The work of the heart: Emotion in the 1805-35 diary of Sarah Connell Ayer.In November, 1805, fourteen-year-old Sarah Connell of Newburyport, Massachusetts penned her first entry in the diary she would keep for the next thirty years.(1) "Formed by the God of Nature with a heart of sensibility," Connell was more interested in what she felt than what she did.(2) As a result, her 700 page journal provides a remarkable source for the history of emotion. Connell's account is especially significant in that it spans several life stages: her teenage years at an academy, courtship, marriage and motherhood. It also bridges two emotional styles: between 1805 and 1811, it chronicles the "correct sentiments" of a young woman immersed im·merse tr.v. im·mersed, im·mers·ing, im·mers·es 1. To cover completely in a liquid; submerge. 2. To baptize by submerging in water. 3. in the cult of sensibility; after her 1810 marriage and 1811 religious conversion, Connell turned to Calvinism, a theology equally concerned with the disposition of the heart. Although Philip Greven has posited that childhood is the prime influence on emotional style, Connell's journal suggests that life experiences continually reshape emotional disposition.(3) At first glance, Connell's focus on her feelings makes her diary seem different from journals which depict the external reality of women's work: bread baked, children bathed, floors scrubbed. But it is in fact a record of another form of labor central to women's lives: "emotion work For the conscious manipulation of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display, a concept developed by Arlie Hochschild, see . Emotion work has been defined as the management of one's own feelings or as "work done in a conscious effort to maintain the ." In her aptly titled The Managed Heart, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild posits the existence of "feeling rules"-cultural understandings of which emotions should or should not be felt. The "emotion work" required to observe these rules entails two types of acting: "surface acting," purposeful body language such as crying or suppressing a sigh, and "deep acting," the construction of feeling itself.(4) Although Hochschild studied late twentieth century service workers, her concepts help us understand Sarah Connell's emotional development during the early nineteenth century. Connell's diary powerfully conveys how women learned to act appropriate emotional parts; how they shaped their feelings to fit the roles of daughter, wife and mother; and how they attempted to integrate their own needs for self-expression with cultural expectations. Emotion work, like other types of women's work, provided some satisfaction in a job well done. But in Sarah Connell's case, it provides a disturbing example of how deeply cultural demands cut into women's lives. Sarah Connell's 1805-11 diary, written from the ages of fourteen to nineteen, shows her already well launched in studying the skills of a woman of sensibility. She absorbed these from the verse, essays and novels of eighteenth century Britain, which flooded America's book market during the early republic.(5) Sentimental literature was often written for and about the lives of girls on the brink of womanhood wom·an·hood n. 1. The state or time of being a woman. 2. The composite of qualities thought to be appropriate to or representative of women. 3. ; young women such as Sarah Connell were among its prime consumers. Living in a busy seaport, Connell had easy access to the literature of sensibility through Newburyport's circulating library cir·cu·lat·ing library n. See lending library. Noun 1. circulating library - library that provides books for use outside the building lending library and friends' book collections. As an upper middle class girl, she was expected to spend her days not on household tasks, but on cultivating the "complaisance com·plai·sance n. The inclination to comply willingly with the wishes of others; amiability. complaisance the quality or state of being agreeable, gracious, considerate, etc. " and delicacy of feeling newly associated with the rising elites. (6) As a result, Sarah was an enthusiastic reader of poets such as William Cowper Noun 1. William Cowper - English surgeon who discovered Cowper's gland (1666-1709) Cowper 2. William Cowper - English poet who wrote hymns and poetry about nature (1731-1800) Cowper and novelists such as Samuel Richardson Samuel Richardson (August 19, 1689 – July 4, 1761) was a major English, 18th century writer best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison and Oliver Goldsmith. This sentimental literature exalted spontaneous and expressive emotion springing directly from the heart. Sarah repeatedly decried insincerity in·sin·cere adj. Not sincere; hypocritical. in  sin·cere ly adv. and hated formal occasions, "where every one 'acts a part foreign to his nature.'" (7) Her favorite books both illustrated the value of spontaneity spon·ta·ne·i·ty n. pl. spon·ta·ne·i·ties 1. The quality or condition of being spontaneous. 2. Spontaneous behavior, impulse, or movement. Noun 1. and stimulated an immediate and emotional response. On completing St. Clair, or The Heiress heiress n. feminine heir, often used to denote a woman who has received a large amount upon the death of a rich relative, as in the "department store heiress." HEIRESS. A female heir to a person having an estate of inheritance. of Desmond, for example, she "threw aside the book" and "wept at the fictitious sufferings of St. Clair and Olivia. The World might call it weakness," she allowed, "perhaps it is so, yet I feel that it is a weakness I have no wish to part with; for that person who can read Mrs. Owenson's works without emotion, has indeed a heart of Apathy. Hers, is the language of the heart, it speaks to the feelings, it almost steals us from ourselves, from every thing around us." (8) At the same time that sentimental literature praised spontaneity, it was Connell's prime instructor in surface acting or the behavioral expression of emotion. "May I ever view my heart cloth'd in sincerity," Sarah prayed on her sixteenth birthday, and this literature taught the appropriate emotional clothing for every occasion. (9) It provided a distinctively sentimental language with which to discuss emotion; Connell's diary repeatedly employed stock phrases such as 'tender', 'honest', 'sympathetic' and 'sincere'. Frequently she quoted other writers to express her feelings, and it is sometimes difficult to separate her words from theirs. Often she referred to herself in the third person, as if she were a character in a sentimental drama and were describing someone else's feelings. Similarly, she peopled her diary with the stock characters of sensibility: the deceitful male, suffering female, and 'honest rustic', who in turn stimulated appropriate sentimental reactions. (10) This literature modeled the physic phys·ic n. A medicine or drug, especially a cathartic. physic 1. the art of medicine and therapeutics. 