‘A High and Holy Mission on the Battle-field of Existence’:

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the “Cult of True Womanhood.”

 

Hazel Dicken-Garcia

And

Kathryn Neal

University of Minnesota

 

 

Abstract

            This paper focuses narrowly on one woman to raise the broad question of whether (free) women of color were encompassed by the antebellum “cult” that “true womanhood” required piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Using these and other images as a broad ideology of antebellum womanhood, the writing of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a free woman of color, was studied for relevant images and women’s place as in the private vs. the public sphere.

            The very public life of Harper, an educated, talented orator and writer, unsurprisingly defied much of the ideology--fitting antebellum images of the “radical” and, to some extent, the “evangelical,” woman. Also not surprisingly, dominant images in her writing generally contradict norms of “true womanhood,” with traces of those norms barely perceptible in most of the writing studied. But the one item of fiction read shows: 1) that Harper adhered to limited aspects of that ideology related to motherhood, especially responsibility for a nurturing home environment and teaching of children; 2) clear imagery associated with the ideology pervaded the short story throughout; but that 3) the author manipulated that imagery to “deconstruct” the general framework of “true womanhood” ideology.

            Intellectualizing of women’s (public) role infused Harper’s life and three dominant themes in the writing studied--universality of humankind, needs of people of color, and women’s status (or rights). In sum, her writing, which, of course, cannot be generalized beyond her recorded expressions, reflects a clear dedication to elevation of the mind and spirit overlaying a pervasive message that all women must engage in public sphere pursuits--intellectual, political and ennobling of humankind.