Spirituality

Why Spirituality?

I chose the word Spirituality instead of Religion for the intent of illustrating the various way in which a sense of the divine influenced the writers of the following passages and quotes. Christianity may have been the dominant religion that was spread throughout the regions these writers were occupying, but there are different branches of Christianity, as with any religion, and the thing they have in common is a connection to the divine through personal morality and understandings spirituality. I chose to place the entries that follow in this category because I think that a kind of spirituality was what was driving these women and was also embodied by their writing. The various pictures that I chose, I did so with purposeful intent to illustrate the affects of what I cannot articulate as I did with the Sexuality and Desire topos.

Phillis Wheatley

“God grant deliverance in his own way and time, and get him honour upon all those whose avarice impels them to countenance and help forward the calamities of their fellow creatures. This I desire not for their hurt, but to convince them of the strange absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so diametrically opposite. How well the cry for liberty, and reverse disposition for the exercise of oppressive power over others to agree-I humbly think not require the penetration of a philosopher to determine.” -Phillis Wheatley “Letter to Samson Occam”

In this letter Phillis Wheatley describes herself as being deeply attached to discourses of freedom and of personal religious liberty as well as liberty from slavery. She writes of how ironic it is that she is around people who believe in such things in the time of the American Revolution, and yet still keep slaves and tolerate the enslavement of so many people. The irony is in her final statement that no philosopher is needed to see the situation she and many others are in. Wheatley wants to point out how ridiculous it is to her that their words do not match their actions. She also invokes a sense of spiritual enlightenment and understanding through her relationship to God with her first sentence. This is important in that spirituality was a good are in which to explore ideas of freedom and liberty.

This relates back to feminist theory in that it is through her interactions with white men that Wheatley's poetry and writings flourished, being raised in the Wheatley home and taught to read and white as well as the encouragement from the Earl of Dartmouth must have impacted how she viewed herself and her circumstances. In writing this, she used her connections with the Wheatley family to write about slavery and criticize a nation that concerned itself with liberty from tyranny, but hypocritically had slaves. She engages in a discourse that not many could and becomes a cultural mediator between slavery and the American Revolution. Within a society where Wheatley had little to no legal legitimacy, she found a way in which to assert who own agency, and was helped along the way by the men in her life who acted as mentors and advocates.

Hannah Dustan

“...Hannah Dustan as fashioned by Mather was the model of the captive woman as victor since she proved herself physically, intellectually, and spiritually superior by killing, outwitting, and exemplifying Puritanism's power over the Indians” - Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola “Women's Indian Captivity Narratives”

Zabelle's words remind us of how women's strength and women's agency was viewed not all that long ago. In Hannah Dustan's “A Notable Exploit” the author writes about a raid by the Abenaki Indians upon Hannah Dustan's home and town and how she and a few others were captured and carried away. They remained captive for some time and then turned upon and killed most of their captors after hearing that they would be put through the Gauntlet. After killing the Abenakis, they scalped them, and returned with their trophies and received money and praise for winning their freedom. Dustan's narrative is told in a way that exemplifies her role in the story as a victor over savagery.

The aspects of Dustan's narrative that I found to be the most interesting in relation to feminist theory were how both of the women had similar stories, and also how their stories were transcribed and used in ways that made them become models for a type of woman that was desired by their communities. We rely heavily, as people, on race, gender, class, and nation to categorize people. There is a need underlining human nature to have these categories in place to answer the question of where one falls in the scheme of things. Order is kept by keeping these in place, but it is an order made through the oppression of some peoples and the betterment of others. Women in particular have their bodies used as symbols to keep people in their place, and Dustan's body was literally used in the depiction of her in two different statues where she is represented as a pioneer woman, strong and able to free herself from savagery, and using the righteous wrath of God to correct injustice. Spirituality is invoked heavily here in implying that Dustan was the perfect model of womanly liberty, as posited by the men who wrote down her account. Her sense of superiority over the native peoples is proved through her relationship to God.

Judith Sargent Murray

“And by the lordly sex to us consign'd;

They rob us of the power t'improve,

And then declare we only trifles love;

Yet haste the era, when the world shall know,

That such distinctions only dwell below;

The soul unfetter'd, to no sex confin'd,

Was for the abodes of cloudless day design'd.”

-Judith Sargent Murray “On the Equality of the Sexes”

Sargent Murray's writing is drawing from the discussions from her time period about the soul and gender. We can read her work as the “lordly sex” being male, and given divine rights and superiority by god. Men, she writes, then look down upon women for not being intelligent, and only caring for trifles, perhaps novels, romance, and beauty. Her next words envisage a world where women are seen as the equals of men, because their souls are not denied the right to enlightenment and their oppressions only happen on earth. In this way, she illustrates how ridiculous it is, when in death, are are equal, but in life, women do not get even half a chance to improve themselves.

The aspect of Murray's works that I found to be the most interesting were how the education women receive did not best serve them in life. I would argue that this is still a relevant subject in Feminism today. Education for the sexes is now mandatory up to a certain age in this country, and is supposedly equal in terms of who receives the most attention. This is true in regards to laws and rules set by institutions, if not in practice. Women are far more likely to be interrupted and ignored than men in a group of people, and men are far more likely to be called upon to talk in a formal setting and listened to seriously. Furthermore, women are still encouraged towards the more creative side of education, and men encouraged in math and science. In addition to these subtle prejudices, there are other forms of

education that take place outside of the formal classroom setting. Pop culture and the media, not to mention heteronormative family dynamics and structures, all encourage women to be wives, mothers, and to fall in love with love. Women are also encouraged to mind their appearance far more than men, and are judged to such an extent by societal norms that women themselves become their own cruelest critics. Not to mention the hypocrisy of living in a so called “age of equality” when women are not evenly represented throughout government, the business sector, and academia, despite women making up over half of the total population. 

Crosslisted Entries with Spirituality

-Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz “ A Philosophical Satire: She proves the inconsistency of the caprice and criticism of men who accuse women of what they cause”

-Susanna Rowson “Slaves in Algiers; or, A Struggle for Freedom”