Question regarding transsexualism in the Quran
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Im wondering what the Quranic perspective on transsexualism is. Is it allowed to do a sex change?
I am a muslim and a mother to a transsexual child, a girl born into a boys body.
May Allah reward you all for spreading your knowledge.
Salaam
Welcome to the forum.
This is a medical issue. Follow your doctor's advice.
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Aisha,
I do not understand 'girl into boy's body'; you mean hermaphrodite? or Transsexual? Anyway, to a great extent possible controlling or avoiding sexual tendencies where it is a crime in general is Quran. To go under knife, does not change one's sexual attitude at all. Medical or surgical field does not know anything about this condition, except arrogantly involving itself with mechanical manipulation and intervention. They will supplicate the body with chemically prepared male/female hormones which in turn will interfere with the rest of the intricately interwoven semblance of balance of naturally secreted hormones. This might result in unpleasant situations and uncontrollable medical complications eventually. So keep up patience and let us turn to God for Guidance; there is the guidance near, for those who believe and seek belief and patience.
.
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Aisha,
I do not understand 'girl into boy's body'; you mean hermaphrodite? or Transsexual? Anyway, to a great extent possible controlling or avoiding sexual tendencies where it is a crime in general is Quran. To go under knife, does not change one's sexual attitude at all. Medical or surgical field does not know anything about this condition, except arrogantly involving itself with mechanical manipulation and intervention. They will supplicate the body with chemically prepared male/female hormones which in turn will interfere with the rest of the intricately interwoven semblance of balance of naturally secreted hormones. This might result in unpleasant situations and uncontrollable medical complications eventually. So keep up patience and let us turn to God for Guidance; there is the guidance near, for those who believe and seek belief and patience.
.
Peace
As I wrote I am talking about transsexualism, not hemafrodhite.
First, transsexualism has NOTHING to do with sexual orientation... Its about our gender. The name is missleading to many, I know, but now we have made this clear.
Second, ppl having transsexualism, can't stand living that way. They would do ANYTHING to get to live in the other gender. As many as 50% of young transsexual kids, under 18, tries to commit suicide. Some succeed...
I just wanted to know if any one knows if there is something in the Qur'an about this issue.
I have read some on a page who claims that there is some verses on this subject...
Aisha
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Peace
As I wrote I am talking about transsexualism, not hemafrodhite.
First, transsexualism has NOTHING to do with sexual orientation... Its about our gender. The name is missleading to many, I know, but now we have made this clear.
Second, ppl having transsexualism, can't stand living that way. They would do ANYTHING to get to live in the other gender. As many as 50% of young transsexual kids, under 18, tries to commit suicide. Some succeed...
I just wanted to know if any one knows if there is something in the Qur'an about this issue.
I have read some on a page who claims that there is some verses on this subject...
Aisha
Salaam Sister
Drfazal is not wrong.This is what you wrote in your first post.I am a muslim and a mother to a transsexual child, a girl born into a boys body.
This post indicates that as you child is
-genotypically girl ie XX
-Phenotypically boy i.e outward look (external genitalia)
Such conditions are known as "true/false hermophroditesBut probably you want to say that your child is
-genotypically and pheotypically as boy
-Psychologically a girl
Did I get your point of view correctly ?
Regards -
This is a medical issue. Follow your doctor's advice.
Surely you can offer more than that. It sounds quiet patronising, unintentional as it may be.
I think what Aisha was after was adivce from the quran to facilitate her decision making process, seeing that people here should know the book inside out.Aisha, as you can imagine there nothing in the quran that talks about gender disorders explicitly.
But God absolutely asserts that he creates what he wills, everything is under his control. There will be implicit references and lessons that can be drawn from other verses. I'll read through the Quran again with your question in mind and inshallah let you know if I find anything.My personal decision would be to help that person feel comfortable and loved in their own skin.
Use of surgery and drugs in an area about which we know so little doesn't sit well with me.Don't do what society or family expects, but do what is best for yor child.
In the meantime perhaps you can share with us how old the child is and why has she been diagnosed as you describe.
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Salaam Sister
Drfazal is not wrong.This is what you wrote in your first post.
This post indicates that as you child is
-genotypically girl ie XX
-Phenotypically boy i.e outward look (external genitalia)
Such conditions are known as "true/false hermophroditesBut probably you want to say that your child is
-genotypically and pheotypically as boy
-Psychologically a girl
Did I get your point of view correctly ?
RegardsSalam
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexualism
The word "transsexualism" has nothing to do with intersexual conditions as hermophrodites.
For me who lives besides it every day, its all clear, but I guess for you who doesn't, its a bit more complex.. I need to be a bit clearer perhaps.
Anyway, I just wanted the Quranic view on the issue, transsexualism.
My baby is almost nine now and has said herself, that she is a girl since she was 2,5 years old. We have been at a children's hospital and a big team of specialists in this matter, has examined her and given her the diagnose "gender identity disorder in childhood" which will change into "transsexualism", in about a year. After that we will start treating her with drugs who will stop male puberty. When she is 16 she will get the female hormones and start development as a women.
I know there is some stuff said in the traditional sunnah, hadiths, about my topic, but even though you might find some good things in there, I don't believe it's relevant in religious perspectives. The Qur'an is.
One verse is 2431,
2431 And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and keep
covered their private parts, and that they should not reveal their beauty
except what is apparent, and let them put forth their shawls over their
cleavage. And let them not reveal their beauty except to their husbands,
or their fathers, or fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons
of their husbands, or their brothers, or the sons of their brothers, or the
sons of their sisters, or their women, or those committed to them by oath
or the male servants who are without need, or the child who has not yet
understood the composition of women. And let them not strike with
their feet in a manner that reveals what they are keeping hidden of their
beauty. And repent to God, all of you believers, that you may succeed."the male servants who are without need" who are those?
In hadith its called "mukhannath" and is explained in two kinds.. the first one is a transsexual person, who can't help him/herself, and the second one is those who put on the other genders clothes and acts to commit sins.
I don't know enough to interpret the Qur'an, so I need your help!
wa salam,
Aisha -
peace Aisha,
I think most are having difficulty in understanding exactly what the situation is, as am I.
I assume she was born genetically male, XY, but feels female. And I assume therefore has male genetalia. So, for all intents and purposes, she is male physiologically, but psychologically feels female?
I dont know anything about this area, but a few questions come to mind
Is there a chance that once the male hormones naturally begin to take their course, she will revert to feeling like a male? If there is a chance, and you allow them to take their course and it doesn't work, is there no going back? i.e. once this development period is over you will have missed your window of opportunity to help her?
In what way does she manifest or feel like a female?
Has attraction to the opposite sex ever came up?
Is it possible for her to naturally develop as a male, thus worst case scenario will be an effeminate male? who may or may not be attracted to men?
It's ok if you dont want to discuss any of these questions, as it is quite personal, but thought I'd write them, for something to think about, although I'm sure you will have already had these thoughts.
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Salam
She was born a boy, and I made her wear boys clothes, play with boys toys and so on, like any normal boy... But she refused... When she was little, like a year or two, she always wore a shirt on her head, and said that it was her long hair.
