Conventions and Voices in Margaret Fuller's Travel Writing Author(s): William W. Stowe Source: American Literature, Vol.

63, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 242-262 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2927164 . Accessed: 17/04/2013 13:20
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Fuller's and Voices inMargaret Conventions Travel Writing

WILLIAM W. STOWE

Wesleyan University

Fulleras a travel do not thinkof Margaret writer. For WXTE Century, of Woman in theNineteenth us she is theauthor and a partisan the editorof theDial, a pioneering journalist, writers, of Romanindependence. Like other nineteenth-century of travel writshe was attracted by themarketability however, an excellent provided ing and foundthatits loose conventions purposes. framework forher own eclecticstyleand multiple servedas vehicles formultiple Her travelnarratives voices marked and unmarked, real and inventedmale and female, a hierarchy amongthem or a senseof irrewithout establishing Her travel book Summer one to another. versible progress from to the New-York Tribuneform on the Lakes and her letters of American travel, to theliterature an impressive contribution and reveal theshape broadadaptability, thegenre's demonstrate ofherthinking. and thedirection of hercareer
I

was nota particularly masculine mode when Travelwriting norwas ita totally feminized Fullercameto itin themid-i84os,1 domainin Ann Douglas' sense,peopledby genteel, marginal1 In "JuliaWard Howe and the TravelBook,"New EnglandQuarterly, 62 (I989), 264masculine 79, Mary-SuzanneSchriberassertsthatthe travelbook was "a predominantly factthat"of the 69I books of travelpublishedbetween preserve" and citesthe impressive i8oo and I865, only 35 were by women."What she does not tell us is how manyof the masculine 69I concernedtravelto Europe and how manywere examplesof specifically sub-genressuch as the sailor's accountor the diplomaticmemoir.I do not doubt that, a travelbook was harderfora woman than like most aspects of public life,publishing it was fora man, but I do not believethata public thathad welcomed the travelbooks CatharineMaria Sedgwick,and Caroline Cushing, of Emma Willard, Lydia Sigourney, and thatwould soon greetworksby "Grace Greenwood,""FannyFern,"HarrietBeecher Fuller-was "a masculinepreserve." Stowe, JuliaWard Howe-and Margaret

American Literature, Volume 63, Number 2, JuneI99I. Press. CCC 0002-9831/91/$I.50. University

Copyright C) I99I by the Duke

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ized women, clergymen, and aesthetes.2 It was insteada genial form of narrativethat served as a meeting place for various narrativevoices, literary styles,levels of speech, and kinds of subjects,combining disparatemodes of discoursewithoutnecessarilygenerating themintoa any tensionamong themor forging "higherunity." Travel books were morecasual than novels,with no necessary formotherthanthatof the journeytheypurported to describeand no necessary singlepurposemoreimportant than the variouspurposesof theirvariouspartsand voices. The genre has a long history, combiningelements of the explorationnarrative, the picaresque novel,and the eighteenthcentury periodicalessay.The nineteenth-century Americanverthe serial publication of WashingtonIrving's SketchBook of Crayon,Gent., a collection of disparate prose pieces Geoffrey strunglike beads on the string of the narrator's travels.3 Crayon, Gent., the putativenarrator, describesthe passing scene, quotes and tells stories.He allows himselfto speculatein good poetry, romantic-sentimental fashion on thefateof men and shipslost at sea. He poses as a moral biographer in a shortsketchof Roscoe, the Liverpool banker,poet, and philanthropist, and sets up as a poetic social commentator in an essay entitled"The Wife." He throwsin the storyof Rip Van Winkle, then an essay on English writers'low opinion of America,then a description of English rurallife.He takeson the voice of the German Romantic story-teller in "The Spectre Bridegroom"and that of "an independentgentlemanof the neighbourhood"in a description of the Little Britaindistrict of London. He is Geoffrey Crayon himselfin the famousdescription of Stratford-on-Avon, but he becomes the soberhistorian of the AmericanIndian in "Traitsof Indian Character"and "Philip of Pokanoket."He describesan old fisherman, tellsthe Legend of SleepyHollow, and concludes with an "Envoy" acknowledginghis work's heterogeneity and "requestingthe reader,if he should findhere and theresomethingto please him, to restassuredthatit was written expressly
2 Ann Douglas, The Feminization ofAmerican Culture(I977; rpt.New York: Anchor Doubleday, I988). 3 The Sketch Crayon, Gent.,rpt.in Washington Irving:History, Tales, Book of Geoffrey and Sketches (New York: Libraryof America, I983), pp. 73I-I09I. Further references will be followedby page numbersin parentheses.

sionthatconcerns me,however, in i8I9-I820 really begins

with

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forintelligent readers like himself; but entreating him,should he find anything to dislike, to tolerate it,as one ofthose articles whichtheauthor has beenobligedto write forreaders of a less

The variousvoicesspeak forthemselves; theirfortuitous juxtaposition creates no particular narrative tension. They are all male,it is true, but they are otherwise genuinely different, not thesamemalevoicerepeated andover over againbuta collection forthereader's of voicesassembled pleasure bya genialmaster of ceremonies.4 workenjoyed Irving's and great popular success served as a modelforscores of other heterogeneous collections of talesand occasions fornarrative ventriloquy, including most notably Longfellow's Outre-Mer and,in another tone, Twain'sA Abroad. Tramp a significant Lydia H. Sigourney produced variation on this modelin Pleasant Memories ofPleasant Lands,whichcombines and guide-book anecdotes, quotations, obcopywithpersonal Rather thanpreserving thevarious servations. these voices forms
themall to the singlerecsubordinates mightsuggest, Sigourney

refined taste" is relaxed, (p. IO90). The tone eclectic, pluralistic.

