Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

History

Advisor

Kathleen McCarthy

Committee Members

David Reynolds

Helena Rosenblatt

Subject Categories

History

Keywords

periodical, author, editor, literature, republicanism

Abstract

This dissertation examines the interplay of ambition and gender in the pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book under the editorship of Sarah Josepha Hale during the antebellum period bracketed by the Panic of 1837 and the start of the Civil War. In it, I argue that contrary to longstanding assumptions about the primacy of ambition during this time, the meaning and value of ambition was hotly contested, frequently by the middle-class, white, native-born women who published in, and were the primary intended readers of, Godey’s Lady’s Book. Against a background of profound political, economic, and social instability, and possessed of very few tools with which to protect themselves against financial loss and downward social mobility, these women denounced ambition as brash, speculative, self-aggrandizing, and focused on self-enrichment. They urged American women and men to prioritize the public good rather than pursue individual gain, to embrace simplicity, frugality, independence, and integrity, and eschew decadence, dependence, and luxury consumption. They did so by claiming the mantle of republicanism from the Revolutionary generation, not only as wives and mothers, but as central figures in the national marketplace of ideas, via popular periodicals – and none were more popular than Godey’s Lady’s Book. This strategy met with very partial success: Hale succeeded in using her position at Godey’s to encourage women into the literary marketplace as paid professionals, and she and her fellow native-born, middle-class, white women authors successfully articulated a vision of acceptable, genteel American ambition that was covert, uncompetitive, hard-working, conservative, and patriotic. This vision penetrated nineteenth century American culture to a remarkable extent and achieved a notably durable degree of popular consent – but it was, and remains, a vision of women’s ambition. Ultimately, men’s ambitions would not be confined by the same strictures that confined women’s ambitions, and thus the foundation of the double bind that women experience to this day was laid in place.

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