When we were to go outside, I made her take it off, and she got really upset. Not like if I would tell her to leave her toy at home, but much worse...
When she was 2,5 years old we went to see her grandmother. The grandmother told my baby to take off the shirt from her head since she is a BOY. My baby replied, "I'm a girl". The GM then repeated "No, you're a boy, never say you are a girl again" and then she slapped my baby... Not hard, but i don't believe in hitting children so I screamed at her and then left...
Anyway... That was the first time she said it out loud, that she is a girl.After that I got scared, and me and my baby's father, tried even harder to make her a boy.
When she was 3 I seeked help with the children's psychologists, and they told me to let the child choose. That it was possible she was transsexual. I hated their answers.
But after 2 more, really difficult years, I started to realize. I read about it and every piece fell into place.
You asked me how she manifests these feminine side, and I will tell you... She is more feminine than any girl you know
The way she speaks, moves, dances, walks... In everything!She says she doesn't want to live if she cant live as a girl. And it breaks my heart.
When a child has come on this strong, and for this long (her hole life), like my baby has, its most likely she will stay this way. The hormone blockers used at first is reversible. If you stop taking theme you will go into normal puberty. The nonreversible drugs is not given until her doctor, and she, is really sure, and the sex change operation isnt done until the age of 18.
What happens if you don't stop male puberty on a transsexual girl, like my baby, is that she will get depressed and might harm herself badly. She will get a dark voice that no operation in the world can make feminine again... She will grow beard, which is really hard to get rid off later... And so on...
Some male hormones are already in her system, and she still doesn't want to live as a boy.
Until for not long ago we thought transsexualism was just like a psychiatric illness, but now we know its biological. Something happens when the child is growing in the whom, in week8-14.
There is actually a test that can be made to be sure, but there is a big problem... You need to be dead firstS
They can measure a subject in the brain.One child on every 10000'th birth is born like this. Its 3 times as usual to be like my baby, a male to female transsexual, as it is to be a female to male transsexual.
I hope I got things a little bit more clear for you, if not ask again.
Wa salam, Aisha
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Dear Sister Salaam
I am not a Muftee but showing just an opinion which might help your out. At more than one places Allah saysAllah does not burden any human being with a responsibility heavier than he can bear
So if the doctors think that as such this gender identitiy problem is going to create uncontrollable psychological confliction then you should act as they advise.
If it is controllable with medicine and psychotherapy then you should reconsider your decision.
Regards -
peace Aisha,
Thanks for clarifying.
I find it interesting at such a young age she acted female, even with toys. For example, I would have thought a child given any toys would play with them.
In any case, I think if I were in your situation I would consult medical advice / specialists, child/father and go with what seems best for your child. The thing is, a significant part of our acts are based on intention, if your intention is just/honest/sincere/righteous/etc then I would find it difficult to think God would assign blame if you got it wrong. I can think of a few verses that could be relevant, but I can only recall one at the moment, 2225.
As a side note, I study nutrition sometimes and I am aware of the negative effects of soya on male development, if you wish to research it. Not saying it is related, but you may find it useful/interesting.
All the best.
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Im wondering what the Quranic perspective on transsexualism is. Is it allowed to do a sex change?
I am a muslim and a mother to a transsexual child, a girl born into a boys body.
May Allah reward you all for spreading your knowledge.
Salaam
Perhaps it does.
The answer for such a person is as Andrea Dworkin and her relationship. Why? Because the inside is as it is.
Then again, why do you refer to your son as a girl? And why did you scream at the grandmother?
Personally I'd send the child to martial arts classes (no I wouldn't suggest Ranma 1/2 as an inspiring series). And find natural herbal treatment for soy poisoning.
http//www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327 -
Salam
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexualism
The word "transsexualism" has nothing to do with intersexual conditions as hermophrodites.
For me who lives besides it every day, its all clear, but I guess for you who doesn't, its a bit more complex.. I need to be a bit clearer perhaps.
Anyway, I just wanted the Quranic view on the issue, transsexualism.
My baby is almost nine now and has said herself, that she is a girl since she was 2,5 years old. We have been at a children's hospital and a big team of specialists in this matter, has examined her and given her the diagnose "gender identity disorder in childhood" which will change into "transsexualism", in about a year. After that we will start treating her with drugs who will stop male puberty. When she is 16 she will get the female hormones and start development as a women.
I know there is some stuff said in the traditional sunnah, hadiths, about my topic, but even though you might find some good things in there, I don't believe it's relevant in religious perspectives. The Qur'an is.
One verse is 2431,
2431 And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and keep
covered their private parts, and that they should not reveal their beauty
except what is apparent, and let them put forth their shawls over their
cleavage. And let them not reveal their beauty except to their husbands,
or their fathers, or fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons
of their husbands, or their brothers, or the sons of their brothers, or the
sons of their sisters, or their women, or those committed to them by oath
or the male servants who are without need, or the child who has not yet
understood the composition of women. And let them not strike with
their feet in a manner that reveals what they are keeping hidden of their
beauty. And repent to God, all of you believers, that you may succeed."the male servants who are without need" who are those?
In hadith its called "mukhannath" and is explained in two kinds.. the first one is a transsexual person, who can't help him/herself, and the second one is those who put on the other genders clothes and acts to commit sins.
I don't know enough to interpret the Qur'an, so I need your help!
wa salam,
AishaSalam Aisha,
The Quran does not mention anything about this situation. Do you think it should? -
Aisha,
If at all there is a disease in a human, it is in the heart. This is Quran.
What you gave birth to is definitely a boy, it is his acquired or derived mentality he has been willingly acting as a girl. It is the heart that houses the mind. Teach him Quran, he will be boy again psychologically and mind wise too. At present, he is not at all a girl either from physiological, or biological or philosophical point of view. Do not go to doctors; and follow not them any more; they know nothing but drugging and knifing.
Peace.
.
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peace Aisha,
Thanks for clarifying.
I find it interesting at such a young age she acted female, even with toys. For example, I would have thought a child given any toys would play with them.
In any case, I think if I were in your situation I would consult medical advice / specialists, child/father and go with what seems best for your child. The thing is, a significant part of our acts are based on intention, if your intention is just/honest/sincere/righteous/etc then I would find it difficult to think God would assign blame if you got it wrong. I can think of a few verses that could be relevant, but I can only recall one at the moment, 2225.
As a side note, I study nutrition sometimes and I am aware of the negative effects of soya on male development, if you wish to research it. Not saying it is related, but you may find it useful/interesting.
All the best.
Peace.
Thank you for reading my story.
Offcours I will follow the medical advice, my daughters life depends on it.
Soya? Thats sounds interesting, but we dont use it! I will look into it anyway, so thanks
wa salamPerhaps it does.
The answer for such a person is as Andrea Dworkin and her relationship. Why? Because the inside is as it is.
Then again, why do you refer to your son as a girl? And why did you scream at the grandmother?