voiceof thegenteel female voice ognizable poet.This dominant In theconventional is alwayssweetly superior. self-deprecatory makesa virtueof her willed narrowness: Preface, Sigourney has not sought "The writer to dwellupon the dark shadesof to visit thecountries thatit was herprivilege [but]has preferred than to preserve the thorn."5 The rather to pressthe flower flowers she proffers are all eminently and maincorrect literary in tainsomevestige of their evenwhenpressed generic origins, and sentimental or verse. The volume's fervid Sigourney's prose is Sigourney's version oftheconvensecondpoem,forexample, tionalaccount of shipboard Sunday services, repeated againand ofAtlantic againin travelers' descriptions crossings:6
4 The difference Rubinbetween my readingof the Sketch Book and that of Jeffrey Dorsky, "WashingtonIrving and the Genesis of the Fictional Sketch,"Early American with I think, generictraditions fromthe different 2I (I986-87), 226-47, stems, Literature, of element,the development which we are dealing. He emphasizesthe proto-novelistic sketch.I emphasize the and the genre of the individualfictional the Crayon-persona, way in which the book as a whole served as a model for futuretravelwritersand nineteenth-century of a popular formof quasi-literary helped establishthe conventions non-fiction. 5Pleasant Memoriesof Pleasant Lands (Boston: JamesMunroe & Co., I844), p. iV. will be followedby page numbersin parentheses. Furtherreferences 6 See, e.g., HarrietBeecherStowe,Sunny ofForeign Lands (Boston: Phillips, Memories Sampson & Co., I 854), p. I I .

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deck Upon thesheltered Was helda sacredrite, of old Ocean'sking, The worship of (Pp. 7-8) The Lord powerand might[.] tale of a child's death at sea This is followedby a sentimental life,we, like this ("Happy shall we be, ifin theclosingofour frail leave behinda gleam of lightand consolation, voyager, trembling as the olive-leafabove the flood,or the dove whose last act was peace, ere it enteredrejoicinginto the ark, to be a wandererno avertedshipwreck, more" [p. 17]), a pious accountof narrowly in Liverpool,and a quick trana visitto a charitableinstitution guidebook material("Chester has a sition from unadulterated Castle where a garrisonis stationed,and a Cathedral erected which is 350 feet in length,by 75 in century, in the fifteenth breadth,and the altitudeof the tower 127" [p. 381) to superior "During our ride of ten miles from Sigourney pontification: friendsat home, who are such models of industry agricultural and domestic virtue,would be more carefulto surroundtheir and agreeableobjects" (p. 79). dwellingswith comfortable Sigourney'ssocial and politicalopinionsare as homogeneous as her tone and as complacentin their support of all that is in the statusquo. The "perfect most moral and most repressive subordination"of the poor boys in the Blue Coat Hospital in in childrenand pauLiverpool seems to her most appropriate pers, and she commentswith profoundpoetic approval on the benefactionsof Mrs. Fry, the volunteerchaplain of Newgate, whose purpose seems to be to reconciledeporteesto theirfate She is always carethem into obedientservants. and transform female readers ful, too, to keep her actual, upper-middle-class, passage in mind,and tuneher songto theirears,as the following testifies: most strikingly fromher poem on Kenilworth to say still, It seemslikean illusion Butyet'tistrue. I've beenat Kenilworth. home, And whenoncemoreI reachmypleasant flag In Yankeeland,shouldconversation it seldomdoes, Amongus ladies,though and our housekeeping, Whenof our children, be a pause, yetshouldthere And help we speak, me in thattimeof need I will bethink and sucha host To mention Kenilworth,
Chester to Eastham
. . .

we could not avoid wishing that our

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will raindown,from thosewho read Of questions make wizardpages,as will doubtless Scott's again.(P. i8o) tideof talkrunfree The precious The purpose of travelfor the author of these lines is firstto gambit,useful to deploy provide herselfwith a conversational when even the servantproblembegins to pall as a subject for fromother"ladies" herself discussion,and second to distinguish about in "Yankee land" as the source of privilegedinformation genius. and vicariouscontactwith literary to a feminine-and a book is veryclearly directed Sigourney's and "feminized"-audience. Her purposeis to produce,display, and literary of piety,gentility, fostera respectablecombination is as clearlywritten pleasure. Zachariah Allen's PracticalTourist for an audience of men, and his purpose is to conveypractical to be sure) He adopts in his Preface(proleptically, information. a voice verymuch like thatof Dickens' Thomas Gradgrindand the text'sothervoices to it. "The principaldesign subordinates "is to recorduseful facts."7 of the followingpages,"he writes, The primaryfacts he has in mind consist of the details of every industrial process he can lay his eyes on, together that supportsthem,and his primary with the economic system narrativevoice is that of an inquiringreporterin the service back home. His accounts of the procedures of manufacturers adopted by employersof labor and deployersof capital in the technibooming Britishindustrialsystemare straightforward, from coal-mining, and He describes everything admiring. cal, ship-building,and the various aspects of textileproductionto of pins" in greatdetail (p. 6i). He quotes with "the manufacture day forchildren as the twelve-hour admirationsuch regulations of mill work forany child under nine years and the prohibition old, "exceptin silk mills,wheretheymaybe employedat 7 years them to the care exercisedby "humane of age," and attributes childrenfrombeing overworked" English Statesmento protect sightEven when Allen takeson the role of the conventional hour he improvesthe frivolous tourist, seer or the sentimental of more facts. by making it an occasion forthe communication
7The PracticalTourist(Providence:A. S. Beckwith,I832), will be followedby page numbersin parentheses.

