SOURCE: “Marietta Holley: The Humorist as Propagandist,” in Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 34, No. 4, Fall, 1980, pp. 193-201.

In the following essay, Armitage analyzes Holley's use of humor, asserting that it exposes and challenges women's ideas about themselves.

Walter Blair was quite right in calling Marietta Holley a propagandist.¹ Born on the family farm in Jefferson County, New York in 1836 where she lived until her death in 1926, she confronted the nineteenth century's most urgent issues in the twenty novels which span a 41-year career. Racial and religious questions, women's rights, temperance, fashion, manners, travel—all were scrutinized by her crackerbox philosopher, Samantha Allen, whose wisecracks and button-hole logic entertain and edify the reader.² All also derive from Holley's central concern: if women could just get the vote, they could gain control of their lives and positively affect political decisions. Of course women did get the vote...