Compelled to Write: Alternative Rhetoric in Theory and Practice

2: Sarah Grimk

2 S A R A H g R I M k é Breaking the Bonds of Womanhood Nothing, I believe, has tended more to destroy the true dignity of woman, than the fact that she is approached by man in the character of a female. Grimké, 1838 Prior to judging an other, we must be in some relation to him or her. This relation will ground and inform the ethical judgments we finally do make. We will, in some way, have to ask the question, “Who are you?” Butler, 2005 Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, published in 1838, is widely recognized as the first systematic treatment of women’s rights to be published by an American woman.1 Indeed, feminist scholar and Grimké biographer Gerda Lerner argues that Grimké’s Letters “anticipated by dozens of years the main points advocates of woman’s rights would make for the next century” (1998, 26). The story of how this text came to be written and how it has come to the attention of feminist scholars only in the last forty years, and even more recently to feminist rhetoricians, illustrates how examining the cultural constraints Grimké faced, as well as the rhetorical strategies she used in response to them, complicates what should not be read as a simple coming-to-voice story. As the opening epigraphs illustrates, Grimké understood more than 150 years before the advent of postmodern theory that identity is both constrained and constructed, and I believe there is much to gain from reading her as, in Butler’s terms, bringing herself, as a woman, into a different relationship with men and with her society at large. In a very real sense, Grimké is compelled to write to break the bonds of womanhood that sought to limit the public role she and her sister Angelina took in the abolitionist cause; in assuming this role, the two sisters became in some sense others—women who stepped out of 1. For more on this, see Bartlett (1994), Kohrs Campbell (1989), and Nies (1977). Sarah Grimké 43 the conventional bounds of modesty and morality yet claimed the moral right, indeed the moral obligation, to do so. More specifically, I sketch Grimké’s journey to voice and her contributions in her Letters in a new light that casts her as a queer figure in her culture, despite the fact that sexual identity issues are never raised in her work. Any account of Grimké’s life must be read from the complex and, at times, contradictory interactions of gender and race, and her Letters can be usefully read as growing out of the abolitionist counterpublic , which centered on race, and attempting to aid in the creation of a counterpublic based on gender. In her efforts to contribute to the creation of a counterpublic based on gender, Grimké’s Letters are particularly interesting because they energetically sought to create a copresence for women in society. Grimké’s struggle for voice is an interesting case for reconsidering the three principles I introduced in chapter one, by which the field of rhetoric and composition has sought to deal with the problem of the social identity of the author. She was denied access to the discourses of power not because her sociocultural background could not have prepared her well for such interactions but solely because of her gender. In claiming a voice, she used rather traditional genres and patterns of argument, so she should not be seen as a figure whose rhetorical practice explicitly sought to expand the canon of acceptable practice; rather she used mostly traditional methods to unsettle problematic dominant cultural values about women and slaves. From the standpoint of the queer theory principles I introduced in chapter one, Grimké can usefully be read as working to make women copresent as a force in public discourse and as using disidentification strategies to challenge the prevailing notion that women were biologically unsuited to public discourse and thus could only persuade based on seduction. In this sense, Grimké’s Letters are a dramatic example of identity as performative, of a marginalized person claiming a voice and attempting to change an important aspect of her own and all women’s identities. As the discussion that follows illustrates, the remaining two queer identity principles operate in more complex ways in Grimké’s text and life. For example, her bold steps into public discourse with her sister in their speaking tour and the publications...