An Independent Woman Desiring Liberty

(Picture to left is Philadelphia's 2nd and Dock streets, where Ann lived.)
I can already say that—by far—Ann Carson’s Memoir is my favorite read this semester I noted many themes for investigation: class, gender, marriage/domesticity, and, most significantly, independence & liberty. In particularly I noted that Ann Carson seems to dwell on these last two and her definitions seem to vary by context. I see Ann as woman striving for independence but at what cost? Ann claims in one of her letters to Mary that she has an independent spirit, and later, she calls it “haughty independence,” (a result of education). In a male, this trait was to be admired, but in Ann, it is taken as pride (vii, 19) (note, page numbers refer to the original text). She seems to credit her haughty spirit of independence from attending school with both males and females, a situation she warns as a “gross impropriety,” which lead to her having a strong, self-willed mind “with ideas most masculine” (20). It is probably that she inherited her independent spirit from her father, who had a “prevailing mania for liberty, equality, independence, and the rights of man” (my emphasis) (16). He fought for both his independence and that of his “adopted country.” As a result, Ann claims that she was a “spoiled child, and never could from my infancy endure the slightest contradiction. If Captain Carson ever presumed to command me, I recoiled with abhorrence from this assumption of power” (59). She argues that she, “was an American; a land of liberty had given me birth; my father had been his commanding officer; I felt myself his (meaning Captain Carson) equal, and pride interdicted my submitting to his caprices.” (59).

It is no wonder that she balked at being married to man not her choice. She clearly states that she married at filial obedience, that she was not ready, and that she resented it: her mother’s error was the daughter’s sacrifice (40). Later she argues that she experienced womanish fears—the idea of a husband “terrified and disgusted me” (127). The resentment she felt at her parent’s high-handedness may have influenced her feelings for Smythe, who fought in the War in South America, a country that struggled for the rights of nature and “ emancipation from the tyranny of the parent country, and an exertion of their own will.” “His whole soul was devoted to the cause of liberty and equality” (139). However, it seems that Ann doesn’t want to marry anyone. She didn’t want the Captain, she chose to not run away with Nat, she put off Captain H. indefinitely, and Smythe had to trick her into marriage. I cannot help but feel that she associated marriage with a loss of independence and liberty, and it seemed that in her marriage to Carson, she always struggled to with authority, often seeking it for herself.
During her marriage to Captain Carson, she discovers that he has cheated. This revelation somehow threw power into her court and, as she says, she became the tyrant, “I became the tyrant in my turn, and he bowed in submission to my sovereign will and pleasure” (my emphasis) (60). After she defies his authority by moving home to her mother, she reads Mary Wollstonecraft’s Norway letters, and subsequently becomes “a heroine and bravely bid defiance to Captain Carson’s authority” (45). Other ways she exerted her authority in the home was by withholding sex, “I now beheld my union with Captain C. with horror, not as an act of free will, sanctioned by Heaven, but out of parental authority, contrary to laws of God . . . . I therefore refused him all the privileges of a husband as regarded myself . . .  my person and chamber, which were sacred” (93). Thereafter she fancied herself free “from all my matrimonial fetters, and for the first time a love of liberty arose in my heart”– “emancipated me” . . . “free as the bird” and she lived as a widow (93). So, liberty and independence, for Ann meant submitting to no authority, having her own will over her body, and having a sexual relationship with whom she pleased.

It also mean have financial independence. On page 24, she clearly associates independence with the financial, yet a privilege that men enjoy.  She is frustrated that her father will not allow her mother to establish a shoe, grocery, or grog shop, “at this time our family might have been opulent, and some of its members probably lawyers, doctors, and even clergymen” (25). Later, while Captain Carson is away, Ann cleverly sets up a China and Glass shop and takes in odd jobs in sewing (i.e., uniforms for the military). She supervises young women, evidently helping out some who are in “trouble” (i.e., Miss Elliot). At this point, I was reminded of Johnson’s book in which he explained how women frequently took in sewing to help out with family finances, yet they typically made disproportionately less then men. Ann seems to have made quite a bit, but then she was the boss, a role in which she seemed to thrive. She states that “Independence was my idol” (76) and associates prosperity with peace (77). Her work made her healthy and happy (76), except for when Captain Carson came home and appeared to accept her role as bread winner. Once he went away (I think he was bi-polar) and was gone for 3 or more years, and after the rumor that he was dead, she proceeded to transfer her business’s authority (in name) from her mother to herself (108) because as a widow (as she now saw herself), it was acceptable for her to own the business. As a widow, she gains in confidence and inquires about getting a divorce. She tells the reader that she “fancied myself at liberty to marry again” (116).

If, as Elizabeth Barnes argues in States of Sympathy, that early American women “embody what most endangers republican structures” (Barnes 8), then we can view Ann Carson as am embodiment of dangers of anti-authoritarianism and self-centered independence (que Tocqueville’s definition of independence). Moreover, since the woman’s body became fetishized as a symbol of American virtue and innocence, then, as Barnes argues, “the successful assault on the woman’s chastity would therefore be read by postrevolutionary audiences as a metaphor for the debasement of American character and the corruption of national integrity” (Barnes 8). In this light, Mary Clarke’s warning in the introductory letter to Ann, becomes more poignant, “Wo be to that female who presumes to think for herself, or seek for happiness through other optics than the glass of good Madam Prudence” (vi). In short, Ann desires the same liberty men enjoy, however, society at that time did not know what to make of a woman like this. Men have the liberty to roam the world seeking riches and enjoying the company of sexual relationships.  Carson is never condemed for this--he is only condemend for his job performance and his neglecting of his family. (I can't wait to see how people take his being gone 4 years.) I feel that had she lived later, Ann's life may have turned out differently. But living during a period when feminine virtue went hand-in-hand with republicanism, women seemed to have no choice but to surrender their liberty and lived in the restrictive dictates of a oppressive patriarchal society. As Mary Clarke laments in her opening letter to Ann:

“Women are at best poor dependent creatures; before marriage our parents govern us with despotic sway; and the customs of society, more arbitrary than the laws of Medes and Persians, demand from us even the sacrifice of the heart’s best and purest emotions, which must all be immolated at the shrine of false delicacy, and the opinion of our friends; who forsooth, because they have outlived the age of feeling and sentiment, imagine they possess the power of restraining the soft impulses of all-power Nature in our hearts” (vi).

 In short, early American independent women lived in glass houses—or perhaps glass prisons.
Works Cited:

• Barnes, Elizabeth. States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel.
• The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson, Daughter of an Officer of the U.S. Navy, and Wife of Another, Whose Life Terminated in the Philadelphia Prison. 2nd Edition. Mrs. Mary Clarke, ed. New York. 1938.