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The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

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Not since 1950 and Louise Hall Tharp's book "The Peabody Sisters of Salem" has any author tackled the daunting task of writing a collective biography of these women. It's almost difficult to believe that Tharp and Marshall used some of the same personal letters as source material. For this new offering is the masterpiece, a Rolls Royce to Tharp's tricycle. No wonder it took decades to assemble and complete.

Though the sisters had three younger brothers, the accomplishments of the men pale in comparison with those of the women. Elizabeth (1804-1887) was a teacher, writer, publisher, and encouraging friend (and never more than that) to many of the Transcendentalists and their crew. Mary (1806-1887) was the beautiful one, another teacher, who set her sights early on snagging Horace Mann as a spouse (and eventually succeeded). Sophia (1809-1871) was the invalid artist who found her creative dream partner in husband Nathaniel Hawthorne. All were inspired by the example set by their mother, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1778-1853), whose liberal and feminist ideals are in retrospect more suggestive of the late 20th century, and not of her own time. The Peabodys were not among the financially elite Bay-Staters, but they seemed to have their fingers on the pulse of the commonwealth and on the trends of the country.

Framed at beginning and end by Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1842 wedding, this volume is one of the most detailed narrative chronicles of familial correspondence you're apt to read in your lifetime. It's never tedious, simply all-encompassing. The very words of the individuals themselves are so revealing, so personal. We can tap into their emotions of the moment: their joys, sorrows, angers, jealousies, misunderstandings, and hopes. After just a few chapters, the reader comes to KNOW these women and their fellow correspondents. The text is supplemented with b&w portraits of every major character in this real-life drama, giving us a chance to truly SEE them. Those were the days when people wrote and sent letters, then read the answers aloud to drawing-room audiences of friends and relatives. A different time indeed.

Though I and other reviewers elsewhere have given this book a high rating, it won't be for everyone. It's highly recommended for students (both casual and formal) of American history, American literature, and women's studies. Marshall's "The Peabody Sisters" is a wonderful dip into 19th-century life. It can be a culture shock to close the covers, blink your eyes, and return to the 21st century.

Oxen-like in size, this is a delight of a historical biography. The Peabody sisters are three extraordinary women well worth getting to know, which you will, intimately, in Megan Marshall's fantastic portrait of Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia.

Particularly with Elizabeth, the eldest and most influential, Murphy goes into such detail that it's as if the two were best friends. Innumerable letters and journal entries are quoted tirelessly (it inspires one to keep better record of one's own life), and you will be amazed at how thoughtful and brilliant Elizabeth was. The company she kept is a who's who of Boston's elite: tutored by Ralph Waldo Emerson, befriended by a famous Boston minister who used their discussions faithfully as the basis for his popular sermons, and personal friend of a Harvard University president who allowed her to peruse his bookshelf whenever she wanted--and all this before age twenty! Next is beautiful Mary, who learned early on to use her looks to her advantage, though unable to penetrate her older sister's shadow; and Sophia, the youngest, a notable artist who was crippled by headaches for much of her life, but was stronger than anyone gave her credit for. Mary eventually married Horace Mann, Sophia became Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Elizabeth never married, though it was she who befriended Mann and Hawthorne before either of her sisters knew the men. The book focuses mainly on the sisters' lives pre-marriages and their academic achievements and contributions to the Romantic Movement, not the family drama, though there is a decent enough helping of the latter that no one will feel cheated out of a good story.

Though not wealthy--often the Peabody family hovered near poverty, especially in early years--and denied college educations because of their sex (though that hardly seems to have handicapped them; each learned numerous languages, read with a vengeance, and developed learned opinions on virtually everything), the sisters transcended their social position and lack of formal education to became some of the most influential, powerful women of the time. It's too bad that they are not more well-known and celebrated than they are; only two books in recent literary history have been written about these great women, while biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, by comparison, are numerous. I must add that I had always thought of Hawthorne as a rather grim, foreboding man; through love letters to Sophia contained in "The Peabody Sisters," I now see him as a much more happy-go-lucky, humorous literary figure.

"The Peabody Sisters" is a book ten years in the making and is clearly a labor of love for the author. It is meticulously documented, even for a 450+-page biography (there are over 100 pages of notes that aren't required reading). Though I wouldn't call it a riveting read, the sisters' lives were fascinating and make for a very good book. Parts drag on--the first 80 pages were slow--but it is an inspiring read, one definitely worth your time.

