Where does Bagley fit?

A few thoughts (without any particular claim to coherence) on Sarah Bagley as I read further into her own words and the literature on women's rhetoric:

1) Is it more historically and textually accurate to look at Bagley as primarily a labor activist? That, consciously or unconsciously, agitating for labor was a priori to women's rights agitation (i.e., to what extent would the vote have been useful if women laborers had no time in which to exercise it?) However, this is not to say that her gender was absented (in fact, it might have found expression through absence) from her rhetoric, rather it played into a rights talk that strategically emphasized labor rights over women's rights. Perhaps Bagley had to choose (I use this word very, very tentatively) which to emphasize, and she chose the former. But, if she strategically chose the former, How? Why?

2) Building off point #1, to what extent does Bagley fit into a line of women that includes Mother Jones and Emma Goldman, rather than Angelina Grimke, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony?

3) There appears to be a dialectical tension between Bagley as labor reformer and Bagley as woman. How does this compare to women who agitated primarily for rights other than women's rights? This poses an interesting problem: One the one hand, such a woman would be a de facto feminist by virtue of her existence and rhetorical style (for breaking gender norms, speaking on behalf of herself and class, advocating in public). But on the other hand, such a woman would be anti-feminist based on substantive content (women as lowly servants to men in their joint(?) goals).

4) Perhaps these three points lead to an additional reason, aside from a possible class bias, that resulted in the exclusion of Bagley from the women's rhetoric canon. Was her contradictory position as lower-class, laborer and woman responsible for her exclusion? In this case, I'm wondering if something along the lines of W.E.B. Du Bois' double consciousness is at work here? (And in what ways that phenomenon has lead to the exclusion of other women from the feminist canon, most notably non-white women--see especially bell hooks).

5) Most controversially: To what extent has the study of women's rhetoric suffered from the constraints of canonization--a process that has virtually eliminated the presence of Sarah Bagley? With few exceptions, does Bagley's rhetoric demonstrate how class has been suppressed by historical and contemporary understandings of feminist rhetoric? Are we being tyrannized by the canon? Or is it just a blind spot?

Any thoughts?

Walter Benjamin on Writing

A little inspiration from Walter Benjamin as the semester becomes more and more writing intensive. These days I find myself thinking about #6. I always find #7 oddly encouraging.

The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

1. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

2. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

3. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

4. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

5. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

6. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

7. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

8. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

9. Nulla dies sine linea -- but there may well be weeks.

10. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

11. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

12. Stages of composition: idea -- style -- writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

13. The work is the death mask of its conception.

Sarah G. Bagley on Religion and the Laboring Class

"...They attend church as much--nay more than could be expected, under all the circumstances. If they should not go to church at all, they would be quite excusable, and if at the day of retribution the operatives of our country should be found guilty of a want of religious devotion, how much more will the teachers of religion have need of repentance and forgiveness for their sanction of the system which disqualifies them to attend church and cultivate the spirit of the gospel.

"It will be said, that we are infidel to offer an apology for a neglect to attend church? We are aware that the operatives are rapidly verging to infidelity to the religion that lays heavy burdens upon their shoulders, that it will not remove with one of its fingers. Is it strange that the operatives should stay away from the churches where they see the men filling the 'chief seats,' who are taking every means to grind them into the very dust, and have no sympathy with them, and look upon them only as inanimate machines, made to subserve their interests?"

Voice of Industry, May 6, 1846

Something interesting is going on here. Many reform movements founded and organized by 19th century women have found their rallying call in/through religion, yet in the quote above Bagley insists that religion is in some way anathema (too strong a word?) to the interests of the laboring classes. In fact, instead of using religion to call for labor reform, she appears to be using the condition of labor to call for religious reform.

Any thoughts?

Historical Context – Sarah Bagley and Labor Reform

Writing in 1845, Reverend Henry A. Miles described the working conditions of the female Lowell Factory laborers. “From the boarding-houses to the mills are laid side-walks of brick and stone, for the comfort of the operatives in wet and muddy walking,” says Miles. “The mills themselves are kept of uniform temperature, being heated in cold weather either by steam, or by hot-air furnaces. The rooms are lofty, are well ventilated, and are kept as free from dust as is possible, while the machinery is carefully boxed, or otherwise secured against accidents”.[1] However, at one point in his description, Miles is forced to confront some of the apparently negative descriptions of factory life that were then circulating. After appropriately detailing some of the seeming objections to his glowing report, Miles can only conclude:

A walk through our mills must convince one, by the generally healthy and robust appearance of the girls, that their condition is not inferior, in this respect, to other working classes of their sex. Certainly, if multitudes of them went home to sicken and die, equal multitudes of their sisters and neighbors would not be very eager to take the fatal stations which were deserted. The united testimony of these girls themselves, of the matrons of their boarding-houses, and of the physicians of the city, can be reconciled with only one conclusion, and that only the prejudiced and designing will resist.[2]

It is not unlikely that Miles had in mind someone much like, if not particularly, Sarah G. Bagley. President and founding member of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, as well as the first female labor activist, Bagley’s perceptions of life in the mills was much different.[3] Perhaps she, too, had someone like Miles in mind when she said:

There is not a man in [the] community who would not blush to say in view of the physical organization of the female operative, that the laws of health are necessarily and unavoidably violated by them every day, in various ways. The long hours of labor, the short time allowed for meals, and the large number who occupy the sleeping and sitting apartments, all go to prove that physical inability must be the result. There is no time or accommodation for bathing in their sleeping apartments, a practice that has been deemed as necessary to health, as food or sleep, by the physiologists of our day. With but a few moments of time allowed to take their food, which is swallowed without being half masticated, and the pores of the skin being encrusted, or nearly so with cotton dust, it is not strange that so many of their number fall a prey to consumption, and find an early grave.[4]

From these accounts emerge two very different versions of the life of the women that have come to be known as the Lowell Mill Girls. Both accounts are indicative of a battle in Lowell over the definition of the conditions and nature of the woman workers who labored in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. However, due to Lowell’s prominence in the factory scene at large, as well as the nascent labor reform movement that extended from Lowell into other New England states, these local disputes over the nature of workers in Lowell come to participate in a much larger dispute over the nature of labor reform generally. Lowell may provide the particular entrance into this rhetoric of reform, but the rhetoric in turn speaks to a generalized battle over the place of work and women in society, a battle in which women played a key role.

