Walking a Tight Rope

Have you ever walked a tight rope? Without a net?

Have you ever jumped out of an airplane? Without a parachute?

Hopefully you haven't. But I feel like I am.

I have a 4000 word (approximately 8-pages, single spaced) essay due in January for my Unsex'd Females module. Caroline, the tutor/professor, has asked us the class(the whopping 3 of us) to compare Mary Wollstonecraft with a contemporary female author. Since I was an American & she did not know much about American authors at this time (1790s), she felt I should pursue that direction. Ok, sure. I didn't come over here to study American authors, but I'll humor her & do it.

So after much Googling, I found someone that didn't have a lot of scholarship. Which meant I had to do my own digging. The lady's name was Judith Stevens Sargent Murray. She was from Gloucester, MA, & her family was considered part of the aristocracy during the American Revolution. She wrote an essay called "On the Equality of the Sexes" 2 years BEFORE Wollstonecraft published her "Vindication on the Rights of Woman." Interesting, huh?

So here are these two women who are writing the same thing, but on different continents. Their religious views are exact (both Unitarian/Universalists though MW seems to lose her religion later in life). They both call for female education. In fact, they are so similar it's scary.

So why have I not find any comparison articles out there?

Easy answer. No one has felt like writing about it...until now!

So here I am, with this so called "original" topic that no one has done any scholarship on and why am I freaking out, you ask? BECAUSE I HAVE NO ONE TO BACK ME UP! It's all me! And what little biography Sheila Skemp has published on Murray! I did send Dr. Skemp an email today (she's a US History prof at Ole Miss) to which she graciously replied back.

So I am literally walking a tight rope without a net to catch me if I happen to step wrong. Caroline is quite excited that I could possibly have a publishable article if it's good and I'm freaking out!

So, for all of my literary friends reading this ... guess what you may be doing over Christmas break! Oh yes, reading my essay & giving me some feed back because the bar has been set and I'm not sure if I can clear it without a little help.