5. Sorry is a State of Mind

Dear … I am truly sorry for imposing on your ladyship’s time, which must contain ever so many obligations…

Dear … Please forgive me for daring to importune you with the enclosed request…

My Dear(est) Madam … By no means do I wish to impose upon your good will by…

Dearest …

Most Admired Lady …

The list had a few other salutations, but the woman bent over the simple wooden writing desk had scratched them out. She wrote first in Galician, then in Spanish, knowing neither was likely to be accessible to the recipient or recipients, who were more likely to know Greek, Latin, French, or even Italian than they were Spanish or another mode of speech from the countryside, one more similar than not to Portuguese. She didn’t know yet if she should attempt French or find a translator to render her letter into English. That might be a challenge, even in Santiago. A Coruña was a possibility, or Vigo. As ports, they had more contact with the English-speaking world, although who knew what brand of English was spoken, precisely because they were ports.

The mode of address was hardly the only challenge.

Rosalía had spent countless hours reading, taking notes, and always reflecting on what she was learning in her journal. She was trying to decide what should be her next step to getting her writing in the right hands as well as choosing in which direction to take that step. She knew she wanted to be part of a community of writers, but where she lived there were few opportunities for women to participate. She might be guilty of accepting that idea without proving its veracity, just as everyone else did, but discovering the lesser-known reality was a slow process. If Galician women artists and writers were nearly invisible, either there really were none (in which case she was the exception) or they remained in the shadows for a reason.

Still, Rosalía’s readings had shown her that it was possible to form such groups and that - unexpectedly, for her - many of these were of women, or only a few men. She had read it so often that surely it could not be fiction. The journals where she had recorded everything were accurate, and the documentation she had used had shown her what had been possible for decades, even centuries. The absence of women as recognizable figures - other than as meigas and mouras - or works in the Galician language did not prove there were none. France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Italy: all had numerous examples of gatherings that served as clubs or meeting points for intellectual discussion.

She knew about other places with the gatherings she longed for, especially although not exclusively, ones led by women like Elizabeth Montagu, Madame de Staël, even others before them. So often she had read about salons and tertulias, about the bas-bleus or bluestockings, about terms like literary women, which she translated as literatas for a piece of her own. She knew, too, because she not only had read about Elizabeth Montagu’s activities, but also her letters, and she knew about the discussions circulating in Europe concerning one or another aspect of the querelle des femmes. Were women human or not? Equal or inferior? The question was everywhere. 

It reminded Rosalía of similar polemics started by Spanish chroniclers as to whether the indigenous inhabitants they found in the so-called New World had souls or not. If they had souls, they could and should be converted to Christianity. Did women have brains with which to think? If so, they could and should learn things to do with that thinking.

She knew the publications of Josefa Amar y Borbón in Madrid, such as advocating for admission to intellectual academies and institutions of similar nature. In 1786, she published “Discourse in Defense of the Talent of Women, and of Their Aptitude for Governing and Other Positions in Which Men Are Employed.” That hadn’t gone entirely unnoticed in patriarchal Spanish society.

It was just that Rosalía hadn’t had much luck finding collaborative spirits around Santiago. It was possible that the matter of having two languages, in a convoluted relationship, affected how both were used. Or maybe she needed to spend less time devouring books, more time sipping tea with others.

Rosalía thought about Mary Wollstonecraft’s brilliance as well as her courage and how, like Mary’s, so many minds had been silenced forever by childbirth or its effects. There were others, like Mary Astell, who came before Wollstonecraft, and about still others who came before Astell. Fortunately, there were lists of important figures in the past, even if commentaries on their works were scarce. Rosalía had learned that Anne-Marie du Boccage, who traveled to England from France to meet Montagu, had been admitted to several academies and had won the first prize offered by the Academie de Rouen in 1746. In response to the prize-winning poem, whether good or mediocre, Voltaire had termed her the “Sappho of Normandy.” 

Perhaps Rosalía was a bit envious, not exactly of the public recognition of these literary women, the bluestockings, but rather of their ability to live from their writing. It was something she could not do yet. Nevertheless, she felt guilty at thinking of her own selfish desire to perform on the literary stage.

She knew she needed to swallow her pride in order to accomplish her goal. She started to write, unsure if she’d read the words somewhere or if she was using them for the first time in her journal.

I am very sad to have no others, but I am accompanied by the books I’ve read.

She wrote, thoughtfully, and stopping to let the ink of her energetic handwriting dry.

To this she added two brief notes, which meant approximately the same thing:

Women are slaves. 

Women are not free. 

Everyone was writing about these things, although nobody seemed to have read what they’d written. Rosalía had consumed article after article, proposal after proposal, book after… She knew all about the rivers of theories and opinions that offered their interpretations of society and how women ought to behave. Clearly there was much dissonance, although her beliefs were clear: she would be a writer and write about her own thinking on where she lived as well as who lived there. [Eventually, she too would portray women in unfair circumstances, despite her self-doubts.]

