Anna Cora
Mowatt Ritchie was a mid-nineteenth century American author, public
reader, playwright and actress, a well-known and respected figure among
her contemporaries in American literary and dramatic circles. Oral
Interpretation scholars have called her the first "lady" elocutionist
because she was the first female to enter the career of public reader
without a previous career on the stage. In 1989, John Gentile, writing
a history of prominent solo performers, credited her along with famed
actresses Fanny Kemble and Charlotte Cushman with bringing to solo
performance a level of prestige previously unknown in America. He
claimed that they, as respectable women in a traditionally disrespected
career, brought a respectability and an acceptance that allowed women
of a later age to enjoy professional platform careers.
Mowatt was
also one of the first American women to achieve popular success as a
playwright. Mrs. Mercy Warren, Charlotte Lennox and Susan Rowson were
among her few forerunners. Her best remembered play, Fashion,
was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. The comedy frequently
appears in contemporary anthologies of representative American dramas.
Theatre historians mark Fashion as one of the first successful efforts
to create a distinctively American comedy of manners. Following the
success of Fashion, Mowatt reigned as one of the
queens of American drama during her eight year acting career.
No one forbade American women of the pre-Civil War
period to write and publish poems, novels, non-fiction or even plays. A
good number of women did and made a respectable amount of money for
their efforts. However, many people were not entirely at ease with the
idea of women writers. In a letter to his publisher William Ticknor in
January of 1855, Nathaniel Hawthorne referred to them as a "d---d mob
of scribbling women." The reputedly 'gentle-hearted' Charles Lamb said
of English poetess Letitia Elizabeth Landon in 1854, "If she belonged
to me, I would lock her up on bread and water till she left off writing
poetry. A female poet, or female author of any kind, ranks below an
actress, I think."
Anna Cora Mowatt was able to establish discursive
authority in the face of such social sanctions because she actively
exercised (and even today posthumously exercises) control over the
interpretation of her actions. Mowatt was, in the language of modern
public relations experts, her own best "spin doctor." Much that we know
of Mowatt comes from her own autobiography. In this work and all the
other modes of public expression Mowatt used -- non-fiction, fiction,
performance, plays, and poetry -- she employed potent rhetorical
strategies to present herself, her desires, and her motivations in a
way that would mitigate the effects of her society's prejudices without
alienating her auditors.
Mowatt played both the rebel and the conservative in
her time. By keeping her unconventionality carefully concealed by
narrative and rhetorical acumen, Mowatt was able to have her cultural
cake and eat it too. She was an independent working woman in a time
when upper and middle class writers and speakers often looked on such
women with suspicion or scorn. She presented herself to the public in
the questionable roles of actress and lady author and still managed to
pull off the feat of being generally acclaimed a lady.
