The Need of Their Genius": Women's Reading and Writing Practices in Early America

Abstract

Reading and writing were collective enterprises within women's literary societies in early America and, as evidenced by one such postrevolutionary reading circle, the Gleaners, this commitment to collaboration had profound and pervasive consequences. The positions fashioned by the Gleaners concerning the right and obligations of female citizenship not only informed their activities but also engaged them in a transatlantic discourse to which they made significant contributions and form which they drew insight. Postrevolutionary and antebellum women practiced reading and writing at a host of sites, ranging from family circles to organizations that promoted cultural uplift and moral reform. Literary societies at female academies and seminaries provided young women with an informal course of study, a well-stocked library, and numerous opportunities to write and speak. Hundreds of literary societies were neither sponsored by nor attached to a female academy or seminary. White women of all ages in towns and cities throughout the United States organized these associations. In inventing their definitions of female citizenship, members of literary societies relied on the printed word, which provided a discourse and a shared language on the rights and obligations of citizenship. They insisted upon the importance of learning and celebrated the intellectual achievements of women, past and present. But they called upon women to direct their learning less to individual ends than social improvement. Individually and collectively, they established the markers of "gendered republicanism," the discourse that investigated the role of women in the nation's public life.

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