Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Early American Studies) by Rosemarie Zagarri

Author:Rosemarie Zagarri [Zagarri, Rosemarie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2011-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

Female Influence

As the contours of the liberal approach to party conflict took shape, indications suggested that men may not be the best individuals to disseminate the new ideal. Male political leaders had lost the faculty for calm and rational deliberation. Party “passions and prejudices,” remarked one observer, “have so increased in magnitude that their influence seems to bid defiance to the dominion of reason. Cool and passionate disquisitions have given place to the asperity and malignity of party zeal.” These “over-heated politicians,” another commentator noted, had by the strength of their attachment to their party” revealed the weakness, if not total demolition of their intellects.” Caught up in the irascible delirium” and the insane intoxication of party spirit,” said another, men had forgotten about everything, even including their own “self-interest, to say nothing of public welfare.” Nothing could compare in importance with the sharp conflict, and electioneering squabble, excited by the all absorbing question: which of the two political parties should be uppermost?” Men seemed too involved, too distracted, and too passionate to dampen the flames of party conflict and division.23

Women, on the other hand, might be better positioned than men to inculcate the new liberal attitude toward party politics. As Enlightenment thinkers made clear, women, despite their lack of formal political power, could exert a significant influence over society and politics. As many commentators remarked, women had a demonstrable impact on what people said, thought, and did. They affected the spirit of public discourse and the tenor of social relations. They instilled moral values and inspired virtuous behavior in their husbands and children. Their actions propelled society from a state of rudeness to civility. In fact, women's very lack of formal political power might make them the ideal purveyors of the new liberal ideal. Unlike men, they would not be as personally invested in the outcome of the political contests of the day.

By the first decades of the nineteenth century, the notion of women's influence had become a staple in the prescriptive literature of the day, especially in literary periodicals and ladies’ magazines. Women were, according to one New Yorker, “beings of the highest consequence, and on them depends the healthiness or the contagion of social intercourse.” Articles on “female influence” typically made expansive, even extravagant, claims about women's power. “Even in the most polished nations,” declared one periodical, “female influence is the grand mover which actuates the political and the social body.” Although it was a notoriously hard variable to measure, female influence, it was said, “has been infinitely greater than appears in historical records. Wars and revolutions, religious sects and spiritual leaders, often traced their origins to women.” Like the water that fish swim in, women's influence was omnipresent but transparent, invisible to the naked eye.24

A key aspect of women's influence was its indirect nature. “We feel, but we cannot describe the powers by which [women] subdue, captivate, and command,” commented the Lady's Weekly Miscellany. “They are too subtile to be clothed in words, and pass directly to the heart, too rapid even for observation.

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