The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

by Various

  Janey was right and Charles Taylor felt that she was; the conventionalities must be observed no matter at what cost. He held her fondly against his heart, “if aught of ill should arise to you from your remaining here I should never forgive myself.” Charles could not remain longer, he must be at his office, for business was urging. His cousin, George Gay, was in the private room alone when he entered, he appeared to be buried five feet deep in business, though he would have preferred to be five feet deep in pleasure. “Are you going home to supper this evening,” inquired Charles? “The fates permitting,” replied Mr. Gay, “You tell my sisters that I will not return until after tea, Mary will not thank me for running from Mrs. Brewster’s house to hers, just now.” “Charles,” warmly spoke George in an impulse of kindly feeling, “I do hope the fever will not extend itself to Janey.” “I hope not,” fervently breathed Charles Taylor.

  36

  ALICE RUTH MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON

  (1875–1935)

  Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a mixed-race family. After graduating from Straight University, she worked as a teacher in the New Orleans public school system, and in 1895 she published Violets and Other Tales, her first collection of short stories and poems. She married the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898; the marriage was violent. They separated in 1902 and she moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught at several schools including Howard High School. She married Robert Nelson, an activist, in 1912.

  The following selection consists of an essay, “The Woman,” and five poems, “I Sit and Sew,” “Sonnet,” “To Madame Curie,” “To the Negro Farmers of the United States,” and “Amid the Roses.” In “The Woman,” Dunbar-Nelson asks, “Why should well-salaried women marry?” Marriage, for her, is “based on a desire to possess the physical attractions of the woman by the man, pretty much as a child desires a toy, and an innate love of man, a wild desire not to be ridiculed by the foolish as an ‘old maid,’ and a certain delicate shrinking from the work of the world—laziness is a good name for it—by the woman.” Why should women sacrifice their space in the professional world for the sake of their families (especially husbands)? Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s poetry, seemingly frank and personal, contains all of the power of her prose. The short poems offered here alternate between celebrating their subjects, as “To Madame Curie” and “To the Negro Farmers of the United States” do, and voicing anxieties and desires.

  “The Woman” (1895)

  SOURCE: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “The Woman,” Violets and Other Tales (Boston: The Monthly Review, 1895).

  The literary manager of the club arose, cleared his throat, adjusted his cravat, fixed his eyes sternly upon the young man, and in a sonorous voice, a little marred by his habitual lisp, asked: “Mr. ——, will you please tell us your opinion upon the question, whether woman’s chances for matrimony are increased or decreased when she becomes man’s equal as a wage earner?”

  The secretary adjusted her eyeglass, and held her pencil alertly poised above her book, ready to note which side Mr. —— took. Mr. —— fidgeted, pulled himself together with a violent jerk, and finally spoke his mind. Someone else did likewise, also someone else, then the women interposed, and jumped on the men, the men retaliated, a wordy war ensued, and the whole matter ended by nothing being decided, pro or con—generally the case in wordy discussions. Moi? Well, I sawed wood and said nothing, but all the while there was forming in my mind, no, I won’t say forming, it was there already. It was this, Why should well-salaried women marry? Take the average working-woman of today. She works from five to ten hours a day, doing extra night work, sometimes, of course. Her work over, she goes home or to her boarding-house, as the case may be. Her meals are prepared for her, she has no household cares upon her shoulders, no troublesome dinners to prepare for a fault-finding husband, no fretful children to try her patience, no petty bread and meat economies to adjust. She has her cares, her money-troubles, her debts, and her scrimpings, it is true, but they only make her independent, instead of reducing her to a dead level of despair. Her day’s work ends at the office, school, factory or store; the rest of the time is hers, undisturbed by the restless going to and fro of housewifely cares, and she can employ it in mental or social diversions. She does not incessantly rely upon the whims of a cross man to take her to such amusements as she desires. In this nineteenth century she is free to go where she pleases—provided it be in a moral atmosphere—without comment. Theatres, concerts, lectures, and the lighter amusements of social affairs among her associates, are open to her, and there she can go, see, and be seen, admire and be admired, enjoy and be enjoyed, without a single harrowing thought of the baby’s milk or the husband’s coffee.