2. a medicine, especially a cathartic. See also purging ball. al as well as the verbal expression Noun 1. verbal expression - the communication (in speech or writing) of your beliefs or opinions; "expressions of good will"; "he helped me find verbal expression for my ideas"; "the idea was immediate but the verbalism took hours" verbalism, expression of sensibility. Like her favorite fictional heroines, Sarah Connell threw herself on beds, into carriages, and into her loved ones' arms. Above all, she cried: tears welled up, spilled over, poured forth, and sometimes overwhelmed her. (11) Sentimental literature encouraged Connell to engage in deep as well as surface acting. As Hochschild explains, in deep acting, "the actor does not try to seem happy or sad but rather expresses spontaneously ... a real feeling that has been self-induced." (12) Sarah induced sentimental emotions by making others' experiences her own. When reading, she shared in the lives of fictitious characters; similarly, she tried to enter into her friends' feelings. Sarah frequently described her heart as one that "palpitated" or "vibrated" in response to others. In a favorite word, her heart "participated" in emotion. "Alass, my Lydia!" she wrote when her friend's mother died. "Often have you been call'd to follow to the grave, friends, from whose love you derived happiness. Sarah drops a tear in sympathy with her friend. She participates your sorrows." (13) As literary critic Noun 1. literary critic - a critic of literature critic - a person who is professionally engaged in the analysis and interpretation of works of art Janet Todd points out, sensibility taught its devotees not so much "what it felt like to be another person or object, but what it felt like to be looking at a person or object and how such looking affirmed their own sensibility." (14) This is clear in Sarah Connell's cultivation of both benevolence BENEVOLENCE, duty. The doing a kind action to another, from mere good will, without any legal obligation. It is a moral duty only, and it cannot be enforced by law. A good wan is benevolent to the poor, but no law can compel him to be so. BENEVOLENCE, English law. and melancholy. Like many sentimentalists, Sarah Connell understood benevolence as sharing feelings with the poor rather than goods. (15) Associating contentment Contentment Aglaos poor peasant said by the Delphic oracle to be happier than the king because he was contented. [Gk. Myth.: Benét, 15] with modest circumstances, she visited poor rustics in order to "participate" in their simplicity and tranquillity. (16) When her friend Abigail visited a poor woman with ten children, Sarah focused not on what Abigail did to help them, but on her friend's "engaging" appearance and "smile of complacency and self-approbation". (17) Melancholy was as pleasurable as benevolence and produced as purposefully. Connell often sat by her window to imbibe the delicate sadness nightfall induced. "A sweet melancholy diffused itself over my heart," s he rhapsodized. "Memory recalled a thousand tender scenes; the silent tear fell, from an emotion, which it was impossible to controll." (18) Yet controlling emotions was exactly what the cult of sensibility expected of its practitioners: they were to feel, but not to feel too much. (19) The recurrence of the word "tranquillity" suggests sensibility's modulated mod·u·late v. mod·u·lat·ed, mod·u·lat·ing, mod·u·lates v.tr. 1. To adjust or adapt to a certain proportion; regulate or temper. 2. tone: it demanded tears, not sobs; tenderness, rather than emotional storms. Nature embodied the tractable tractable easy to manage; tolerable. characteristics sensibility idealized i·de·al·ize v. i·de·al·ized, i·de·al·iz·ing, i·de·al·iz·es v.tr. 1. To regard as ideal. 2. To make or envision as ideal. v.intr. 1. . "We have had a delightful walk," Connell mused. "The scenery around was romantic and calculated to excite the most agreeable sensations ... the soft murmur murmur /mur·mur/ (mur´mer) [L.] an auscultatory sound, particularly a periodic sound of short duration of cardiac or vascular origin. anemic murmur a cardiac murmur heard in anemia. of the brooks, and the sweet music of the little warblers, soothed my mind into the most perfect tranquillity." (20) For many sentimentalists, tranquillity proved an elusive goal. Sarah Connell often found it difficult to hit the emotional pitch which sensibility demanded; her deep acting often left her overreacting. "Though from it has proceeded some of my most exquisite enjoyments, yet still I am convinced that a large share of sensibility is often a cause of much sorrow to its possessor ...," she observed. "I always go upon the extremes. One moment I laugh, sing, and dance, ... and I am the life of our domestic circle, at another I am depressed, I fly to the retirement of my chamber, & give way to the most unpleasant sensations." (21) Sarah Connell also struggled to observe gender prescriptions in her emotional expression. While admiring occasional rationality in women and tenderness in men, she pointedly avoided what she regarded as assertive "masculine" emotions, and her diary shows that emotion remained strongly gendered in the early republic. This is clear in how she dealt with sexual passion and anger and in her relations with her father. (22) The sentimental novels Sarah read conveyed fear of "unwomanly" feeling in sexual terms: they commonly featured a virgin whose passion led to her seduction Seduction See also Flirtatiousness. Selfishness (See CONCEIT, STINGINESS.) Armida modern Circe; sorceress who seduces Rinaldo. [Ital. Lit.: Jerusalem Delivered] Aurelius Dorigen’s nobleminded would-be seducer. and betrayal, and they cautioned their readers to distrust men and contain sexual impulses. (23) Sarah Connell knew just such a case in her own household. A young woman living with the Connells, "possessed of much beauty, and a lively disposition," met a handsome young man with "the worst of principles. He professed pro·fess v. pro·fessed, pro·fess·ing, pro·fess·es v.tr. 1. To affirm openly; declare or claim: "a physics major to love her, 'she believed and was undone.'" He seduced her, and to avoid supporting the resulting daughter, married the mother but promptly deserted her. The mother named her baby after her friend Sarah Connell, reminding the diarist di·a·rist n. A person who keeps a diary. diarist Noun a person who writes a diary that is subsequently published Noun 1. of emotion's high price. (24) Sarah Connell was equally wary of anger. By the late eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans may have criticized displays of anger in both sexes, but found them particularly offensive in the home and by women. Connell's care to express anger mainly on others' behalf shows her recognition of these limits in women's allowed emotional expression. (25) In the case of her betrayed friend, for example, Sarah clearly thought wrong had been done. "How many have fallen victims to the baseness of those who call themselves lords of the Creation[?]" she expostulated with uncharacteristic un·char·ac·ter·is·tic adj. Unusual or atypical: an uncharacteristic display of anger. un sarcasm. It was the responsibility of "every virtuous female [to] show her detestation of the libertine lib·er·tine n. 1. One who acts without moral restraint; a dissolute person. 2. One who defies established religious precepts; a freethinker. adj. Morally unrestrained; dissolute. by wholly renouncing his society ...," she maintained. But having castigated male behavior, Connell drew back from such unwomanly outrage. She concluded by accepting a male acquaintance's judgement that through associating with these men, women "seemed to encourage such conduct" and were themselves at fault. (26) Sarah Connell's observance of her society's feeling rules for women is most apparent in her relationship with her father, to whom she was especially close. Her small, indulgent in·dul·gent adj. Showing, characterized by, or given to indulgence; lenient. in·dul gent·ly adv. and largely secular family was similar to the "genteel gen·teel adj. 1. Refined in manner; well-bred and polite. 2. Free from vulgarity or rudeness. 3. Elegantly stylish: genteel manners and appearance. 4. a. " model Philip Greven has described and which sentimental literature idealized. (27) In it, amiability was prized above all else. But in Sarah's late adolescence, economic circumstances tested her family's equanimity e·qua·nim·i·ty n. The quality of being calm and even-tempered; composure. [Latin aequanimit . In 1808, when she was seventeen, her father suffered major financial reversals from the Embargo; in 1809 they were forced to move from Newburyport to more modest homes in Concord and then Bow, New Hampshire Bow is a town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 7,138 at the 2000 census. History Incorporated in 1727, the town was one of several formed to ease population pressures on the Seacoast. . (28) To cope with this situation, Sarah openly manipulated her feelings. In doing so, she showed her absorption of women's roles into sensibility, her desire to modify her feelings to suit her father and her care to influence him only indirectly. "We should cultivate a good disposition," she wrote. "This is a duty incumbent on all--for it will make ourselves cheer ful and contented--and enable us to contribute to the happiness of those around us." (29) In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently , by displaying the 'right' feelings herself, she would produce the 'right' feelings in others. The Connells' move from Newburyport to Concord represented financial failure for her father, and although Sarah was leaving behind her childhood home, she did everything she could to conceal her feelings. On seeing their goods boxed for moving, she "was obliged o·blige v. o·bliged, o·blig·ing, o·blig·es v.tr. 1. To constrain by physical, legal, social, or moral means. 