Personally I'd send the child to martial arts classes (no I wouldn't suggest Ranma 1/2 as an inspiring series). And find natural herbal treatment for soy poisoning.
http//www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327Salam
Just one question... why did you search the Qur'an for homosexuality? Its not relevant in this case...
transsexualism is not a sexual orientation.
I call my daughter a girl becuz she is one! And I will scream and go angry with anyone hitting my children! even call the police if necessary
Children need protection.Salam Aisha,
The Quran does not mention anything about this situation. Do you think it should?Salam.
I am a bit surprised over your question. Why shouldnt the Qur'an mention these humans?
I believe that God sent me this child because He knows I am capabel of dealing with itI didnt come here for medical advice, i will give it to my baby, anything she need. I came to see if God had mentioned something on this subject, anything relevant at all, on this forum, because I know there is a lot of ppl with big knowledge about the Qur'an in here. There is hadiths on the subject but i reject theme, so I was just wondering if there was something in the Great Book of Allah.
Wa salam,
Aisha -
Aisha,
If at all there is a disease in a human, it is in the heart. This is Quran.
What you gave birth to is definitely a boy, it is his acquired or derived mentality he has been willingly acting as a girl. It is the heart that houses the mind. Teach him Quran, he will be boy again psychologically and mind wise too. At present, he is not at all a girl either from physiological, or biological or philosophical point of view. Do not go to doctors; and follow not them any more; they know nothing but drugging and knifing.
Peace.
.
If you get cancer, God forbid, you wouldn't go to a doctor? You would just sit at home reading Quran?
Transsexualism is biological, and that's a fact today 2009.
There is this test, but it is only to be made on dead ppl, and i wouldn't go that far just to prof you wrongI think your advice is wrong, and that you should seek knowledge in the subject before saying things like this.
Not even in the strict sect of salaafi does one say "don't go to the doctor, if you are ill".
My girl reads the Qur'an, and is learning about Islam, alhamdulillah. She is praying every night, that when she wakes up, she will have a girls body.
Do you have anything from the Qur'an, that states your advice?
wa salam,
Aisha -
peace,
I think the issue of homosexuality is mentioned because its underlying theme of it being unnatural is also present in transsexualism. Also because this issue may need to be considered no matter which option is chosen.
Out of curiosity, what is it that they test for when the person is dead, to determine the presence of this condition? And how proven is this test?
Also, what do they think happens during pregnancy, which you referred to earlier? -
Im wondering what the Quranic perspective on transsexualism is. Is it allowed to do a sex change?
I am a muslim and a mother to a transsexual child, a girl born into a boys body.
May Allah reward you all for spreading your knowledge.
Salaam
Aisha,
I came across this thread and felt the need to write a little response. I honestly do not believe that you will find anything helpful in the Qur'an. It lacks information when it comes to issues of sexual and/or gender identity the way that they are understood today. Yes, there are verses that relate to indecent attractions and sexual behaviour, but they are not relevant to how gender and sexuality are viewed and understood today. Your daughter is lucky and blessed to have a supportive and loving mother such as yourself who is able to respect her struggle, and trust that her dilemma is real. I volunteer at a centre that provides peer support for the LGBT (which includes trans people) community, and you wouldn't believe the amount of kids I work with who find themselves without anyone to lean on. Their families work against them and try to 'convince' them, whether through religion or psychology, that the 'fix' to their problem is to simply let go and accept that they are who they were physiologically born to be.
You obviously know the situation well. You have studied the matter and understand that gender identity is very separate than sexual identity (though they may cross paths). You have worked with the medical field to try and ease the transitional process for your daughter. You're doing a great job! I am not transexual, but I have experienced enough misunderstanding and disrespect from the world for my own position in the LGBT community. I say this to share that I am not responding here as someone who doesn't understand or relate to your daughter's situation.
I agree with your statement in response to Taj. Yes, this is an issue that I wish everybody were able to open their hearts to understanding. Gender identity issues affect a lot of people. It certainly would have been nice if there were mention of them in the Qur'an...and what mention there is, it seems to be negative and misleading, unfortunately.
You have made it clear time and time again that you are simply asking if people know of verses that refer to gender identity or transsexuality in the Qur'an. There seems to be none...at least none that would really speak to the issue of how it is viewed and dealt with in today's world.Anyway, having said all this, I suppose that I just felt the need to say thank you for being there for your daughter and giving her exactly what she needs your unconditional understanding, support, and love.
~ Dana
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salam Aisha,
Salam.
I am a bit surprised over your question. Why shouldnt the Qur'an mention these humans?
I believe that God sent me this child because He knows I am capabel of dealing with itOnly by the support of Allah, one is capable of handling and dealing with any challenge. So keep seeking Allah's support because it is the one and only way. bravo
Now in regard to Al Quran, I don't think that it should mention each and every detail of each and every situation of each and every mindset of each and every indiviual. Not that it does not, btw. The Quran speaks in general. The Quran does not, for example, mention the Ozone hole as important and critical it is on Earth and all it's inhabitants. Yet the Quran does mention that corruption will spread out of people's own doings. So there are zillion of cases, situations and damages that, of course, resulted only from us, humans. And of course, it is, almost always, the innocents are the ones paying the price.
So keep doing what you are doing and may Allah be with you in every step of the way.
peace -
I am just a little curious, isn't this division of people into straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, transsexual, transgender a fairly recent western construct?
A lot of societies, especially in the past in Western Europe, and in the present in many Asian societies, do not have these divisions.
The following article should be an interesting read.basically what I mean is that labelling people as something is questionable.
As for your child's case, I think, as her mother, you should alleviate her suffering, be it physical, emotional, psychosomatic, mental or psychological.
The Female World of Love and Ritual Relations between Women in
Nineteenth-Century America
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
Signs, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Autumn, 1975), pp. 1-29.
Stable URL
http//links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0097-9740%28197523%291%3A1%3C1%3ATFWOLA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-HThe Female World of Love and Ritual
Relations between Women in
Nineteenth-Century America
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
The female friendship of the nineteenth century, the long-lived, intimate,
loving friendship between two women, is an excellent example of
the type of historical phenomena which most historians know something
about, which few have thought much about, and which virtually no one
has written about. 1 It is one aspect of the female experience which consciously
or unconsciously we have chosen to ignore. Yet an abundance of
manuscript evidence suggests that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
women routinely formed emotional ties with other women. Such deeply
felt, same-sex friendships were casually accepted in American society.
Indeed, from at least the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth
century, a female world of varied and yet highly structured relationships
Research for this paper was supported in part by a grant from (he Grant Foundation,
New York, and by National Insti(utes of Healtb trainee grant 5 F03 HD48800-03. I would
like to thank several scholars for (heir assistance and criticism in preparing this paper
Erving Goffman, Roy Schafer, Charles E. Rosenberg, Cynthia Secor, Anthony WaLJace,
Judy Breault, who has just completed a biography of an important and introspective
nineteenth<entury feminist, Emily Howland, served as a research assistant for this paper
and her knowledge of,nine(een(h.century family structure and religious history proved
invaluable.
