Mary Lincoln: non-feminist?

[Linda Anderson]

You can get a sense of what educated women in the 19th century (as well as the 20th century) had to face in the following passage from Fanny Seward's diary written when she was eighteen. "Mr. Browning, with his wornout notions of man, the chief end of woman—quite provoked me" but she did not tell him she wanted to be a writer because she also had "a horror of appearing to class myself with the blue-stocking number."

Fanny did have strong female role models in her life like Charlotte Cushman and Dorothea Dix whom she wished to emulate but it takes a certain type of personality to buck society's expectations of how women should live their lives. I wish she had recorded what her father said in response to Mr. Browning!


"Smithsonian Institute. Left some cards which were due, at differ-
ent houses. Senator Browning of Ill. Dined with us, en famille.
At dinner Father told him that twenty, (he meant eighteen)
years ago, he had his life insured to provide something for
my maintenance when I grew up. He h did not want me
to marry some scamp & be ill-treated. Mr. Browning thought
young ladies ^though not thinking too much of it^ ought to look forward to marriage as a
desirable event. Father thought it was a great risk &
chance, that even marriage for love was as likely to prove
unhappy as not, for at my age I would not be
capable of understanding the charades of any man.
He wished to provide for my ^future^ comfort independent
of any consideration of marriage. Mr. Browning thought
it was best for young ladies to be married and not be
left alone—but our sisters and brothers ^will^ would marry &
leave us. "Some of them will and some of them won't" said
Father looking at Augustus with a smile. Mr. Brown-
ing, with his wornout notions of man, the chief end of
woman—quite provoked me. It was on the end of
my tounge (sic) to say that in case of necessity I thought I
would be able to support myself—but as he might have
asked how? And I should have had to say something
of my hopes of writing, I thought best to be silent. I
have a horror of appearing to class myself with the blue-
stocking number. So I kept still, and Father maintain-
ed the woman side better than I would have done. How
great a contrast were his generous and manly senti-
ments, compared with the conceited old notions of Mr. B."

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?p...&Print=497