Protocols Of Reading In The 1800's Case Study

Protocols of Reading in the Mid 1800’s There is nothing better than devouring a good book. We hungrily flip through pages, possibly even just scan the text purely to see what action lies ahead. However, in the 19th century, protocols of reading were much different than our current practices. Books, magazines and newspapers were seen as precious and it was a treat to be able to read for a few minutes at night. The cultural context of the 1850’s will be crucial in order to determine common practices of reading, especially in women. The female reader was treated very differently than their male counterpart. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin will be used as a case study to examine the role of not only the female reader, but the female
writer as well. The 1850’s proved to be a trying time for female readers yet, a very exciting and interesting time as well. Women were now added to the social, political and economic changes that characterized their time. The time period of 1820-1860 saw a nation that rose out of the American Revolution and we ready for a change. Developments in transportation and electronic communication allowed information to reach residents more rapidly than ever before. It was all of a sudden important to have a self-identity and crucial for Americans to “make something” of themselves. “The ability to send information quickly, and to receive a rapid response to that information, had a profound effect on readers within the nation and on the nation itself” (Brown 98). Although citizens of the 19th century were not able to tear through books as fast as we are today, scholarship and print culture were becoming much more accessible to the average American. The conventional American home in the Antebellum Era had very strict protocols for reading.
Even if a home did have varied texts to read, finding the time proved to be difficult. “Those of us who are determined to live like human beings and require food for mind as well as body, are obliged to take time from sleep to gratify this desire” (Flint 193). Chores and daily duties had to be completed first and reading was a last priority. As this quote explains, if one had a desire to expand the mind, time would have commonly been taken from their nightly sleep. Reading was a recreation, not on occupation or necessity. Girls or women could get some reading done in a parlor while they were sewing and someone was reading aloud. They were sometimes asked to write down words they did not know the meaning to while listening to the reader. But it was important that they were always ready to take callers. An interesting observation from girls in the 19th century was that they often could not decipher what reading was part of their lessons and what reading was purely recreational. Authors such as Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens were considered family favorites however, they could have also been seen as scholastically
valid. Mothers were primarily in charge of teaching their children to read (no matter how many times they were interrupted during the day with their household duties). “A number of reminiscences confirm the prevalent assumptions made in advice manuals and in many reviews: that a girl’s reading was primarily dependent on her mother’s choice and guidance” (Flint 194). Different types of books were considered suitable for girls or for boys and were doled out accordingly by their parents.
1848 signified the beginning of the American Women’s Movement. Females were gaining notoriety in the scholarship arena and their male counterparts could not look the other way. Additionally, the women’s movement and antislavery had clear congruencies. “Readers would have found many parallels between the rhetoric of antislavery and the rhetoric of women’s rights, and there was an ongoing crosspollination of people and ideas between the two movements” (Brown 109). In fact, women used the platform of “American” principles to argue for both slave rights and women’s rights and what it meant to be American. They disputed that what America was founded upon supported an equal society for all citizens. Founders knew that the only way they could appeal to the white, rich men was to use the texts that they themselves created (i.e. The Declaration of Independence). This tactic did prove to be effective however, slavery stood in the way of an undoubtedly divided nation. In the mid-19th century, women took particular interest in magazines and letters. “The notion of a separate “women’s magazine” gained purchase in the 1840’s and 1850’s involved the commercial imperative of crafting and defined readership, and so gender ideology and a separate women’s magazine culture became mutually reinforcing” (Gilding 156). Although many of these magazines were not necessarily marked as a “women’s” magazine, the readership was clear. Women used magazines as an outlet to express sentimentalities alongside of their readers. For example, if the author was feeling the emotion of grief, she imposed that feeling on her reader as well. “If the magazine could preserve the editor’s sentiments, then, it could also preserve and make plan the relationships that underscored the circulation on the text, between editors, editors and subscribers, and editors and contributors" (Gilding 160). The goal of many of these magazines was to make the material familiar and relatable to the common female reader of the Antebellum era. In addition to magazines, letters played a fundamental role in preserving sentiments. Everyday women would write to magazines and get their letters published. “For many nineteenth-century women letters were surrogates for visits, occasions when information on thoughts and feelings enable friends and relatives to nurture emotional relationships” (Gilding 163). Also, the connection between magazines and letters cannot be ignored. Many “women’s” magazines were compiled of letters written for women by women. Advice manuals were also prevalent and sometimes even functioned as a substitute for a parent. Mothers would sometimes read them aloud to their children or read them to learn how to deal with their children. Feminine literature greatly varied from their male counterparts.
Men enjoyed writing and reading about life at the high seas or the torturous days on the battle fields. Although women did commonly write about family life, emotions or feelings, it would be unfair to claim that women only wrote sentimental texts. Authors such as Chopin, Wharton, Cather and Gilman stretched the limits of sentimental texts and incorporated universal truths. “Women with literary ambition recognized that asserting the aesthetic value of their work depended on refusing what was perceived as the narrow, sentimental focus on home, hearth, and virtue” (Nolan 571). The women listed above knew they had to go beyond established stigmas, and stretch their boundaries to fit into the literary canon.

Works Cited
Brown, Matthew D. "Reading and National Identity: 1820-1860." Cultural History of Reading. Westport: Greenwood, 2009. 97-131. Print.
Flint, Kate. "Reading Practices." The Woman Reader 1837-1914. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. 187-249. Print.
Gilding, A. L.."Preserving Sentiments: American Women's Magazines of the 1830s and the Networks of Antebellum Print Culture." American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism 23.2 (2013): 156-171. Project MUSE. Web. 14 Apr. 2016.
Nolan, Elizabeth. "The Woman's Novel beyond Sentimentalism." The Cambridge History of The American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 571-85.
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