Undergraduate Study Guide

The Female Review; or, Life of Deborah Sampson


Texts discussed in this module:

• Herman Mann, The Female Review; or, Life of Deborah Sampson
Electronic text available at http://www.archive.org/details/femalereviewherm00mannrich

• Zagarri, Rosemarie. “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America.” William and Mary Quarterly. 55.2 (1998): 203-30.
Electronic text available through the UCF library via the MLA International Bibliography Database.

NOTE: Texts are available online and not included in your textbook. In order to refer to them in class, please take copious notes and print out selected passages for discussion.

Assignment: Please bring to class your response and notes to ONE of the following activities. Our discussions will focus on your responses to these activities.

Activity 1: After reading Zagarri’s article “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,” using passages from both texts explain whether or not you think Sampson’s drag allows her to operate outside of the “rights” of women. Cite textual examples from both texts to support whether or not you think Sampson crossed the boundaries of women’s post-revolutionary rights. If you think she did, does this make her an unruly woman?

Activity 2: Take the visual tour (below), which shows various representations of Sampson throughout the decades. How have the visual representations of Sampson changed over the years? What version of Sampson does each image “sell” to viewers? What could Mann’s and the artists’ motivations be for presenting Sampson the way they do? What could this signify in regard to the larger picture of changing American gender norms?

Activity 3: Take the historical tour (below), which features sections of government documents surrounding Sampson’s enlistment. What does it mean that Sampson lied about her enlistment date to match the date in Mann’s interpretation of her life? What could this say about her participation in her biography? What else can do these documents tell us about Sampson.

Visual Tour:

Take a visual tour of the web images below and notice the following:

1. How the original engraving of Sampson coincides with the text’s description of her as Lady Columbia in its preface.

2. The symbolic elements present in the images.

3. How Sampson is presented to audiences in each image.

Online images:

• View the 1797 Frontispiece and title page on the Massachusetts Historical Society website:
http://www.masshist.org/objects/enlarge.cfm?img=1639_sm.jpg&queryID=359

The title page of the 1797 text reads:

The female review: or, Memoirs of an American young lady; whose life and character are peculiarly distinguished—being a Continental soldier, for nearly three years, in the late American war. During which time, she performed the duties of every department, into which she was called, with punctual exactness, fidelity and honor, and preserved her chastity inviolate, by the most artful concealment of her sex. With an appendix, containing charcteristic traits, by different hands; her taste for economy, principles of domestic education, &c. By a citizen of Massachusetts. Dedham: Printed by Nathaniel and Benjamin Heaton for the author. M,DCC,XCVII.

• Go to the online text and reread the dedication on the digital page 24.
http://www.archive.org/details/femalereviewherm00mannrich

• Go to this site: http://fightinglikeaman.blogspot.com/?zx=4d98d7127fdbcd2

1. Under the blog entry “Visuals: Deborah Sampson and Lady Columbia” View the 1796 representation of Liberty also knows as Lady Columbia.

Higham says that Americans named Liberty Lady Columbia to “bring her down to the American earth (66). He also explains that:

Throughout the nineteenth century, therefore, Americans strove to invest this personification of a principle with the corporeal reality of a place. As a first step in localizing Liberty, artists tied her closely to less ambiguous symbols of American nationality. In addition to the pileus, she was frequently required to carry an American flag, or to lean on a shield emblazoned with stars and stripes. (66)

2. View the 1975 painting “Private Robert Shurtleff” as it appeared in a 1988 American History Illustrated article, at this site:

• View the bronze statue erected in front of the Sharon Public library in Massachusetts in 1989, only five years after she was named the official state heroine, at this site:
http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Massachusetts/heroine_gannett.html

Alfred F. Young notes:

Because the statue is not up on a lofty pedestal (traditional for political leaders), or on a high horse (a requisite for generals), it is a provocative figure . . . The statue does what public statues of heroes rarely do. Instead of intimidating us, it raises questions: “What did you do to deserve this place of honor?” and “Why are you wearing the dress of a woman and half-wearing the military coat of a man while holding a gun?” (311-12)

• Just for fun look at the latest representation of Lady Columbia in this 2010 Examiner cartoon by Nate Beeler:
http://thenewagenda.net/2010/12/06/lady-columbia-roll-on/

Historical Tour:

Take a historical tour of the images, documents, and quotes below and notice the following:

1. Note who assisted Sampson with the documents needed to receive a military pension.

2. The significance of Sampson’s pension and how this could relate to publishing of her biography.

3. How Sampson is presented in the historical documents and how she is presented in the contemporary article.

Online images and documents:

• First find and read this brief historical article to contextualize events:
Leonard, Patrick L. “Deborah Samson: Official Heroine of the State of Massachusetts.” Minerva VI.3 (1988): 61.
Electronic text available through the UCF library via the ProQuest Database.

