Reading the traveling exhibition show: “Massachusetts Magazine” and the visual /verbal construction of the American woman

Beverly Jean Reed, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation utilizes the motif of the traveling exhibition show in order to analyze how the Massachusetts Magazine (1789–96) participated in the cultural discussion regarding the construction of the American woman in the new nation. Although others have focused on the role of women in America (i.e., “Republican Motherhood”), I assert that whatever situation a woman found herself in—single, married, widowed—there were bodily standards that cut across these roles and applied to all women. Both the visual and verbal elements of the exhibits that appear in this magazine reveal that the body of this ideal national type was based on scientific theories of race and gender which, in turn, determined a woman's position in the new nation. Chapter one analyzes how Massachusetts Magazine was linked with other cultural institutions such as Charles Willson Peale's American Museum in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and provided readers with legitimized ways of viewing bodies on display. Chapter two examines how eighteenth-century scientists viewed the body through a racialized gaze that assumed the superiority of European and Anglo-American whiteness, and how they sought to contain non-white races through their classification systems. It is upon these scientific findings that the racial construction of the American woman was founded. As evidenced in the Massachusetts Magazine, Chapter three analyzes how the racialized body was further bifurcated into distinctive gender types and how the ways in which a woman adorned her body contributed an additional layer of meaning to her classification. Since she was linked to the body politic and the stability of the new nation, scientists and educators also debated how the American woman could regulate her body. Chapter four focuses on this debate and how contributors to the Massachusetts Magazine proposed that self-control required women to receive a social and academic education. These proposals, however, were influenced by racial assumptions. Although the bodies of white women were endowed with the potential for self-control, non-white women were judged as having neither the potential nor the ability to control their bodies due to their racial identity.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Oreovicz, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature|American studies|Womens studies|Mass media

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