By Paul Carrier
Many of us probably have Julia Ward Howe’s most celebrated accomplishment tucked away in a dusty corner of our minds reserved for historical tidbits. It was in November, 1861, during the Civil War, that a friend told Howe she should compose new lyrics for John Brown’s Body, a song that was popular with Union troops, particularly those from Massachusetts.
As Howe tells it, she awoke that night and “the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.” Worried that she might forget the verses if she went back to sleep, Howe “sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
Howe’s legacy was secured. She had given birth to The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
That would have been accomplishment enough, but as Elaine Showalter makes clear in this compelling biography, Howe was much more than the poet who announced: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
A feminist, abolitionist and suffragist, Howe was born into a well-to-do family and raised in New York by a domineering father. (Her mother died when Howe was five.) Howe waged civil wars of her own, not least against her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who was nicknamed Chev. A widely admired social reformer and trailblazer in caring for the blind, Chev was 18 years older than Howe, whom he addressed as “my child” before they were married in 1843.
Paternalistic and authoritarian, Chev repressed his creative wife by trying to insist that she restrict herself to caring for their home and children, which made for a stressful marriage. Howe seemed to resent each discovery that she was pregnant, and although she loved her six children, she sometimes lamented that she felt somewhat detached from them.
Six years after the couple’s European honeymoon, “her youthful fantasies about marriage had been shattered,” Showalter writes. “She had her children, her studies, and her secret writing, but her marriage had turned out to be another imprisonment with her husband as the jailer.”
Yet despite Chev’s oppressive demands, Howe asserted her independence, to a degree. In 1853 she published her first book of poetry, Passion-Flowers, which drew some criticism but won praise from the likes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenlief Whittier. The poems did not spare Chev; their voice is that of a woman “confessing her ambitions and her unhappiness.” Other books, essays, travel writing and lectures followed. Howe even wrote a bold novel with an unconventional protagonist that was finally published in 2004 as The Hermaphrodite.
The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe isn’t a dual biography, but inevitably, it pays considerable attention to Chev. A dashing, energetic, Boston-born physician, he was a hero of the Greek War for Independence and founder of the Perkins School for the Blind (originally, the Perkins Asylum for the Blind) in Massachusetts.
While Chev clearly deserves most of the blame for the sorry state of his marriage, Showalter is evenhanded. Howe does not escape unscathed. During one bad stretch in 1852, for example, Showalter notes that Howe and Chev each held “the worst interpretation of the other’s behavior” after nine years of marriage because they “had not learned how to talk to each other.” Howe could be snobbish, vain, cutting, even racist; unfortunately, racism was not uncommon even among her fellow abolitionists.
Howe’s recurring complaints, although entirely justified, make for wearisome reading. Fortunately for her and the reader, Howe not only fought back against Chev as best she could, but she outlived him by more than 30 years. If anything, Chev’s death in 1876 gave her the freedom she often lacked while married, allowing her to expand her very public role in the battle for women’s rights.
“Began my new life today,” Howe wrote on Jan. 14, 1876, one day after Chev’s death. After nearly 33 years of marriage, she would live another 34 years, during which her interests and celebrity ranged so far afield that she was sometimes referred to as “the queen of America.”
Showalter’s illuminating biography documents the struggles, successes and failures of a valiant and talented icon, although the post-Chev chapter of her life could be more detailed. In the process, The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe sheds light on the status of women in 19th-century America, and the myriad social causes that roiled the United States during Howe’s often difficult, but always eventful, life.
As Howe tells it, she awoke that night and “the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.” Worried that she might forget the verses if she went back to sleep, Howe “sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
Howe’s legacy was secured. She had given birth to The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
That would have been accomplishment enough, but as Elaine Showalter makes clear in this compelling biography, Howe was much more than the poet who announced: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
A feminist, abolitionist and suffragist, Howe was born into a well-to-do family and raised in New York by a domineering father. (Her mother died when Howe was five.) Howe waged civil wars of her own, not least against her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who was nicknamed Chev. A widely admired social reformer and trailblazer in caring for the blind, Chev was 18 years older than Howe, whom he addressed as “my child” before they were married in 1843.
Paternalistic and authoritarian, Chev repressed his creative wife by trying to insist that she restrict herself to caring for their home and children, which made for a stressful marriage. Howe seemed to resent each discovery that she was pregnant, and although she loved her six children, she sometimes lamented that she felt somewhat detached from them.
Six years after the couple’s European honeymoon, “her youthful fantasies about marriage had been shattered,” Showalter writes. “She had her children, her studies, and her secret writing, but her marriage had turned out to be another imprisonment with her husband as the jailer.”
Yet despite Chev’s oppressive demands, Howe asserted her independence, to a degree. In 1853 she published her first book of poetry, Passion-Flowers, which drew some criticism but won praise from the likes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenlief Whittier. The poems did not spare Chev; their voice is that of a woman “confessing her ambitions and her unhappiness.” Other books, essays, travel writing and lectures followed. Howe even wrote a bold novel with an unconventional protagonist that was finally published in 2004 as The Hermaphrodite.
The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe isn’t a dual biography, but inevitably, it pays considerable attention to Chev. A dashing, energetic, Boston-born physician, he was a hero of the Greek War for Independence and founder of the Perkins School for the Blind (originally, the Perkins Asylum for the Blind) in Massachusetts.
While Chev clearly deserves most of the blame for the sorry state of his marriage, Showalter is evenhanded. Howe does not escape unscathed. During one bad stretch in 1852, for example, Showalter notes that Howe and Chev each held “the worst interpretation of the other’s behavior” after nine years of marriage because they “had not learned how to talk to each other.” Howe could be snobbish, vain, cutting, even racist; unfortunately, racism was not uncommon even among her fellow abolitionists.
Howe’s recurring complaints, although entirely justified, make for wearisome reading. Fortunately for her and the reader, Howe not only fought back against Chev as best she could, but she outlived him by more than 30 years. If anything, Chev’s death in 1876 gave her the freedom she often lacked while married, allowing her to expand her very public role in the battle for women’s rights.
“Began my new life today,” Howe wrote on Jan. 14, 1876, one day after Chev’s death. After nearly 33 years of marriage, she would live another 34 years, during which her interests and celebrity ranged so far afield that she was sometimes referred to as “the queen of America.”
Showalter’s illuminating biography documents the struggles, successes and failures of a valiant and talented icon, although the post-Chev chapter of her life could be more detailed. In the process, The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe sheds light on the status of women in 19th-century America, and the myriad social causes that roiled the United States during Howe’s often difficult, but always eventful, life.
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