Susanna Rowson American Identity

The New World, a place of reimagined beginnings and a chance to reform yourself, is often told to have been discovered by than none other than Christopher Columbus when “in 1492 [he] sailed the ocean blue.” The way we look at America now bases itself very heavily off of this belief and the education that came with it. More recently it has been shown that it does not matter whether this is even true historically. There are many disputes to this claim. However, it is a part of the history we grow up hearing about alongside the tales of Plymouth Rock, George Washington, and the Boston Tea Party. These stories have become an essential part of the American Identity, but why? Every nation creates a narrative, a construct of themselves that they present

This is true in our society as well. We owe our narrative, in part, to Susanna Rowson, an important figure in the understanding of the foundations of the American Identity. Recently scholars have been reevaluating her as one of the prime examples of the transatlantic author due to her experiences on both sides of the Atlantic during the critical period of colonization and the founding of the United States. Rowson’s novel Reuben and Rachel attempts to create an identity narrative for the newly formed United States and serves as a parallel to her life as a transatlantic actor, writer, and educator. By creating a fictional history of the genealogical line that helped give birth to the United States she attempts not only to find her place in the new continent, but to create characters that exemplify what it means to be first an “American” and more specifically for her the goal was what it meant to be a “Female American.” She then used this narrative to create an educational curriculum that would become dominant in the United States and shape the American ideology for the next two-hundred

Back where she had been rejected before, she now expected better results, but faced setbacks again as her husband’s hardware business failed in 1793 (Martin 2). She turned to acting as a way of living. At this time, the field of acting was looked down upon, seen in nearly the same light as prostitution, so she once again led a difficult life (Homestead & Hansen 622). Not only that, but her entire family was forced to become actors just to scrape by (Martin 2). They had done so well in England where both William’s business and her life as a governess had been a success, but in America they found no such luck. Following suit, her second-generation characters also struggle in the new World. Orabella, Ferdinand’s wife, returns home to find her village destroyed, her parents murdered, and her sister pregnant with the child of their murderer. Orabella’s entire family and most of her tribe have been abused or murdered. This stands as a clear parallel to the struggle Rowson and her family are facing. Rowson had allowed her family to fall into a state of defamation and poverty at the hands of those who have laid claim to America. Not only were they defamed as actors, but even the plays she wrote were scorned as being un-American (Weaver). She was not yet the true American that she dreamed of being. However, unlike Rowson the family in the novel returns to Europe to hide for