Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, Conduct Literature, and Protocols of Female Reading in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

The title page of the 1846 edition of Harvey Newcomb's conduct-of-life book, Newcomb's Young Lady's Guide, features a classical portrait of a woman reading. Her feet are bare, her hair curls around her shoulders, she half reclines against the back of a luxurious sofa, and she looks directly at the tablet before her. Her obvious interest in the text suggests that she finds a certain pleasure in her reading, but her upright posture and her feet resting firmly on the floor resist the assumption that she reads idly or passively. Indeed, she might be engaging in a regimen of self-education or self-improvement, and the words that encircle the image—"Young Lady" and "Christian Character"—contain her reading within the lexicon of ideal womanhood. 1

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