“The Caprices of an Undisciplined Fancy”: Using Blame to Negotiate the “betweens” of Ethos via the Epideictic

Abstract

Building on the scholarship of Nedra Reynolds, Dale Sullivan, and recent feminist scholars writing on ethos, this article argues that blame is a vehicle that rhetors can use to enhance their ēthē. Specifically, this article shows that blame can modify social mores when used by an ethically strong rhetor who censures another individual with a strong ethos. To make this argument, this article considers the rhetoric of a nineteenth-century French-American Catholic Sister living at the intersection of various worlds, as the article illustrates how she, when challenged by an American bishop, used a rhetoric of blame to further enhance her ethos.

Notes

1 I would like to thank Rhetoric Review reviewers—Jane Donawerth, Lynee Gaillet, and Carolyn Skinner—for their insightful comments on my earlier draft. Additionally, I would like to thank Martha Cheng and Suzanne Bordelon for our writing group that has lasted long beyond RSAs “Career Retreat.” Finally, I am grateful for Sr. Mary Ryan for her friendship and archival assistance.

2 Throughout this article, I refer to the group commonly known as “nuns” as either women religious or sisters.

3 The letter I analyze in detail is a much published translation from the French by nineteenth-century Sister of Providence Mary Eudoxie Marshall (Guérin, Journals xiv). The handwritten original also remains preserved in the archives. Because I do not know the identity or credibility of this translator, I had two French scholars and colleagues, Milan Kovacovic and Dana Lindaman, verify the quality of the translation. Though it would be ideal if the examined letter were not a translation, the importance of Guérin’s situation and the need to consider women’s texts warrant the letter’s study. I invite scholars of French rhetoric to study the letter and to add to my analysis with their knowledge of the language.

4 It was not uncommon for women to join orders of sisters after giving birth; however, in so doing, their relationships with their children after joining the orders were uncertain.

5 See Mattingly for more regarding women religious in the U.S.

6 The Pope’s formal approval, however, did not come until 1843.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabethada A. Wright

Elizabethada A. Wright is a Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies where she has served as Writing Program Administrator since 2013. Her research focuses on how people in marginalized groups find voice in a world that seeks to deny them that voice. She has published in many periodicals and collections of essays.