It would not be easy to find the community she so needed. Then Rosalía came across Fanny Fern, the literata born in Portland, Maine in 1811 with the name Sara Payson Willis. She found the reference to the Maine author’s literary and professional accomplishments in a quarterly journal in the city library and it was like finding a new lease on life. Especially intriguing were Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio and Fresh Leaves, both from the 1850s. She gleaned something about the author’s style and intent from a few passages the reviewer in Europe had included, copying it into her journal:  

“Do you suppose that you can quietly take the wind out of everybody's sails, the way you have, without having harpoons, and lampoons, and all sorts of miss—iles thrown after you? No indeed; every distanced scribbler is perfectly frantic; they stoutly protest your book shows no genius, which fact is unfortunately corroborated by the difficulty your publishers find in disposing of it; they are transported with rage in proportion as you are translated.” 

Fanny wasn’t skewering her contemporary Beecher Stowe (also born in 1811); she was praising her, while insisting that fame could well bring heartache, which was realistic. This writing one thing while meaning something entirely different was not unheard of in women writers, and Rosalía herself had used it. Because her Galician- or Spanish-speaking public didn’t expect such a bold technique in a young writer from a rural area, readers had smirked at her work, called it old-fashioned, mournful, full of pain, romantic. [This would not change for decades.]

Women writers often have forked tongues, they can be sarcastic, can condemn social customs …

she wrote, uneasily, wishing it didn’t have to be that way.

Fern, whose real name was Sara, although Rosalía might not have known that, was a good literary and financial model for the young Galician. Born in Portland before Maine was a state (it was still part of Massachusetts until 1820), she was the highest-paid journalist - male or female - in her country. However, she still had to have a male to accompany her if she went out in the evening. Men had frequently hampered her career, moreover, and Fern often used retranca to express her jabs, making them seem like simple inconformity with a situation or even like puzzlement. Women do well to perfect the art of looking confused when they strongly disagree with someone. Fern’s novel. Ruth Hall had been too critical, too direct, and too autobiographical to sit well with the general readership.

In English retranca might be ‘tongue-in-cheek’. [It’s a very Galician thing even now.] Rosalía was used to the type of humor and knew it was agile, tricky, stylistically gratifying when it was used properly. She would enjoy reading Fern’s highly successful volumes of breezy vignettes that were anchored in a sincere evaluation of things that weren’t quite right with society.

Rosalía would send her Meses do inverno poem, but she stopped and courageously added five more poems, telling herself she did it because Fanny Fern seemed so nice, so supportive, all without the slightest idea of who was writing to her from across the Atlantic. She also had made references to Bluestockings and made fun of bad writing. Hmmm… why not add a few more pieces, maybe a story, and both the manifestos she’d written in the voice of a woman? How much was too much?

“The woman writes as if the devil was in her,” the famous Nathaniel Hawthorne had observed in reference to Fanny Fern, in a backhanded compliment that Rosalía must have noted if she’d been able to see it. Hawthorne was good-looking but stodgy and preachy, among other things. He’d railed against “that damned mob of scribbling women,” in a letter to his editor, George Ticknor. She most certainly would have noted it in her journal if she’d read it somewhere. Hawthorne would need to be taken to task for that derogatory statement. Obviously he felt threatened by the fact that in the US the majority of best-selling novels were written by women.

Why did she choose Fern to write to over María Susanna Cummins, author of The Lamplighter, incredible bestseller from 1854? She knew Cummins’ novel, which had reached Europe in French. She didn’t really know, but expected to keep Cummins on the list of possible contacts, all of which would begin with something akin to Dear Friend and Fellow Writer, please forgive me for writing to you but…

A month went by, or probably it was more like two or three. Rosalía was back at her desk, writing a different sort of entry in her journal:

Fanny Fern has replied to my letter! She’s willing to read some of my poems. She’s also asked if I have written any stories or novels or vignettes. I have, but don’t know who could translate them into English. I’ll have to send just poetry. Still, if only….

Fanny Fern recommends Harriet Beecher Stowe as well! Stowe! Who wrote her famous novel in Maine. They must have known each other, proving that the comment in her vignette was in jest. Women writers are a rare breed, and can frighten people.

She has also sent a long list of articles and books on slavery! Fanny Fern, or Sara, is so generous! I hope I can find them here.

It was regarding the latter topic, slavery, that the writer from Maine had insisted on Rosalía’s need to write to Harriet Beecher Stowe. (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, had long been available in both French and Spanish; her name was so widely known that Rosalía had been reluctant to write to her. Moreover, the Beecher family was one of academic repute, on the part of father and mother. It was intimidating to think she should contact such a famous woman, but having seen that Fern had written that vignette with such vigor and disguised positivity, it was entirely possible that Stowe would respond.)

It was late and she had little oil in her lamp left to write, but Rosalía added one more entry to her journal:

Are even women in America also meeting as much as it seems to discuss topics they call “culture”? Fanny Fern appears to suggest that in her letter. Maybe I can learn about more writers and read their books. It might not be easy to find them here in Santiago, unless the bookstore can order them or the Real Sociedad Económica de los Amigos del País can buy them. 

And who are the Grimké Sisters she mentions in her letter? I’ve never heard of them, but she’s insisting I try to learn about what they’ve done, how they think. I guess there’s a lot of attention being paid to racial themes in America. As if we didn’t have enough to reform in society, like men, like religion. The Grimkés apparently were very progressive, despite their Quaker connection. Then again, religion over there is more Protestant, which might be better for women and slaves in some ways.

Until now Rosalía hadn’t given as much thought to transatlantic connections, but on this night she found herself wondering… She knew those connections existed and she was realizing that they were increasing.

She wasn’t sorry at all now that she’d decided to write. She didn’t feel as alone, either.