(p. 150).

p. 6. Furtherreferences

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Writing Fuller's Travel Margaret

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landfallin England beginswith conHis paragraphon the first ventionalcommentson "our old home" and the "verdure" of landscapes," moves on to "the gleaming lights of "refreshing along the headlandsof the coast," sprinkled variouslighthouses, and then jumps with reliefto an account of the colored glass thatdistinguish one lightfromanother and clockworkrhythms he visitto the English countryside, (p. I9). Describing his first bows brieflyin the directionof aestheticappreciationbefore launching into a long disquisitionon the competingmeritsof it is stonefencesand hedges (pp. 47-49). When he waxes lyrical, of Dudley over the not verybucolic view fromthe battlements of numerous a view of "tall chimneys Castle, near Birmingham, . . . gilded on one side by the last raysof the setting ironfurnaces sun" (pp. 66-67). He combinesa Romanticregardfor Nature but subordinates visionof Progress, utilitarian with an industrial them both to his practicalYankee concernforhow to do a job efficiently. as Zachariah Allen, but her subEmma Willard is as practical While he reportson industrialprocesses and ject is different. and presumably male, entremanagerialtechniquesto ambitious, customsin meticulousdetail for she reports on foreign preneurs, the benefitof the femalepupils in her school at home. Willard using the travvoice to another, fromone distinct moves freely opinions, reportage, eler's privilegeof combiningimpressions, and paraphraseto conveyto her audience culturaland historical and domestictips. In the guise pointsof etiquette, information, forexample,she describesher of a teacherof domesticeconomy, writingtable and the red and blue cloth thatcoversit, the paruse to keep it clean. On quet floorand the techniquethe servants otheroccasions she copies what soundslike a tourguide's patter of a and combinesit with practicalhintsworthy into her letters more modernguidebook: shoeswhichI bought pairofleather Bytheway-I havea substantial to Frenchmud.... I assureyou,thatthe sound at Havre,suitable is absolutely called in questionby of my countrywomen, judgment health inwhich exposetheir they on account ofthemanner foreigners, to walk in. in all weathers, thinshoes by wearing, we willgo forth in grandprocession Our feet, beingwellguarded, places.Our starting to see Paris,and getan idea ofitsmostcelebrated acquainted. pointis the Palais Royal, withwhichyou are doubtless

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place to theLouvre, whichmay be I will conductyou in the first of the heart as considered Paris... very In stillotherplaces she adopts the tone of the moralizinghistocommentssuitable rian, repeatinganecdotal lore and providing for shaping the opinions of respectablecitizens of a Christian Republic: "In the solemn vaults of St. Denis, amid the sculpyou see not onlythe warrior, of dead royalty, turedcongregation smilingbeside its but the marbleinfant and the aged statesman; dead mother.These were of royal blood; and while the good and great oftensleep unhonered[sic],these littleuseless beings Yet, Heaven to posterity. must have theirlineamentspreserved rest their souls! they were innocent.Would that their fathers Willard also led an activesocial life in Paris, and in her letpaid her by General tersto her sistershe exultsin the attention well. "Deterof dressing necessity and the concomitant Lafayette mined to go in the eveningto the General's soiree,"she wrote, "I sent for a marchande des modes to counsel and consult.Caps them on and my were lyingabout the room; I had been trying Capt. R. opened the door, hair was dishevelled-when suddenly and introducedMadame George La Fayette"(p. 43). of women'seducation Willard was a theorist More important, as well as a teacher,and her visitsof inspectionto educational are describedin the voice of the seriousprofessional: institutions in female "I had beforetold her,why I was so deeplyinterested devotedto thecause of femaleeducation. schools,-I was myself a recentpeople, and hoped In America,we were comparatively to learn much, from their skill and experience.I then asked with theirusages,thatI should be her,if it would be consistent of the institution" allowed to peruse the rules and regulations consistentnor mutually Willard's voices are neitherstrictly She is frivolousand serious by turns and gives contradictory. concerns. equal space to what now seem trivialand important her own charof depiction The resultis an artlessbut revealing The job of synthesizing acter and the breadthof her interests. in thetextas a whole and of constructing the apparentdisparities a conceivablespeakerforthem all fallsto the reader.
will be and Letters(Troy, N.Y.: Tuttle, 1833), p. 53. Further references 8Journals followedby page numbersin parentheses.

had beenso too!" (pp. 113-14). and mothers

(p. II7).

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Fuller's Travel Writing Margaret