  Her earnings are her own, indisputably, unreservedly, undividedly. She knows to a certainty just how much she can spend, how well she can dress, how far her earnings will go. If there is a dress, a book, a bit of music, a bunch of flowers, or a bit of furniture that she wants, she can get it, and there is no need of asking anyone’s advice, or gently hinting to John that Mrs. So and So has a lovely new hat, and there is one ever so much prettier and cheaper down at Thus & Co.’s. To an independent spirit there is a certain sense of humiliation and wounded pride in asking for money, be it five cents or five hundred dollars. The working woman knows no such pang; she has but to question her account and all is over. In the summer she takes her savings of the winter, packs her trunk and takes a trip more or less extensive, and there is none to say her nay,—nothing to bother her save the accumulation of her own baggage. There is an independent, happy, free-and-easy swing about the motion of her life. Her mind is constantly being broadened by contact with the world in its working clothes; in her leisure moments by the better thoughts of dead and living men which she meets in her applications to books and periodicals; in her vacations, by her studies of nature, or it may be other communities than her own. The freedom which she enjoys she does not trespass upon, for if she did not learn at school she has acquired since habits of strong self-reliance, self-support, earnest thinking, deep discriminations, and firmly believes that the most perfect liberty is that state in which humanity conforms itself to and obeys strictly, without deviation, those laws which are best fitted for their mutual self-advancement.

  And so your independent working woman of to day comes as near being ideal in her equable self poise as can be imagined. So why should she hasten to give this liberty up in exchange for a serfdom, sweet sometimes, it is true, but which too often becomes galling and unendurable.

  It is not marriage that I decry, for I don’t think any really sane person would do this, but it is this wholesale marrying of girls in their teens, this rushing into an unknown plane of life to avoid work. Avoid work! What housewife dares call a moment her own?

  Marriages might be made in Heaven, but too often they are consummated right here on earth, based on a desire to possess the physical attractions of the woman by the man, pretty much as a child desires a toy, and an innate love of man, a wild desire not to be ridiculed by the foolish as an “old maid,” and a certain delicate shrinking from the work of the world—laziness is a good name for it—by the woman. The attraction of mind to mind, the ability of one to compliment the lights and shadows in the other, the capacity of either to fulfil the duties of wife or husband—these do not enter into the contract. That is why we have divorce courts.

  And so our independent woman in every year of her full, rich, well-rounded life, gaining fresh knowledge and experience, learning humanity, and particularly that portion of it which is the other gender, so well as to avoid clay-footed idols, and finally when she does consent to bear the yoke upon her shoulders, does so with perhaps less romance and glamor than her younger scoffing sisters, but with an assurance of solid and more lasting happiness. Why should she have hastened this; was aught lost by the delay?

  “They say” that men don’t admire this type of woman, that they prefer t
he soft, dainty, winning, mindless creature who cuddles into men’s arms, agrees to everything they say, and looks upon them as a race of gods turned loose upon this earth for the edification of womankind. Well, may be so, but there is one thing positive, they certainly respect the independent one, and admire her, too, even if it is at a distance, and that in itself is something. As to the other part, no matter how sensible a woman is on other questions, when she falls in love she is fool enough to believe her adored one a veritable Solomon. Cuddling? Well, she may preside over conventions, brandish her umbrella at board meetings, tramp the streets soliciting subscriptions, wield the blue pencil in an editorial sanctum, hammer a typewriter, smear her nose with ink from a galley full of pied type, lead infant ideas through the tortuous mazes of c-a-t and r-a-t, plead at the bar, or wield the scalpel in a dissecting room, yet when the right moment comes, she will sink as gracefully into his manly embrace, throw her arms as lovingly around his neck, and cuddle as warmly and sweetly to his bosom as her little sister who has done nothing else but think, dream, and practice for that hour. It comes natural, you see.

  “Amid the Roses” (1895)

  SOURCE: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “Amid the Roses,” Violets and Other Tales (Boston: The Monthly Review, 1895).

  There is tropical warmth and languorous life

  Where the roses lie

  In a tempting drift

  Of pink and red and golden light

  Untouched as yet by the pruning knife.

  And the still, warm life of the roses fair

  That whisper “Come,”

  With promises

  Of sweet caresses, close and pure

  Has a thorny whiff in the perfumed air.

  There are thorns and love in the roses’ bed,

  And Satan too

  Must linger there;

  So Satan’s wiles and the conscience stings,

  Must now abide—the roses are dead.

