"if there is no fatal mistake..."

9 June 2022: "But I am very well, and if there is no fatal mistake, omissions, or transpositions of pages or chapters from my weak memory, I shall be content. The book can’t hurt anybody, and it may be to some like a sprinkle in a dry time—lay the dust for a little while" (qtd. in Gussman xi).

Catharine Maria Sedgwick wrote these words in an 1857 letter, discussing the upcoming publication of her final novel, Married or Single? So, yes, I am in the midst of working on an entry on Sedgwick in general and learning quite a bit. These words made me laugh a bit and feel seen (like has happened many times in this writing process). I mean, they are kind of my wish for my own book. 

Work Cited

Gussman, Deborah. “Editor’s Introduction.” Married or Single? 1857. By Catharine Maria Sedgwick, edited by Deborah Gussman, U of Nebraska P, 2015, pp. ix-xli.

Still works...

17 May 2022: At around 3:00 today, I found myself hitting a wall as I tried to outline my next entry (on Hope Leslie). It was also gorgeous outside and I hadn't been out there since my walk ended a couple of hours before. So...gave the mid-day loop a try, even down to the playlist. And it worked--not perfectly, but by the time I got back, I had decided on a relatively simple approach. Of course, even that got modified and revised as I sketched it on paper and then typed it up, but the important thing is that I got past that wall.

Hopeless-ly

16 May 2022: One of the most delightful sentences I've come across while working on this book: “I wish to argue that contradictions are an inevitable element of Sedgwick’s project and that one cannot separate Hope Leslie from Hopeless-ly” (Fetterley 501). All these years that I've known and studied Sedgwick's book and I only today realized that there's a pun sitting right there.

Work Cited

Fetterley, Judith. “‘My Sister! My Sister!’: The Rhetoric of Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, vol. 70, no. 3, Sept. 1998, pp. 491–516. EBSCOhost.