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One finalvoice,the closestto Fuller's in termsof biographical factand personalcontact,is thatof the man who actuallycommissioned her lettersfromEurope, Horace Greeley.Less than a year afterFuller's death, Greeley leftfor Europe himself,to attend the Great Exhibition and have a look around. His letterswere duly publishedin the Tribuneand collectedin I85I as their"utter proclaiming Glancesat Europe,with an introduction his intention sole merit"and declaringthat absence of literary of the districts was "to give a clear and vivid daguerreotype of industrialprocesses I traversed."9 They containdescriptions blasts at the like Allen's (for example, XII on flax-processing), that remind us of Fuller and Twain, and reports aristocracy institutions. Greeleyspeaks in the on educational and charitable voice of the temperancecrusaderand the Yankee moralist;he trieshis hand at politicaland economic theoryand forecasting. neoAbolitionists, He makes room forthe voices,too, of British of U. S. raw materials, political Colonialist would-be exploiters and Churchmen.In all of thishe echoes his traveling aristocrats, his patriotism, but his good-naturedphilistinism, predecessors, and his energeticimaginationmake him sound finallymore Newman mold in the Christopher like a post-CivilWar tourist than one of the more earnestmechanics or romanticsof the thirties His pridein the practicalAmericanexhibits and forties. gewgawsof Europe" at the Fair, in contrast to the "innumerable (p. 289), is boundless. He is an outspokencriticof aristocracy and the friendof producersof all and of economic exploitation workersto vigorous to factory kinds, fromIrish tenant-farmers his go-ahead capitalists.His voice is perhapsmost distinctively typicaland most own, and at the same time most poignantly sadly misguided,when he describeshis scheme to turn all of Rome into a perpetual "World's Exhibition of Fine Arts" by examples of indigenouspainting tradingher many superfluous and sculptureforsamplesof work fromaroundthe world: "It is in her power to constitute herself the centerof an International of the name.... Is it too much to hope Art-Unionreallyworthy that she will realize or surpassthis conception?"(p. 194). Perhaps Greeley's vision of Rome as a kind of nineteenth-century Busch Gardens of the fine arts was more realisticthan Ital9 Glancesat Europe (New York: Dewitt & Davenport,I85I), p. iv. Furtherreferences will be followedby page numbersin parentheses.

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ian patriots would like to admit;it was in anycase clearly an and commercial. American vision, grandand expansive letters butit is his own loud, voices, speakin many Greeley's Like many of its predominates. brash, generous tonethatfinally possibilities and successors, it speaksof American predecessors and attempts to applyto verydifferent in a Europeansetting of thebooming thegoalsand standards settings and conditions Western democracy. variaI havementioned three narrative The writers exemplify writing. Irvingseems modelof travel tionson the polyphonic his of narrative authority by presenting to abdicatehis position to issuefrom various pensand readers withchapters purporting and Zachariah various voices. Allen, to record LydiaSigourney andsubsume in in contrast, thevoices ofothers them appropriate or discourse: practical theirown pleasantly pious unrelentingly and openlyservestheirpurposes. theirs everyword is clearly or takeup a moreboldly, Emma Willardand Horace Greeley of a number assuming eclectic position, perhapsmorenaively, to evaluate their relative the reader theopportunity and giving and approval. attention claimsto his/her II It would be handyat thispointif I could arguethatMarfromthe simplest to progressed garetFuller's travelwriting or that she of thesenarrative modes adapted themostcomplex but I do not themall intoa grandand triumphant synthesis, believethatthisis the case. Fullerwroteall her life,but she shedid leavebehind an imno masterpiece. However, produced effecrhetorically crafted, tightly argued, pressive bodyoffinely of tiveprose, muchof it madepossible bythelooseconventions in a single whichallowedhertoexpress context travel narrative, theappreciative and of herconsciousness: the disparate aspects and the aesthetic, the conventionthe analytic, the intellectual travel and feminine. Her onlycompleted book, ally masculine on the Lakes,and her posthumously collectedletters Summer of voices Tribune sounda variety from Europeto theNew-York derived sometimes from attributed to others, thatare sometimes and models, sometimes Fuller'sown. conventions clearly generic
At its best, Fuller's travel writingmakes all of these voices voices,givingthem room to speak,as it were,in theirnarratives,

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a subtle,complicatedunderstanding of interact, thus expressing politicsand culture,and of the American's-and especiallythe American woman's-relation to them. eclectic on theLakes is in manywaysa conventionally Summer travelbook tracingFuller's I843 journeyto Niagara Falls, the Great Lakes, and the Illinois prairie.It containsTranscendental to Wordsworthian musings,'0 ambitions,"iviews of and reactions materialas the anecdote and such illustrative famous scenes,12 of the of the man who spat into the Falls and the description It conof Niagara tourists. eagle chained up forthe amusement few pages,a philosophicaldialogue on the tainsalso, in the first of comments on thenarrowness fourelements, some well-known story (told by a felNew EnglandersmovingWest,the touching gentlemanruinedby a vicious low passenger)of an unfortunate of the Indians, a paragraph of many descriptions wife,the first the "'go-ahead'" "mushdeploringwhile seekingto understand room growth"of Westerntowns,and severalcriticalsummaries and charmwitty, of books on Indians.These pages are vigorous, ing, full of competingvoices all monitoredby a woman with domestic, and social concerns. her own intellectual, spiritual, The tone, the technique, and the purposes remain similarly mixed throughoutthe book: Fuller includes more anecof rhapsodicappreciations dotes,originalpoems, conventionally of Westernlife,and long interpocriticalobservations scenery, lated tales, all held togethernot by a single voice or subject but by the simple fact that they coexist in the same text and This does not make everypage of the the same consciousness. book riveting and indispensable, nor does it ensure that every sequence and passage commentneatlyon everyother. At the veryleast, however,Fuller's book remindsthe reader that conventional aestheticresponsesto nature,love of landscape and
10 "Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowersthat star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineamentsbecome fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thoughtwith its genius." Summeron the Lakes in 1843 (Boston: Charles C. Little and will be followed by page numbers in James Brown, I844), p. 7. Further references parentheses. 11"I trustby reverent faithto woo the mighty meaningof the scene" (p. 28). 12 "For the magnificence, the sublimity of [the Falls] I was preparedby descriptions and by paintings. When I arrivedin sightof them I merelyfelt,'ah yes,here is the fall, just as I have seen it in picture"' (p. i i).