  “I Sit and Sew” (1918)

  SOURCE: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “I Sit and Sew,” A.M.E. Church Review (1918).

  I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,

  My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—

  The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,

  Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken

  Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,

  Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—

  But—I must sit and sew.

  I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—

  That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire

  On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things

  Once men. My soul in pity flings

  Appealing cries, yearning only to go

  There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—

  But—I must sit and sew.

  The little useless seam, the idle patch;

  Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,

  When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,

  Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?

  You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream

  That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,

  It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

  “Sonnet” (1919)

  SOURCE: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “Sonnet,” Crisis (August 1919).

  I had not thought of violets late,

  The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

  In wistful April days, when lovers mate

  And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.

  The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,

  And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;

  And garish lights, and mincing little fops

  And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.

  So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,

  I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;

  The perfect loveliness that God has made,—

  Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.

  And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream

  Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

  “To the Negro Farmers of the United States” (1920)

  SOURCE: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “To the Negro Farmers of the United States,” Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer (Naperville, IL: J. L. Nichols, 1920).

  God washes clean the souls and hearts of you,

  His favored ones, whose backs bend o’er the soil,

  Which grudging gives to them requite for toil

  In sober graces and in vision true.

  God places in your hands the pow’r to do

  A service sweet. Your gift supreme to foil

  The bare-fanged wolves of hunger in the moil

  Of Life’s activities. Yet all too few

  Your glorious band, clean sprung from Nature’s heart;

  The hope of hungry thousands, in whose breast

  Dwells fear that you should fail. God placed no dart

  Of war within your hands, but pow’r to start

  Tears, praise, love, joy, enwoven in a crest

  To crown you glorious, brave ones of the soil.

  “To Madame Curie” (1921)

  SOURCE: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “To Madame Curie,” Philadelphia Public Ledger (August 21, 1921).

  Oft have I thrilled at deeds of high emprise,

  And yearned to venture into realms unknown,

  Thrice blessed she, I deemed, whom God had shown

  How to achieve great deeds in woman’s guise.

  Yet what discov’ry by expectant eyes

  Of foreign shores, could vision half the throne

  Full gained by her, whose power fully grown

  Exceeds the conquerors of th’ uncharted skies?

  So would I be this woman whom the world

  Avows its benefactor; nobler far,

  Than Sybil, Joan, Sappho, or Egypt’s queen.

  In the alembic forged her shafts and hurled

  At pain, diseases, waging a humane war;

  Greater than this achievement, none, I ween.

  WOMEN ADDRESSING WOMEN: ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS

  37

  SARAH J. EARLY

  (1825–1907)

  Sara Jane Early was born Sarah Jane Woodson in Chillicothe, Ohio, into the family that founded the first black Methodist Church west of the Alleghenies. After graduating from Oberlin College, she joined the faculty at Wilberforce University and became its first black female college instructor. In her later life, she was a lecturer, author, and the superintendent of the black division of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement.

  In the following address, Early notes the importance of the women’s club movement, which organized groups of black women throughout the United States in the years after the Civil War, promoting education, temperance, women’s rights, and Christianity. Many of the writers featured in this anthology were central figures in their city’s or region’s women’s clubs and wrote for their local newspapers. Mixing Christian, inspirational language with tangible measures of women’s club’s growth, Early argues in this detailed and passionate essay that the progress already made by black women is evidence that black culture and society will thrive.

  “The Organized Efforts of the Colored Women of the South to Improve Their Condition” (1894)

  SOURCE: Sarah J. Early, “The Organized Efforts of the Colored Women of the South to Improve Their Condition,” World’s Congress of Representative Women, Vol. 2. Ed. Mary Wright Sewall (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1894).

  In this age of development and advancement all the forces which have been accumulating for centuries past seem to be concentrated in one grand effort to raise mankind to that degree of inte
llectual and moral excellence which a wise and beneficent Creator designed that he should enjoy. No class of persons is exempt from this great impulse. The most unlettered, the most remote and obscure, as well as the most refined and erudite seem to have felt the touch of an unseen power, and to have heard a mysterious voice calling them to ascend higher in the scale of being. It is not a strange coincidence, then, that in this period of restlessness and activity the women of all lands should simultaneously see the necessity of taking a more exalted position, and of seeking a more effective way of ascending to the same plane, and assuming the more responsible duties of life with her favored brother.