2. to leave the room, to prevent discovering the emotion of my heart." Especially difficult was the farewell to her Aunt Newman, her closest female relative. On departing, Connell at first threw herself weeping into the chaise, but remembered to hide her emotions from her parent: "Papa was low-spirited, and I endeavoured to suppress my own feelings, in order to enliven en·liv·en tr.v. en·liv·ened, en·liv·en·ing, en·liv·ens To make lively or spirited; animate. en·liv en·er n. my good Father," she wrote. "My heart became tranquillized; the serenity I at first assumed, at length became real." (30) One circle remained in which she could give her emotions free rein: among her female friends. With them feelings were more pleasure than work. In a diary striking for its emotional hyperbole hyperbole (hīpûr`bəlē), a figure of speech in which exceptional exaggeration is deliberately used for emphasis rather than deception. , Connell saved her warmest praise for female friendship. "'Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul, I owe thee much,'" she apostrophized; and again, "Friendship, sweet soother of my cares! Attend me as I journey through life.... "The benefits of friendship, "so dear to sensibility," were many. In Connell's favorite phrase, friendship "banish'd ceremony," allowing friends to put aside all social disguises. As women and members of her own class, her friends fully entered into each other's feelings, sharing their sorrows and joys. "Among all the advantages which attend friendship," Connell wrote, "there is none I more highly value than the liberty it allows of opening one's heart without disguise." (31) Friendship was, in short, the epitome of sensibility. Sarah's dearest friends dated to her years at Franklin Academy Franklin Academy is a coed boarding school in East Haddam, Connecticut, serving the needs of students in grades 8-12 who have Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities NLD and various other learning disabilities. The school officially opened in September 2003 with approximately 35 students. in Andover, Massachusetts, which she attended for fourteen months during her mid-teens. There she learned rhetoric, composition, geography and the decorative skills of future upper class wives. (32) Although boarding school girls often embroidered em·broi·der v. em·broi·dered, em·broi·der·ing, em·broi·ders v.tr. 1. To ornament with needlework: embroider a pillow cover. 2. "let reason be my guide," Sarah's was an education in sensibility rather than rationalism rationalism [Lat.,=belonging to reason], in philosophy, a theory that holds that reason alone, unaided by experience, can arrive at basic truth regarding the world. . Franklin Academy was coeducational co·ed·u·ca·tion n. The system of education in which both men and women attend the same institution or classes. co·ed , but classes were sex-segregated and Connell lived "the female world of love and ritual" Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has described. (33) She boarded with the widow Hannah Osgood and became fast friends with her daughter Harriot and niece Maria. Her "beloved Harriot" became her closest friend, and Sarah regarded their time together as "the summit of my happiness." Years later she lovingly described "Harriot, Maria and Sarah, seated as they often used to be at the door of Aunt Osgood's cottage, looking at the Moon shining through the foliage of the tall button woods that shaded the dwe lling where I was once so happy." After Connell left Andover, she and Harriot visited and wrote each other for years; Sarah always found that "in telling her all my thoughts, my heart was relieved." (34) Her relationship with Harriot provided a model of female friendship, so that on leaving Andover, Sarah sought out other young women with whom she could share her feelings. Female friendship enabled Sarah Connell to feel soothed and loved, to express her individual self while remaining a woman of sensibility. So central were these relationships to her, that, she declared, "To love, is necessary to my very existence." "My happiness consists in feeling that I deserve the love of my friends, in studying to make their life pass pleasantly, and in cherishing their esteem," she asserted. "I could not exist in a state of indifference, Nature never formed me for it." (35) Such declarations suggest that Connell, in her pursuit of sensibility and femininity, was entirely other-oriented in her emotions. In a sense this was true: sensibility left its practitioners open to others' feelings, just as gender roles expected women to serve others. But in practice sensibility's effects were far more ambiguous. (36) The core of sensibility was the use of others' experiences in order to stimulate and admire feelings in oneself. In reading novels, Connell aroused sympathy through imagining others' sufferings. Similarly, she visited modest farm folk to evoke feelings of contentment in herself, and she prized her friends for the opportunity to "relieve" herself. In calling a female friend an "interesting object," Connell captured sensibility's utilitarian and self-enhancing tendencies. (37) Simply keeping a diary suggests an assertive element: it asserted her education, in that she was able to record her experience; her class, in that she wrote in a sentimental language mainly available to t he elite; and her femininity, in that she displayed the prescribed womanly wom·an·ly adj. wom·an·li·er, wom·an·li·est 1. Having qualities generally attributed to a woman. 2. Belonging to or representative of a woman; feminine: womanly attire. virtues. But above all her diary asserted the importance of her self as a subject: her emotions were unabashedly un·a·bashed adj. 1. Not disconcerted or embarrassed; poised. 2. Not concealed or disguised; obvious: unabashed disgust. her main interest and she luxuriated in their expression. Sensibility also endowed en·dow tr.v. en·dowed, en·dow·ing, en·dows 1. To provide with property, income, or a source of income. 2. a. Connell with a confidence in the goodness of her own heart. Rarely self-critical, she concluded an entry at age seventeen with the words: "I now retire to woo repose, of which, a guilty conscience Noun 1. guilty conscience - remorse caused by feeling responsible for some offense guilt feelings, guilt trip, guilt compunction, remorse, self-reproach - a feeling of deep regret (usually for some misdeed) has never yet deprived me." Her description of herself as "pleased with myself and the World" captures the self-satisfaction she gained from the cult of sensibility. (38) The language in which that self was expressed may have been trite, and convention may have guided the emotions she expressed, but sensibility affirmed her being. How crucial sensibility was in allowing that self-enhancement is apparent when she moved from her single years to her marriage and from the world of sentiment to that of Calvinism. The Connell family's removal from Newburyport to New Hampshire New Hampshire, one of the New England states of the NE United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts (S), Vermont, with the Connecticut R. forming the boundary (W), the Canadian province of Quebec (NW), and Maine and a short strip of the Atlantic Ocean (E). in spring 1809 marked a breakdown not only in her family's wealth but in the emotional relationships which had sustained Sarah's vision of sensibility. Sentimental literature idealized harmony and contentment, but by the summer of 1810 her mother had apparently turned to drink, resulting in frequent arguments, Sarah's pleading for reform, and embarrassment for the entire family. (39) Emotion became a source of pain rather than pensive pen·sive adj. 1. Deeply, often wistfully or dreamily thoughtful. 