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at and outrage forwomen's education, concern of wildflowers, exclusive, of Indiansare not mutually treatment whitesettlers' a real dialogue it institutes passages while in its mosteffective voices. amongitsvarious distinct amongthegenerically Such a dialogueis established women. of frontier voicesthatFuller uses in her discussions litof theseis the idealizing The first and mostconventional as raw material of the prairie voice thatuses the sights erary Look, forexconceits. scenesand neat rhetorical forpastoral of serious and amusedaccount at Fuller'ssimultaneously ample, who reladiesofIllinois young and accomplished somecheerful withtheir education to interfere irrelevant fusedto allow their In thispassage, thecontasks. economic anddomestic important and the young ladies'useless"accomplishments" trast between as a simple ironic, skillsis tidily their newlyacquiredpractical demof the nounsand verbsin the two sentences comparison and spokeFrench "The young ladiesweremusicians, onstrates: Here in the praibeen educatedin a convent. having fluently, (p. 38). The thatassailedtheirpoultry-yard" the rattlesnakes conventFrench, musicians, sentence-ladies, nounsin thefirst and highculture; privilege, bespeakan urbanworldof shelter,
rie, they had learned to take care of the milk-room,and kill

thosein the secondsentence-prairie, rattlesnake, milk-room, a placeof rural uncultivated an setting, poultry-yard-describe senofthefirst elements The verbal work andrealdanger. hard and passive-were, having are gentle, descriptive, tence spoke, and activeare vigorous in thesecond those beeneducated; of thepassage The rest assailed. careof,kill, hadlearned, take of additional versions several theconceit byadducing develops ladies/ (American) young thebasiccontrast-indoors/outdoors; recivilized wildroses/blue spiderwort; peasants; Norwegian wildbeauty/the sweet Europe/America; places; gions/western The passage as a wholerepresents of city"parties." vulgarity constructing appealliterary, self-consciously Fuller at hermost to a ideas and striking of words, convey structures images, ing toherreaders. contrast inthemodeof subject thevery same Fuller treats Elsewhere, rhetorical than rather description: argument logical
beenthe newlot.It hasgenerally their for ofthewomen theunfitness

is at present, ofthese settlers, drawback The great uponthelives

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follow, as womenwill,doingtheir choiceofthemen,and thewomen and weariness. in heartsickness sake,buttoooften bestforaffection's of theirown not beinga choiceor conviction Beside it frequently and they are their partis thehardest, mindsthatit is bestto be here, in fieldlabor, and recforit. The mencan findassistance leastfitted is greater, strength Theirbodily reation withthegunand fishing-rod. of life. and enablesthemto bearand enjoyboththeseforms findanyaid in domestic The womencan rarely labor.All itsvarisick or well,by the be performed, tasksmustoften ous and careful neither education hasimparted mother to whoma city and daughters, (P. 6i) thestrength norskillnowdemanded. a case rather than describing a Fuller is here constructing her opinion: "the The first sentence introduces piquant contrast. lives "is the unfitness of the great drawback" in these settlers' women fortheirnew lot." Those thatfollowsupportthatopinforsevWomen are unfit ion with factsand logical conclusions. to move westin eral reasons,Fuller declares:theywerereluctant the first place but had no choice but to followtheirmen; unlike the men, who can fishand hunt,theyleftall sourcesof enjoybehindthem;unlikethe men,theycan find mentand recreation no hired helpersto ease theirtoil; their"cityeducation" did not life. These two paragraphsintroprepare them for a frontier duce a longer section,the purpose of which is to argue forthe the children women. "Instruction practicaleducationof Western want," she concludes,"but methodscopied fromthe education of some English Lady Augusta,are as ill suited to the daughter of an Illinois farmer, as satinshoes to climbthe Indian mounds" is as the comparisonthat ends (p. 63). The voice still literary, is no longerits purpose: this sentenceshows, but its literariness it aspiresinsteadto a broadersocial utility. A thirdvoice and a thirdgenericmode are evidentin the tale of a Creole girl named Mariana,whose school experience, temperament,and genius resembleFuller's own. The tale itselfis romantic. Mariana is a highly coloredand a tragic conventionally
character, "a strange bird . . . a lonely swallow that could not of highest Eros .... to one who knew love only as a flower or

make foritselfa summer"(p. 8i). She gives "her heartcapable

to one who parted his as and [binds]her heartstrings plaything, as the ripe fruit leaves the bough" (p. 95). She wishes to lightly he desires conversation; open her heartto her husbandin fervent only "an indolent repose": "In fine,Sylvain became the kind,

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and wretched the solitary Mariana, husband, but preoccupied of the tale could be drawnfrom wife"(p. 97). The substance called the chapter forexample, Irving's Book (compare, Sketch of one of "The BrokenHeart") whilethe toneis reminiscent ou de l'Italie, books,Mme. de Stae's Corinne, Fuller'sfavorite in a novel whichbecamea popularvademecumfortravelers a lessonemotional is pureFuller, however, Italy.Its conclusion, withher consistent butstill logicalthistime, thanstrictly rather passage: in thepreceding position
in theposition of womanthatone like Mariana It marksthe defect shouldhave foundreasonto writethus.To a man of equal power, would have presented no more !-many resources equal sincerity, he wouldhavebeen needed to seek, He wouldnothave themselves. the to be quite wreckedthrough called by life,and not permitted they lost,unless areoften as Mariana affections Butsuchwomen only. soul to prizethem. (P. 102) great meetsomeman of sufficiently of its own while adding another and exhibits a polyvocality dimension to her ongoingdiscussionof the positionof women of the Indian encampin the West. Her celebrateddescription fashion travel-book mentat Mackinac combinesin conventional with Indian of her conversations reports her own observations, priestsand women, imagined speeches of Catholic missionary Indian skeptics,and several long passages fromother writers. in the statusof Indian women,but interested She is particularly she also uses the white women'svoices she hears or imaginesto on theircondition. add criticaldepth to her previouscomments