When you think of that somewhat hazy designation "The New England Transcendentalists," I'll bet the first legendary figure that automatically springs to mind is Ralph Waldo Emerson. It could just as easily be Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcott, or another half dozen men of the time and place. Do the names Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody resonate with you, as well? They didn't for me until I read Megan Marshall's 2005 biography The Peabody Sisters. Marshall's narrative is the result of a monumental undertaking: spanning two decades and a continent, her tireless search for primary sources unearthed thousands of pages of journals and letters cached across the country in small-town libraries, universities, and private homes. She set out to read every word written by the sisters, and also studied the papers of their associates and pored over the many books the Peabodys say influenced them in their formative years. From this morass of material, Marshall marshaled (I couldn't resist) a group biography which not only discloses the early lives of the sisters in intimate detail, but paints a picture of the events, beliefs, prejudices, and social mores of that turbulent time in American history.

This is not the typical biography that follows its subjects to the grave. Marshall tells a coming-of-age story that ties the girls' spiritual struggles, attempts to define themselves, and strivings for self-development to those of the young nation. For the most part resisting the present-day temptation to posit all sorts of unconscious motivations, Marshall allows the sisters to speak directly for themselves. With a graceful economy of phrasing, she weaves together disparate threads from journal entries and correspondences to craft an intensely personal biography. This personal tone springs largely from the confessional quality of the diaries and letters.

Marshall opens and closes her story with the marriage of Sophia Peabody to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although it was Elizabeth who initially attracted Hawthorne, he chose her sister as his bride. Interestingly, Elizabeth also attracted Horace Mann who chose, ultimately, to marry Elizabeth's other sister, Mary. Marrying Elizabeth was probably too big a risk: of the three Peabody sisters-- none of them intellectual slouches and none as conventionally ordinary as the typical New England woman-- Elizabeth was the most extraordinary. She was the most ambitious, socially and intellectually, and it is her narrative which is the more dramatic example of the frustrations of talented nineteenth-century women whose aspirations were bridled by social conventions. Moreover, it is Elizabeth's spiritual struggle which exemplifies the overarching crisis of the age: filling the emotional and cultural void left by the collapse of orthodox Christianity and this new generation's rejection of Calvinism.

When the Peabody sisters were growing up, optimism and expectation coincided with the youth of the nation, and the possibilities for the progress of humankind were in the air. Amidst boom and bust, cities rose, and for the first time in the new world young women lived independently, and backwoodsmen left the forest seeking the cultural commodities of the expanding towns. Transatlantic packets arriving in the ports discharged radical ideas with their passengers. In this atmosphere, the lives of the Peabody sisters were touched in some measure by the various great "isms" of their day: nationalism, liberalism, feminism, socialism, abolitionism, unitarianism, transcendentalism, and romanticism.

Yet, in the first decades of the nineteenth century in New England, the backcountry operated as if it were still a medieval theocracy. The seaboard, however, was more sophisticated, because of the constant influx of new immigration and foreign visitors, who brought with them the radical ideas of the Socinians, Swedenborg, and other circulating avant garde ideas. In lieu of fire and brimstone, the new intellectuals embraced a genteel Unitarianism. It was under this latter influence that Elizabeth and her sisters participated in the Great New England Schism and came to travel in Transcendentalist circles.

At different stages in her life, Elizabeth enjoyed a reciprocal connection with "representative men" such as William Ellery Channing, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, Horace Mann, Theodore Parker, Washington Allston, and- not to omit representative women- Margaret Fuller and Maria Sedgwick.

Channing, whose sermons galvanized the Unitarian movement, was Elizabeth's mentor and spiritual guide. He encouraged Elizabeth to broaden her studies and think seriously about theology, philosophy, and literature. It was through him that Elizabeth came to read the Romantic poets Coleridge and Wordsworth (with whom she developed a personal correspondence) and the philosopher Victor Cousin, whose presentation of the new German thought made Kant, Hegel, and Schelling accessible. Eventually Channing came to rely on Elizabeth's assistance in framing his weekly addresses for delivery and publication.

Elizabeth developed a close and constructive friendship with Emerson , as well. At first her tutor in Greek, Emerson took up Elizabeth's translation of Gerando's Self Education, which, together with his other works, was adapted by Emerson in composing the essays "Self-Reliance" and "Nature."

Beyond English poets and German idealists, the young Elizabeth and her sisters were especially affected by Germaine de Stael. Her explications of German philosophy fired the youthful Transcendentalists, but it was more her sexual exploits and renowned salon that captured the girls' imagination. Elizabeth would follow her example, albeit more sedately, by becoming a translator, writer and essayist, lecturer, bookseller, and by some accounts the first woman publisher in the new republic. From her press came the sermons of Channing, antislavery pamphlets, the first appearance of Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial, and several of Hawthorne's early works. Elizabeth's bookstore and circulating library became the hub of The Hub, the principal meeting place for Transcendentalists and social reformers.

