“Systems of Self: Autobiography and Affect in Secular Early America”

Simon, Katie. “Systems of Self: Autobiography and Affect in Secular Early America.” PhD dissertation, University of California, 2012.

Simon assesses autobiographies of four early Americans using affect theory to assess primal sources of original thought that only later become expressible in language and reason. The four are Gustavus Vassa, Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, and Mary Baker Eddy. Simon observes that Eddy’s autobiography begins as a personal life story featuring troubles that were caused by the subordinated status of women. But suddenly, Eddy shifts from a personal narrative to challenge the premise of human experience, claiming that, “The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged” (Retrospection and Introspection, 22). Simon is interested in how Eddy did this with respect to gender. She focuses on Eddy’s Genesis-derived definition of deity that reverses the subordination of women, and her other statements about gender as culturally constructed. Eddy, “uses these formulations to provide pragmatic solutions for the problems many women encountered in the nineteenth century” (93). Simon explores Eddy’s arguments about the power of fictitious beliefs to produce destructive effects and therefore the importance of alternative beliefs that support the dismantling of fictions. She concludes, “Eddy expunges … entrancing fictions that would keep her from living a more livable life. And a livable life is surely a reality worth living.”

View this resource online.