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The Federal Mother: Whitman as Revolutionary Son

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Betsy Erkkila
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Extract

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin remarked on the radiant sun painted on the back of George Washington's chair: “I have,” he said, “often and often in the course of the Session … looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” In one of his earliest published poems, “The Columbian's Song,” Whitman draws upon the rising-glory rhetoric of the Revolutionary period to express a similar confidence in America's future:

O, my soul is drunk with joy,

And my inmost heart is glad,

To think my country's star will not

Through endless ages fade,

That on its upward glorious course

Our red eyed eagle leaps,

…………

That here at length is found

A wide extending shore,

Where Freedom's starry gleam

Shines with unvarying beam.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 10 , October 1985 , pp. 423 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

NOTES

1. In Silverman, Kenneth, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), p. 575.Google Scholar

2. Whitman, Walt, The Early Poems and the Fiction, edited by Brasher, Thomas L. (New York: New York University Press, 1963), p. 2Google Scholar. Subsequent references to the early poems and fiction will be from this edition (EP) and will be cited in the text.

3. Silverman describes this familial rhetoric as “Whig Sentimentalism” in A Cultural History, pp. 82–7.Google Scholar

4. For a discussion of the psychological sources of Whitman's familial images see Miller, Edwin Haviland, Walt Whitman's Poetry: A Psychological Journey (New York: New York University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; and Black, Stephen, Whitman's Journey into Chaos: A Psychological Study of the Poetic Process (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

5. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Weightman, Roger, 06 24, 1826Google Scholar, in Selected Writings, edited by Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: AHM Publishing Co., 1979), p. 13.Google Scholar

6. Freneau, , “On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man,” in Poems of Freneau, edited by Clark, Harry Hayden (1929; rpt. New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1960), p. 125Google Scholar. Subsequent references to the poems of Freneau will be from this edition (PF) and will be cited in the text.

7. In The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975)Google Scholar, Annette Kolodny discusses the conflict in American writers between the pastoral vision of a feminine landscape and the “agressively destructive masculine orientation of history” (p. 38).

8. Whitman, , The Uncollected Poetry and Prose, Vol. 1, edited by Holloway, Emory (Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), p. 51.Google Scholar

9. Uncollected Prose and Poetry, p. 69.Google Scholar

10. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition, ed. Cowley, Malcolm (New York: Viking Press, 1959), p. 23Google Scholar. Subsequent references to this edition will be cited in the text as LG 1855.Google Scholar

11. In Whitman, , Leaves of Grass: An Exact Copy of the First Edition, 1855 (New York: Eakins Press, 1966).Google Scholar

12. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Vol. 1, edited by Bradley, Sculley et al. (New York: New York University Press, 1980), p. 161Google Scholar. Since I am tracing changes and developments in Whitman's relation with his democratic muse, here, as elsewhere in the text, I have used the original version of the poem. Subsequent references to this volume will appear in the text as LG Variorum.

13. For a discussion of the relation between Whitman's attitude toward women, particularly mothers, and some of the social and sexual ideologies of his time, see Aspiz, Harold, Walt Whitman and the Body Beautiful (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980)Google Scholar and Killingsworth, Myrth Jimmie, “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View,” American Literature, 54 (03 1982), 28–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass: Facsimile Edition of the 1860 Text, edited by Pearce, Roy Harvey (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961), p. 239Google Scholar. Subsequent references will be cited in the text as LG 1860.

15. In Furness, Clifton, “Walt Whitman's Politics,” American Mercury, 16 (1929), 464.Google Scholar

16. Whitman, , The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman, Vol. 9, edited by Bucke, Richard Maurice (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902), p. 11.Google Scholar

17. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition, edited by Blodgett, Harold and Bradley, Sculley (New York: Norton, 1965), p. 511.Google Scholar

18. In conceiving of motherhood not in terms of the isolate family nor as a biological function only, but as a social principle and a creative and intellectual force, Whitman comes close to the mother-centered, Utopian vision of Gilman, Charlotte Perkins's Herland (1915).Google Scholar

19. Whitman, , Prose Works 1892, Vol. 2, edited by Stovall, Floyd (New York: New York University Press, 1964), p. 372.Google Scholar