‘Dear Millie’: Letter Writing and Gender in Postbellum America

Abstract

Describes the nature and function of nineteenth-century letter-writing literature, which promoted letter writing as indispensable to anyone hoping to achieve social or professional success and reinforced the widelyheld cultural assumption that correct writing, like speaking, was inextricable from character and good manners. Claims that in making the argument for the importance of women’s learning to write effective letters, letter-writing guides stress not only the everyday function of correspondence in maintaining social relations and a well-run home, but also the inseparable relationship between belletristic manners and what it meant in nineteenth-century American culture to “act like a lady.” Demonstrates how these guides generally reinforced conservative definitions of female roles rather than expanded the rhetorical territory of women.