of Fuller'svoices, yetanother One finalpassagedemonstrates

felt bythewhiteman forthe Indian: I havespokenof thehatred How to loathing. to disgust, withwhitewomenit seemsto amount and their smellof the Indians, I could endurethedirt,thepeculiar in theeyesof myladyacquaintances; was a greatmarvel dwellings, certainly did notquitegiveme up,as they indeed, I wonder whythey Indian "Get it. you distaste for gone, you looked on me withgreat the towards hapless ifnotthebreathed, expression dog,"was thefelt, in all their sorrows of thesoil. All their claims, quite forgot, owners and the vicesthe whites of their skins, abhorrence tawny dirt,their them. havetaught expartof a life, [the]great A personwho had seenthemduring thatI was no longer to me withsuchviolence, his prejudices pressed sticks at him,as he passed.A threw thattheIndianchildren surprised

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will be ungrateful. Bring they ladysaid,"do whatyouwill forthem, it to you."The nextmoup an Indianchildand see ifyoucan attach whom in thepresence of one of thosechildren she expressed, ment, at theodor leftby one of herpeople, up, loathing she was bringing as he passedthrough theroom.When and one of themostrespected, not to love it baselyungrateful the childis grownshe will consider ofthe willnot;and thiswillbe citedas an instance as it certainly her, I83) the Indian. (P. impossibility of attaching quotHere Fuller writesin the voice of the engaged reporter, ing her sources and commenting-in what we take to be her own voice-on what she observes.The tone is again ironic;the as it was and literary, conventional, however, is not formal, irony, to the and deeplyfelt.Fuller refers in the first passage,but bitter theirill-treatment Indians as "ownersof the soil" and attributes in part to the white women's "abhorrenceof their dirt"; she describesa white woman's open expressionof "loathingat the odor leftby" a passing Indian and this same woman's outrage of dependentIndian children.The voices at the ungratefulness thatFuller sounds and the voice thatshe adopts in this passage speak to and commentupon earliervoicesin the text,reminding her readers that the genteel ladies of the Illinois prairiewere of "the ownersof the soil," also racistusurpersof the property is not only a lady herselfand an and that theircorrespondent observerof middle-classculturebut also a true democratand an engaged social critic. The voice and the tone of this passage do not representa goal, achieved once and forall, but ratherone of a number of modes available to Fuller as a writerof travelnaralternative ratives.Fuller does not abandon her concernfor the domestic forthe beautyof of frontier women,or her appreciation affairs with the of theirrelations theirgardens,because she disapproves Fuller's Indians. All of the passages I have analyzed exemplify with many other concernforthe conditionof women; together passages theyhelp map out a complicatedpositionfromwhich and analytic,humorous Fuller can adopt variouslydescriptive voices. Some of these and sentimental, criticaland supportive voices could be called masculine(eitherbecause of theirconventional points of view or because of theiractual sources),others and others unmarked.They all help define Fuller's feminine, actingperson. stanceas a writerand as a thinking,

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of the In Summer on theLakes Fulleruses the conventions pleasant torecount ofvoices, booktospeakwitha number travel customs. unfamiliar and observe stories, interesting repeat visits, consistent to a single, She does not reduceall theseelements and giveher reader but she does put themtogether narrative, The Tribune to hearthemtalk to each other. the opportunity case.Theyare notin theproper letters are a morecomplicated of journalistic a collection sensea singletextat all but rather paid forat the rateof $Io by Greeley, pieces,commissioned death. The only after Fuller's into a volume and collected apiece, in in in nor originality, nor style, consistent neither letters are someare merecatareaders: the interest theyhold formodern ofa hundred ofthevoices sights, parrotings loguesofobligatory need forthe perpetual to Fuller's testimony othersuch letters, of thanto her experience moneytheywould bringin rather of several amalgams evenpassionate are skillful, Europe;others ofherexperience tothevariety testimony ofFuller'sownvoices, ofthat ofthecomvariety, unity in theultimate and toherbelief and thepolitical. theaesthetic, theemotional, truethatFuller'semphasis changes, While it is indisputably as she commits and confidence thather own voicegainsforce causein Rome,it wouldbe a mistake herself to theRepublican final the triumphant to read thischangeas a totalconversion, termithe predestined of maturation, stageof a linearprocess and personal life, political, nusad quemof Fuller'sintellectual, Fuller's camebefore. all that evencancelling, totally superseding, chosenotto reprint, from lastletters Rome,whichherbrother are movingevidenceof her engagement in politicalstruggle, dimension of to thepersonal commitment and ofhercontinuing of the conventional and of the continuing utility thisstruggle, of travel writing. polyvocality bits:thestory excerptable arefulloflively, The Tribune letters of George on Ben Lomond;heraccounts of Fuller'snear-death of Americans and Mazzini; herdiscussions Sand, Mickiewicz, and establishments of publicwashing abroad; her descriptions of the her in reports eyewitness Florence; American sculptors Insteadof discussing birthand deathof the RomanRepublic. I proposeto familiar however, passages, anyof theserelatively letter from first in somedetailFuller's Europeand her examine
indeed of the necessarycoexistenceof the personal, patibility,

