In Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (1986), Cathy N. Davidson described the 1790s as a decade alive with debate over woman's issues. Divided between two "highly polarized camps" (126), writers of the period advanced either "traditional" or "equalitarian" positions on a woman's role in the family and society: How should women relate to parents, suitors, husbands and children? How should women be educated? What work should women do in the world? According to Davidson, Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)-Massachusetts author of essays, letters, a novel, and two plays-advocated the early feminist equalitarian position "more than any other single American writer" at the time (129).
The recent republication of novels by such early women writers as Susanna Rowson, Hannah Foster, Rebecca Rush, and Tabitha Tenney; the appearance of anthologies of early American writing by women; and the access to early magazines now available through The American Periodical Series is making it possible to test Davidson's characterization of Murray's place in the 1790s. Murray's advocacy of woman's intellectual equality in works that also argue for female subservience within patriarchy raises questions critics have only recently begun to address about the gradual evolution of feminist ideas in the first
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Because she was primarily a magazine writer (even her novel and plays appeared serially in The Massachusetts Magazine) and because her work was collected as a book in the unwieldy (because poorly divided up) form of The Gleaner in 1798-republished only in 1992-Murray's contribution to early American discourse has been generally ignored. This is unfortunate not primarily because Murray was a gifted writer but because she was an energetic proponent of progressive ideas in a number of culturally significant