She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America

Chapter 1. Reading

31  Chapter 1 Reading At its heart,this is a book about women reading— white women and black women; mothers and daughters; with men and with other women; in urban and rural locales; amid housework, child care, jobs, and other time commitments. And it is about women reading something specific: Shakespeare. A remarkable cache of material survives about these women readers of Shakespeare, from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth. In many instances, we know exactly what texts they read and how often they met, how quickly or slowly they read each text,what criticism they read,what material supplemented their study of Shakespeare, how they chose members, what papers they wrote, what topics they discussed and debated, how they carried their enthusiasm for Shakespeare into civic work, and in some cases, if diaries or other private writings survive, what their personal reflections were about reading Shakespeare.1 Based on this largely untouched material,this book argues that reading Shakespeare was a potentially transformative activity for many American women and for their communities,beginning in the 1880s and lasting well into the twentieth century.2 But how exactly did women read Shakespeare? And what was it about reading Shakespeare specifically that was so appealing to women? This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by clubs and through the confidence gained from mastering (and sometimes performing and adapting) Shakespeare,by and large in the period 32 SHE HATH BEEN READING before women could even vote.3 Women engaged in elaborate and intellectually demanding work on Shakespeare: they read plays closely; researched unfamiliar words or phrases;contextualized the plays in history,contemporary literature,and art;memorized passages;wrote essays;read aloud and sometimes performed plays; often kept up with the latest Shakespeare criticism;and frequently expressed their enthusiasm for Shakespeare publicly,by sponsoring libraries,educational scholarships , public gardens, and parks: all lasting memorials to these grassroots readers and to their passion for Shakespeare.4 As such, they make a case for Kate Flint’s description of reading as an act that “provides liberation through the imagination ” and facilitates “inward, social, and political exploration.”5 Unlike the popular rhetoric movement of the late nineteenth century, which “persistently directed the American woman to the domestic sphere as her proper rhetorical space,” Shakespeare clubs allowed women to forge their own intellectual lives during this period, mostly with other women but also at times with men.6 The repercussions of reading Shakespeare extended beyond the confines of individuals and clubs and had an impact on society. Under the banner of the Shakespeare club, many women spread their enthusiasm for reading by spearheading public efforts to promote reading in their own communities, thus linking the name of Shakespeare with literacy and education.7 Publishers targeted Shakespeare clubs for Shakespeare editions; clubs purchased works of criticism for libraries, and they often accumulated substantial collections of Shakespeare’s works and criticism as the base for public libraries and served as librarians. Many early twentieth-century libraries enshrined Shakespeare’s works as the foundation of their collection, sometimes devoting shelves, cases, and rooms to Shakespeare resources, all of which reveal the roots of women readers in local communities and institutions.8 Recent studies in book history have suggested the need to reevaluate the role of readers in influencing cultural life, and women readers of Shakespeare offer us an important opportunity to assess some of the central questions related to reading and public life.9 In this chapter (and elsewhere in the book) I explore the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, combining work on women’s clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. I focus on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. While women of course read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many women have attested that membership in a Shakespeare club encouraged them to read more regularly and in more sustained and focused ways, but also with a wider frame of reference, providing what Elizabeth Long calls “the social infrastructure” necessary for sustained reading.10 The Norwich, [18.221.165.246] Project MUSE (2024-04-24...