I. The most notable exception to this rule is now eleven years old William R. Taylor
and Christopher Lasch, "Two 'Kindred Spirits', Sorority and Family in New England,
1839--1846," New England Quartet'ly 36 (1963) 25-41. Taylor has made a valuable contribu(
ion to the history of women and the history of (he family with his concept of "sororia"
relations. I do not, however, accept (he Taylor-Lasch thesis that female friendships developed
in the mid-nineteenth century because of geographic mobility and the breakup of
the colonial family. I have found these friendships as frequently in the eighteenth century
as in the nineteenth and would hyporhesize that (he geographic mobility of the midnineteenth
century eroded (hem as it did so many other traditional social instilUtions.
Helen Vendler (Rei.Mw of Notablt Ameritan W<mI<!n, 1607-1950, ed. Edward James and
Janet James, New y .....h TifrUJs) . I can give you no idea how desperately I shall want
you...." After one such visit Jeannie, then a spinster in New York,
echoed Sarah's longing "Dear darling Sarah! How I love you & how
happy I have been! You are the joy of my life.... I cannot tell you how
much happiness you gave me, nor how constantly it is all in my thoughts.
. . . My darling how I long for the time when I shalt see you...." After
another visit Jeannie wrote "I want you to tell me in your next letter, to
assure me, that I am your dearest. ... I do not doubt you, & I am not
jealous but I long to hear you say it once more & it seems already a long
6. Sarah Butler Wister was the daughter of Fanny Kemble and Pierce Butler. In l859
she marred a Philadelphia physician, Owen Wister. The novelist Owen Wister is her son.
Jeannie Field Musgrove was the half,orphaned daughter of constitutional lawyer and New
York Republlcan politician David Dudley Field. Their correspondence (1855---9 is in the
Sarah Butler Wister Papers, Wister Family Papers, HistoricaL Society of Pennsylvania.
7. Sarah Butler, Butler Place, S.c., to Jeannie Field, New York, September 14, 1855.
8. See, e,g" Sarah Butler Wister. Germantown, Pa., to Jeannie Field, New York,
September 25, 1862, October 21. l863; or Jeannie Field. New York, to Saran Butler
Wister, Germantown, July 3, 1861, January 23 and July 12, 1863.
g, Sarah Buder Wister, Germantown, to Jeannie Field, New York. June 5, l86l,
February 29, 1864; Jeannie Field to Saran Butler Wister November 22, l861, January 4
and June 14, 1863.
Signs Autumn 1975 5
time since your voice fell on my ear. So just fill a quarter page with
caresses & expressions of endearment. Your silly Angelina." Jeannie
ended one letter "Goodbye my dearest, dearest lover-ever your own
Angelina." And another, "I will go to bed ... 1 could write all
night-A thousand kisses-I love you with my whole soul-your
Angelina."
When Jeannie finally married in 1870 at the age of thirty-seven,
Sarah underwent a period of extreme anxiety. Two days before
Jeannie's marriage Sarah, then in London, wrote desperately "Dearest
darling-How incessantly have 1 thought of you these eight days-all
today-the entire uncertainty, the distance, the long silence-are all new
features in my separation from you, grevious to be borne.... Oh Jeannie.
1 have thought & thought & yearned over you these two days. Are
you married 1 wonder? My dearest love to you wherever and whoever
you are."IO Like many other women in this collection of thirty-five
families, marriage brought Sarah and Jeannie physical separation; it did
not cause emotional distance. Although at first they may have wondered
how marriage would affect their relationship, their affection remained
unabated throughout their lives, underscored by their loneliness and
their desire to be together. l1
During the same years that Jeannie and Sarah wrote of their love
and need for each other, two slightly younger women began a similar
odyssey of love, dependence and-ultimately-physical, though not
emotional, separation. Molly and Helena met in 1868 while both attended
the Cooper Institute School of Design for Women in New York
City. For several years these young women studied and explored the city
together, visited each other's families, and formed part of a social network
of other artistic young women. Gradually, over the years, their
initial friendship deepened into a close intimate bond which continued
throughout their lives. The tone in the letters which Molly wrote to
Helena changed over these years from "My dear Helena," and signed
"your attached friend," to "My dearest Helena," "My Dearest," "My
Beloved," and signed "Thine always" or "thine Molly."12
10. Sarah Butler Wister, London, to Jeannie Field Musgrove. New York, June 18 and
August 3, 1870.
II. See, e.g., two of Sarah's letters to Jeannie Decemoer 21. ). See. as well, her
autobiography Mary Hallock Foote, A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West The Reminisana.
of Mary Halwck Foou, ed. Rodman W, Paul (San Madno, Calif. Huntington
Library, 1972), In many ways these letters are typical of those women wrote to other
women. Women frequently began Ieuers to each other with salutations such as "'Dearest,"
"My Most Beloved," "You Darling Girl," and signed them "tenderly" or "'to my dear dear
sweet friend, good-bye." Without the least self-consciousness, one woman in her frequent
letters to a female friend referred to her husband as "my other love," She was by no means
6 Smith-Rosenberg Love {/nd Ritu{/l
The letters they wrote to each other during these first five years
permit us to reconstruct something of their relationship together. As
Molly wrote in one early letter
I have not said to you in so many or so few words that I was happy
with you during those few so incredibly short weeks but surely you
do not need words to tell you what you must know. Those two or
three days so dark without, so bright with firelight and contentment
within I shall always remember as proof that, for a time, at
least-l fancy for quite a long time-we might be sufficient for
each other. We know that we can amuse each other for many idle
hours together and now we know that we can also work together.
And that means much, don't you think so?
She ended "I shall return in a few days. Imagine yourself kissed many
times by one who loved you so dearly."
The intensity and even physical nature of Molly's love was echoed in
many of the letters she wrote during the next few years, as, for instance
in thiS short thank-you note for a small present "Imagine yourself
kissed a dozen times my darling. Perhaps it is well for you that we are far
unique. See. e.g.. Annie to Charlene Van Vleck Anderson, Appleton, Wb" June 10, 1871,
Anderson Family Papers, Manuscript Division. Stanford Uni"ersity Maggie to Emily Howland,
Philadelphia, July 12, 1851, Howland Family Papers, Phoebe King Collection,
Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College Mary Jane Burleigh to Emily Howland,
Sherwood, N,Y" March 27, 1872, Howland Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith
College; Mary Black Couper to Sophia Madeleine DuPont, Wilmington, Del., n.d. , and Sarah Alden Ripley to Sophia Bradford, November 30,1854,
in the Sarah Alden Ripley Correspondence, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College Fanny
Canby Ferris to Anne Biddle, Philadelphia, October II and November 19, 1811, December26,
1813, Fanny Canby to Mary Canby, May 27,1801, Mary R. Garrigues to Mary
Canby, five letters n.d., , Anne Biddle to Mary Canby, two letters n.d., May 16,
July 13, and November 24, 1806, June 14, 1807, June 5, 1808, Anne Sterling Biddle
Family Papers, Friends Historical Society, Swarthmore College; Harriet Manigault Wilcox
Diary, August 7, 1814, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, See as well the correspondence
between Harriet Manigault Wilcox's mother, Mrs. Gabriel Manigault, Philadelphia, and
Mrs. Henry Middleton, Charleston, S.C., between 1810 and 1830, Cadwalader Collection,
J. Francis Fisher Section, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The basis and nature of such
friendships can be seen in the comments of Sarah Alden Ripley to her sister-in_law and
long-time friend, Sophia Bradford; "Hearing that you are not well reminds me of what it
would be to lose your loving society, We have kept step together through a long piece of
road in the weary journey of life, We have loved the same beings and wept together over
their graves" (Mrs. O. J. Wister and Miss Agnes Irwin, eds., Worthy Women of Our Firsl
Century love." Or as she wrote after Helena's
decision to marry "You know dear Helena, I really was in love with you.
