Will the real Deborah Sampson please stand up?

So, it’s a story about a cross-dressing woman, told by a man using rhetorical drag…


After reading Judith Hiltner's two extensive essays, on how Herman Mann used her as a feminine American icon to reinforce eighteenth-century ideal of the Republican woman and discourage gender transgression, I am discouraged in my search to find any of Sampson's voice in the text.  Her writing is also so amazing I feel quite intimidated that I am writing about the same text as this "master of the feminine argument." 

Well, this disappointment could also be my three cups of coffee wearing off and my blurry vision, from fighting with my MLA style guide in an effort to create an annotated bibliography.

But really, if Mann turned a cross-dressing soldier who was kicked out of her church, into a religious, intelligent proponent of feminine virtue, where do I find her voice? As a narrator, Mann almost winces with his effort to tell a war story but not actually describe any fighting.

I also discovered that a passage I thought might contain Sampson’s voice—where she liberates a young proper lady from Indian captivity—was fabricated by Mann because she was not even enlisted at the time of this battle.

Where to you find a formula for extracting an appropriated woman’s voice from a text where the author is using her to support his own agenda?

Well, at least I can be proud that early American women were making men nervous because they began to defy what was considered proper behavior. Mann’s desire to take away Sampson’s masculine attributes, in The Female Review, is evidence of this trend.

Until next time, keep fighting.

~Blake