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ones in order to show how all three use two last, unreprinted beliefs to presentthe writer's of travelnarrative the conventions While I have no effective setting. and opinions in a rhetorically intentionof denyingthe very real changes that took place in from I846 to I850, I will Fuller's writingand in her thinking advantagesof polyvocaltravelwriting emphasize the continuing project. forher politicaland rhetorical accountof the crossletter beginswiththeobligatory The first with a moralizingcommentand a ing in the Cambria,together conventionalmetaphorthat could have been penned by practigenteelclass of travelers cally any memberof the domesticated, and writers: "Our ship's company numbered several pleasant to the members,and that desire prevailedin each to contribute of all, which, if carriedout throughthe voyage of satisfaction life,would make this earthas happy as it is a lovelyabode." A voice emergesin Fuller's commentsupon the more distinctive awe a number of the passengersfeel in the presenceof Lady of King William IV and "the daughter Falkland, the illegitimate and her mockeryof the factthat this celebratedMrs. Jordan," alliance with one of the feelingis the resultof "her left-handed dullest familiesthat ever sat upon a throne" ratherthan her "descent fromone whom Nature had endowed with her most splendid regalia."Fuller goes on in thissame voice to praisethe had insistedthat Cambria'scaptain,who, on an earliercrossing, to equal rightsupon his deck FrederickDouglass be "admitted with the insolentslave-holders, and assumed a tone towardtheir Stateshad had the firmness, which,ifthe Northern assumptions, good sense, and honor to use, would have had the same effect, and put our country in a different positionfromthat she occupies at present."A voice verymuch like thatof Emma Willard ("The is heard in an account of English travelarrangements and servedpuncdinner,if orderedin time,is cooked properly, tually"),while Allen's or Greeley'scan be heard in a description where, "for a very of the Mechanics Instituteat Manchester, and the women small fee, the mechanic,clerk, or apprentice, of their families,can receive various good and well-arranged
instruction."13
13At Home and Abroad,ed. A. B. Fuller (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, I856), pp. will be followedby page numbersin parentheses. Furtherreferences
I20-2I.

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man") and intelligent ("a verybenevolent the Liverpool Institute quotes "our Boston 'Dial' " on the subjectof self-improvement, in Bradshaw'sRailway she quotes him quotingit. The discovery Guide of a set of quotationsfromCharles Sumner and Elihu Burritton the subject of peace gives rise to an imaginarydialogue between Fuller and her English acquaintances,who are happy to be at peace with the United States but quick to celebrate their militaryvictoriesin China and Ireland. "'You are saying, "'and illumimightily pleased,'" Fuller imaginesherself nate for your victoriesin China and Ireland, do you not?' and they,unprovokedby the taunt,would mildlyreply.'We do not, but it is too true that a large part of the nation fail to bring Fuller then describes in her own voice some evidence of tractsof self-education, includingthe improving working-class man of the townof Wortley, pubone Joseph a "working Barker, and a scheme whereby lished throughhis own printing-press," the young women in a certain unnamed town took it upon themselvesto cut out passages frombooks and pamphletsand newspapers"on the greatsubjectsof the day,""which theysend about in packages,or paste on walls and doors" (p. I24). This modes of tourleads to a glimpseof one of her less conventional fromanyone but ing and a passage which would be surprising the author of Womanin the Nineteenth Century:"How great, how imperiousthe need of such men, of such deeds, we felt more thanever,while compelledto turna deafear to the squalid and shamelessbeggarsof Liverpool,or talkingby nightin the streetsof Manchesterto the girls from the Mills, who were air,through bareheaded,withcoarse,rude,and reckless strolling the streets, or seeing throughthe windows of the gin-palaces too dull to carouse" (p. I24). Here the women seated drinking, Fuller's voice changes in a single sentencefromthat of a deobserver of conditions to thatof an engaged tached,generalizing sordidstreetscene. witnessof,almosta participant in, a specific, with to ironic emphasis England's much She goes on to refer and to suggest that it cannot long coexist touted domesticity with the deplorable conditionof the women she has just obis meltinginto served: "The homes of England! theirsweetness
home the true nature and bearing of those events . .
.' "

In addition herself, Fullerquotes, different voices to assuming When the Directorof the voicesof others. and even invents,

(p.

I23).

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to those fable;onlythe new Spiritin its holiestpowercan restore of 'each man's castle,'forWoman, homes theirboasted security and has let fall the keys in the warder,is driveninto the street, makingthis after immediately her sad plight"(p. I24). However, Fuller becomes the conventionaltour bold political statement, guide once more, listingin the same paragraphsuch curiosities as "the statueof Roscoe by Chantrey"and the funeralof an infant,"borne to the graveby women." She gives a briefaccount glimpse American'sfirst of Chester,the site of the conventional highlyromanticin of Old England, calling it "a tout-ensemble itself,and charming,indeed, to Transatlanticeyes," and conin of bathingfacilities cludes with a commenton the availability habit of unfortunate English hotelsand the Americantraveler's generalizingfrominadequateexperience. as a whole showsFuller usingthe polyvocaltravelThe letter writingtraditionto create a complex persona of her own out voices. The writerof these lettersis clearly of severaldifferent a woman of independent mind and advanced opinion who details of is yet not above attentionto the always fascinating howeverconvenit offers, at the experiences travelor excitement tional theymay have become. She is well-read;she is politically, alert; she is bold enough to converse socially,and historically enough to comMill-girlsat nightand confident with strolling menton the lineage of royalbastards.She has a practicalstreak and a sense of humor.The factthat she can combine evidence make it speak with intoa singleletter, of all thesecharacteristics are severalvoices,and insistthatthesevoices,howeverdisparate, of of the conventions her mastery demonstrates not inconsistent, and her abilityto use them forher own ends. travel-writing fromItaly, is evidentin her last two letters This same mastery and I3 Februwhich appeared in the Tribune on 9 January publishedAt ary I850 but were omittedfromthe posthumously thanthe more These letters are single-minded and Abroad. Home on current events, earlierones, it is true,and focusmoredirectly polyvocality use of the conventional but theyalso make effective such elementsas personalnarrative, combining of travel-writing, of Italian life,and commentson American begenre-paintings in various haviorabroad withan accountof the politicalsituation advocatingsocial partsof Italy and two impassionedperorations justice and politicalfreedom.