Marshall is careful that all this intellectual history does not come at the expense of a good family drama: the pages are lively with tales of lost fortunes, unhinged spinsters, sexual predators, brutal medical treatments, hallucinations, barbaric fits of temper, opium abuse, suicide, pestilence, paralysis, covert rivalries, love affairs and betrayals.

Marshall wades waist high in ideological waters, honoring the Peabody sisters and their mother for unconventional views on marriage and a woman's independence, for their Herculean exertion at self-education and burning desire for creativity and action in a world disparaging of assertive women. At the outset, she quotes Emerson lauding the sequestered woman and means to elicit sympathy for Elizabeth upon her receiving scoldings from wealthy matrons and warnings from her beloved Channing for displays of her precociousness

In fact, all the men in this story come off badly. The Peabody men are ineffectual, Alcott fudges facts and mooches off people, Mann and Hawthorne, bombast to the contrary, toy with the affections of a woman they claim to respect, and even the saintly Channing and gentle Emerson, while loving, are nevertheless chauvinistic.

True, women, historically, have been held to a standard of modesty and selflessness and have enjoyed little autonomy or legal protection. Even so, Eliza Peabody, the girls' mother, still remembered a past in which the educated women of her affluent family exercised an authority arrogated by the well-to-do. She recalled her family's loss of enormous holdings in the Revolutionary period. By the time her girls came along, the family was fighting to subsist in freakish economic cycles marked by panics and depressions. Her daughters' best chances were a fortunate marriage or some means of independence. Eliza's own husband turned out to be a dismal provider, and the family's survival relied heavily on her education, begun in childhood among the vestiges of privilege. Everywhere in New England learning was synonymous with prestige, and it was fashionable to educate one's daughters, so Eliza ran a school.

Eliza's principle of "self-reliance" was born of an ugly necessity, more than from a theoretical embracing of The Rights of Woman. The gentlewomen of her kin had had more to lose than gain in seeking strict autonomy. Emerson's remarks echoed of a time in which privacy was a luxury reserved for a woman of means. For Eliza and her daughters, that world was gone.

Adumbrating Virginia Woolf's plaintive cry for A Room of Her Own, the Peabody sisters are representative of a class of women who, intelligent, genteel, expressive, and courageous, might still be as restricted today as they were then were it not for the efforts of their sisters in women's struggle for emancipation.

At the center of the American Renaissance stand several families whose impact has been often studied and written about. One family of women has been clearly neglected and their impact downgraded, the Peabody Sisters. Megan Marshall has written a very well researched and long overdue work of depth that flows along lightly. Highly readable, this work articulates the contributres of Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia (wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne) in prose that reads more like a novel than like a multi-subject biography. For those interested in the American Renaissance, American Romanticism, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, early feminism, and literary excellence this book is a necessary presence on your bookshelf. Do yourself a favor and read this book. I highly recommend it for scholars and layman.

If you want more information on Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, read Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: a life by Patricia Dunlavy Valenti. I thought that Marshall was stretching a bit when she inferred that Sophia's migraine headaches happened at certain times because of feelings (e.g. jealousy, loneliness) that she experienced. Biographers get into muddy waters when they diagnose or interpret diseases from the 19th century as part of their description. An exception would be a writer who is a medical doctor and is writing solely about a disease in the 19th century and is using medical records as sources. Marshall puts her comments about Sophia's headaches in context by referencing only one text: Oliver Sacks' Migraine: Understanding a Common Disorder.

This well-written book is full of descriptive passages that do put the reader back into the Victorian time period. The expectations of and challenges for women are interesting to read about first hand from the Peabody sisters' letters. New Englanders will appreciate learning about towns and cities such as Dedham (once pastoral), Salem, Brookline, Boston along with parts of Maine. Learning about the connections between these women and famous artists, statesman, authors, lecturers and ministers is unendingly fascinating.

Editorial comment: Sophia should have been a famous artist herself and Elizabeth Peabody should be recognized in university education classes for her accomplishments and struggles.

