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Abstract
This dissertation examines intertextual and epistolary connections between women writing in the late eighteenth century in America and in the “mother country” of England, providing an expansive view of transatlantic cultural exchange in the Revolutionary and Federalist periods. The title comes from a letter by Mercy Otis Warren, the early American historian and essayist, addressed to the British historian Catharine Macaulay, in which Warren rails against the “fresh instances of venality…from the corrupted fountain” of British government that was flowing into the American colonies. My overarching argument is that such transatlantic connections mean we cannot simply separate the two countries in literary studies; indeed, without including transnational issues any study of the early national period would be incomplete.
My work contributes to American studies by searching out the beginnings of literature and national thought in relationship to its British roots, by illustrating original American contributions to ideas about nation, and especially by emphasizing neglected women writers. I employ post-colonial theory as discussed by Ernest Renan, Homi Bhabha, and Benedict Anderson to emphasize the fluid nature of “national” boundaries. This research extends the recent surge in scholarly interest on transatlantic topics by examining how the written word crossed national boundaries while creating them.
I propose three different models of transatlantic study to facilitate a study of early American culture and literature, and it is in these three separate groupings of women writing that I suggest methods for transatlantic studies to move forward. My first chapter compares the work, lives, and interchange of historians Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren. The next focuses on revolutionary notions of liberty and the role of women in re-visioning the Western world, with Judith Sargent Murray and Mary Wollstonecraft representing their respective countries and cultures. The third chapter considers the richly symptomatic “body” of Susanna Rowson, meaning both her person and her work, as she traversed the Atlantic in search of economic success and professional stability.
