“The Damned Mob of Scribbling Women”
In a class I am teaching this semester--“Mad Geniuses and Scribblers: Portrayals of the Author in Nineteenth-Century America”--we read some samples of the criticism that was directed at women who ventured into print in the 1850s, beginning with Hawthorne’s famous diatribe against the “damned mob of scribbling women.” I noticed that many of the female students seemed to be squirming in their seats…