It was a passion such as I had never known until I saw you. I don't think
it was the noblest way to love you." The theme of intense female love was
one Molly again expressed in a letter she wrote to the man Helena was to
marry "Do you know sir, that until you came along I believe that she
loved me almost as girls love their lovers. to Helena, n.d, to Helena, September 15 and 23, 1873, n.d. , n.d. .
8 Smith-Rosenberg Love and Ritual
wonder that I can stand the sight of you." This was in a leeter congratulating
them on their forthcoming marriage.16
The essential question is not whether these women had genital con"
tact and can therefore be defined as heterosexual or homosexuaL The
twentieth-century tendency co view human love and sexuality within a
dichotomized universe of deviance and normality, genitality and
platonic love, is alien to the emotions and attitudes of the nineteenth
century and fundamentaIly discorts the nature of these women's emotional
interaction. These letters are significant because they force us to
place such female love in a particular historical context. There is every
indication that these four women, their husbands and families-all eminently
respectable and socially conservative-considered such love both
socially acceptable and fully compatible with heterosexual marriage.
Emotionally and cognitively, their heterosocial and their homosocial
worlds were complementary.
One could argue, on the other hand, that these letters were but an
example of the romantic rhetoric with which the nineteenth century
surrounded the concept of friendship. Yet they possess an emotional
intensity and a sensual and physical explicitness that is difficult to dis"
miss. Jeannie longed to hold Sarah in her arms; Molly mourned her
physical isolation from Helena. Molly's love and devotion to Helena, the
emotions that bound Jeannie and Sarah together, while perhaps a
phenomenon of nineteenth-century society we're not the less real for
their Victorian origins. A survey of the correspondence and diaries of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women indicates that Molly, Jeannie,
and Sarah represented one very real behavioral and emotional option
socially available to nineteenth-century women.
This is not to argue that individual needs, personalities, and family
dynamics did not have a significant role in determining the nature of
particular relationships. But the scholar must ask if it is historically possible
and, if possible, important, to study the intensely individual aspects
of psychosexual dynamics. Is it not the historian's first task to explore the
social structure and the world view which made intense and sometimes
sensual female love both a possible and an acceptable emotional option?
From such a social perspective a new and quite different series of questions
suggests itself. What emotional function did such female love
serve? What was its place within the hetero- and homosocial worlds
which women jointly inhabited? Did a spectrum of love-object choices
16. Mary Hallock to Helena, September 23, 1873; Mary Hallock to
Rlchard, December 13, 1873. Molly", and Helena', relatiomhip cominued for the re,t of
their lives. Molly'~ letten are filled with tender and imimate references, as when she wrote,
twenty yeaT~ later and from 2,000 miles away "It isn't because you are good that I love
you-but for the essence of you which i~ like perfume" (n.d. ).
Signs Autumn 1975 9
exist in the nineteenth century across which some individuals, at least,
were capable of moving? Without attempting to answer these questions
it will be difficult to understand either nineteenth-century sexuality or
the nineteenth-century family.
Several factors in American society between the mid-eighteenth and
the mid-nineteenth centuries may well have permitted women to form a
variety of close emotional relationships with other women. Ameri(Can
society was characterized in large part by rigid gender-role differentiation
within the family and within society as a whole, leading to the
emotional segregation of women and men. The roles of daughter and
mother shaded imperceptibly and ineluctably into each other, while the
biological realities of frequent pregnancies, childbirth, nursing, and
menopause bound women together in physical and emotional intimacy.
It was within just such a social framework, I would argue, that a
specifically female world did indeed develop, a world built around a
generic and unself-conscious pattern of single-sex or homosocial networks.
These supportive networks were institutionalized in social conventions
or rituals which accompanied virtually every important event in
a woman's life, from birth to death. Such female relationships were
frequently supported and paralleled by severe social restrictions on intimacy
between young men and women. Within such a world of emotional
richness and complexity devotion to and love of other women
became a plausible and socially accepted form of human interaction.
An abundance of printed and manuscript sources exists to support
such a hypothesis. Etiquette books, advice books on child rearing, religious
sermons, guides to young men and young women, medical texts,
and school curricula all suggest that late eighteenth- and most
nineteenth-century Americans assumed the existence of a world composed
of distinctly male and female spheres, spheres determined by the
immutable laws of God and nature. l ? The unpublished letters and
diaries of Americans during this same period concur, detailing the existence
of sexually segregated worlds inhabited by human beings with
different values, expectations, and personalities. Contacts between men
and women frequently partook of a formality and stiffness quite alien to
twentieth-century America and which today we tend to define as "Victorian."
Women, however, did not form an isolated and oppressed subcategory
in male society. Their letters and diaries indicate that women's
sphere had an essential integrity and dignity that grew out of women's
17. I am in the midsl of a larger study of adult gender-roles and gender-role socialization
in America, 1785-1895. For a discussion of social attitudes toward appropriate male
and female roles, see Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood 1820-1860,"
A1Ill'Ti?an Quamrly 18 (Summer 1966) 151-74; Ann Firor Scott, The SQUthern Ltu/y From
PedR.stal to Politi?s, 1830-1930 (Chicago 'University of Chicago Press, t970), chaps. 1-2;
Smith-Rosenberg and Rosenberg.
10 Smith-Rosenberg Love and Ritual
shared experiences and mutual affection and that, despite the profound
changes which affected American social structure and institutions between
the 17605 and the 18705, retained a constancy and predictability.
The ways in which women thought of and interacted with each other
remained unchanged. Continuity, not discontinuity, characterized this
female world. Molly Hallock's and Jeannie Fields's words, emotions, and
experiences have direct parallels in the 17605 and the 17905.1 8 There are
indications in contemporary sociological and psychological literature
that female closeness and support networks have continued into the
twentieth century-not only among ethnic and working-class groups but
even among the middle class 19
Most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women lived within a
world bounded by home, church, and the institution of visiting-that
endless trooping of women to each others' homes for social purposes. It
was a world inhabited by children and by other women.20 Women
helped each other with domestic chores and in times of sickness, sorrow,
or trouble. Entire days, even weeks, might be spent almost exclusively
with other women.21 Urban and town women could devote virtually
every day to visits, teas, or shopping trips with other women. Rural
women developed a pattern of more extended visits that lasted weeks
and sometimes months, at times even dislodging husbands from their
beds and bedrooms so that dear friends might spend every hour ofevery
day together.22 When husbands traveled, wives routinely moved in with
other women, invited women friends to teas and suppers, sat together
sharing and comparing the letters they had received from other close
18. See, e.g., the letters of Peggy Emlen to Sally Logan, 176&--72, Wells Morris Collection,
Box I, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; and the Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis Letters,
Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
19. See esp. Elizabeth Botts, Family and Socw.l N~twork (London Tavistock Publications,
(957); Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London, rev. ed.