• Go to this site: http://fightinglikeaman.blogspot.com/?zx=4d98d7127fdbcd2

1. Under the blog entry “Historical Contextual Documents” look at the three national archival documents:

“Paul Revere’s letter supporting Deborah Gannett's 1805 pension application.”
“Copies of Deborah Gannett's muster certificate and bounty receipt.
“Sworn statement describing her military service under oath.”

• Explore pages 12-32 of The Female Review; or, Life of Deborah Sampson for more legible versions of these documents:
http://www.archive.org/details/femalereviewherm00mannrich

• Judith Hiltner asserts that Mann appropriates Sampson’s identity and “Attempts to shape an icon if national virtue and a myth of the early republic from the raw material of a cross-dressing female soldier” (190).
• Karen Weyler believes:

This failure of Sampson to write and speak for herself would seem to suggest that near impossibility of uncovering the real Deborah Sampson behind two hundred years of mythmaking. Nonetheless . . .Sampson’s actions subsequent to her military discharge allow us to read Sampson in a different fashion, by scrutinizing how she shrewdly transformed a transgressive act that earned other women severe and humiliating punishment into a gallant, quixotic, and patriotic gesture that future writers could construe as one of feminist liberation. (186)

Additional discussion questions about Sampson:

• What messages about women are conveyed by the text and are you convinced by the text?
• What does the text say about women and education?
• Why do you think Herman Mann chose to associate Sampson with Lady Columbia?
• How do the visual representations of Sampson compare to the historical representations?
• Do you agree with Hiltner’s argument that Sampson has no agency in the text? Why?
• Do you agree with Weyler that Sampson is a “shrewd player?” Why?

• Suggested further reading:

Higham, John. “Indian Princesses and Roman Goddess: The First Female Symbols of
America.”American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings. 100 (1991): 45-79. Print.

Hiltner, Judith R. “‘Like a Bewildered Star’: Deborah Sampson, Herman Mann, and
Address, Delivered with Applause.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 29.2 (1999): 5-24.
MLA International Bibliography. Web.

---. “‘She Bled in Secret’: Deborah Sampson, Herman Mann, and the Female Review.” Early
American Literature 34.2 (1999): 190-20. MLA International Bibliography.
Logan, Lisa M. “Columbia’s Daughters in Drag; or, Cross-Dressing, Collaboration, and
Authorship in Early American Novels.” Feminist Interventions in Early American Studies. 240-252. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2006. MLA International Bibliography. Web.
Weyler, Karen A. “An Actor in the Drama of Revolution: Deborah Sampson, Print, and
Performance in the Creation of Celebrity.” Feminist Interventions in Early American Studies. 183-193. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2006. 183-193. Print.

Works Cited

Higham, John. “Indian Princesses and Roman Goddess: The First Female Symbols of
America.”American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings. 100 (1991): 45-79. Print.

Hiltner, Judith R. “‘She Bled in Secret’: Deborah Sampson, Herman Mann, and the Female
Review.” Early American Literature 34.2 (1999): 190-20. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.

Mann, Herman. Ed. and Introduction, John A. Vinton. The Female Review: Life of Deborah
Sampson, the Female Soldier in the War of the Revolution. Tarrytown, N.Y.: Abbatt,
1916. Archive.org. Web. 2 Sept. 2010.

Young, Alfred F. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier.
New York: Knopf, 2004. Print.

Weyler, Karen A. “An Actor in the Drama of Revolution: Deborah Sampson, Print,
and Performance in the Creation of Celebrity.” Feminist Interventions in Early American
Studies. 183-193. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2006. 183-193. Print.

Zagarri, Rosemarie. “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America.” William
and Mary Quarterly. 55.2 (1998): 203-30. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 27 Oct. 2010.