The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe - Elaine Showalter

Shiny New Books no 10 went live a few days ago & I'm very pleased to have a review in it. I enjoyed Elaine Showalter's new biography of Julia Ward Howe very much. Here's the beginning of my review,

Julia Ward was born in 1819, to a wealthy New York family. Her father’s fortune was in banking and, despite his strict religious beliefs, he felt no guilt about his wealth and spent it accordingly. After Julia’s mother died of puerperal fever after giving birth to her seventh child at the age of only twenty-seven, Samuel Ward’s grief took the form of stricter religious observance. Julia and her sisters were brought up as accomplished young ladies, while her brothers were sent to school. The Ward girls were taught French, dancing and music at which Julia excelled. Their social circle was restricted to family and Sundays were dominated by church services and improving literature. Julia later wrote,

The early years of my youth were passed in seclusion not only of home life, but of a home life most carefully and jealously guarded from all that might be represented in the orthodox trinity of evil, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

You can read the rest here.

There are lots of other enticing reviews in this new issue. New biographies of Thomas De Quincey & Anne Brontë (both of which I definitely want to read), more British Library Crime Classics, the new OUP edition of Flaubert's Sentimental Education (which I've just finished & will be reviewing soon), reprints of books by Eric Ambler, Angela Thirkell & Eudora Welty & much more.

Sunday Poetry - Julia Ward Howe

I'm reading Elaine Showalter's new biography of Julia Ward Howe at the moment so the only possible poem for today is her most famous work, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. It's impossible to begin reading it (or even write the title) without humming the famous tune.

The biography is fascinating as I knew nothing about Julia Ward Howe except the fact that she wrote the Battle Hymn. Her marriage to a famous doctor, Samuel Gridley Howe (he ran the Perkins Institute for the Blind that Dickens visited & wrote about in his American Notes), was fraught with tension. The Civil Wars of the title of Showalter's biography don't just refer to the conflict that began in 1861.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
      His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
      His Day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
      Since God is marching on.”

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
      Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
      While God is marching on.

Sunday Poetry - Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe is best known, maybe only known these days for The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Once you start reading the words, you can't help but start singing. Ward Howe was very active, during her long life (1819-1910), in the movements for world peace & women's suffrage. This is one of her feminist poems, Furthermore.

We, that are held of you in narrow chains,
Sought for our beauty thro' our folly raised
One moment to a barren eminence,
To drop in dreary nothingness, amazed;

We, dwarfed to suit the measure of your pride,
Thwarted in all our pleasures and our powers,
Have yet a sad, majestic recompense,
The dignity of suffering, that is ours.

The proudest of you lives not but he wrung
A woman's unresisting form with pain,
While the long nurture of your helpless years
Brought back the bitter childbirth throes again.

We wait upon your fancies, watch your will,
Study your pleasure, oft with trembling heart,-
Of the success and glory of your lives
Ye think it grace to yield the meanest part.

Ev'n Nature, partial mother, reasons thus:
"To these the duty, and to those the right";
Our faithful service earns us sufferance,
But we shall love you in our own despite.

To you, the thrilling meed of praise belongs,
To us, the painfuller desert may fall;
We touch the brim, where ye exhaust the bowl,
But where ye pay your due, we yield our all.

Honour all women - weigh with reverend hand
The worth of those unproved, or overtried,
And, when ye praise the perfect work of One,
Say not, ye are shamed in her, but glorified.