Sarah Kemble Knight’s Nonhuman and Human Encounters:
Hazzardos Rivers, Terrifying Darkness, and Surly Old Shee Creatures
This paper functions as an exploration of Sarah Kemble Knight’s The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York through an ecofeminist lens by examining the representation of human and nonhuman in the text. Specifically, I investigate the relationships forged by Knight between human and nonhuman entities through her use of language, rendering the entity as either subject or object. Vivid descriptions of urban and rural lands are provided by Knight, as well as numerous interactions with people she encounters during her five day journey between Boston and New Haven. Knight participates in enforcing the dominant patriarchal ideology of her culture by describing the land she encounters as an object rather than subject, and categorizing women, Native Americans, and African American slaves as othered objects. Ecofeminism reveals the connection between the degradation of nature and the domination of women in Knight’s journal, which is expressed in terms of subject and object.
Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines Knight’s relationship with the land through the filter of the picaresque genre in her essay “The New England Frontier and the Picaresque in Sarah Kemble Knight’s Journal.” The frontier becomes “literary, colonized, domesticated, ‘urbanized,’ dangerous, comic, practical, and amoral” through Knight’s use of the picaresque (123). Knight’s amoral descriptions of the land challenge the Puritan dialectical view of the land, rendering Knight’s voice unorthodox. Additionally, Knight’s portrayal of the land is not informed by the garden metaphor found by Annette Kolodny in other women’s writings; in contrast, Knight often “urbanizes” the land she travels through, referring frequently to towns rather than the frontier. Despite her unorthodox voice, Knight still enforces dominant patriarchal ideology, privileging the urban over the wild.
Robert O. Stephens claims that Knight describes the land in two manners: the world or the actual, and the underworld or the mythic. He argues that scholars should focus on the mythic elements found within the journal rather than take the journal as a “literal diary.” Stephens’s essay resituates Knight’s work within the “fruitful tradition of colonial American, and particularly New England, literature” (254). Peter Kratzke states that whether Knight uses mimetic or mythic language and imagery, both are polemical in nature. The body and spirit, and human and animal imagery are addressed briefly, and Kratzke notes that the “polemical landscape is blurred by very real physical danger,” which is of interest to this project (48). Rivers in particular are the most frequently mentioned aspect of the land in the journal as Knight records her struggles to cross them without drowning. If the landscape is the only imagery that escapes clear cut polemical categories, how does this affect the relationship of human to nonhuman in the journal?
Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson’s article “Writing About Nature in Early America: From Discovery to 1850” provides historical and literary context for an informed ecofeminist reading of the journal. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries viewed nature with an “unrestrained imperialistic ethic of domination,” which matches the findings of Kolodny in terms of male writers (3). Knight does not match the pattern of women writers who challenge the land-as-woman metaphor through garden imagery; instead, she upholds the preference for urban over wild, untamed land. Johnson and Patterson locate a shift in the late eighteenth century in which the manner of living for settlers in North America had changed, but not the ethic. Knight’s journal was originally written in 1704-1705 and so falls in between this shift of changing lifestyles. The lack of copious descriptions of the land traveled through in Knight’s journal is in normal during the late seventeenth century to the time of the American Revolution. Johnson and Patterson claim that most writings were “largely silent about nature, focusing mainly on narratives of people (both Native and Euro-American), politics, and religious work” (5-6).
Scholars apply ecocritical and ecofeminist theories to early American texts in addition to the nineteenth century, home to the traditionally defined originator of nature writing Henry David Thoreau, and later centuries. Timothy Sweet addresses three possibilities of analysis: the contrastive model, an early American origins model, and an environmentally inflected origins model. Although Sweet’s analysis focuses on ecocritical-economic theories, he does address the motivations of ecofeminist American studies. Ecofeminist studies wish to “investigat[e] the shape of the nature-culture boundary” as well as “the desire to transform wilderness into domestic space, from the colonial era on” or locating “undomesticated space in nature” starting in the 1820s (420). Daniel Philippon, in response to Sweet’s article, also defends the necessity and value of ecocritical theory: “To not address the nonhuman world in literary and cultural criticism is now becoming as unthinkable as failing to attend to race, class, and gender, among other social categories, and that is an unqualified good on both philosophical and biological grounds” (432). The project of reexamining early American texts through an ecocritical or ecofeminist lens can provide insight into later periods of American literary history, according to Philippon. And therefore Knight’s journal can provide insight into the ways in which women, not just men, contributed to the domination of nature and degradation of other women by rendering these entities as objects, rather than equal subjects in literature.
