Key issues raised while researching The Female Review

• Key issues raised while researching The Female Review:



1. Why does the entire text make an effort to capitalize and italicize words that imply a noble struggle next to her name and words like “Female” and Heroine?” Ex: (pps. 96, 109, 135, 152, 220, 226, 227) (1972 printing).

2. The text, written by a male, tells a woman’s story in the third person, often interjecting opinions and attempts to shape the reader’s feelings toward her. (This is consistent during the entire text. Ex:

3. It is rare to see Sampson’s voice in the first person (in quotes) in her biography. When her voice is the first person it is still Mann’s voice.

4. Why does the text constantly compare her with Lady Columbia in the dedication and the preface? Ex: (pps. Np., 37).

5. Why is the bloody dream she had, which inspired her to join the army, in first person? Ex: (pps. 79-34). (1972 printing).

6. How is her biography different from other revolutionary biographies at the time this was written? Was biography different because she was a woman?

7. Sampson’s degree of agency in the text is definitely an issue.

8. This is presented as history but was later thought of as historical fiction.

9. How does this tale contrast to the norms for other late eighteenth-century American women?

10. Did Sampson serve to advance Women’s rights or was she simply a woman with no other options as she is presented in the text?

11. Why this text is apparently aimed at upper-class men and what is this significance?

12. Does the text simply further Simone de Beauvoir’s myths of women or does it successfully present a woman’s story not in relation to her value to men?

13. Is the reason the text basically apologizes and censors her story because Sampson told a story where she transcended mere meaning in relation to men?

14. What is significant about the scenes where she successfully operates as a man?


• Keywords for MLA and other database searches I tried in various combinations:

1. Rhetorical Drag

2. Biography

3. Agency

4. Historical fiction

5. Women’s rights

6. Late eighteenth-century America

7. Revolution

8. American War Hero

9. Feminist

10. Feminine

11. Deborah Sampson

12. Early American Women

13. American Female Heroes

14. Women War

15. Cross-dressing

16. Gender transgression

17. Women History

18. Female Voice

19. Heroine

20. Indians

21. Captivity

Through my research I decided to investigate the text with the lens of a feminist critical theory. I believe analyzing this text through the Feminist perspective will allow me to write Sampson into history as Carla Mulford suggests.

I found that Judith Hiltner discusses eighteenth-century American anxieties about shifting gender norms and how this influenced the way Sampson was presented in the text. In another article Hiltner investigates the degree of Sampson’s political agency through a speech given during the time she toured as a speaker after being discovered as a woman.

I also found an essay from Anne S. Lombard where she also feels that Sampson’s voice is swallowed by Mann’s narration and interjections. She also feels that Alfred F. Young’s 2004, book about Sampson, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier, seeks to find the history in Mann’s sensationalized biography, fails to thoroughly address the social implications of her story. I also checked this book out of the library along with two others on the expected roles of women in Sampson’s time.

I even discovered an essay by Louis Filler, which calls readers of history to look for the “useable past” and to bring attention to historians who may have been careless. This makes me think about the way Mann shaped Sampson’s story in the way he saw fit.

I came across and essay by Jennifer Johnson, who believes gender is something we do and not biological.

The most pertinent essay I pulled up was by D. Cohen and about transgressive feminism in biographies and tragic heroines. I had to request it through inter-library loan. Sampson’s life after war was not a comfortable one and I can see where it could be tragic.

My research reinforced my belief that Sampson’s voice is lost in the text because and needs to be drawn out. I am interested in the few passages where she is quoted and speaks in the first person. However, there may be something to be garnered from the extended passages where the text praises Sampson in an effort to invoke sympathy and understanding from the audience and asks them to accept her as a war hero.

I would even love to dig into the scenes where Sampson’s behavior is the most unladylike and she successfully lives as a male soldier but I am not sure what significance this would contain. I could compare her behavior with the expected norms of Late eighteenth-century America to prove she is an unruly woman of our past. Unfortunately, this seems obvious to me and I am not sure if it is significant enough to investigate.

Something that remains unclear is the importance of her encounter with Indians at the end of text in relation to frontier captivity narratives.