Constructing childhood: the Christian Recorder and literature for black children, 1854-1865

African American Review, Fall, 2002 by Chanta M. Haywood

Although stories like "Kitty's Verse" complied with the prevailing gender construct of girls' natural spiritual abilities, I contend, first, that it was hard to escape accepting and complying to some of the prevailing views of the day and, second, that Blacks didn't accept such views uncritically. The realities of black life dictated that their literature provide alternatives for their children. "Schools at Home," "Apologizing," and "Fathers Pray with Your Children" exemplify complex ways gender was being navigated.

In the "Schools at Home" piece mentioned earlier, the author designates specific types of lessons that can be conveyed to boys and girls while they are at home. The author notes that boys should be "required to give the principles of raising water by the pump," and they should know "the work is performed easier when the team is near the load than when father removed" and "how dew is deposited in the evening hours." Girls should be taught lessons "when around the fireside." They should be taught "the principle upon which the smoke ascends the chimney, and why the air is warmest at the top of the room. At another time, why the pitcher sweats in the hot noon, or the dough rises in the pan" (37).

That the boys' lessons are about the barn, teaming, and ploughing, and even about the grass implicitly situates boys outside the home, in the public space. Boys are being taught lessons that reemphasize nineteenth-century notions of the male's place being outside, away from the hearth. Girls, on the other hand, are being taught that their space is within the domestic sphere, or, as the author notes, "around the fireside." Emphasizing that they learn about the sweat on the pitcher, and the principles of rising dough, positions them as cooks and caretakers of the home, notions that show girls growing up into the Western notion of the true woman spelled out by Barbara Welter. (9) But although this piece consigns specific spheres for women, it is also simultaneously subverting the idea of "true womanhood" and critiquing the inapplicability of such standards for many black girls.

A large number of Northern black women in the nineteenth century were domestic workers, and many of them had to work to bring in extra income to sustain their families. Teaching young girls such lessons "around the fireside" reveals clear pre-Washingtonian ideas of combining self-help skills with science and labor. (10) The story also reveals the contradictions inherent in gender expectations for black girls, who on the one hand were being taught that they should grow up to be morally superior, pure, domestic, and nurturing, but who knew that they would function in a society that expected them to do domestic work, that would take them out of the home, with the result that they would be away from their families for extended periods of time.

The subversion of Western notions of femininity may also be seen in the interesting fact that a large number of the contributors to the children's section of the Christian Recorder were women. (11) The act of women writing for the Recorder sent a dual message to girls. On the one hand, much of the writing that women produced was didactic and intended to instruct, so it was used as a tool to continue the "womanly" endeavor of nurturing and caring for the children. At the same time, however, writing for publication was a very public act, and it was not traditional for women to engage in public activity. A diverse audience subscribed to this paper, which engaged and addressed the political and social issues affecting blacks. Girls and boys reading these stories written by women were therefore receiving the message that, despite the fact that many of the stories encouraged private expectations of girls, they could not avoid public work intended for the betterment of the race.