I hadn't been able to keep up with comments on other posts lately -- not that I'm good at that anyway -- until today. I want to move an exchange from the comments of my post on Writing Oddities because I want to thank Historiann especially for giving me a brainstorm.
The subject of the article that I'm overhauling went by several names in her life: Ruth Cox, Harriet Bailey, Harriet Adams, and Ruth Adams. This made her a bit of a research mystery, but one that has to have been the most satisfying and exciting of my career thus far (I do hope many more are in the future because -- wow! -- that was fun!). In my post, I was frustrated over the practical issue of just how to refer to her without losing the reader.
Historiann responded: "On the name problem: I have the same problem with my subject. But, instead of seeing it as a problem, I've decided to see it as an opportunity. I'm experimenting with using the different names she used/used for her at different points in her life, as a signal of the many different identity changes she goes through in her life."
A name change can indicate a change of identity, either through imposition or self-definition. In my answer, I wrote that I hadn't tackled the concept of identity head-on in this overhaul of the article because the subject would have become too unwieldy what with all of the differentiations of abolitionist tactics, and attempts at easing in class identification, and so forth. There is, however, a section in which I discuss my subject's plans for her future versus Douglass's plans for her future (seriously, the man was a patriarch at home, which will fit into the bigger picture later on). Douglass sees her as fitting into his life as a confidante, a liaison to his wife, and another set of hands around the house. Naming her, or allowing her to name herself, as his sister -- this assumed identity of "sister" -- indicates her position in the Douglass household at that time.
Bailey -- for that is the name that she went by at this time -- had other ideas. She wanted to be wife and mother in her own home, helpmeet to her own husband and raising her own children, rather than ancillary to the Douglass home. In marrying, she took her husbands last name and became Harriet Adams. I seriously doubt that the act of taking the name itself was much of a choice in the way a woman taking her husband's name today indicates a particular choice. Women just did that in those days. Still, the new name indicated a choice that she had made about her life: to leave off the identity of spinster sister in the Douglass home and take on the identity of wife in her own.
Of course, you can go back further and see that she took the name Harriet Bailey after she ran away from slavery. The name change served the practical purpose of disguising her identity as a fugitive from slave catchers, but also to indicate a new identity as self-emancipated woman. Douglass went through the same process when he changed his name from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Johnson to Frederick Douglass.
Later in her life, she went back to Ruth, going by Ruth Adams. The return to Ruth came after emancipation. Ruth Adams, then, was a legally free woman in a nation without slavery and also a widow.
So, each name change, regardless of how conscious the motivations behind the change were, indicated a different status in her life: Ruth Cox was the enslaved woman, Harriet Bailey was the single woman and fugitive living in Frederick Douglass's house, Harriet Adams was the wife and mother, and Ruth Adams was the widowed and legally free woman.
Now, I have to go stick this into the article -- polished up a bit, of course!
Thank you so very much Historiann, for inspiring this passage!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
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6 comments:
The difficulty this creates in referring to her is trivial, I think, in comparison to the interest of the story told by the sequence of names. I thought of you, and this issue, reading this obituary: "In seemingly serial incarnations, she was Ruchel Zylska, Rachel Zylska, Rachel Shilsky, Ruth Shilsky, Ruth McBride and, for the last 51 years, Ruth McBride Jordan." (She was apparently the subject of a popular memoir.)
(BTW: the conventional opposite of selling yourself short is selling yourself long. But maybe I missed something there.)
Vance, yes, you are quite right, the story is the more important part; but, when you are on the ground -- or in the words -- those trivial things seem much bigger than they are.
"Serial incarnations": I like that!
I didn't know that about "selling yourself long." "Selling yourself tall" didn't seem quite right, except that the image in my head of "selling myself short" was one of me shrinking smaller and smaller, whereas the opposite seemed to be growing bigger and bigger. Hence, tall -- rather than long -- as opposed to short.
Agreed -- just because the choice of handle (or any other verbal detail) is not the most important thing doesn't mean you don't have to make a good decision.
And selling oneself is doubtless a special case, but in general, "buy short and sell long".
I don't know much about marriage traditions in the US, but taking your husband's name was not normal in Scotland, Ireland or France until the 19th C; it continues not to be normal in much of Scandanavia. When it began to be adopted in Scotland it was a mark of 'Britishness' and a desire to mark respectability. Now, if we knew about slave marriage cultures (which you might do, I don't), could taking her husband's name be a choice- and not just a social norm?
I'm so pleased you found my comment helpful!
I think you're right to keep in mind the question of chosen versus culturally imposed name changes and identities, esp. when dealing with early modern and even 19th C people. But I think you can make too much of it, too. After all, changing one's name has long been a marker of changes of identity--women in marriage, but also men as well as women when they enter religious life take on a new, religious name. And after a while, one may end up taking on or taking up a name because that's what other people call you--in the sense of language constructing an identity or subject position. (How many times on academic blogs do we complain about not being called "professor" or "Dr." by our students? Clearly we don't want our names preceded by "Miss" or "Mrs." or "Teacher Lady" to become an institutionalized part of our professional identity.)
Unless you think she was coerced, presumably she chose her husband and decided to marry him. Feminist Avatar's comment is interesting especially b/c she was a freedwoman: taking her husband's name is significant too in that she could go by the name of a man she loved as a free, married woman, instead of by the name of a man who merely owned her (as in slavery.)
(BTW: on the question of choice and identity--as an early modernist, I think that modern people think they have way more "choices" than they really do, and that early modern people had a lot more decisions to make than we give them credit for. That is, I'm wary of the concept of "choice" as a marker of modernity.)
Historiann.com
感謝是愛心的第一步........................................
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