly portrayed women as mere victims of men's alcohol abuse. She documents references to women's courage, intelligence, and accomplishments and portrayals of temperance advocates as role models and heroines. She then focuses on the language, rhythm and alliteration of language that activists applied to "patriotic themes" of God, home and native land. These were celebrated in speeches that lauded the mid-western Women's Crusaders and women who provided aid to the Civil War. Abundant scriptural references appealed to audiences who were knowledgeable in Bible studies. WCTU President Frances Willard frequently interpreted the Bible to persuade her listeners that "Woman is becoming what God meant her to be." (p. 53) The author also identifies techniques of public presentation taught by Willard's WCTU to temperance speakers. The proper demeanor for delivering speeches was to present "a moral and feminine character" (p. 65) in dress and appearance. Rather than diverting and angering an audience with masculine speech or "tight" pants and short skirts of the Bloomer costume, presenters were urged to act womanly for public approval. Part two of this monograph deals with rhetoric in two specific arenas of controversy. One chapter explores an 1890s debate over racial issues between WCTU leader Frances Willard and African American activist Ida B. Wells. In 1894, while she toured England, Wells attacked the American WCTU for the organizaiton's complicity in lynching. Willard defended her organization, insisting it did not condone the practice. She portrayed northern and western chapters of her organization as having integrated membership and she reported on separate but strong black chapters throughout the American south. Mattingly documents their exchange and relays the contributions of other key players, such as Frances E. W. Harper, the WCTU national Superintendent of Work Among Colored People, who distanced herself from the WCTU in 1890, and Lucy Thurman of Wisconsin, who reinstated the post in 1893 with Mary Murray Washington of Alabama and Frances Joseph of Louisiana. Finally, Mattingly evalutes Willard as a product of her times, who demonstrated much myopia on racial questions, but whose organization offered some positive experiences for black members. In a departure from her focus on women's rhetoric in temperance, Mattingly devotes chapter five to newspaper accounts of temperance women. On balance, she observes journalists to report most generously when a sensational angle appeared. Their accounts were sizable if they could report on Bloomers and masculine behavior on the podium when they expected conventional ladylike demeanor. They attacked spinster Susan B. Anthony regularly for claiming to understand the effect of alcohol abuse on family life. Sometimes, however, newspapers sympathized with women reformers, even if they were aggressors against saloonkeepers, as long as they were seen as victims of alcohol. Frances Willard was generally painted as a "womanly" speaker. An important strength of this chapter is the wide range of sources, from the New York Times to Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chicago Times, Baltimore American, Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Minneapolis Tribune. Part three is probably the most impressive section of this book, for its thoroughness in collecting women's fiction of the 1840s and 1850s. Among the roster of authors discussed is Lydia Sigourney, Sarah Josepha Hale, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Caroline Maria Sedgwick, Caroline Lee Hentz, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Susan Warner, Laura Somerville, and S.A. Southworth. Titles examined include _Nora Wilmot: A Tale of Temperance and Woman's Rights_ by Henrietta Rose, Southworth's _Inebriate's Hut_, and Somerville's _Price of a Glass of Brandy_. Louisa May Alcott's _Little Women_ and _Silver Pitchers_ are examined for portrayal of the virtues of abstenance. All are praised for their explicit discussion of previously delicate subjects. Mattingly notes that many of these novelists rejected the literary convention of closing the story with a happily-ever-after wedding. Instead, they open with a wedding and demonstrated that miserable marriages soon ensued when the husband was a drinker. Mattingly succeeds in surveying the terrain she aims to illuminate. Yet one might wish for additional arenas for exploration. For instance, there is tantalyzing reference, all too brief, to late nineteenth century changes in temperance novels, when business is praised at the time that Frances Willard is increasingly pro-labor. Another suggestion, that men's temperance novels exhibited different emphases, including women who were drinkers, makes the reader wish for a chapter that compares temperance fiction by women vs. men. In all, this volume does not address organizational dimensions of temperance clubs and societies, but does keep its promise, to document and characterize the prose employed by women in their fight against the demon rum. Review Commissioned by Gayle Gullett, Arizona State University. Copyright (c) 1999 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]