“A Maturity of Thought Very Rare in Young Girls”: Women’s Public Engagement in Nineteenth-Century High School Commencement Essays

Abstract

Though largely debarred from public rhetorical performance as adult women, young women in the nineteenth-century US received rhetorical training and performed their original compositions before large public audiences as high school students. Their access to the academic platform stemmed in part from their politically contained position as students and “girls” in this context. But students used these opportunities to intervene in political debates and to comment on their experiences as women and students. These rhetorical interventions represent an important part of our rhetorical history, shedding light on a significant rhetorical opportunity for many young women across the US.

Notes

¹ Thanks very much to RR readers Vicki Tolar Burton and Lynée Lewis Gaillet for their careful readings and thoughtful comments in the revision and publication of this article. Thanks also to my UofL writing group, Andrea Lunsford and my 2014 RSA Research Network group, and Karen Kopelson for their valuable feedback and support.

² Notably, schoolgirls also had opportunities to intervene in public discourse through the Educational section of the Courier (established in 1866), which published student essays, educational news and editorials. Grammar school students used their theme-writing assignments to refute the arguments of a local citizen against educating women, and their essays produced an ongoing debate in this section for the next six months. Though this engagement was similarly contained (within the Educational section), these deliberative essays also had a broad public audience.

³ Six other students graduated that year as well. It is unclear why only these three were reprinted and discussed, though it is likely because they were considered the best. It should also be noted that, for whatever reason, 1860 is the only year for which student essays were included in a school board report.

⁴ It may be of interest to the historian to note that these essays appeared in the report in a different order: Radcliffe (Butler), Burke (Howard), Gibbons. I have chosen to present the essays in order of increasingly challenging interventions to suit the argument of this piece.

⁵ Quackenbos’s Advanced Course is listed in the Annual Report of 1860 as the rhetorical text for both Female and Male during this school year. Textbook adoptions from earlier years are unavailable.

⁶ For example, Burke read from Longfellow’s “Miles Standish” at the 1864 commencement ceremony.

⁷ Though reprints of this piece circulated elsewhere, Gibbons’s reference to the “amorous swain of six years,” suggests that her source is the 1854 edition of Yankee Notions. Despite the fact that the term swain refers to a male suitor, Gibbons is referring to the fictional author “Kathrun.”

⁸ Though it is unclear how Gibbons died, it may have been related to illness contracted at Female High School. In his report of 1862, the year after Gibbons’s death, Superintendent Morris could have been referring to Gibbons when he reported that so many students were getting ill from the school, sometimes fatally, that “the statement has become very current in our community, that we are only educating young ladies to graduate and die” (Annual Report [1862] 17–18). He used this fact to lobby for a new school building for Female.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy J. Lueck

Amy J. Lueck is a doctoral fellow in Rhetoric and Composition at University of Louisville. Her dissertation, “‘A Polished, Practical, or Profound Education’: The Negotiation of (Gendered) Literacies and Higher Learning in Louisville’s First Free Public High Schools, 1856–1896,” is an archival project that investigates nineteenth-century high schools as they negotiated the means and ends of providing higher education to an increasingly diverse and expanding body of learners. Her work has appeared in Kairos, Currents in Electronic Literacy, and a number of edited collections. She can be reached at [email protected].