Knight’s initial journey from Boston to New Haven takes five days, covers two hundred miles, and follows the Post Road. The land is neither completely wild nor fully civilized; Knight’s longest journey between markers of civilization is only thirty miles. The lack of properly maintained roads, ferries, and safe bridges are markers of “wilderness” for the Bostonian Knight. However, the dangers faced by Knight are based on navigation of the blurred boundaries of urban and wild as she struggles to cross rivers, travel by horse at night, and traverse hills and mountainous terrain with guides more knowledgeable about the wilderness than herself. Despite the fact that most of her journal focuses on the people she meets, Knight does include descriptions of her interaction with the land. Most of these descriptions illustrate her unpleasant experiences with the nonhuman world, or feature her triumph over the land, expressed as not drowning, falling off cliffs, and safely reaching New Haven.
Even though the route Knight follows is called Post Road, the road is not uniform in appearance. Knight’s first guide reminds her it is dangerous to ride “hard” in the night; however, the horse “has the sense to avoid” riding hard (90). The first night of her journey consists of riding through a “thick swamp” in a “great fogg.” Knight describes herself as “startled” by the darkness, the fog, and the swamp itself, and she must rely on the knowledge of her guide to see her safely through the danger. The roads range from “even and pleasant” and “clean, good and passable” to “very bad.” Generally, the more populated the location of the post stop, the better the roads. The condition of the roads are mentioned in the journal only when they present an obstacle for Knight, or when she is praising a more civilized town for having good roads.
Knight does not spend her journey walking the roads nor does she travel in a coach. Instead, Knight must ride a horse, which she never refers to by a specific name. Horses are referred to as horse, hors, jade, mare, and nagg, and the most important role a horse plays in the journal is its relationship to its rider. This is significant because horses are the only animals mentioned in the journal and they are already domesticated, serving the purpose of humans. No raccoons, snakes, fish, insects, birds or other “wild” animals make an appearance despite the fact that Knight travels through swamps and forests and crosses rivers. Animals are only mentioned in terms of the food that appears on her dinner plate and therefore exist only as objects rather than subjects within the journal. In one section, a young lady must ride bareback at a fast pace over a rough road, causing her to bemoan her sore backside, providing Knight with an amusing story to retell. More seriously, Knight’s horse spooks while crossing the New London Ferry, the horse almost stumbles off a steep and narrow pathway while she’s riding, and her horse collapses underneath her while she’s riding up a hill. Knight refuses on several occasions to ride her horse across a river, demanding instead to be conveyed in a canoe, suggesting that Knight trusts a man-made object, the canoe, over nature’s creation rendered domesticated, the horse.
Rivers are the most frequently mentioned obstacle and source of terror for Knight during her journey, perhaps because they are the least tamed and urbanized aspect of the wilderness. Roads, even if in poor condition, provide Knight and her guides access to the land, but not all of the rivers have proper ferries, bridges, or canoes that will not flood. The rivers are “bad,” “dang’ros,” “difficult,” “hazzardos,” or “navigable,” illustrating the polemical landscape theory proposed by Kratze, representing extremes: good or bad, never in between. Although there are ferries available for some of the rivers, the crossing is still dangerous; one ferry takes four hours to cross a river that is filled with ice during the winter. The second river Knight encounters, she refuses to ride across on her horse, and instead the Post provides a “very small and shallow” canoe with a boy to paddle her across. Knight is convinced the canoe will flood and this thought “greatly terrifie[s]” her (92). This theme of terror continues with the third river, although Knight does include self-mockery of her fright:
I cannot express The concern of mind this relation sett me in: no thoughts but those of the dang’ros River could entertain my Imagination, and they were as formidable as various, still Tormenting me with blackest Ideas of my Approaching fate—Sometime seing myself drowning, otherwhiles drowned, and at the best like a holy Sister Just come out of a Spiritual Bath in dripping Garments. (92)
Even though Knight makes light of her terror, the dangers she faces during her journey, mainly the risk of drowning in a river, are still strongly conveyed throughout her journal. When faced with the challenge of crossing a “hazzardos River” at night on her horse, Knight obeys the advice of her guide and gives her horse its head, allowing it to navigate across the river without her interference. The horse is previously established as an object rather than a subject, so trusting an object with her life is an uneasy decision. Knight describes her choice as either possibly drowning in the river, or being left behind on the river’s shore.