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Fullerspeaksin the voicesof the of 9 January In the letter to the trials subjected the private individual politicalreporter, She tellsof socialist. time, and thecommitted of thisunsettled occupiers of theAustrian in Romeand of thebehavior protests and thecomfort herown depression of Florence. She recounts of nature and in art:"I gaze on thebeauty she takesin nature . . . I look againupon art, myself. and seek thusto strengthen and optimistic in itscalm."She waxesfervent and solacemyself "I believed before I came to future: in herhopesfora socialist sequence as the inevitable Europe in what is called Socialism, to the needs and wantsof the era, but I did not thinkthese and dailylife education, in modesof government, vastchanges will.The world they as I nowthink as rapidly wouldbe effected p. i). standwithout them"(Tribune, can no longer of I3 February interThe letter beginswitha conventional and to humanevents and its relation of the weather pretation from the writgenrescenefamiliar withthe kindof domestic and beganwithmeteors ingsof Emma Willard:"Last winter as ifNature no lessglorious, shineand theSpring thatfollowed and tenrejoicedin and dailysmiledupon the nobleefforts, of the Italianpeople.This winter, Italy der generous impulses is shroudedwith snow.Here in Florencethe oil congealsin the closetbesidethe fire-the waterin the chamber-just as as yetuncomforted by of New England, in our country-houses furnaces" p. i). Fullergoes on to moralizethe scene (Tribune, traveler's theconventional stillfurther, and to moveawayfrom of the fallacy: pathetic own use easy her voicebyundercutting
I withthisinjured people,though, Thus Natureagainsympathizes wishesshe did not. For many wanderer fearme, manya houseless an extremity of thiswinter, and anykindof shelter wantbothbread, almost in thisrichest thathad seemed impossible deprivation physical to the extreme be subjected land. It had seemedthatItaliansmight butthatthecommon plea,"I beggar's of mental and moralsuffering, so. 'Tis no longer a merepoeticexpression. mustremain am hungry," partand doubtless Then she moves-and thisis the astonishing the letterchose not to reprint the reason her carefulbrother for their corfrom descriptionof conditionsto a prescription rection and takes on in the process a new voice, rare among the rose-coloredAuroraBorealis.All the winterwas steadysun-

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but existingin productive travelers detached nineteenth-century voices: relationto her other,more conventional will be radical.Not only hereand elsewhere, The nextrevolution, mustgo.... Not religion mustgo, buttheRomanCatholic Jesuitism of foreign blood,mustbe depotentate and every onlytheAustrian, overfellow an arbitrary lordship man who assumes posed,butevery revolution. out. It will be an uncompromising man,mustbe driven beit-France cannot norcriticize reasonnorratify Englandcannot trayit-Germany cannotbungleit-Italy cannotbabbleit away The New Era is stampit downnorhideit in Siberia. Russiacannot Men havelong it walk.... is to it born; begins an embryo: no longer of a transition state-it is over thepowerof positive, been talking
is begun.... effort determinate God be praised!

a voice thatviolates This is clearlythe voice of a revolutionary, rhetoricand its with its inflammatory the canons of gentility politicalmessage.In an era when women did not addressmixed it is also on any subject,let alone revolution, public gatherings a voice that masculinevoice. It is not,however, a conventionally Fuller adopted in any finalway; it did not supersedeor replace her other voices,any more than her experienceof motherhood in superseded her concernforthe Roman poor, or her interest with Mazor her enthusiastic friendships American sculpture, zini and Mickiewicz. It coexisted,in this letterand in Fuller's withthe voicesof the sensitive and vulnerableobconsciousness, serverwho found solace in natureand art and of the practiced and evokerof domesticscenes. writer, maker of metaphors The significance of Fuller's life and thoughtdoes not lie in some inexorableprogressin which the errorsof one stage are being replacedby the truthsof a new one. While it constantly is true that she was "radicalized" by her engagementin Italian political struggles, this fact cannot adequately describe or explain the power of her example and of her work. These are in to the scope of her interests betterunderstoodby reference the these last letters, the compendiousnessof her sympathies, and especiallyher abilityto incorpopower of her convictions, in and the revolutionary rate the domestic,the compassionate, a single text,a single discourse,and a single life,to deny the in other words, without conventionallimitations of femininity, as a woman. Her argufor a momentabandoningher identity

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thevery first had beenthatwomenshouldhavethe mentfrom should forself-fulfillment as men,thatthey sameopportunities ifthey houseor efficient wished, or journalists, be sea-captains womanly anything truly without everrepressing holdmanagers, thisinFuller'slifewouldhaveexemplified in their characters. if she had never prose.It written a lineof traveler's clusiveness thatwe wouldhaveknownfarless is also fairto say,I think, and madeuse ofthepolyvocal aboutit ifshehad notdiscovered travel writing. of nineteenth-century American conventions

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