Female Inheritance

The Impetus

History is so often recounted through the lens of white male conquerors, businessmen, explorers, farmers, soldiers, and scholars—individuals privileged by their class, race, or wealth as dominate voices. It is relatively rare to be able to access historic accounts from marginalized perspectives or domestic landscapes. We can, however, find some of those perspectives in historic needlework pieces.

I was already enamored with textiles when I decided to focus some of my early research in grad school on historic needlework. In Boston, it surrounded me at every museum I visited, worked in, or interned at and was an accessible and rich trove of primary source material for reaching a wider understanding of the periods in which they were made. The art form became a more and more tempting medium for addressing complex ideas about the expected vs. real ideals and nature ascribed to womanhood. I created my own sampler, “Female Inheritance,” to reflect upon and capture the evolution of these paradoxes within our society in regards to gender, power, and identity politics.

Duality in Stitches

Girlhood samplers are often viewed as implements of obsequious isolation for women throughout history. They have not only been tools of oppression, but also tools of learning, power, and artistic expression. Working within and subverting this medium allows me to pay homage to its great —though commonly unacknowledged— artistry while also creating a dialogue with the past that seeks to question, rectify, and renovate our understanding of gender and identity in history and the present.

Considering that estimates for female literacy rates in the 18^th century are between 31 and 48%, a sampler was a rare avenue towards education through exposure to and repetition of numbers and the alphabet (at least for those whose families could afford the tutelage and silks required for this capstone work), an opportunity they likely wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise. This duality is fascinating to me, as is the well-established iconography of the pieces themselves, honed by region and leading teachers within each. Many historic needlework samplers include the maker’s name and perhaps the year of their birth or the year of creation. It’s much more rare to be able to match these names with faces and events. I modeled “Female Inheritance” upon a sample worked by Elizabeth Derby in Salem, Massachusetts in 1774 as it is a thrilling exception to this rule.

“Modesty Adorns the Fair Sex Tho Life”

Elizabeth Derby’s story is an especially unique one of upheaval and a bittersweet independence. The daughter of a prosperous New England shipping family, Derby created her sampler at the age of 12 years old in 1774. Worked in silk on linen, its brilliant colors remain unfaded by time. One of the verses she’s included reads, “modesty adorns the fair sex tho life,” which, in retrospect, provides us with an intriguing opportunity to read a bit further into the expectations society, her family, or tutor had for Derby in comparison to the path she actually found herself on in life.

In 1783, Derby married Captain Nathaniel West against her parent’s wishes. Six children, one elaborately decorated home (rooms from which still survive in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston), and 23 years later, Derby divorced her husband in a “bitter trial” that was splashed across newspapers. According to the New England Historical Society, Derby paraded, “a series of prostitutes through a Salem, Massachusetts courtroom to prove her ship captain husband cheated on her.” Derby was not only passionate about seeking this divorce, she was also savvy. She had long been unhappy in the marriage, but acted only when the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill that gave women more property rights in cases of adultery. Derby was not only resilient, she was smart and willing to risk much for personal honor and independence. Divorce would have been extremely rare at the time and it left Derby estranged, living in isolation from society until her death in 1814.

In this light, her girlhood sampler almost reads as somewhat ominous to any woman living life on her own terms, in opposition to the strictures of societal conventions. Derby did not uphold the colloquial inheritance inscribed in it and suffered as a result. We can only surmise at what her actual personality may have been, but it seems safe to assume she was not one to be placated and insisted on making her own decisions regarding her marriage and agency—notions not commonly acted upon until much closer to our own time than her own.

What values will we choose to enshrine for the next generations? What agency will marginalized voices posses in our society and what will they have to sacrifice in order to attain it? What is the legacy of the ridicule we assign to marginalized and female-identifying voices? How can we reclaim traditionally domestic labor as a valuable means of communication, protest, and empowerment in our charged political climate?

“Female Inheritance” will be on display in the 2019 juried exhibition “Crafting Democracy” in Rochester, New York from August–October 2019 at the Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County. The show is curated by Juilee Decker, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Museum Studies Program and Hinda Mandell, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Communication, Rochester Institute of Technology

Sources:
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/winter11/literacy.cfm
https://salemsecretunderground.wordpress.com/2017/01/05/a-nasty-divorce-west-vs-west/
https://peabodymallwalk.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/nathaniel-and-elizabeth-derby-west-1776-2/
http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/elizabeth-derby-west-scandalous-1806-divorce/
http://dwightderbyhouse.org/museum/derby-sampler/