WHITE, Rhoda E(lizabeth Waterman)

Born circa 1800s; died death date unknown

Also wrote under: Uncle Ben of Rouses Point, N.Y. Uncle Ben

Daughter of Thomas G. and (?) Whitney Waterman; married James W. White; children: six daughters, two sons

No biographical data on Rhoda E. White appears in the standard 19th-century sources; however, some general information about her background can be abstracted from Memoir and Letters of Jenny C. White Del Bal (1868), a book she wrote following her daughter's death. White was the oldest daughter of General Waterman, a New York state lawyer who married the eldest daughter of General Joshua Whitney, founder of Binghamton, New York. Her parents were socially prominent Episcopalians. She married a member of an exemplary Irish Catholic family. White converted to Catholicism in 1837, and the Catholic religion was one of the major influences in her life.

Her husband, a wealthy lawyer, became a judge of the Superior Court of New York City. She traveled in fashionable New York society, vacationed at Newport and Saratoga, and enjoyed the privileges of the rich, but her life was not idle. She studied throughout her marriage and received private lessons in all subjects from the best teachers. The mother of eight children, including six daughters, she tutored her family at their home, Castle Comfort.

The title page of Jane Arlington; or, The Defrauded Heiress: A Tale of Lake Champlain (1853) lists The "Buccaneer" of Lake Champlain as an earlier work of Uncle Ben. Any prior publications, however, have been lost. Jane Arlington, a short novel, is the story of a "young lady perfect and accomplished in every aspect" who, after she is orphaned, is deceived by her kindly stepfather's villainous brother into leaving home and finding employment in the frontierlike Lake Champlain region. The plot is predictable: Jane receives both charity and cruelty from employers and others she encounters, but her moral fortitude and personal goodness enable her to survive and regain her rightful inheritance. White does make use of the unprincipled scoundrel, but her premise is that villainy, or virtue, is frequently disguised and unanticipated. As a corollary, White exposes class pretensions and distinctions as inadequate measures of individual merit. In developing her theme of false class consciousness, she reveals a keen comic talent that emerges most fully in the caricatures of Mrs. Prim and her family.

White extends her humorous portrayal of human foibles in Portraits of My Married Friends; or, A Peep into Hymen's Kingdom (1858), a series of six sketches narrated by a wry old bachelor, Uncle Ben, who terms his married acquaintances "more fortunate" than he, but who mainly tells of the problems of marital discord and unhappy matches. Most of the portraits, whether comic or tragic, are slight, melodramatic treatments, but the most effective integrate character and theme with moral vision and social consciousness. One of these, "Jerome and Susan Daly," idealizes the love between a village couple and their children, while at the same time it contrasts child-rearing practices in the village with those in the city, depicts Scotch and Irish servant girls in the homes of the rich, and proposes "cultivated hearts" as a means of leveling class distinctions. Another effective portrait, "Kate Kearney," combines social realism—including graphic descriptions of tenement life and the plight of abused wives—with a strong story line.

White's main concern in Mary Staunton; or, The Pupils of Marvel Hall (1860), the most fully realized of her fiction, is the detrimental effects of poor training and environment on young girls, even if their natures are gentle, loving, and sensitive. The novel is an exposé of a fashionable boarding school in New York City, whose pupils acquire little meaningful education and only superficial training in social amenities. Mary is an unlikely heroine; mean, vengeful, and "coarse," she has been neglected by Mrs. Marvel, who is satirized for her false values. Deprived throughout her childhood of affection as well as of religious and moral instruction, she receives a chance for a different life when her long-absent father returns from India and attempts to repair the damage done to his motherless daughter. Although the novel is weakened by White's penchant for exaggerating virtues and faults, it is for the most part refreshingly frank and unsentimental.

Two ideas dominate White's fiction—Catholicism and education. Her recurrent theme is that children, regardless of their socioeconomic status, develop best when they are instilled with faith and love. Her style is at times stilted and melodramatic, and she uses dialogue excessively in forwarding plots. Nevertheless, White captures voices accurately, particularly immigrant brogues and regional dialects, and she is skillful in rendering realistic scenes of both lower-and upper-class life. Her treatment of New York tenement dwellers and their living conditions, though neither extensive nor primary, is a forerunner of the work of Stephen Crane and Jacob Riis. All of White's writing stems from a sense of ethical and social responsibility, but her view of conventional situations is generally from an unexpected angle. Her humorous perspective raises even her most commonplace subjects from the level of cliché and stereotype.

—THADIOUS M. DAVIS