2. Suggestive or expressive of melancholy thoughtfulness. pleasure, and sensibility offered few solutions. At the same time, she was cut off from her oldest friends, in whom she had confided her feelings. Sarah sought new friends, but as her class position declined, she feared to share her feelings; apparently, emotional openness was dependent on shared status as well as gender. Her sense that feeling rules had somehow shifted created new emotional tasks. (40) "Old dame prudence, ever checking my visionary enthusiasm, gently wispered in my ear ... 'You are too much governe d by impulse, learn to be more systematic,'" Sarah wrote, and resolved that her "actions should be more governed by reason" and that her "feeling should no longer run away with my judgment." (41) Connell had by no means entirely rejected sensibility--she still read sentimental literature and corresponded with her oldest friends--but displayed a caution entirely new to her diary. Connell's turn from sensibility intensified when she met her future husband, Samuel Ayer. A New Hampshire native New Hampshire native is a status recognized by the state of New Hampshire which identifies people who were born in the state. The word denotes someone who was born in a given place. five years older than Sarah, Ayer was a tutor at Dartmouth College Dartmouth College, at Hanover, N.H.; coeducational; chartered 1769, opened 1770, the ninth colonial college (see Wheelock, Eleazar). Originally a men's college, Dartmouth began admitting women in 1972. about to begin his medical practice when they met in the summer of 1809. (42) At first he seemed to embody the "Man of Feeling": Connell found him "amiable, sensible, and polite. His countenance is but the index of his heart," she declared, paying him sensibility's highest compliment. She found she could share all her "sentiments ... with unbounded confidence" and abandoned the caution she had begun to develop with women. "Many would call this enthusiasm," she remonstrated. "But it is only the unfeeling, and such as never felt their hearts warmed by the pure emotions of affection." (43) But Ayer monopolized her feelings as no single female friend had. She found that "absent from the Man who possesses my undivided heart, nothing interests me. I am alone in a crowd. I pass through life in a kind of stupid indifference to all around m e." (44) Until Sarah's marriage at age nineteen in October 1810, sentimental literature and gender expectations had tempered her emotions, but no single individual had overtly directed them; Sarah tried to please her father, not obey him. Yet within a month of their marriage, Samuel Ayer asserted mastery of her feelings. Separated from her oldest female friends and with her family life in disarray, she was particularly vulnerable. He pointed out "a fault, which, if not corrected, must eventually have depreciated Depreciated may refer to:
In May, 1811, seven months after her wedding, Sarah Connell yielded further control of her emotional world by making a Calvinist profession of faith before Reverend Asa McFarland of the Concord Congregational con·gre·ga·tion·al adj. 1. Of or relating to a congregation. 2. Congregational Of or relating to Congregationalism or Congregationalists. Adj. 1. Church. (46) This did not mark a complete break with her sentimental principles. As a girl in Andover and Newburyport, she had attended Congregational meeting and periodically copied sermons into her diary, although she was equally willing to attend Episcopal services or none at all. Influenced by eighteenth century cultural currents, Calvinism itself incorporated sentimental concepts. As she observed, "religious subjects" were "subjects, interesting to every heart of sensibility." (47) But Calvinism's feeling rules were distinctly different. Above all, they insisted that the heart and its effusions were naturally depraved de·praved adj. Morally corrupt; perverted. de·prav ed·ly adv. rather than good. This new conviction made sense of Sarah Connell Ayer's new reality: as a daughter, she was unable to stop her parents' quarrels, financial decline or drinking; and as a wife, she found Samuel judged her duplicitous. At the same time, her role as a married woman demanded that she set aside the trappings of girlhood, of which sensibility was a part. Declaring herself "an enemy to the generality of novels," she began to employ the Scripture-based language of Calvinism rather than sensibility. (48) Sarah Connell Ayer's spring 1811 conversion marks the transition from single to married life, sensibility to Calvinism. It also anticipates the most crucial event in her emotional development: the change from wife to mother. At the time of her conversion, Sarah was probably in the initial months of her first pregnancy. That volume of her diary ends October 26, 1811, as she awaits childbirth. The next volume begins September 29, 1815. During the intervening years she experienced the tragedy that assured she would fully embrace the emotional world of Calvinism. She wrote: Since closing my last journal, I have been the mother of four children, which now lay side by side in the grave-yard. The first was born in 1811, Dec. 10th The second the 10th of Oct. 1812, and lived only two days, the third the 4th of Sept. 1813, and the 4th. the 25th of Nov. 1814. This last was a sweet, interesting boy, and lived to be six months old. He was a lovely flower, and I trust he is now transplanted in the garden of Heaven. Though the death of this child was a great trial, yet I hope I was made to bow submissive sub·mis·sive adj. Inclined or willing to submit. sub·mis sive·ly adv.sub·mis to the will of my Heavenly Father. (49) This catastrophic loss established the feeling rule Sarah Connell Ayer would observe for the rest of her life: to be "insensible INSENSIBLE. In the language of pleading, that which is unintelligible is said to be insensible. Steph. Pl. 378. " to the world and "sensible" only to God. This was an emotional task so demanding that at first Connell Ayer found it difficult to express herself at all: between 1811 and 1815 she did not write in her diary, and for some years thereafter she used her journal to transcribe To copy data from one medium to another; for example, from one source document to another, or from a source document to the computer. It often implies a change of format or codes. clerical sermons rather than her own feelings. By the late 1810s, she had found her voice, but used it to whip her feelings into the shape demanded by her church and family. Between 1811 and 1822 Sarah belonged to the Congregational Church in Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine, with a 2004 population of 63,882. Portland is Maine's cultural, social and economic capital. Tourists are drawn to Portland's historic Old Port district along Portland Harbor, which is at the mouth of the Fore River and part , where her "beloved pastor" Edward Payson Edward Payson (1783-1827), American Congregational preacher, was born on 25 July 1783 at Rindge, New Hampshire, where his father, Seth Payson (1758-1820), was pastor of the Congregational Church. succeeded her non-churchgoing husband as the prime influence on her emotional While Samuel Ayer had expected his wife to be more rational, Payson prized the heart over dogma. (51) His own experience with sickness and infant loss especially attuned at·tune tr.v. at·tuned, at·tun·ing, at·tunes 1. To bring into a harmonious or responsive relationship: an industry that is not attuned to market demands. 