Knight at times refuses to cross rivers if there is a possibility of calmer weather or the waters falling to a more manageable level. For example, the Paukatang River challenges her “weary, very weary, hungry and uneasy circumstance” and she allows the party she is traveling with to cross on without her (99). The presence of a ferry is no guarantee of a safe crossing, as Knight discovers with the New London Ferry: it is with “great difficulty in getting over” due to high winds that toss the boat about, and horses that “capered” in reaction to the bad weather and crossing (100). A river swollen with ice melt is described as a “rapid stream” which “was very terrifying,” but Knight still crosses it in a canoe (116). Further description of this experience is cut short with the explanation that “it is past my skill to express the Exceeding fright all their transactions formed in me” (116). The travel through a lands described as “dolesome woods,” “Terrifying darkness,” “Armed Enymie,”and trees and bushes that “gave us an unpleasant welcome” leaves Knight worried, filled with “fears and fatigue,” and “tired and dispirited” (93). In reducing the land to an armed enemy, the land is denied any status as a subject; it exists only as an object preventing her from reaching the civilized towns she seeks.
In examining the language used by Knight to describe the land she traversed during her journey, it becomes clear that she views land as an object, rather than a subject equal to humans. Even though the land, especially rivers, provides tangible dangers and obstacles to a traveler such as Knight, she does not allow the environment to prevent her from reaching her final destinations: New Haven, and New York, and then back home to Boston. After suffering through a terrifying river crossing and struggling up a hill in the dark, Knight aligns her triumph with the now visible moon, which she terms the “Glorious Luminary” (92). The moon is transformed into the “kind conductress of the night,” and the rest of the land is similarly transformed: clownish trees become Boister’s Trees, Knight’s terror becomes “Bright Joy” in her soul, and rather than seeing “Armed Enymies” in the night, Knight now imagines a “Sumpteous citty” populated with buildings and churches (94). The rural land is imaginatively shifted into an urban and civilized town.
While the land is largely ignored in the journal in favor of Knight’s interactions with other people and rural cultures, Knight does include her approval of cities that have transformed and harnessed the natural land. The town of New Rochelle is described as:
a very pretty place well compact, and good handsome houses, Clean, good and passable Rodes, and situated on a Navigable River, abundance of land well fined and Cleerd all along as wee passed, which caused in me a Love to the place, wch I could have been content to live in. (111)
Towns that have bad roads, hard to cross rivers or no ferries, and ugly houses are subject to Knight’s scorn and disapproval. The urban is clearly privileged over the rural and frontier in the journal. In addition to preferring urban environments, Knight’s human-human relationships indicate cultural and racial boundaries of her time. An examination of the manner in which Knight describes other women, Native Americans, and African American slaves is needed before a connection can be made between the degradation of nature and the domination of women and “others” in the journal.
Women that Knight disapproves of are mentioned more frequently than women Knight approves of, or feels treated her with the proper respect. “A young Lady” at her first stop peppers with Knight with “silly questions.” This young lady, Knight records, is rude, implies that only a prostitute would appear late at night and alone, and unsuccessfully attempts to impress Knight by putting on two or three rings. Another woman is scorned for her poor attempt to cook pork and cabbage served in a purple sauce (turned purple by her kettle) with “Indian bred.” Mr. Devill’s daughters “look’t as old as the Divel himself, and quite as ugly” and live in a “habitation of cruelty” (98). The old woman at Knight’s next stop is a “pretty full mouth’d old creature” who violates proper manners by loudly telling the French doctor her maladies in front of company (98).
The wife of the man who provides a guide at Paukataug River, along with her husband and children, is reduced to an object of pity. Knight uses their poverty-stricken existence and appearance to remind herself that her “late fatigues” are only temporary. Jemima, an eighteen year old girl, is reduced to a punch line in a humorous story, and the Saybrook land lady is depicted as a foul creature who pollutes her food offerings with her continuous scratching and refusal to wash her hands. “Jone Tawdry” is presented as an ignorant bumpkin in search of ribbons, and “Little Miss” of the French family cannot make a proper bed. Knight also records her encounter with a “surly old shee Creature, not worthy the name of woman” who refuses Knight and her traveling party admittance during a storm (110). Knight reduces these women to the status of “other” by labeling them creatures, devils, and as exaggerated caricatures, demeaning them for not meeting societal and cultural standards that she believes in and enforces through recording these encounters for her reader’s delight. These exaggerated caricatures are polemical in nature, providing Knight’s readers with the extremes of a given category: the human.