(Baltimore Penguin Books, 1964).
20. This pattern seemed to cross class barriers. A letter that an Irish domestic wrote in
the 1830s contains seventeen separate references to women and but only seven to men,
most of whom were relatives and two of whom were infant brothers living with her mother
and mentioned in relation to her mother (Ann McGrann, Philadelphia, to Sophie M.
DuPont, Philadelphia, July 3, 1834, Sophie Madeleine DuPont Letters, Eleutherian Mills
Foundation).
21. Harriett Manigault Diary, June 28, 1814, and passim; Jeannie Field, New York, to
Sarah Butler Wister, Germantown, April 19, 1863; Phoebe Bradford Diary, Janurary 30,
February 19, March 4, August tt, and October 14, 1832, Historical Society of Pennsylvania;
Sophie M. DuPont, Brandywine, to Henry DuPont, Germantown, July 9, 1827,
Eleutherian Mills Foundation.
22. Martha Jefferis 10 Anne Jefferis Sheppard, July 9, 1843; Anne Jefferis Sheppard
to Martha Jefferis, June 28, 1846; Anne Sterling Biddle Papers, passim, Biddle Family
Papers, Friends Historical Society, Swarthmore College; Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, Virginia,
to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, Philadelphia, November 24 and December 4, 1820,
November 6, 1821.
Signs Autumn 1975 11
women friends. Secrets were exchanged and cherished, and the
husband's return at times viewed with some ambivalence.23
Summer vacations were frequently organized to permit old friends
to meet at water spas or share a country home. In 1848, for example, a
young matron wrote cheerfully to her husband about the delightful time
she was having with five close women friends whom she had invited to
spend the summer with her; he remained at home alone to face the heat
of Philadelphia and a cholera epidemic. 24 Some ninety years earlier, two
young Quaker girls, commented upon the vacation their aunt had taken
alone with another woman; their remarks were openly envious and tell
us something of the emotional quality of these friendships "I hear Aunt
is gone with the Friend and wont be back for two weeks, fine times
indeed I think the old friends had, taking their pleasure about the country
.. and have the advantage of that fine woman's conversation and
instruction, while we poor young girls must spend all spring at home....
What a disappointment that we are not together. "25
Friends did not form isolated dyads but were normally part of
highly integrated networks. Knowing each other, perhaps related to
each other, they played a central role in holding communities and kin
systems together. Especially when families became geographically
mobile women's long visits to each other and their frequent letters filled
with discussions of marriages and births, illness and deaths, descriptions
of growing children, and reminiscences of times and people past provided
an important sense of continuity in a rapidly changing society.2&
Central to this female world was an inner core of kin. The ties between
sisters, first cousins, aunts, and nieces provided the underlying structure
upon which groups of friends and their network of female relatives
clustered. Although most of the women within this sample would appear
to be living within isolated nuclear families, the emotional ties between
nonresidential kin were deep and binding and provided one of the
fundamental existential realities of women's Iives.27 Twenty years after
23. Phoebe Bradford Diary, January 13, November 16--19, 1832, April 26 and May 7,
1833; Abigail Brackett Lyman to Mr5. Catiing, Litchfield, Conn" May 3, 1801, collection in
private hands; Martha Jefferis to Anne Jefferis Sheppard, August 28, 1845.
24. Lisa Mitchell Diary, 1860s, passim, Manuscript Division, Tulane University;
Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley February 5, 1822; Jeannie
McCall, Cedar Park, to Peter McCall, Philadelphia, June 30, 1849, McCall Section, Cadwalader
Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
25. Peggy Ernlen to Sally Logan, May 3, 1769.
26. For a prime example of this type of letter, see Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to
Elizabeth Bardley Gibson, passim, or Fanny Canby to Mary Canby, Philadelphia, May 27,
1801; or Sophie M. DuPont, Brandywine, to Henry DuPont, Germantown, February 4,
1832.
27. Place of residence is not the only variable significant in characterizing family
structure. Strong emotional ties and frequent visiting and correspondence can unite
12 Smith-Rosenberg Love and Ritual
Parke Lewis Butler moved with her husband to Louisiana, she sent her
two daughters back to Virginia to attend school, live with their grandmother
and auot, and be integrated back into Virginia society.'-s The
constant letters between Maria Inskeep and Fanny Hampton, sisters
separated in their early twenties when Maria moved with her husband
from New Jersey to Louisiana, held their families together, making it
possible for their daughters to feel a part of their cousins' network of
friends and interests.29 The Ripley daughters, growing up in western
Massachusetts in the early 1800s, spent months each year with their
mother's sister and her family in distant Boston; these female cousins
and their network of friends exchanged gossip-filled letters and gradually
formed deeply loving and dependent ties.30
Women frequently spent their days within the social confines of
such extended families, Sisters-in-law visited each other and, in some
families, seemed to spend more time with each other than with their
husbands. First cousins cared for each other's babies-for weeks or even
months in times of sickness or childbirth. Sisters helped each other with
housework, shopped and sewed for each other. Geographic separation
was borne with difficulty. A sister's absence for even a week or two could
cause loneliness and depression and would be bridged by frequent letters.
Sibling rivalry was hardly unknown, but with separation or illness
the theme of deep affection and dependency reemerged.31
families that do not live under one roof. Demographic studies based on household structure
alone fail to reflect such emotional and even economic ties between families.
28. Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth BordJey Gibson, April 20 and September
25, L848.
29. Maria Inskeep to Fanny Hampton Correspondence, 1823---60, Inskeep Collection,
Tulane University Library.
30, Eunice Callender, Boston, to Sarah Ripley , September 24 and October
29, 1803, February 16, 1805, April 29 and October 9,1806, May 26,1810.
31 Sophie DuPont filled her letters to her younger brother Henry (with whom she
had been assigned to correspond while he was at boarding school) with accounts of family
visiting (see, e.g., December 13, 1827, January LO and March 9, L828, February 4 and
March 10, 1832; also Sophie M. DuPont to Victorine DuPont Bauday, September 26 and
December 4, 1827, February 22, 1828; Sophie M. DuPont, Brandywine, to Clementina B.
