Angelina Grimke: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination

Epilogue

Epilogue On the occasion of Sarah Grimke's passing at the age of eighty-one, Lydia Maria Child wondered to Angelina whether "it now sometimes seems strange to you that those exciting and eventful years, that so tried our souls and taxed our energies , have passed away into history?" Very few remained, thought Child, who had "any idea of the prayers, and tears, and inward struggles, through which you and your noble sister passed, in that arduous mission of rescuing millions of human brethren from the darkness and misery ofslavery." If, in fact, as Child averred, the young of 1874 looked back on the sisters' crusade as they might recall the stoning of Stephen, then perhaps the reason lay in part with Angelina herself. For many, including Abby Kelley and Maria Weston Chapman, Grimke's marriage to Weld and subsequent retirement from public life was exasperating and, with all due sympathy for Angelina's poor health, inexplicable. Child, in her own sly way, had earlier discerned the real cause of Grimke's withdrawal; writing to Chapman in the spring of 1839, Child claimed that she did "not wonder at Angelina Grimke; for she was educated a Presbyterian, and has married a Presbyterian. I know its influences right well:' Child noted, "and I love it as my eyes love smoke."l Sight impaired, Child was mistaken on all three counts: Weld was not a practicing Presbyterian; Angelina had not been educated as a Presbyterian; and, more importantly, her withdrawal had nothing to do with these alleged causes. Angelina E. Grimke retired from public life because she was physically and mentally exhausted, because she looked forward to the reputed peace of quiet domestic life, and because she felt duty-bound to lavish upon her children the full extent of her love and care. Ifthere remained any mystery as to the matter-and it is difficult to see why such reasons would not be sufficient and convincing-it may be owing to the equanimity with which Angelina so readily excused herself from the public stage at a time when the abolition of slavery and sex prejudice was anything but certain. Yet even here we have not far to seek, for Grimke had come to understand herselfin a way that transcended the spheres to which others assigned her. Though not given to ironic detachment, Angelina could see that she had acted a part, an 168 ANGELINA GRIMKE essential and genuine part, in the unfolding drama of moral reform. She had, in the process, become a model to others regardless of her particular station in life. Thus she lightly admitted to Anne Warren Weston that "our enemies [would) rejoice, could they only look in upon us from day to day and see us toiling in domestic life, instead of lecturing to promiscuous audiences:' Still, Angelina explained, " I verily believe that we are thus doing as much for the cause ofwoman as we did by public speaking. For it is absolutely necessary that we should show that we are not ruined as domestic characters, but so far from it, as soon as duty calls us home, we can and do rejoice in the release from public service, and we are as anxious to make good bread as we ever were to deliver a good lecture."2 These are not words likely to satisfy Grirnke's supporters-or her critics for that matter-but they do give us opportunity to reflect again on her legacy as one of America's greatest and most distinctive reform voices. By way of introduction, I had sought to raise the question ofjust who Grimke was, in what this "voice" consisted , and to what effect. For want of a better term, I posed the question as bearing on her identity as public moral actor, and advanced the several accounts of her speeches and writings as a means to answer the question. In this way, the matter of Grimke's identity was figured rhetorically, that is, itwas recognizable as the process and product of symbolic action in and for the world. In this sense, identity-at least Grirnke's-is better grasped as a verb than a noun, an active, creative, changing force, a self that is coherent on its own terms but finds its fullest realization as it is exercised in building and transforming human community. Identity thus formulated bears directly on the more specific issue of how "the public" may be seen at work in her reform career and rhetorical efforts...