Interviews with Staff & Advisory Board Members - Sarah Josepha Hale & The Godey Girls

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1) How did you first learn about Sarah Josepha Hale?

CZ: I first learned about SJH when, in my capacity of Historian of the Charlestown (MA) Historical Society, I was asked to fact-check and critique a Boston public school project developing a brochure describing a "Boston Women's Heritage Trail in the neighborhood of Charlestown, MA." One of the women honored was SJH noted for her promotion and leadership of a week-long Ladies Fair in 1840 to raise funds to complete the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Through the sale of baked goods, arts and crafts created by women, the Fair raised over $30,000 (a large sum in those days) which, when matched by two large benefactor donations of $10,000 each, was sufficient to complete the Monument.

PO: I first learned about Sarah Hale in the 1980s while a PhD student in American literature.

2) Why did you decide to get involved in a project or book about her?

CZ: When Dr. MJ Lewis contacted a mutual acquaintance in Charlestown regarding her search for information on SJH, the mutual acquaintance passed along her request, to which I responded with an offer of assistance. As I researched the requested information, I became intrigued by the project involving a documentary on SJH and became involved in it.

PO: Like most PhD students, I was looking for a dissertation topic—something that would hold my interest for several years (turns out to be more like 20 years!) and something that would allow me to do original research. Sarah Hale was the perfect topic: she was an important and fascinating literary figure in my period of study (nineteenth-century American literature) who was largely unrecognized in literary scholarship. After I completed the dissertation in 1990, I still had many questions about Hale, so I decided to continue my research, which led to my first book, Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors (1995).

3) Please explain briefly what you did and how it related to SJH.

CZ: In pursuing my involvement in the SJH documentary project, I performed research on SJH in Boston that included: identifying where she had lived and worked in Boston while editing American Ladies Magazine (including maps and photographs); the editorial content of the Ladies Magazine by surveying the complete collection of Ladies Magazine editions donated by SJH to the Harvard College Library, and the history of how she came to edit the Ladies Magazine at the invitation of an Episcopal Clergyman of Boston, Rev. John L. Blake. I also pursued research on the period of SJH's editorship of Godey's Lady's Book by consulting resources contained in various Philadelphia libraries and historical societies, including information on where she had lived and worked in Philadelphia (including maps and photos); where she died and was buried; and her various accomplishments as editor of Godey's Lady's Book for 40 years. As a result of various references encountered in my research I was able to track down a living great-great-grandson of SJH, David Greathouse of Fredericksburg, Texas, with whom the project has been in communication.

PO: My book analyzes the editorial career of Sarah Hale and places that career in the context of other women editors of the nineteenth century. I specifically focused on Hale’s notion of women’s culture and her strong support for literature and American authorship.

4) What do you think were her major contributions related to your special project or book?

CZ: SJH's major contributions, in my opinion, were her championing of women's rights in a male-dominated patriarchal society; her prodigious output of novels, poems, women's history books, cook books, etiquette books, and magazine articles, stories and editorials contained in the two most popular women's magazines of her day that helped shape the values that women transmitted to their children and families; her support of charitable, patriotic, and educational causes such as Boston mariner aid institutions, the Bunker Hill Monument completion, the establishment of Vassar College for women, and Mount Vernon restoration; and her petitioning of President Lincoln to proclaim an annual celebration of Thanksgiving Day, which he agreed to, thus establishing it as one of America's most popular and beloved holidays.

PO: Sarah Hale was a powerful figure in nineteenth-century American literary culture. As editor of two different women’s magazines for fifty years, she reviewed thousands of books, wrote monthly editorials, and published the work of many of the period’s most accomplished writers. She was also influential in promoting an idea of women’s culture that emphasized intellectual accomplishment, domesticity, and moral leadership.

5) What about her career and contributions do you think are relevant today?

CZ: SJH is relevant today to women's continuing striving for equal rights and equal pay in the workplace. She is a shining example of the intellectual capabilities and moral power for good possessed by women. Her example should inspire more women to "go and do likewise."

PO: Although many of Hale’s political positions are outdated, much of her work is relevant today. In particular, I would note her support of women’s education, her commitment to occupational opportunities for women, and her support of American authorship.

6) Why has she not been more recognized in history books?

CZ: SJH has not been more recognized by the history books because she dealt with practical matters of her time and place, trying to provide solutions to immediate problems in the world about her as magazine editing and writing require, and did not write an enduring manifesto for societal change in the tradition of Rousseau, Thoreau, Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, etc.

PO: No one can give a definitive answer to this question, but I would speculate that two factors are most important: First, she spent much of her career laboring on women’s magazines, which are often dismissed as frivolous and not worthy of serious attention. Second, and most importantly, history books tend to emphasize people who pioneered ideas that are later accepted. Thus we celebrate, for example, (and quite properly) nineteenth-century suffrage advocates. But Hale did not support women’s suffrage, so she is often cast as a relic of a less progressive culture. Such thinking is too simplistic. Hale was not a pioneer on the subject of women’s suffrage, but she took many influential and important positions on many other issues.

7) Historically, why is her work important?

CZ: Her work is important for the impetus she provided for social change in the betterment of the status of women in society.

PO: Sarah Hale was the first U.S. woman to successfully lead a major magazine over many decades, and her positions on education, employment, art, and domesticity provide an opportunity to understand the complexities of many aspects of nineteenth-century American life.

8) What aspect of her work would you recommend for educators to investigate or develop for research and/or assignments?

CZ: I would recommend that educators investigate how her editorial championing of women's rights resulted in practical changes in the laws of various states and in Federal legislation as regards such issues as women's rights to have bank accounts in their own name, to inherit their husband's estates, to not be considered their husband's chattel, etc.

PO: I can think of many assignments that might be suitable for high school or university students—comparing the visual and verbal representations of women within her magazines; writing a critical analysis of individual stories, poems, or novels that appear in the magazines; analyzing the rhetoric of Hale’s editorials. These are just a few of the many assignments related to Hale and her editorship of the Lady’s Book.

9) What aspect of her work would you recommend for students to investigate or develop for research and/or assignments?

CZ: Same as 8.

PO: My main suggestion is for students to browse the pages of the Lady’s Book and to look for something that fascinates them. These magazines are full of information, and each reader can find something worth exploring or studying.

10) Why do you think it is important to produce a documentary about SJH?

CZ: A documentary would bring to light the extraordinary accomplishments of an early leader in the women's movement for equal rights; an author, poet, and editor of prodigious output; a disseminator of wholesome values that influenced the upbringing of generations of Americans and continues to guide parents in transmitting good moral values to their offspring; an example of a benefactress of causes, charitable, patriotic, and educational, that should inspire and inform all those who seek to do good works; and an example of what a committed, disciplined, and persevering mind, soul, and spirit can accomplish in one lifetime.

PO: A documentary would be a wonderful opportunity to introduce her work to a new generation of students.

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Copyright © 2007 Sarah Josepha Hale Film •   A Nineteenth-Century Documentary about Sarah Josepha Hale