Jane Kamensky

Sex and sexuality in early America

What role did sexual assault play in the conquest of America? How did American attitudes toward female sexuality evolve, and how was sexuality regulated in the early Republic? Sex and sexuality have always been the subject of much attention, both scholarly and popular. Yet, accounts of the early years of the United States tend to overlook the importance of their influence on the shaping of American culture. Sex and Sexuality in Early America addresses this neglected topic with original research covering a wide spectrum, from sexual behavior to sexual perceptions and imagery. Focusing on the period between the initial contact of Europeans and Native Americans up to 1800, the essays encompass all of colonial North America, including the Caribbean and Spanish territories. Challenging previous assumptions, these essays address such topics as rape as a tool of conquest; perceptions and responses to Native American sexuality; fornication, bastardy, celibacy, and religion in colonial New England; gendered speech in captivity narratives; representations of masculinity in eighteenth- century seduction tales, the sexual cosmos of a southern planter, and sexual transgression and madness in early American fiction. The contributors include Stephanie Wood, Gordon Sayre, Steven Neuwirth, Else L. Hambleton, Erik R. Seeman, Richard Godbeer, Trevor Burnard, Natalie A. Zacek, Wayne Bodle, Heather Smyth, Rodney Hessinger, and Karen A. Weyler.

On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

work. Reconsideration of these women’s lives is an important contribution itself, but a greater engagement with prior interpretations would underscore the originality of her approach. Yet, the most frustrating aspect of this volume is the central trope of ‘‘love.’’ While Scharff does qualify the concept of ‘‘love,’’ describing it in eighteenth-century terms, often the use of the word ‘‘love’’ becomes distracting because it is too easily universalized. For instance, in describing Hemings at Jefferson’s deathbed, Scharff writes ‘‘A cooling hand was laid on his forehead, a damp sponge held to his lips. Strong arms raised him upon his pillows. Silent loving eyes looked into his own’’ (p. 376). Such a passage might make scholars wonder if Scharff forgot her own definition of ‘‘love’’ as something far less romantic. Contrast that passage with the one on the emancipation of Harriet Hemings, Jefferson’s daughter, in which Scharff writes ‘‘Jefferson may never have shown Harriet any outward affection. He may well have told himself that he bore her no particular fondness. But he could not have given her a more precious testament of his love’’ (p. 364). In this context, even by the contemporary definition, ‘‘love’’ seems inappropriate to describe the relationship. By her last paragraph, Scharff almost upends her entire thesis, writing ‘‘The women Jefferson loved knew that love itself was no guarantee of prosperity or security, or even bodily safety. It was not the answer to anything’’ (p. 384). While not untrue, this central concept of the work seems inadequate in describing Jefferson’s relationships to the women closest to him, relationships that seem embedded in noblesse oblige, with affection the only difference between ‘‘love’’ and any other relationship between unequals. While this study occasionally reveals flaws, these are apparent because Scharff has provided such a fresh and engaging take on Jefferson’s life that she has piqued her audience’s curiosity about the ways these women have been studied and about the limits of comprehending the emotional lives of people in earlier centuries. She has provided the narrative foundation for this subject and will most certainly have an impact on the ways that biographers understand Jefferson.