Marshall has managed to bring to life three exceptional New Englanders who were involved in both the Transcendentalist movement and changing nature of children's education that occurred in the mid-eighteenth century. Though this biography, which follows the entwined lives of the Peabody sisters, could have been an overwhelming tome that detailed every aspect of the sister's lives, Marshall instead presents us with a very clear theme and follows Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia on their path to adulthood. This book, wisely I think, stops after the marriage of Mary to Horace Mann. At that point, the sisters are no longer such an integral part of each other's lives and are not dependent on the each other for their financial well being. To go on and chronicle their married (or in Elizabeth's case, single) lives, would have taken away from the cohesiveness of the work.
Marshall's writing is excellent and her understanding, and apparent love, for her subjects comes through with every chapter. Though Marshall has great respect for the objects of the book, it never overshadows the story. Each woman has her own flaws, as do the great men that they come into contact with. And Marshall resists the temptation to do a full psychoanalysis of her subjects. She does analysis their behavior but it never goes beyond the simple historical analysis that makes any good biography worth reading.
Marshall's attention to the world around the Peabody sisters is an added highlight to the book. Boston and its environs were important in the lives of the sisters and Marshall does an excellent job of describing the area in the mid-eighteenth century. In some ways, this book sheds as much light on the changing nature of New England, with the advent of Unitarianism, the focus on public education, and the creation of the ideal that many people think of when they imagine Louisa May Alcott's Concord, as it does the lives of the three sisters.
Overall an excellent book - well written and well paced. History buffs, especially those interested in women's studies or the history of New England, will find this a pleasant and informative read. It is also very accessible to a reader with little or no historical background.
In a side note - as I was reading this book, I had this desire to go back and reread Little Women; there was something about the Peabody sisters that reminded me of the March sisters. After I finished Marshall's biography, I did read Alcott's book (and watched the latest movie version with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon) and I was amazed at how similar the fictional lives of the March sisters were to the real lives of the Peabody sisters. It proved to be an interesting side note to a pleasurable reading experience.

This was a pretty good read, even though I usually hate biographies. Because it focused on three people instead of one there was a range of experience, and the narrative never bogged down. The story details the lives of three amazing women. I think that the accomplishments of the eldest sister, Elizabeth, would have made her remarkable even today. The exploits of the younger two sisters do not seem similarly impressive, at least in the portion of their lives that the author has given us. The book ends with the marriage of the second sister, and the end of the three living together. This is halfway through all of their lives, and seems an abrupt ending. The author has taken such care and been so meticulous with her research thus far that her decision to summarize the second half of all three of their lives in one epilogue seems extremely hurried and abrupt. The lives of the two younger sister, Sophia and especially Mary, seem to become more interesting after the end of the book. Elizabeth's domineering nature and intelligence seems to have stifled Mary, and to a lesser extent Sophia. I think they come into their own later in life and find the author's decision not to include this for the sake of focusing on the interaction between the three an odd choice.
The book begins with the girl's grandparents, and lags a bit at the beginning. But once the sisters enter the tale the book becomes much more interesting. The book, while clearly heavily researched, is still accessible to people, like myself, without much knowledge of the era, though some familiarity with Transcendentalist thinking might be useful. I found myself growing attached to the characters, the author gave them a great deal of humanity and reality, and in the end was sorry to see their story end so abruptly.

This book is one of my picks for the best reads of all time. I usually don't care for biography, but this had me spellbound like a novel. I could visualize the ladies in their respective settings and the personalities were fascinating. What complicated and difficult lives in so many ways, living in one another's shadows. Elizabeth's accomplishments were staggering. Translating from Latin and German? I don't even speak English correctly half the time! How interesting to live in a time when America was smaller. Obviously, I can recommend this book wholeheartedly.
Janice Lawson - Montana

Just finished this unfinished tripartite biography. The writing is good, really good, but this is only Volume 1. Where is the promise of Vols 3 and 4?

I did really enjoy this story of 3 enlightened sisters, enlightened mother -- and the details of post-Revolutionary Boston. What I missed were the details of 'ever-day' life for a woman, married, unmarried, finally married -- what it was like on a physical/human scale (toilet facilites, dealing with feminine hygiene, sex, lack of sex, so-on).

If one reads a recent biography of Jane Austen, the 'stuff' of her life is all there -- though so much less is known of Austen. So, why not include the facts of daily life for the Peabody women whose thoughts and courage were noble beyond belief.

Well, I shouldn't complain. I enjoyed this book so much and wish that it will have a sequel.

Peabody Sisters is excellent. There are so many people connected to these three woman that the reader is vicariously hearing inside information about historical figures, as well as the Peabody sisters---women most of us probably did not know. While you learn the historical significance/involvement of these women, you also learn of their daily lives and personal frustrations and joys. Megan Marshall has some 150 pages of notes and I think she must've examined every diary, note, letter, and biography of every individual involved in the sisters' lives. But, this is NOT a boring biography...Marshall speaks in a readable voice.