The High Road: The Autobiography of an Ambitious Mother: A Study in Human Nature (c. 1910)
The High Road: The Autobiography of an Ambitious Mother: A Study in Human Nature (c. 1910)
Anonymous
Rare Books and Manuscripts Library
SPEC.RARE.MS.AMER.0035
Sadly unpublished, this well-written manuscript chronicles the “rags-to-riches” journey of an American mother determined to give her daughters the best lives they can achieve. Born in the antebellum South to poor farmers and widowed at a young age, the unnamed author is determined that her own children will marry well above their own stations. The High Road is less an autobiography and more a road map to upward mobility as it was available to women at the turn of the 20th century. By the end, her daughters are married into wealth and comfort, and she benefits alongside them as their widowed mother cared for now by her sons-in-law. Her story illustrates the struggles of mothers to see their daughters married well - the surest form of economic stability in the time period. In the end, she acknowledges that she at times had to act with ambition and shrewdness, characteristics singularly unbecoming for women at that time, but offers no apology since she now has the satisfaction of seeing her children comfortable and without material deprivation.
This work also showcases her own accomplishments in writing and rhetoric, unusual for a poor farmer’s daughter, with ample editing marks in her own hand, showing her command of the English language and literary tradition.