On the Original Sigourney

Not long ago I stumbled across a major pop culture phenomenon of the 19th century that I had had never heard of. How often does that happen? To me, rarely any more. I learned about it by way of the actress Oriska Worden, but there is a much nearer path that I didn’t happen to take but surely would have eventually. The nearer path is by way of Sigourney Weaver.

Surely you wondered “what’s up with that name? the first time you heard it. Like, no one else has that name. Shewas actually born Susan Alexandra Weaver. As a teenager she became enchanted with the name Sigourney after coming across it in The Great Gatsby. But that’s not its ultimate origin either. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not a writer who made artistic choices randomly. He has particular fun with character names in Gatsby, revealing a satirical side not unlike that of Sinclair Lewis. What did the name Sigourney signify to him? I’ll venture an answer but first you must take the ride in my rickety flivver.

The origin of all this is a 19th century authoress named Lydia Sigourney (Lydia Howard Huntley, 1791-1865). For much of the 19th century Sigourney was America’s best-selling female author as well as the top female poet. She was a major cultural force. If she’d wanted to start a cult, she could have, for she practically had one anyway. Then why is she so obscure now? The answer is that her poetry and her system of values are dated. She is no longer highly regarded, so she has become more of a historical footnote than a writer whose work is still embraced avidly. But the motto of THIS website is “once important, always important”. Everyone should know about this woman.

Hailing from Norwich, Connecticut, Sigourney was the daughter of a gardener who, for whatever reason, encouraged her education at a time when that was unusual for girls. She was only 18 when started her own local school in 1811. When that petered out, she started another in Hartford in 1814, with the encouragement and support of Daniel Wadsworth, for whom the Wadsworth Athenaeum is named. She closed the school in 1819 upon her marriage to Charles Sigourney, choosing to focus on her duties as wife and mother. Initially she wrote privately and anonymously, but her husband lost most of her fortune and her parents were in need, so she opted to go headlong into a literary career to earn money, and the effort was successful. She published over five dozen books and some 300 articles in a career that lasted over four decades.

Sigourney’s work hasn’t completely fallen by the wayside. One of her poems was quoted throughout the 2019 movie The Lighthouse.Natalie Merchant has set another of them to music. Sigourney’s book Pocahontas and Other Poems (1841) is one of her best remembered on a purely literary basis. But her primary social significance stems from the fact that she wrote “conduct books” for young ladies. These consisted of instruction for females as to how best to be a dutiful and effective wife, mother, and lady. Her advice ran the gamut from domestic instruction, to Christian philosophizing. And this is naturally why she fell by the wayside. Her poetry has been deemed “sentimental”, and her writings as they related to women were the farthest thing possible from what we consider progressive, which is why her name is not habitually included among the usual list of 19th century feminist pioneers. I imagine she was opposed to much of what they stood for, and vice versa. But we are confronted with the confusing fact that she also happened to be a strong, independent, capable, and talented female, and a figure of national significance then and historical importance now. And to muddy waters, she advocated a sort of ideal womanhood that stressed love and kindness, thus she was critical of the mistreatment of African Americans and Native Americans and other underserved groups (she was also an advocate for the Deaf), and was devoted to their education and relief in a way that does track loosely with ideals we do consider progressive today.

When I say Sigourney was significant, it’s not some bone I am throwing her. She was not just a star of the lecture circuit: there were scores of ladies’ literary and discussion groups across the United States named for her, generally called some variation on Sigourney (or Sigournian or Sigournean) Society. There is a town named after her in Iowa, and a Sigourney Street and a Sigourney Square in Hartford. Her poems were published in a magazine edited by Edgar Allan Poe, and an anthology edited by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. On a tour of England she met Queen Victoria (a natural fan of her philosophy) and William Wordsworth, her literary hero.

But she was SUCH an embodiment of that 19th century Cult of Domesticity. Surely the later generations of Sigourney Societies in places like Kansas or Indiana or Iowa were in favor of prohibition, and probably against votes for women. Their ideals were rated old-fashioned and conservative by the 20th century. What would they have represented to Fitzgerald in the era of emancipation from corsets, making out in the rumble seats of automobiles, social drinking, the Charleston, and the wearing of make-up, and so forth? He’s probably picturing somebody who looks like Carrie Nation. I have no idea, but I imagine that Sigourney Weaver just glommed on to that name because it sounded cool. Whereas to Fitzgerald, there couldn’t have been a name less contemporary or glamorous!

That said, there are many reasons to revive interest in Lydia Sigourney as she relates to American history, culture, politics, education, and literary art. The idea that someone so important should become so unknown offends me to my soul!

For more on Victorian popular culture please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.