Smith, Philadelphia, January L5, 1830; Eleuthera DuPont, Brandywine, to Victorine DuPont
Bauday, Philadelphia, April 17, 1821, October 20, 1826; Evelina DuPont
to Victorine DuPont Bauday, October 18, 18L6). Other examples, from the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, are Harriet Manigault Diary, August 17, September 8,
October 19 and 22, December 22, L8 14; Jane Zook, Westtown School, Chester County, Pa.,
to Mary Zook, November L3, December 7 and LI, 1870, February 26, 1871; Eleanor Parke
Custis to Elizabeth Bordley , March 30, 1796, February 7 and March 20,
1798; Jeannie McCall to Peter McCall, Philadelphia, November 12, 1847; Mary B. Ashew
Diary,July II and 13, August 17, Summerand October t858, and, froma private collection,
Edith Jefferis to Anne Jefferis Sheppard, November 184t, AprilS, L842; Abigail Brackett
Lyman, Northampton, Mass., to Mrs. Cading, Litchfield, Conn., May 13, 1801; Abigail
Brackett Lyman, Northampton, to Mary Lord, August II, 1800. Mary Hallock Foote
vacationed with her sister, her sister's children, her aunt, and a female cousin in the
Signs Autumn 1975 /3
Sisterly bonds continued across a lifetime. In her old age a rural
Quaker matron, MarthaJefferis, wrote to her daughter Anne concerning
her own half-sister, Phoebe "In sister Phoebe I have a real friend-she
studies my comfort and waits on me like a child.... She is exceedingly
kind and this to all other homes (set aside yours) I would prefer-it is
next to being with a daughter." Phoebe's own letters confirmed Martha's
evaluation of her feelings. "Thou knowest my dear sister," Phoebe
wrote, "there is no one ... that exactly feels thee as I do, for I think
without boasting I can truly say that my desire is for thee."32
Such women, whether friends or relatives, assumed an emotional
centrality in each others' lives. In their diaries and letters they wrote of
the joy and contentment they felt in each others' company, their sense of
isolation and despair when apart. The regularity of their correspondence
underlines the sincerity of their words. Women named their
daughters after one another and sought to integrate dear friends into
their lives after marriage.33 As one young bride wrote to an old friend
shortly after her marriage "I want to see you and talk with you and feel
that we are united by the same bonds of sympathy and congeniality as
ever."3~ After years of friendship one aging woman wrote of another
"Time cannot destroy the fascination of her manner ... her voice is
music to the ear...."35 Women made elaborate presents for each other,
ranging from the Quakers' frugal pies and breads to painted velvet bags
and phantom bouquets.36 When a friend died, their grief was deeply
felt. Martha Jefferis was unable to write to her daughter for three weeks
because of the sorrow she felt at the death of a dear friend. Such distress
was not unusual. A generation earlier a young Massachusetts farm
woman filled pages of her diary with her grief at the death of her
"dearest friend" and transcribed the letters of condolence other women
summer of 1874; cousins frequently visited the Hallock farm in Milton, N.Y. In later years
Molly and her sister Bessie set up a joint household in Boise, Idaho (Mary Hallock Foote to
Helena, July and passim). Jeannie Field, after initially disliking her sister?in-law,
Laura, became very dose to her, calling her "my little sister" and at times spending virtually
every day with her (Jeannie Field New York, to Sarah Butler Wister, Germantown,
March 1, 8, and 15, and May 9, 1863).
32. MarthaJefferis to AnneJefferis Sheppard, January 12, 1845; Phoebe Middleton to
Martha Jefferis, February 22, 1848. A number of other women remained dose to sisters
and sisters-in-law across a long lifetime (Phoebe Bradford Diary, June 7, 1832, and Sarah
Alden Ripley to Sophia Bradford, cited in Wister and Irwin, p. 195).
33. Rebecca Biddle to Martha Jefferis, 1838-49, passim; Martha Jefferis to Anne Jefferis
Sheppard,July 6, 1846; Anne Jefferis Sheppard to RachaeLJefferis, January 16, 1865;
Sarah Foulke Farquhar Diary, September 22, 18l3, Friends Historical Library,
Swarthmore College; Mary Garrigues to Mary Canby , 1802-8, passim; Anne
Biddle to Mary Canby , May 16, July 13, and November 24, 1806, June 14, 1807,
June 5, 1808.
34. Sarah Alden Ripley to Abba Allyn, n.d., Schlesinger Library.
35. Phoebe Bradford Diary, July 13, l832.
36. Mary Hallock to Helena, December 23 ; Phoebe Bradford
Diary, December 8, 1832; Martha Jefferis and Anne Jefferis Sheppard letters, passim.
14 Smil.h-Rosenberg Love and Ritual
sent her. She marked the anmversary of Rachel's death each year in her
diary, contrasting her faithfulness with that of Rachel's husband who
had soon remarried.37
These female friendships served a number of emotional functions.
Within this secure and empathetic world women could share sorrows,
anxieties, and joys, confident that other women had experienced similar
emotions. One mid-nineteenth-century rural matron in a letter to her
daughter discussed this particular aspect of women's friendships "To
have such a friend as thyself to look to and sympathize with her-and
enter into all her little needs and in whose bosom she could with freedom
pour forth her joys and sorrows-such a friend would very much
relieve the tedium of many a wearisome hour. ..." A generation later
Molly more informally underscored the importance of this same function
in a letter to Helena "Suppose I come down ... spend Sunday
with you quietly," she wrote Helena " ... that means talking all the
time until you are relieved of all your latest troubles, and 1 of mine.
. . ."38 These were frequently troubles that apparently no man could
understand. When AnneJefferis Sheppard was first married, she and her
older sister Edith (who then lived with Anne) wrote in detail to their
mother of the severe depression and anxiety which they experienced.
Moses Sheppard, Anne's husband, added cheerful postscripts to the sisters'
letters-which he had clearly not read-remarking on Anne's and
Edith's contentment. Theirs was an emotional world to which he had
little access.39
This was, as well, a female world in which hostility and criticism of
other women were discouraged, and thus a milieu in which women
could develop a sense of inner security and self-esteem. As one young
woman wrote to her mother's longtime friend "I cannot sufficiently
thank you for the kind unvaried affection & indulgence you have ever
shown and expressed both by words and actions for me. Happy
would it be did all the world view me as you do, through the medium of
kindness and forbearance."40 They valued each other. Women, who had
little status or power in the larger world of male concerns, possessed
status and power in the lives and worlds of other women.41
37. MarthaJefferis to Anne Jefferis Shepp<!rd, August 3, 1849; Sarah Ripley
Diary, November 12, 1808, January 8, 181 L. An interesting note of hostility or rivalry is
present in Sarah Ripley's diary entry Sarah evidently deeply re5ented the husband'5 rapid
remarriage.
38. Martha Jefferis to Edith Jefferis, March IS, 1841, Mary Hallock Foote to Helena,
n,d, to Sophie Madeleine DuPont, February , Eleanor Parke Custis to ELizabeth BordLey
, May 13, 1796,JuLy 1, 1798; Peggy EmLen to Sally Logan, January 8,1786. All but
the EmlenlLogan letters are in the Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis Correspondence, HistoricaL
Society of Pennsylvania).
