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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Gay Gibson Cima
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

On 4 July 1740, women originally from Angola, Gambia, Senegal, West India, the Netherlands, France, Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, and various corners of the American colonies rushed into the streets of Charles Town, South Carolina. They panted, wept, laughed, and fell on the ground shuddering and groaning, only to rise, shout, and commence “damning all others round about them.” In 1772 a prominent Whig playwright excoriated her Governor, King George III's representative in the Massachusetts Colony, characterizing him in scene after scene as “Rapatio”; her play was performed in patriots' parlors across the colony and published in major newspapers. The following year in Boston, as prostitutes began to troll the docks and a diverse, transatlantic community of Christians surfaced, a young West African slave girl published poems and recited them in her mistress's home on the main thoroughfare, warning local Harvard boys to shun the “transient sweetness” of sin and reminding King George that his smile could “set his subjects free.” In the 1790s a Boston minister's wife produced a play which excused married women's flirtations (and her own), even after the publication of a vicious, serialized parody of her as a woman guilty not only of adultery but also of the violent domestic abuse of her husband. In her collected works, she renamed one of her plays Virtue Triumphant.

Type
Chapter
Information
Early American Women Critics
Performance, Religion, Race
, pp. 1 - 17
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Introduction
  • Gay Gibson Cima, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: Early American Women Critics
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486104.001
Available formats
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Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Gay Gibson Cima, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: Early American Women Critics
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486104.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Gay Gibson Cima, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: Early American Women Critics
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486104.001
Available formats
×