Holley, Marietta

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HOLLEY, Marietta

Born 16 July 1836, Jefferson County, New York; died 1 March 1926, Jefferson County, New York

Wrote under: Samantha Allen, Jemyma, Joshia Allen's Wife

Daughter of John M. and Mary Taber Holley

The youngest of seven children, Marietta Holley was born on the family farm where she lived her entire life. Financial difficulties ended her formal education at fourteen, but she maintained a lifelong fondness for reading. In the 1870s she augmented her family's modest income by teaching piano lessons. Always inordinately shy, she was fifty years old before she left Jefferson County for the first time. Her shyness eventually prevented her from accepting invitations to read her work in public or to address the leading feminist reformers of the day. After the death of her parents, she lived alone with her unmarried sister, Sylphina, who died in 1915. Nothing about her private life reflects the fact that she was a celebrated humorist whose popularity rivaled Mark Twain's.

Although she initially wrote and published poetry under the pseudonym Jemyma, her contributions to the American vernacular humor tradition began with My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet's (1873). Holley created in Samantha Allen, her commonsensical persona, an ideal spokesperson for her primary theme: women's rights. Holley made relatively unpopular feminist ideas more acceptable by grounding them in the domestic perspective of a farm wife and stepmother. Even Samantha's nom de plume, Josiah Allen's Wife, served as an ironic comment on women's subordinate social, political, and economic status.

Two antagonists to Samantha's feminism appear in the novel: Josiah Allen and Betsey Bobbet. Josiah's views are suffused with sentimentality and male egoism, while Betsey, an aging spinster, holds that woman's only sphere is marriage. Although Betsey soon disappeared from Holley's work, Josiah continued as a comic foil to Samantha's feminism and common sense.

For her second novel, Josiah Allen's Wife as a P.A. [Public Advisor] and P.I. [Private Investigator]: Samantha at the Centennial (1877), Holley's publisher, Elisha Bliss, supplied her with extensive material about the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Thus began the practice that became characteristic of Holley's humor; she wrote realistic descriptions of places she never visited in person. The travel motif gave Samantha increased opportunity to expound upon a variety of feminist issues, including women's right to privacy, and to celebrate the wide range of talents displayed in the Woman's Pavilion at the Exposition.

In My Wayward Pardner; or, My Trials with Josiah, America, the Widow Bump, and Etcetery (1880), inspired by an open letter from the women of Utah to the women of the U.S., Holley responded to another contemporary issue, polygamy. She dramatized the abuses of polygamy by having Josiah, under the influence of a Mormon deacon, flirt with a widow. Although we never seriously believe Josiah will take a second wife, Holley came perilously close to destroying the strong family unit that served as the basis for Samantha's domestic feminism.

Holley's fourth novel, Sweet Cicely (1885), dramatized the plight of women who married intemperate men. The novel was influenced by Holley's correspondence with Frances Willard, head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and it echoed the sentimental tone of temperance tracts. Because it dealt extensively with women's legal status, it was a great favorite of the feminist leaders; Susan B. Anthony wrote Holley to tell her of the pleasure the novel gave her. It was not, however, a popular success.

In contrast, her next novel, Samantha at Saratoga; or, Racin' after Fashion (1887), was Holley's most popular work. It features Samantha and Josiah vacationing at the country's most fashionable resort, Saratoga. There Holley attacks, through humor, society's preoccupation with the genteel values that were antithetical to her goals of full political and economic equality for women.

Between 1887 and 1914, Holley wrote 14 more humorous novels that addressed a variety of social issues, ranging from women's role in the Methodist church to American foreign policy. None of these, however, enjoyed the success of Samantha at Saratoga, and in many the quality of her humor declined. Nonetheless, Holley made important contributions to the American vernacular-humor tradition and to the feminist movement. No other humorist made the opponents of feminism the targets of her humor, and no other feminist used humor as her primary weapon for furthering the women's rights movement. She gave to American literature one of its strongest and most eloquent heroines of the 19th century, and she was influential in making feminist principles acceptable to a wide audience of women.

Other Works:

Betsey Bobbet: A Drama (1880). The Lament of the Mormon Wife: A Poem (1880). Miss Richard's Boy, and Other Stories (1883). Miss Jones' Quilting (1887). Poems (1887). Samantha Among the Brethren (1890). The Widder Doodle's Courtship, and Other Sketches (1890). Samantha on the Race Problem (1892). Tirzah Ann's Summer Trip, and Other Sketches (1892). Samantha at the World's Fair (1893). Samantha Among the Colored Folks (1894). Josiah's Alarm, and Abel Perry's Funeral (1895). Samantha in Europe (1895). Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition (1904). Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife (1905). Samantha vs. Josiah: Being the Story of a Borrowed Automobile and What Came of It (1906). Samantha on Children's Rights (1909). Josiah's Secret: A Play (1910). Samantha at Coney Island and a Thousand Other Islands (1911). Samantha on the Woman Question (1913). Josiah Allen on the Woman Question (1914).

Bibliography:

Blair, W., Horse Sense in American Humor: From Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash (1962). Blyley, K. G., Marietta Holley (dissertation, 1936). Curry, J. A., Women As Subjects and Writers of Nineteenth-Century American Humor (dissertation, 1975). Curry, J., ed., Samantha Rattles the Woman Question (1983). Morris, L. A. Women Vernacular Humorists in Nineteenth-Century America: Ann Stephens, Frances Whitcher, and Marietta Holley (dissertation, 1978). Winter, K. H., Marietta Holley: Life with "Josiah's Wife" (1984).