No Text for my Context

I’ve narrowed down my time and location (1834-1845, Lowell, MA), however I’m still having trouble coming up with an artifact to analyze. The difficulty with analyzing the strikes of 1834 and 1836 is the lack of a clearly identifiable artifact, at least that I’ve been able to locate. And at this point doing archival research isn’t really an option (anyone want to fly me to Massachusetts?) What I have been able to find is the petition the women circulated, a document about unions that they attached to the petition, and a newspaper article referencing the second strike. Part of me wonders if I’m looking in the right place. And if I am, have I found enough to analyze?

I’m still interested in The Lowell Offering generally, but I think it is another project. On the one hand, it offers an excellent look into the creative output of mid-18^th century, working women. In a way, it reminds me of Jacques Ranciere’s work in The Nights of Labor. And in fact, his historical analysis provides a useful (and perhaps novel) way of looking at the Offering. However, it lacks an apparently obvious connection to the labor agitation that was occurring in the Lowell Mills, and for this project I’m largely interested in engaging labor movement history.

Having said that, I think I have found an artifact that allows me to touch on the Offering and the labor movement—but I’m just now considering it. The potential object of study is an exchange between Sarah Bagley, editor of the woman’s section of the Voice of Industry and founding member of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (who one researcher claims is the first female labor organizer in the U.S.—though I’m going to need to do some more digging to verify it) and the former editor of the Offering, Harriet Farley (or Harriot F. Curtis—I don’t have the name in front of me). The exchange takes place in the letter-to-the-editor section of Industry (I believe), in which Bagley accuses Farley of establishing an editorial policy that favored views held by the mill industrialists, while neglecting a pro-worker stance. The exchange is insightful as it can be read as a theoretical-political dispute. However, unlike the usual theoretical-political disputes that were taking place between intellectual-elites in the labor movement, this dispute features members of the working class. I need to examine it further before I can legitimately make that claim, but I think something interesting might be going on.

I’m still working through this, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

Choosing a Topic and Narrowing it Down

My research interests, conceived very (very) broadly, are centered around (re)theorizing the possibilities for social change. The question I've started to formulate around this (and where rhetoric comes home to play, especially regarding invention) is: What kinds of public rhetoric (and/or discourse) produce the possibilities for radical social change? How do they do it? So, I'm looking for a case study that will contribute to that research agenda (recognizing the necessity for other, more specific research questions once I select the particular* artifact for this paper).

So, with those general interests in mind, I need to come up with a case study for this specific course. To help narrow it down, I’ve come up with several criteria. The case study should 1) be an example of social change (failed or realized), 2) be historical, 3) have a clearly delineated text of some sort that is available for criticism (meaning, I want to have something a little more concrete for this project).

The other day I met with Dr. Poirot and she and I discussed several possibilities. One possibility she mentioned was looking at the Lowell Mill Girls Strikes of 1834 and 1836. As early examples of women’s organizing, the strikes provide an opportunity to look at the intersections of gender and class. I’ve been doing some reading about the surrounding time period, and found particularly interesting a monthly magazine called The Lowell Offering, that included poetry, essays, short stories, etc., written by the Lowell Mill Girls. This topic gives me a couple of directions. I could choose to look at discourses immediately surrounding the historical strike, or alternatively I could start looking through the Offering, started four years after the second strike, and see how these women’s reflections on the strike (maybe there are reflections?) help influence/orient our understanding of early female attempts at social change, and what the broader implications are for that understanding. So, still a lot more narrowing to do, but I think I've found a starting point.

Having said that, I implore you for comments and suggestions.

*I'm feeling very self-conscious about using this word after our discussion in class today. Lol.

A Brief Description

Elizabeth Cady Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions to the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York in July of 1848. The text is designed to parallel an earlier declaration penned in 1776: The Declaration of Independence. The Sentiments and Resolutions provides a list of injuries—15 in total—that men have perpetrated on women. It then offers a series of 12 resolutions, the implementation of which would help to eliminate the “absolute tyranny” of men over women. The enumeration of the injuries produces an overwhelming effect on the reader. As the accumulation of offenses are stacked on one another, line by line, those offense also come to weigh heavily on the reader’s mind. The list of resolutions produces a similar effect, in which the weight of the work required to correct the injustices weighs heavier and heavier as each resolution is read.

Much like the text it imitates, the tone of the Sentiments and Resolutions is strident and sweeping. However, though the Sentiment’s most obvious characteristic is its similarity to the Declaration of Independence, its most striking characteristic is the manner in which it departs from its precursor—a departure that can be read as a critical failure. This failure functions to expose the failures of the Declaration of Independence. Namely, that by excluding women, the Declaration did not stand up to its own declared principles. Evidence of this omission appears quickly in the document, beginning in the second sentence. Where the Declaration posits “that all men are created equal,” the Sentiments and Resolutions declares “that all men and women are created equal.” This maneuver exposes the word men as a non-inclusive term. By placing the word women next to men, the document draws attention to the exclusivity of men (both the Declaration’s writers and those honored with its rights), as well as the Declaration’s own failure to extend equal protection to all people in the United States.