Wright, Julia McNair

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WRIGHT, Julia McNair

Born 1 May 1840, Oswego, New York; died 3 September 1903, Fulton, Missouri

Daughter of John McNair; married William J. Wright, 1859; children: two

Julia McNair Wright was born to an upper-middle class family who saw to her sound academic—and private—education. She was married at nineteen to a clergyman who, after serving churches for several years at a time in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Jersey, became a professor of mathematics and then vice president at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. She had two children. Except for occasional one-to-two-year periods of silence—perhaps caused by the efforts of resettling her family or by travel in Europe, Wright published almost continuously. Her work ranged widely, including short stories and novels, histories, poems, religious tracts, moral lessons on temperance, cookbooks, and scientific works on botany. Many books were published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication or the National Temperance Society.

The idealism and morality pervading her writing are that of conventional middle-class Protestantism: some of her work displays anti-Catholic themes; and in some of her fiction she explicitly denies the importance of votes for women. Nevertheless, if she was inactive in the feminist movement and unsympathetic to some of its demands, her fiction and poetry rely heavily on the delineation of women's struggles, hopes, fears, and successes. Her heroines strike the modern reader as well conceived both aesthetically and psychologically.

Adam's Daughters (1892) has a provocative subject: three genteel and well-educated young women and their mother are left suddenly on their own with neither money nor means of support. As Wright explains in the preface: "'What shall we do for a living?' is a problem proposed to many women, maids, wives, and widows." She suggests in Adam's Daughters and in many of her short stories that women should be prepared to work in positions other than teaching or the home. They must, she insists, follow their interests and abilities. Van, one of her heroines who appears in a number of stories, struggles in unsuitable jobs until she recognizes that her real calling lies with the land. She reminds one of Willa Cather's later heroine Alexandra in O Pioneers!; each learns to run a successful farm against difficult odds.

Wright's fiction is characterized by the melodrama and sentimentality of the time, but it also conveys messages that go beyond rigidly conventional bounds. Fallen women survive, widows become independent, spoiled melancholic young women are treated with psychological sensitivity and perception. Medical care, especially in asylums for the poor, is realistically scrutinized in books such as Under the Yoke, and Other Tales (1897), The Awakening of Kohath Sloan (1897), and Duncan's Errand (1899).

Wright's botanical works contain descriptions of nature similar to those in most popular 19th-century poetry—roots, for instance, are called "treasures of darkness." But the books contain also a substantial amount of scientific information about plants and the care of seeds. She made a thorough reading of Thomas Huxley, especially of his analysis of arbitrary distinctions between plant and animal life. Her approach insists that nature always has its purposes, but she supports her philosophical ideas with close observation and extensive knowledge of her subject—a synthesis of love and understanding. The most important of these works, the Nature Reader series (1888-1901), was translated into several languages and into braille.

Wright's primary interest, in whatever she wrote, lay in her concern for the human soul. This concern took her from the nativism and prejudices of her Secrets of the Convent and Confessional (1872) to the Darwinian struggle to survive in society as a man or a woman, to the tragedy of intemperance, and to the lack of natural joy in the education of children. The latter themes appear in The Temperance First Reader: Writing, Spelling, and Reading Lessons for Young Children (1889).

Like an increasing number of popular and successful American women writers in the 19th century, Wright produced books with remarkable speed on a variety of subjects—books devoured by a growing audience always impatient for more. But she even outdid most of her peers in volume, and the popularity of her work suggests its influence on her times.

Other Works:

The Golden Life (1867). The Shoe Binders of New York; or, The Fields White to the Harvest (1867). Almost a Nun (1868). The New York Needle-Woman; or, Elsie's Stars (1868). John and the Demijohn: A Temperance Tale (1869). The New York Bible-Woman (1869). Our Chatham Street Uncle; or, The Three Golden Balls (1869). Almost a Priest (1870). How Could He Escape? (1870). Jug-or-Not (1870). Moth and Rust (1870). Priest and Nun (1870). Westward: A Tale of American Emigrant Life (1870). Saints and Sinners of the Bible (1872). Nothing to Drink (1873). The Life-Cruise of Captain Bess Adams (1874). The Early Church in Britain: Its Faith and Works (1875). Lights And Shadows of Sacred Story (1875). Patriot and Tory: One Hundred Years Ago (1876). A Strange Sea-Story: A Temperance Tale (1876). Circled by Fire (1879). The Complete Home: An Encyclopedia of Domestic Life and Affairs (1879). The Curse and the Cup (1879). Firebrands (1879). On London Bridge (1879). Twelve Noble Men (1879). A Day with a Demon (1880). Step by Step (1880). The Oath-Keeper of Forano (1881). Practical Life; or, Ways and Means for Developing Character and Resources (1881). No Cards, No Cake: Marriage Extraordinary (1882). Among the Alaskans (1883). Bricks from Babel: A Brief View of the Myths, Traditions, and Religious Belief of Races, with Concise Studies in Ethnography (1883). Hannah: One of the Strong Women (1883). Mr. Standfast's Journey; or, The Path of the Just (1884). A Wife Hard Won (1884). The Dragon and the Tea-Kettle: An Experience, and the Dopplegänger (1885). Roland's Daughter: A Nineteenth-Century Maiden (1885). Graham's Laddie: A Story of God's Providence (1886). Million Too Much: A Temperance Tale (1886). Rasmus; or, The Making of a Man (1886). The Heir of Athole (1887). In Black and Gold: A Story of Twin Dragons (1887). A Made Man: A Sequel to "Rasmus; or, The Making of a Man" (1887). Mother Goose for Temperance Nurseries (1887). ABC for Temperance Nurseries (1888). Nature Readers: Seaside and Wayside (1888). Rag Fair and May Fair (1889). Sara Jane: A Girl of One Talent (1889). A Plain Woman's Story (1890). Fraü Dagmar's Son (1891). The Temperance Second Reader (1891). A Modern Prodigal (1892). The House on the Beach (1893). Mr. Grosvenor's Daughter (1893). On a Snow-Bound Train (1893). The Temperance Third Reader (1893). Ragweed: A West-World Story (1894). Her Ready-Made Family (1895). A New Samaritan (1895). Cynthia's Sons (1896). The House on the Bluff (1896). Ladies' Home Cook Book: A Complete Cook Book and Manual of Household Duties (1896). The People's Millions: The Story of a Card House (1896). The Cardiff Estate (1897). Astronomy: The Sun and His Family (1898). Botany: The Story of Plant Life (1898). Toward the Glory Gate (1898). A Bonnie Boy (1899). Three Colonial Maids (1900). Studies in Hearts (1902). The Gospel in the Riviera: A Story of Italy (n.d.). My Five Wards; or,Aunt Huldah's Homilies (n.d.). The True Story Library (n.d.). Two Boys (n.d.).

The papers of Julia McNair Wright are housed in the Fulton Public Library (Missouri) and the Westminster College Library, also in Fulton.

Bibliography:

Dowland, W. A., The Sum of Feminine Achievement (1917). Neven, A., ed., Encyclopaedia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1884). Rice, J. J., ed., History of Westminster College, 1851-1903 (1903).