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“Hermaphroditish Disturbers of the Peace”: Rufus Griswold, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Nineteenth-Century Discourses of Ambiguous Sex

In his 1850 tribute to recently deceased popular American poet Frances Sargent Osgood, magazine editor and anthologist Rufus W. Griswold praised Osgood as the “most womanly” of all the literary ladies with whomhewas acquainted, noting: “She had no need to travel beyond the legitimate sphere of woman’s observation.” In the same tribute, he conversely castigated the “ruder sort of women” who “quit their sphere” to direct their intellectual labors to pursuits reserved for men—the “mathematicians, metaphysicians or politicians.” These he labeled “hermaphroditish disturbers of the peace” for “casting aside their own eminence, for which they are too base, and seeking after ours, for which they are too weak” (“The Memorial” 131). In praising Osgood’s public and private reticence, Griswold also marked her body as clearly “feminine,” in contrast to the ambiguously sexed bodies he claimed for more public women. In addition to praising Osgood, he mentions “with unhesitating pride, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Hewett, Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Welby, Alice Cary” and several others (“The Memorial” 131). Tellingly missing from this list are Elizabeth F. Ellet and Ann S. Stephens, former protégées, who had each suffered a falling out with Griswold (Mattingly 102–03) and were likely among those he had in mind in castigating “hermaphroditish disturbers.” Six years later (1856), Griswold self-published a curious 32-page pamphlet whose title begins Statement of the Relations of Rufus W. Griswold with Charlotte Myers (called Charlotte Griswold). In this document, published in New York City, and circulated widely, Griswold narrates his version of the very public and very messy events surrounding the 1852 divorce proceedings against his second wife, Charlotte Myers. That 34 libraries throughout the country still hold print copies of this document more than 150 years later, while another 47 catalog microfiche copies and an additional 69 hold digital access to the document, attests to the interest this small, seemingly obscure, pamphlet holds for nineteenth-century legal historians, cultural historians, literary scholars, and, I will argue, for women’s studies scholars as well. The document itself is every bit as curious as the case it discloses. Part personal narrative, part legal thriller, part character defense, the document unfolds like a