Mentions of Native Americans and African American slaves are few, but they are present in the journal. Knight’s “tattertailed guide” is described as “an Indian-like Animal,” implying that Native Americans are animal-like rather than human, objects rather than subjects (99). To be “animal-like” is to be uncivilized, and towns and civilization are highly privileged in Knight’s journal. The Native American in her theft story is called a “Heathen” and is not given a name. Rather than describe specific men and women, Knight refers to her observations of Native Americans as one entity, calling them “the most salvage of all the salvages of that kind that I had ever Seen” (105). She is scornful that no attempt has been made by whites to civilize these “salvages.” Through her brief descriptions, it is clear that Knight disapproves of Native American marriage, divorce, and mourning rituals and practices. She also does not enjoy their food, remarking that she cannot stand to eat the “Pumpkin and Indian mixt Bred” served to her one night (107).
Knight’s portrayal of African American slaves reveals the hierarchy of races in her journal: whites, then Native Americans, with slaves at the bottom. The “negro slave” in her theft story is never given a name, and the story is included in her journal as a means of mocking the bumpkins of the countryside. The people of New Haven, according to Knight, are “too Indulgent (especially the farmers) to their slaves” because they are too “familiar” with them, and allow slaves to sit and eat at their tables (104). Knight retells the story of a “poor master” who voluntarily agrees to arbitration with a slave and has to pay his slave forty dollars, and it is clear she does not approve (105).
Knight reduces women, Native Americans, and African American slaves to others, revealing that she participates in acts of patriarchal domination over those who do not qualify as privileged subjects. Similarly, the lands through which she travels are subject to Knight’s inclusion or exclusion in the journal based on her ability to “urbanize” the land or prove that she triumphed over her terrors and fears. While Knight does not use scornful or wrathful language to describe the land that she utilizes when describing people she disapproves of, it is clear that urban settings are privileged and preferred over rural frontiers because they are civilized, and contain civilized citizens. Knight does not experience terror, weariness or fatigue while in the cities of New Haven or New York; she only experiences amusement, business opportunities, and encounters with bumpkins or those she considers her equal.
This exploration of Knight’s journal through an ecofeminist lens has revealed that the connection between the degradation of nature, whether physical or literary, and the domination of women or “others” can be located in early American literary history. Instead of portraying the land as a garden, Knight dominated the land she travels through by reducing it to an object rather than subject status. Humans that do not meet her standards of civilization are similarly reduced to objects—women, Native Americans, and African American slaves. While the motivations of Knight should not be assigned by critics, her language used to identity objects and subjects can be analyzed, revealing enforcement of cultural and social hierarchies.
In closing, further exploration of Knight’s journal upon the connections made in this paper between human and nonhuman entities is a valuable and valid option. A comparison of Knight’s journal with the brief account “Memoir of a Journey from New London to Boston” by John Winthrop (the governor’s son) would prove interesting because the parties took the same route within three months of each other (Bush 69). Locating other travel narratives by both women and men during the early 1700s would expand the boundaries of this brief investigation, allowing for a stronger claim that the ecofeminist lens provides valuable insight into the society and cultural hierarchies and their relationship to the nonhuman environment of this time period.
Works Cited:
Bush, Jr. Sargent. “Introduction: The Journal of Madam Knight.” Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives. Ed. William L. Andrews. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. 67-83. Print.
Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. “The New England Frontier and the Picaresque in Sarah Kemble Knight's Journal.” Early American Literature and Culture: Essays Honoring Harrison T. Meserole. Eds. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and J.A. Leo Lemay. 122-31. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1992. Print.
Johnson, Rochelle, and Daniel Patterson. “Writing about Nature in Early America: From Discovery to 1850.” Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook. Ed. Patrick D. Murphy. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998. 3-12. Print.
Knight, Sarah Kemble. “The Journal of Madam Knight.” Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives. Ed. William L. Andrews. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. 85-116. Print.
Kratzke, Peter. “Sarah Kemble Knight's Polemical Landscape.” CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association. 65.3 (2003): 43-9. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 6 July 2011.
Philippon, Daniel J. “Is Early American Environmental Writing Sustainable? A Response to Timothy Sweet.” Early American Literature. 45.2 (2010): 417-23. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 23 June 2011.
Sweet, Timothy. “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing.” Early American Literature. 45.2 (2010): 403-16. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 23 June 2011.
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