2. him to the feelings of his female parishioners. Payson's memoirist compared him to William Cowper, Sarah's favorite poet, and, like Cowper, he excelled in "effusions of the heart". Nationally famous for his spontaneous public prayers, he regarded them as "'a kind of devout poetry, the whole subject matter of which is furnished by the heart.... "' Through them he sought to 'excite and direct the devotional de·vo·tion·al adj. Of, relating to, expressive of, or used in devotion, especially of a religious nature. n. A short religious service. de·vo feelings of his worshipers'" into a "'torrent of pious, humble, and ardently-affectionate feelings ... [flowing] to the throne of Jehovah.'" (52) While Reverend Payson intensified the passions of his parishioners towards God, as a Calvinist he expected them to keep a tight rein on their feelings towards others. His church enforced this belief by disciplining members not only for sins of behavior, such as intemperance A lack of moderation. Habitual intemperance is that degree of intemperance in the use of intoxicating liquor which disqualifies the person a great portion of the time from properly attending to business. Habitual or excessive use of liquor. Cross-references Alcohol. and failure to attend services, but for the 'wrong' emotions expressed in "passionate and improper" or "unbecoming language" and in "manifesting an improper temper" in conversation. Punishment was equally attentive to feeling. Surface acting was not enough: members were to show the "sincerity" of their "professed penitence Penitence Act of Contrition prayer of atonement said after making one’s confession. [Christianity: Misc.] Agnes, Sister former Lady Laurentini; a penitent nun. [Br. Lit. ," to "condemn" and "acknowledge" their fault, show their "regret" and evince e·vince tr.v. e·vinced, e·vinc·ing, e·vinc·es To show or demonstrate clearly; manifest: evince distaste by grimacing. "tokens of penitence." With one accused member, the church "labor[ed] with him to bring him to a right tempor [sic]," before he gained forgiveness and readmittance. (53) Sarah Connell Ayer's family obligations demanded a "right tempor" much as did her church. The nineteenth century's "cult of true womanhood" assumed both that women were naturally pious and that they were responsible for the spiritual state of their families. (54) This belief vastly increased emotion work's significance: the emotions women were to model were the same tractable, submissive traits that sensibility had prized, but their results were understood in religious terms. Sarah Connell Ayer clearly believed that if only she controlled her feelings, she would not just please her loved ones loved ones npl → seres mpl queridos loved ones npl → proches mpl et amis chers loved ones love npl (which she had felt as a sentimentalist sen·ti·men·tal·ism n. 1. A predilection for the sentimental. 2. An idea or expression marked by excessive sentiment. sen ), but they would come to Christ and be saved. When her father, who lived with the Ayers, died without repenting, for example, she wrote: "Perhaps had I been more mild and affectionate, he would have been less fretful--but ah! how often have I been irritated-and spoken to him in a hasty and undutyful manner! ... had I lived more as becomes one professing pro·fess v. pro·fessed, pro·fess·ing, pro·fess·es v.tr. 1. To affirm openly; declare or claim: "a physics major godliness god·ly adj. god·li·er, god·li·est 1. Having great reverence for God; pious. 2. Divine. god , he might have tho ught more favourably of Christianity and its professors." (55) She had no more success with her husband, who left religious duties to his wife, refused to lead family prayers, and infrequently attended church. (56) But while Samuel had not hesitated to instruct his wife on proper feeling, Sarah as a woman could only influence him indirectly, through controlling herself. Most important for Sarah Connell Ayer was the conversion of her children, for whom she was directly responsible. After the deaths of her first four children, three more lived to maturity: a son in 1819 and two daughters in 1817 and 1823, the last named after her friend Harriot. (57) While she had described her deceased son as a "flower" in the heavenly garden, Connell Ayer perceived her last three children as naturally wicked, making the task of winning them to Christ even more difficult. At the same time, loss of her first-born children increased the urgency of her efforts. As a Calvinist, Sarah Connell Ayer sought to break her children's will by criticizing any displays of temper, reminding them God saw all they did and exhorting them to beg God's forgiveness. But as a woman, she employed what Jan Lewis has called "the emotionology of motherhood": through controlling her thoughts, feelings, even her countenance, she tried to model the characteristics her children should acquire. (58) This required not only surface acting, but a deep acting far more difficult than any she had known as a sentimentalist. As a young girl, she had induced emotions by entering into others' feelings and drawing on the goodness of her own heart. But as a Calvinist and a mother, she believed she had to suppress her depraved heart and model not her self, but Christ. She had to be what she was not. To do this, she repeatedly castigated any assertions of her will, exhorted herself to be "strict in the duty of self-examination" and begged God to "'Lay me low, and keep me there.'" (59) Praying that her child ren "be led to avoid their Mother's faults, and to follow her only, as they may hope she follow'd Christ," she exclaimed, "how insufficient do I feel to bring up my children as I ought." (60) In her efforts to be a good mother, Sarah Connell Ayer turned to female friends for support. Especially important to her were the meetings of the Portland maternal association (founded by Mrs. Payson), where women discussed their obligations as mothers and cultivated a "teachable teach·a·ble adj. 1. That can be taught: teachable skills. 2. Able and willing to learn: teachable youngsters. , affectionate and humble temper" in themselves. (61) She became increasingly active in women's groups in Eastport, Maine Eastport is a small city—comprised entirely of islands—in Washington County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,640 at the 2000 census. Eastport's principle island is Moose Island, and is the easternmost city (although nearby Lubec, Maine is the easternmost , where she moved in 1822. A small fishing village, newly settled, with a tiny group of Calvinists desperate for lay support, it drew her into six different societies: a donation society, another maternal association, an education society for her church's children, a female missionary society, a female charitable society and a female benevolent society The Benevolent Society is Australia’s oldest charity, although it now prefers to regard itself as a ‘’social enterprise’’. It was founded as the Benevolent Society of New South Wales , in addition to numerous prayer meetings and church services numerically dominated by women. (62) These circles provided a sphere in which she could unburden her feelings. Sarah repeatedly praised her "dear Christian friends" who supported her, provided "sympathy, and counsel" and to whom she could "open [her] heart unreservedly un·re·served adj. 1. Not held back for a particular person: an unreserved seat. 2. Given without reservation; unqualified: unreserved praise. 3. ". "I do love christian society above all others," she concluded. (63) But such friendships did not occupy the same place in her emotional world as they had when Sarah was a girl. Since these associations accepted the emotional demands of both Calvinism and motherhood, they could provide at best a temporary respite from their burdens; indeed, the purpose of maternal associations was to teach the "emotionology of motherhood," suggesting that the "female world of love and friendship" could play a role in enforcing society's feeling rules. Sarah's high Calvinist standards also obliged her to criticize her friends' perceived failings and to exhort them to reform, much as she did her children; as these religious tasks extended into her friendships, such relationships offered less freedom of expression and more work. (64) When Sarah's childhood friend Harriot Osgood died in 1832, she contrasted "the coldness and indifference, the inconstancy in·con·stan·cy n. pl. in·con·stan·cies 1. The state or quality of being eccentrically variable or fickle. 