43. Mrs, S, S, Dalton, "Autobiography," (Circle Valley, Utab, 1876), pp. 21-22, Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley; Sarah FouLke Emlen Diary, April 1809;
Louisa G. Van Vleck, Appleton, Wis., to Charlena Van Vleck Anderson, GOttingen, n.d,
, Harriet Manigault Diary, August 16, 1814, July 14, 1815 Sarah Alden Ripley to
Sophy Fisher , quoted in Wi.5ter and Irwin (n. 12 above), p. 212. The Jefferi.5
family papers are filled with empathetic letters between Martha and her daughters, Anne
and Edith. See, e.g., Martha Jefferi.5 to Edith Jefferis, December 26, 1836, March II, 1837,
March , June 3, 1800 Sarah Alden Ripley wrote weekly to her daughter, Sophy Ripley
Fisher, after the latter's marriage (Sarah Alden RipLey Correspondence, passim); Phoebe
Bradford Diary, February 25, 1833, passim, 1832-33; Louisa G. Van Vleck to Charlena
Van Vleck Anderson, December 15, 1873, July 4, August 15 and 29, September 19, and
November 9, 1875. Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis's long correspondence with Elizabeth
Bordley Gibson contains evidence of her anKiety at leaving her foster mother's home at
various times during her adolescence and at her marriage, and her own longing for her
daughters, both of whom bad married and moved to Louisiana (Eleanor Parke Custis
to Elizabeth Bordley , October 13, 1795, November 4, 1799, passim, 1820s
and 1830s). Anne Jefferis Sheppard experienced a great deal of anxiety on moving two
16 Smith-Rosenberg Loue and Ritual
mothers and daughters is evident in a letter Sarah Alden Ripley, at age
sixty-nine, wrote her youngest and recently married daughter "You do
not know how much I miss you, not only when I struggle in and out of
my mortal envelop and pump my nightly potation and no longer pour
into your sympathizing ear my senile gossip, but all the day I muse away,
since the sound of your voice no longer rouses me to sympathy with your
JOys or sorrows.. . You cannot know how much I miss your affectionate
demonstrations."i5 A dozen aging mothers in this sample of over thirty
families echoed her sentiments.
Central to these mother-daughter relations is what might be described
as an apprenticeship system. In those families where the daughter
followed the mother into a life of traditional domesticity, mothers
and other older women carefully trained daughters in the arts of housewifery
and motherhood. Such training undoubtedly occurred throughout
a girl's childhood but became more systematized, almost ritualistic,
in the years following the end of her formal education and before her
marriage. At this time a girl either returned home from boarding school
or no longer divided her time between home and schooL Rather, she
devoted her energies on two tasks mastering new domestic skills and
participating in the visiting and social activities necessary to finding a
husband. Under the careful supervision of their mothers and of older
female relatives, such late-adolescent girls temporarily took over the
household management from their mothers, tended their young nieces
and nephews, and helped in childbirth, nursing, and weaning. Such
experiences tied the generations together in shared skills and emotional
interaction.46
days' journey from her mother at the time of her marriage. This loneliness and sense of
isolation persisted through her marriage until, finally a widow, she returned to live with
her mother (Anne Jefferis Sheppard to Martha Jefferis, April 1841, October Diary, February 19, 1815;
Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, October 10, .
46. Mary Hallock Foote to Helena (no. 52); Jossie, Stevens Point, Wis.,
to Charlena Van Vleck , AppLeton, Wis., October 24, 1870 Pollie Chandler,
Signs Autumn 1975 17
Daughters were born into a female world. Their mother's life expectations
and sympathetic network of friends and relations were
among the first realities in the life of the developing child. As long as the
mother's domestic role remained relatively stable and few viable alternatives
competed with it, daughters tended to accept their mother's world
and to turn automatically to other women for support and intimacy. It
was within this closed and intimate female world that the young girl
grew toward womanhood.
One could speculate at length concerning the absence of that
mother-daughter hostility today considered almost inevitable to an
adolescent's struggle for autonomy and self-identity. It is possible that
taboos against.female aggression and hostility were sufficiently strong to
repress even that between mothers and their adolescent daughters. Yet
these letters seem so alive and the interest of daughters in their mothers'
affairs so vital and genuine that it is difficult to interpret their clo>eness
exclusively in terms of repression and denial. The functional bonds that
held mothers and daughters together in a world that permitted few
alternatives to domesticity might well have created a source of mutuality
and trust absent in societies where greater options were available for
daughters than for mothers. Furthermore, the extended female
network-a daughter's close ties with her own older sisters, cousins, and
aunts-may well have permitted a diffusion and a relaxation of
mother-daughter identification and so have aided a daughter in her
struggle for identity and autonomy. None of these explanations are
mutually exclusive; all may well have interacted to produce the degree of
empathy evident in those letters and diaries.
At some point in adolescence, the young girl began to move outside
the matrix of her mother's support group to develop a network of her
own. Among the middle class, at least, this transition toward what was at
the .'lame time both a limited autonomy and a repetition of her mother's
life seemed to have most frequently coincided with a girl's going to
school. Indeed education appears to have played a crucial role in the
lives of most of the families in this study. Attending school for a few
months, for a year, or longer, was common even among daughters of
relatively poor families, while middle-class girls routinely spent at least a
Green Bay, Wis., to Charlena Van Vleck , Appleton, n.d. ; EleUlhera
DuPont to Sophie DuPont, September 5, 1829; Sophie DuPont to Eleuthera DuPont,
December 1827; Sophie DuPont to Victorine Bauday, December 4,1827; Mary Gilpin to
Sophie DuPont, September 26, 1827; Sarah Ripley Stearns Diary, April 2, 1809; Jeannie
McCall to Peter McCaU, October 27 . Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis's correspondence
with Elizabeth Bordley Gibson describes such an apprenticeship system over two
generations-that of her childhood and that of her daughters. Indeed Eleanor Lewis's own
apprenticeship was quite formal. She was deliberately separated from her foster mother in
order to spend a winter of domesticity with her married sisters and her remarried mother.
It was clearly felt that her foster mother's (Martha Washington) home at the nation's
capital was not an appropriate place to develop domestic talents (October 13, 1795, March
30, May 13, and 1796, March 18 and April 27, 1797, October 1827).
18 Smilh-Rosenberg Love and Ritual
year in boarding schooL47 These school years ordinarily marked a girl's
first separation from home. They served to wean the daughter from her
home, to train her in the essential social graces, and, ultimately, to help
introduce her into the marriage market. It was not infrequently a trying
emotional experience for both mother and daughter.is
In this process of leaving one home and adjusting to another, the
mother's friends and relatives played a key transitional role. Such older
women routinely accepted the role of foster mother; they supervised the
young girl's deportment, monitored her health and introduced her to
their own network of female friends and kin.49 Not infrequently women,
friends from their own school years, arranged to send their daughters to
the same school so that the girls might form bonds paralleling those their
mothers had made. For years Molly and Helena wrote of their daughters'
meeting and worried over each others' children. When Molly finally
brought her daughter east to school, their first act on reaching New
York was to meet Helena and her daughters. Elizabeth Bordley Gibson
virtually adopted the daughters of her school chum, Eleanor Custis
Lewis. The Lewis daughters soon began to write Elizabeth Gibson le
