Literary Ladies and The Calliopean: English Studies at the Burlington Ladies’ Academy (1846–1851)

ANNA SONSER Literary Ladies and The Calliopean: English Studies at the Burlington Ladies' Academy (1846-1851) '0 Horrors! Not a word yet,' exclaimed Maria as, exasperated, she threw her pencil and paper across the room, with an air of desperation ... 'But I don't care what' any body says - not all the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero combined, could convince me that composition writing is fit for girls ... a great literary lady I shall make; why the very thought is enough to give one the horrors. Of all W1fortunate beings, a literary lady, I think, most deserves our pity.' (Calliopean [18471: 3) In August of 1847 the young women of the Burlington Ladies' Academy (BLA) in Hamilton set themselves an ambitious task, namely to write, edit, and publish a literary periodical which J. Scott, former editor of the Christian Guardian, would welcome as 'the first publication of the kind Canada has produced or rather, which the accomplished daughters of Canada have presented to the public' (Calliopean, 16). Intended as a vehicle to raise funds for the Library at the Burlington Academy, the semi-monthly Calliopean, which commanded a yearly subscription of one dollar to be paid in advance, published original combinations of essays~ poetry, and fiction. Predating the onset of Arnoldian humanism or the debates of Huxley and Ruskin, the Academy endeavoured to deliver a 'literary and moral education' (Booker, 102), the combination of which stands to influence our own emerging perceptions of the evolutionary process of university level literary studies. A relatively early experiment in women's education in Ontario, the Academy addressed the issue of literary studies unencumbered by 'masculine' versions of the discipline. The Academy was intent not upon reproducing the classical training associated with men's education but rather upon exploiting literature's spiritually edifying elements in order to produce a source of teachers, accomplished wives, and morally exemplary mothers (Prentice, 110). Consequently, the women of the Academy were able to escape what Sarah Delarnont, labels the 'double conformity' (Delamont, 140) of women~s education in the last century, evading the dictates of the dominant male cultural and educational system as well as preSCribed feminine behaviours. While firmly ensconced in their separate sphere, they were able to pursue what was still considered by educational authorities a dubious object of study, suitable UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 64, NUMBER 3, SUMMER 1995 THE CALLIOPEAN 369 only to the weaker sex and the lower classes. Egerton Ryerson, who sat on the examination committee of the BLA, felt it necessary to argue strenuously in 1842 for the study of English language and literature at Victoria College where it 'should, therefore, occupy a leading, as well as a primary place, in the education of our youth' (Ryerson, 10-11), As Henry Hubert has documented, the debate between the Anglican and Scottish models of curriculum, the classics versus the vernacular, raged late into the nineteenth century. Prevailing beliefs persisted that the study of English 'was considered utilitarian and middle-class ... lithe poor man's classics'" (Hubert, 116). Standing outside this debate, the English curriculum at the BLA, with its shifting and inconsistent boundaries, generated exceptional consequences. The students of the Academy took serious enough interest in literature to establish their own 'paper' wherein the comparatively racy lives and texts of a Madame de Stael and Letitia Landon were open for consideration under a regular column entitled 'Literary Ladies.' Original compositions were solicited from the two hundred students attending the Academy, texts which carry traces of the progressive aspects of the mid-nineteenth century's public and politicalhfe (Murray, 437). Sending often surprising and necessarily contradictory messages, the papers of the Academy and the Calliopean allow for a reconsideration of our own conceptions of the genealogy of English in both a colonial and patriarchal context. Although a non-sectarian organization, the Academy was a reconstituted version of the coeducational Methodist Upper Canada Academy of Cobourg, which offered a Female Department as early as 1836, known as the Cobourg Ladies' Seminary. Cobourg reverted to an all-male institution , Victoria College, in Toronto in 1842 with Egerton Ryerson at the helm. In Odober 1845, the BLA opened its doors in Hamilton under the direction...