2. An instance of being eccentrically variable or fickle. Noun 1. of some whom I have considered friends" with Harriot's unchanging un·chang·ing adj. Remaining the same; showing or undergoing no change: unchanging weather patterns; unchanging friendliness. "sisterly affection." (65) As a result, Sarah Connell Ayer's diary as an adult woman totally lacks the pleasure in self which balanced her empathy for others in her sentimental journal. Instead, under the pressure of a culture in which she felt accountable "for every idle word" she uttered, her sense of self disintegrated. (66) In these later years, a new emotion appears in her diary: a fierce anger at herself for her imperfections and a barely concealed anger at others which in turn only proved her sinfulness. (67) Her self-criticism increased in virulence Virulence The ability of a microorganism to cause disease. Virulence and pathogenicity are often used interchangeably, but virulence may also be used to indicate the degree of pathogenicity. with each year, culminating in 1830 with the wish to do away with herself entirely: "I do feel weary of living at this wretched dying rate--so occupied with worldly cares, so careless in regard to the honour of God, to my own eternal good--and to the spiritual welfare of my husband, children, and those around me," she wrote. "It seems sometimes as though I should eventually destroy myself." (68) Sarah Connell Ayer did not in fact kill herself--she died from a sudden illness in 1835 at age forty-four--but in an emotional sense her diary chronicles her self-destruction. (69) Was her experience representative? Not everyone struggled with her burdens: loss of four children in four years was unusual even in the nineteenth century, and women were more likely to prefer the free will of evangelicalism evangelicalism Protestant movement that stresses conversion experiences, the Bible as the only basis for faith, and evangelism at home and abroad. The religious revival that occurred in Europe and America during the 18th century was generally referred to as the evangelical to Calvinism. Yet Sarah Connell Ayer was firmly within the mainstream in both her youthful delight in sensibility and in her efforts to be a good mother by molding her emotions. In any case, her diary does not have to be representative in every regard to perform a useful function: it highlights the overwhelming importance of gender in women's emotions and suggests new directions for research in the still new field of the history of emotions. (70) First, Connell Ayer's diary suggests that for women, childhood alone does not determine temperament; instead, emotions are literally a work-in-process in response to adult experience. Marriage and the death of her children broke Sarah Connell Ayer's will as her parents never had, enabling this child of gentility to become a Calvinist parent herself. (71) The greater impact of events such as marriage and child-raising on women seems to have created emotional discontinuity dis·con·ti·nu·i·ty n. pl. dis·con·ti·nu·i·ties 1. Lack of continuity, logical sequence, or cohesion. 2. A break or gap. 3. Geology A surface at which seismic wave velocities change. and necessitated a reordering re·or·der v. re·or·dered, re·or·der·ing, re·or·ders v.tr. 1. To order (the same goods) again. 2. To straighten out or put in order again. 3. To rearrange. v. of emotional tasks in their lives. This suggests that women not only expressed emotions differently than did men, but that those emotions were constructed at different points and through different processes in their lives. That this process of emotional reconstruction was not confined to the early nineteenth century is suggested by John C. Spurlock and Cynthia Magistro's recent New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture. They focus on early twentieth century women adapting to new concepts of companionate marriage companionate marriage n. A marriage in which the partners agree not to have children and may divorce by mutual consent, with neither partner responsible for the financial welfare of the other. and motherhood, as defined by psychology and popular culture rather than religion. Yet in the diary of one "flapper wife" they find a suppression of self recognizable to any early Calvinist. "'I am struggling to conquer myself,'" a young wife wrote in 1926; "'I must deny my very self. I must not only learn rigid surface control; I must suffer a complete inner negation NEGATION. Denial. Two negations are construed to mean one affirmation. Dig. 50, 16, 137. .'" (72) The cultural context differed from Sarah Connell Ayer's, yet the demands of marriage seem to have had similar results: a tremendous burden of emotion management. Ironically, our language still exhorts couples to 'work at' their marriage. Historians are just beginning to explore such acts of emotional labor (see also: emotion work) Emotional labor is a form of emotional regulation in which workers are expected to display certain emotions as part of their job and to promote organizational goals. and how-- and if--they have changed over time. Secondly, Sarah Connell Ayer's diary provides striking evidence of the degree to which emotion work is archetypal ar·che·type n. 1. An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype: "'Frankenstein' . . . 'Dracula' . . . 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' . . . women's work. Like housework, it was invisible: society maintained that women were "naturally" emotional, yet men defined the feeling rules which women followed and determined the sphere within which they expressed emotion. As Arlie Russell Hochschild found, the necessity for women to follow those rules requires them to engage in more "emotion managing" than men. Since effective emotion managing looks spontaneous, this reenforces the association of women and emotional expression and effectively conceals the work that women put into shaping their feelings. (73) Like its physical parallel, emotion work was done for others, rather than to express women's individuality. This is why the more emotion work Sarah Connell Ayer did, the less she was able to express her self. The wages of housework and emotion work alike were paid in feeling: a father's happiness, a husband's approval, her children's love. M ost striking is the unremitting character of women's work: continuously repeated, ever on call, expanding to fill the time available. In the labor of their hearts even more than of their hands, women's work was never done. Lastly, emotion work remains distinctive in that it invaded women's lives in a way no purely physical labor could. Sarah Connell Ayer might employ servants to help with housework, but she could not hire out emotion work. As she matured, the duties of wife and mother fueled an increasingly demanding spiral of emotional expectations, as she struggled to both disguise her own emotions and model the emotions others were to feel. Much like Arlie Russell Hochschild's late twentieth century service workers, she experienced a "speed up" that fractured her sense of self. (74) But unlike those workers, Sarah Connell Ayer could not go home from work and rebuild her self; her home was her workplace. Even her female friendships, which had provided a youthful retreat, became occasions to work for Christ rather than to free her self. Sarah Connell Ayer's diary might have served as one place for her true self, or at least for self admiration, as it did when she was a young woman of sensibility. But the combination of religio us duty, maternal obligation and grief over her children's loss made her journal itself a tool of emotion work. That work extended even after death. "O if when the hand that now writes is cold in death, when their mother is laid in the grave," Sarah Connell Ayer wrote, "if then, this manuscript should fall into their hands, may [her children] remember, may they see recorded in her diary, how often she has wept and pray'd for them in secret." (75) In its evolution as a field, women's history ''This article is about the history of women. For information on the field of historical study, see Gender history. Women's history is the history of female human beings. Rights and equality Women's rights refers to the social and human rights of women. has moved from the external circumstances of women's lives--politics, prescriptive literature and economics--to internal dimensions-friendship, family, sexuality and spirituality. The history of emotion provides a means to explore the feelings which are both most intimate and socially constructed: to quite literally get at the heart of women's experience. Sarah Connell Ayer embodies for us the contradictions and complexities of female feeling. ENDNOTES I would like to thank Studium of St. Benedict's St. Benedict’s cross charm against disease and danger. [Christian Iconog.: Jobes, 386] See : Protection Monastery, St. Joseph, Minnesota St. Joseph is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 4,681 at the 2000 census. It is home to the College of Saint Benedict. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.8 km² (1.9 mi²), all land. and the College of St. Benedict for their support of my research and the CSB/SJU Feminist Studies Group for its comments on an earlier version of this paper. (1.) The five volume manuscript diary is held by the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord. It seems complete except for a number of entries concerning her mother which were cut our. The published form appeared as Diary of Sarah Connell Ayer (Portland, Maine, 1910), herafter cited as Diary. It is largely accurate for 1805-1809, but in succeeding years the editor, an M. H. Jewell, often deleted summaries of sermons and religious entries; sometimes these omissions are marked with asterisks, sometimes not. As a result, the published diary presents a far more secular image of the author than the manuscript journal. In quoting from the diary, I have used the published version where it is accurate; quotes from the original manuscript are indicated as such. Permission to quote from the manuscript courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society. (2.) Diary, 103. (3.) The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , 1977), 14-16; Greven allows some combining of temperaments; 18. (4.) Hochschild distinguishes "emotional labor" from "emotion work," with the former comprising public, paid labor, while the latter is private. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley, 1983), Chaps. 3, 4: 7n. (5.) Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York, 1986), Ch. 2. Although by the late eighteenth century the British deplored sensibility as foolish sentimentalism sen·ti·men·tal·ism n. 1. A predilection for the sentimental. 2. An idea or expression marked by excessive sentiment. sen , the literature of sensibility still sold well in the former colonies. Janet Todd, Sensibility: An introduction (London, 1986), 6-9. (6.) Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992), Ch. 3. Hochschild maintains that even today more "emotion work" as well as "labor" is required in the middle and upper classes; Managed Heart, 20. (7.) Diary, 118. (8.) Diary, 93-4. (9.) Diary, 13. (10.) On the stock phrases and figures of sensibility, see Todd, Sensibility, Introduction. (11.) On the profusion of tears in sentimental literature, see Anne Vincent-Buffault, The History of Tears: Sensibility and Sentimentality Sentimentality Checkers dog given as gift to Nixon; used in his defense of political contributions during presidential campaign (1952). [Am. Hist.: Wallechinsky, 126] Dondi comic strip in which sentimentality is the main motif. in France, trans. Teresa Bridgeman (New York, 1991). (12.) Managed Heart, 35. (13.) Diary, 7. (14.) Emphasis mine. Todd, Sensibility, 143. (15.) As Dr. Johnson told Boswell: "'You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling.'" Fred Kaplan Fred Kaplan is a journalist and contributor to Slate magazine. His "War Stories" column covers international relations and US foreign policy, with a particular focus on criticism of the Bush Administration, and major related geopolitical issues. , Sacred Tears: Sentimentality in Victorian Literature Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837—1901) and corresponds to the Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century. (Princeton, 1989), 51. (16.) Diary, 11, 42, 60. (17.) Diary, 152. (18.) Diary, 83. On the cultivation of melancholy, see G. J. Barker Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), 223. (19.) Jacquelyn C. Miller, "An 'Uncommon Tranquility of Mind': Emotional Self-Control and the Construction of a Middle-Class Identity in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," 29 Journal of Social History (1996): 129-148 emphasizes the importance of emotional self-control in this period as part of middle class culture. (20.) Diary, 56. (21.) Diary, 103. (22.) Jacquelyn Miller emphasizes the conflation (database) conflation - Combining or blending of two or more versions of a text; confusion or mixing up. Conflation algorithms are used in databases. of male/female expression of emotion in her "An 'Uncommon Tranquillity of Mind,'" as does C. Dallett Hemphill, "Class, Gender, and the Regulation of Emotional Expression in Revolutionary-Era Conduct Literature," in Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis, eds., An Emotional History of the United States “American history” redirects here. For the history of the continents, see History of the Americas. The United States of America is located in the middle of the North American continent, with Canada to the north and the United Mexican States to the south. (New York, 1998). 33-51. On the other hand, Carol Z. Steams finds that women, unlike men, were kept in a "sad-submissive mode" into the nineteenth century and were expected to be tearful rather than angry. See her "'Lord Help Me Walk Humbly': Anger and Sadness in England and America, 1570-1750" in Carol Z. Stearns and Peter N. Stearns, eds., Emotion and Social Change; Toward a New Psychohistory psy·cho·his·to·ry n. pl. psy·cho·his·to·ries A psychological or psychoanalytic interpretation or study of historical events or persons: the psychohistory of the Nazi era. (New York, 1988), 58. Sarah Connell Ayer's diary supports the interpretation that male/female emotions remained strongly gendered during the early republic. (23.) I have analyzed the functions of novel reading in fostering female caution in courtship in detail in "'this altogather precious tho wholy worthless book': the Diary of Mary Guion," in Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women, SUNY SUNY - State University of New York Series in Feminist Criticism and Theory, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney and Carol J. Singley, eds. (Albany, 1993), 1-45. (24.) Letter of Sarah Connell to Maria Kittredge, March 13, 1810 in Diary, 372-3. (25.) Carol Zisowitz Stearns and Peter N. Stearns, Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History (Chicago, 1986), 28-33. Hochschild finds that suppressing anger is still largely a women's task; Managed Heart, 163. (26.) Connell to Kittredge letter, Diary, 372. (27.) The Protestant Temperament, Part Four. (28.) By August, 1808, her father's worth was less than half what it was in 1805; 1805 and 1808 tax lists for Newburyport, Peabody Essex Museum The Peabody Essex Museum was founded in 1799 as the East India Marine Society by a group of Salem, Massachusetts, based captains and supercargoes. Members of the Society were required by the society's charter to collect "natural and artificial curiosities" from beyond the Cape of , Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts locale of frenzied assault on supposed witches (1692). [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 442; Am. Lit.: The Crucible] See : Witchcraft . Diary, 87, 138. (29.) Manuscript diary, Vol. II, April 14, 1810. (30.) Diary, 85, 88. (31.) Diary, 3, 39, 84, 43, 173. (32.) Diary, 330; Claude M. Fuess, The Story of Essex County Essex County can refer to:
(33.) "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs 1 (1975): 1-29. The degree to which women and men experienced separate spheres clearly varies by education, class, time, location, and period in one's life, not to mention more idiosyncratic id·i·o·syn·cra·sy n. pl. id·i·o·syn·cra·sies 1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group. 2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity. 3. variables such as personality, number of brothers and sisters and individual purpose. As a wealthy young woman with a boarding school education, no brothers and extensive exposure to sentimentalism, Sarah Connell was more likely to experience this separate world. For a very different example which shows the particular circumstances that influence fluidity between spheres, see my essay "Making a Match in Nineteenth Century New York: The Courtship Diary of Mary Guion," New York History 76 (1995): 153-172. (34.) Diary, 18, 38; manuscript diary, Vol. I, August 20, 1809. (35.) Diary, 92, 103. (36.) Stephen D. Cox, 'The Stranger Within Thee': Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth Century Literature (Pittsburgh, 1980), 63, finds sensibility caught between individualism and "social sympathy," as does Syndy McMillen Conger, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility (Rutherford, 1994), xlvii. Janet Todd believes that it enabled women to "exalt their own sensibility without appearing improperly self-centred." Todd, Sensibility, 60. Arlie Russell Hochschild believes surface and deep acting can lead to a narcissistic nar·cis·sism also nar·cism n. 1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself. See Synonyms at conceit. 2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in or altruistic al·tru·ism n. 1. Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness. 2. Zoology Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species. "false self," with women more likely to fall in the latter category, "not because her sense of self is weaker but because her 'true self' is bonded more securely to the group and its welfare." Managed Heart, 195, 196. (37.) Diary, 35. (38.) Diary, 77, 20. (39.) Although passages have been cut from the manuscript, obscuring the details, her mother's drinking emerges in the July and August, 1810 entries, Volume II. Although close to her father and female friends, Sarah Connell mentioned her mother infrequently. (40.) Hochschild found that shifts in status and roles raised questions about appropriate feeling rules; see Managed Heart, 75n. (41.) Diary, 93. (42.) Diary, 377, 101. (43.) Diary, 124-5. Henry Mackenzie's 1771 novel The Man of Feeling offered a male equivalent of the sentimental heroine. See G. A. Starr, "'Only a Boy': Notes on Sentimental Novels," Genre 10 (1977): 501-27. (44.) Diary, 143. (45.) Diary, 175, 177; manuscript diary, Vol. II, Oct. 20, 1810. Hochschild states as a general principle that superiors possess the right to define inferiors' emotion work; Managed Heart, 84-5. (46.) Diary, 196. (47.) Diary, 82; on the parallels between sensibility and religion, see Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, Ch. 5 and Colin Campbell There have been several notable people named Colin Campbell: in Scottish history:
(48.) Diary, 199. (49.) Diary, 209. (50.) Manuscript diary, Vol. III, April 3, 1817. (51.) Diary, 231, 211. Although Payson was technically a Calvinist, Richard Rabinowitz characterizes his theology as "devotionalism ... or sentimentalism, because it stressed so powerfully the role of emotions in ones religious consciousness." The Spiritual Self in Everyday Life: The Transformation of Personal Religious Experience in Nineteenth-Century New England New England, name applied to the region comprising six states of the NE United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region is thought to have been so named by Capt. (Boston, 1989), 157. (52.) Rev. Asa Cummings, A Memoir of the Rev. Edward Payson, D. D., Late of Portland, Maine (New York, 1830), 51, 33, 242, 246. (53.) "Record of the Second Parish Church. Portland, Me First Century. Copied from the Original," 34, 51, 21, 33, 43, 16. Maine Historical Society, Portland, Maine. (54.) See Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860," American Quarterly American Quarterly (sometimes abbreviated AQ), is an academic journal and the official publication of the American Studies Association. The journal covers topics of both domestic and international concern in the United States and is considered a leading resource in , 18 (1966): 151-175 and her "The Feminization feminization /fem·i·ni·za·tion/ (fem?i-ni-za´shun) 1. the normal development of primary and secondary sex characters in females. 2. the induction or development of female secondary sex characters in the male. of American Religion: 1800-1860," in Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner Lois Wendland Banner, more commonly known as Lois W. Banner, is an American feminist author. She received her Ph.D. at Columbia University. She is the author of the textbook , which is commonly used in introductory Women's Studies college classes. , eds., Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (New York, 1974), 137-157. (55.) My emphasis. Manuscript diary, Vol. IV, Oct. 29, 1827. (56.) Diary, 260, 305. Her post-1815 entries rarely express any affection for Samuel Ayer. (57.) Diary, 377-8. (58.) Jan Lewis, "Mother's Love: The Construction of an Emotion in Nineteenth-Century America," Rima D. Apple and Janet Golden, eds., Mothers and Motherhood: Readings in American History (Columbus, Ohio Columbus is the capital and the largest city of the American state of Ohio. Named for explorer Christopher Columbus, the city was founded in 1812 at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers, and assumed the functions of state capital in 1816. , 1997), 52-71. (59.) Diary, 225, 299. (60.) Diary, 241. (61.) "A Constitution for Maternal Associations," The Mother's Manual, Containing Practical Hints, By a Mother (Boston, 1840), 58, 57. Such associations provided a sentimental solution to the Calvinist problem of depravity; see Richard A. Meckel, "Educating a Ministry of Mothers: Evangelical Maternal Associations, 1815-1860," Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 403-423. (62.) Diary, 231, 215, 237, 226, 213, 294, 273; Jonathan D. Weston, The History of Eastport and Vicinity: A Lecture, Delivered April, 1834, Before the Eastport Lyceum Lyceum, gymnasium near ancient Athens Lyceum (līsē`əm), gymnasium near ancient Athens. There Aristotle taught; hence the extension of the term lyceum to Aristotle's school of philosophers, the Peripatetics. (Boston, 1834). (63.) Diary, 233, 247, 266, 257. (64.) Diary, 234, 246, 258, 289. (65.) Diary, 330. (66.) Diary, 246. (67.) Diary, 252. (68.) Manuscript diary, Vol. V, May 2, 1830. (69.) Samuel preceded her in death in 1832. Her twelve-year-old daughter Harriet died five days before Sarah Connell Ayer, apparently of the same illness; the remaining children lived to maturity. Diary, 377-8. (70.) In her examination of maternal prescriptive literature, Jan Lewis rightfully calls for studies of women's real life experiences to test their response to cultural expectations. Lewis, "Mother's Love," 67. (71.) Greven continues his emphasis on childhood experience in his "The Self Shaped and Misshaped: The Protestant Temperament Reconsidered" in Ronald Hoffman Dr. Ronald Hoffman is an American physician, author, and broadcaster in the United States who hosts Health Talk, a syndicated radio talk show. He is the founder and director of the Hoffman Center in New York City, and is a practitioner of Holistic Medicine. , Mechal Sobel and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly Through A Glass Darkly is an abbreviated form of a much-quoted phrase from the Christian New Testament in 1 Corinthians 13. The phrase is interpreted to mean that humans have an imperfect perception of reality[1]. : Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1997), 348-369. (72.) (New York, 1998), 87, 88. (73.) On the belief that women are naturally emotional, see Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, 27; Hochschild, Managed Heart, 164-5. (74.) Hochschild maintains that a speeding up of "emotional labor" in wage-earning work leads to a sense of being "phony", of not knowing who one really is; Managed Heart, 21. (75.) Manuscript diary, August 22, 1824. |
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