Susanna Rowson American Identity

The New World, a place of reimagined beginnings and a chance to reform yourself, is often told to have been discovered by than none other than Christopher Columbus when “in 1492 [he] sailed the ocean blue.” The way we look at America now bases itself very heavily off of this belief and the education that came with it. More recently it has been shown that it does not matter whether this is even true historically. There are many disputes to this claim. However, it is a part of the history we grow up hearing about alongside the tales of Plymouth Rock, George Washington, and the Boston Tea Party. These stories have become an essential part of the American Identity, but why? Every nation creates a narrative, a construct of themselves that they present

not only to others but to themselves. It serves as a common ground for its citizens.

This is true in our society as well. We owe our narrative, in part, to Susanna Rowson, an important figure in the understanding of the foundations of the American Identity. Recently scholars have been reevaluating her as one of the prime examples of the transatlantic author due to her experiences on both sides of the Atlantic during the critical period of colonization and the founding of the United States. Rowson’s novel Reuben and Rachel attempts to create an identity narrative for the newly formed United States and serves as a parallel to her life as a transatlantic actor, writer, and educator. By creating a fictional history of the genealogical line that helped give birth to the United States she attempts not only to find her place in the new continent, but to create characters that exemplify what it means to be first an “American” and more specifically for her the goal was what it meant to be a “Female American.” She then used this narrative to create an educational curriculum that would become dominant in the United States and shape the American ideology for the next two-hundred

years.
Rowson’s own history entwines itself into the tale of Reuben and Rachel. The novel reflects her experiences in traveling back and forth to find her identity. When she first traveled across the Atlantic with her father who was an officer of the Royal Navy she immediately encountered difficulty. At the age of sixteen, she and her father were deported when he could not take an oath of allegiance to the colonies due to the legalities of the Royal Navy (Heil 626). They were shackled as prisoners of war and sent back to Hingham, Abington, and finally Halifax in shame (Vining & Smith, & Martin 2). Much like her characters, her first encounter with the new world is not pleasant. The first character of the Reuben and Rachel timeline, Columbus, is betrayed and sent back to Spain in shackles completely defamed just like she and her father were. Though, both her father and Columbus were loyal to America they were sent back as prisoners with much doubt placed on their allegiances. Columbus’s shackles are removed by the Royal Court (specifically Queen Isabelle) but none-the-less the sting of rejection in a land he founded cuts deeply. Parallelly, Rowson’s identity is immediately questioned before she comes of age to prove herself. She is then sent back to England where she regains some worth, but the sting of American rejection does not leave her. Back in Britain she finds herself as the governess of the children of the Duchess of Devonshire. She and her characters use England as a reprieve from the hardships that they face in America. The genealogical timeline spends nearly three and a half generations back in Europe before returning to America with character Edward Dudley. During this time, they reform their identity as a family and set a foundation for their return to England. Though the family faces many struggles back in Europe where they deal prosecution at the hands of Catholics, familial infighting, and other hardships, they eventually rise back to the top and are prepared to make a second trek to America. This is very similar to Rowson who goes back and has a family before attempting her return.
After marrying the hardware merchant, William Rowson, she returned to the newly formed United States in 1786.

Back where she had been rejected before, she now expected better results, but faced setbacks again as her husband’s hardware business failed in 1793 (Martin 2). She turned to acting as a way of living. At this time, the field of acting was looked down upon, seen in nearly the same light as prostitution, so she once again led a difficult life (Homestead & Hansen 622). Not only that, but her entire family was forced to become actors just to scrape by (Martin 2). They had done so well in England where both William’s business and her life as a governess had been a success, but in America they found no such luck. Following suit, her second-generation characters also struggle in the new World. Orabella, Ferdinand’s wife, returns home to find her village destroyed, her parents murdered, and her sister pregnant with the child of their murderer. Orabella’s entire family and most of her tribe have been abused or murdered. This stands as a clear parallel to the struggle Rowson and her family are facing. Rowson had allowed her family to fall into a state of defamation and poverty at the hands of those who have laid claim to America. Not only were they defamed as actors, but even the plays she wrote were scorned as being un-American (Weaver). She was not yet the true American that she dreamed of being. However, unlike Rowson the family in the novel returns to Europe to hide for

three and a half generations after their second failure in America. Rowson instead decides to stick out her second attempt on the new continent and much to her success. Her luck finally began to look up in 1797 as she became the founder and administrator of the Young Ladies Academy in Boston, mostly due to the success of the novel Charlotte Temple which helped her both monetarily and raised her social standing. She was now famous and a bestselling author in the United States. Not only that, but she had the funds to bring her family out of poverty and start a career as an esteemed educator. Finding her place in the New World as an author, she wrote Reuben and Rachel a year later (Martin 2). This novel was also used to eliminate the criticisms that she had received for being un-American (Weaver). It was a direct refute to those early reproaches of her plays, displaying that being American is not just about your origins, but also about your beliefs, new roles, and love of America (Weaver). Just like her characters she cuts her ties with Europe. She never returned. This provides evidence that she now felt that she had become a “true American” after overcoming the struggles she and her family faced. After finding her own identity, Rowson set out to find an identity for a nation.
Rowson did much of the work in creating the United States Identity narrative through Reuben and Rachel. One of the largest items that she contributed was the portrayal of Christopher Columbus as the first to discover America. Her novel places him at the forefront instead of focusing on the Puritan lineage that came to be the dominant force of America, especially the United States. She tries to separate the British from the origins of America to delegitimize their claim as the true founders of the United States (Weaver). The characters who are English puritans in this story are poised as heroes as compared to the Catholics, but they also are a part of her Spanish based bloodline. She did believe in Protestantism, but she did not believe that being a white English male made you a natural born inheritor of America. She does not completely cut out the protestants. She recognizes them as an integral part of the foundation of the United States, but takes away their claim of being the original or only founders. I believe that she was tired of the belief that America was a land of uniformity, solely based around a protestant English male dominated ancestry. This was not true and she recognized that much of the American identity came from natives and other European origins (Carrere 185). She focuses on the Spanish lineage which often had more mixing with the native population than did the protestants, and she displays that in the novel with the mixing blood of Fernando and Orabella (Carrere 185). She also posits Sir Fernando Gorges, a puritan and “the father of the colonization of North America,” as a direct descendent of the Columbus family line which included Native South American blood from Orabella (Weaver). This completely cuts out the English as the original founders of America showing that even in colonization the descendants were from Columbus’ genealogical line. It also shows a mix of the blood line with natives and creates a real claim to the land. Also, Rowson selectively leaves out much of the Spanish conquest of the tribes of South America. She seems to focus more on the mixing of blood that occurred rather than on the mass killing and death due to disease. Rowson gives us a glimpse of conquest when Orabella’s family is murdered and her sister is raped, but this uprising is depicted as the exception and not the rule. Columbus himself quickly subdues the uprising (Fichtelberg 257). This gives us a much more attractive view of the Spanish lineage from which Rowson starts the American narrative. She tries to show us that America was so much more than just a land of Protestant men by giving us a different view of American history. It was a place of mixed ancestry coming from all over Europe and native blood and she implants this idea through a connection to Columbus.
By focusing not only on Columbus, but more specifically the women surrounding Columbus, Rowson was attempting to create a women’s national identity for America. Rowson believed literature was far too male dominated and saw her novels as a chance to change this on the new continent (Vining & Smith). Though she was greatly interested in America as a whole,