Dahlgren, Madeleine Vinton

views updated

DAHLGREN, Madeleine Vinton

Born Sarah Madeleine Vinton, 13 July 1825, Gallipolis, Ohio; died 28 May 1898, Washington, D.C.

Wrote under: Corinne

Daughter of Samuel F. and Romain Bureau Vinton; married Daniel Goddard, circa 1855 (died); John A. Dahlgren, 1865 (died 1870); children: five

Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren was educated in Philadelphia's Monsieur Picot's boarding school and in the Convent of the Visitation in Georgetown, D.C. After her mother and brother died during her childhood, Dahlgren assumed the role of companion and hostess for her father, a veteran congressman from Ohio. Her husband, Daniel C. Goddard, was assistant secretary of the Interior Department. Widowed five years after her marriage, she returned to her father's Washington house with her two children. She published her first collection of writings, Idealities (1859), under the name of Corinne. Until her second marriage to John Dahlgren, she helped support her family by writing and translating a variety of political and religious essays from French, Spanish, and Italian. She and Dahlgren had three children; and when widowed for a second time in 1870, Dahlgren again returned to her father's home and to writing.

An extremely conservative, traditional Catholic view permeates Dahlgren's fiction and nonfiction. In 1871 she wrote a letter to Congress and a pamphlet, Thoughts on Female Suffrage, arguing woman suffrage was a burden added to the distinct and sacred duties, including motherhood, that women were already responsible for by a law "higher" than the U.S. Constitution. To Dahlgren marriage was a sacred unity in which the family with the husband at the head was the foundation of the state. She believed the 19th amendment, on the other hand, proposed marriage as a mere compact in which each family member required individual representation, leading to diversity and discord rather than unity and peace.

In the 1880s Dahlgren turned from nonfiction to fictionalized sketches and highly didactic melodramatic novels, often serialized in popular magazines. South Mountain Magic (1882), perhaps her most interesting book, is a fascinating account of the mysterious beliefs and supernatural symbols of the South Mountain descendants of the German settlers in a Maryland community. A Washington Winter (1883), an involved romance set in a typical "Washington season," reflects the political and social manners of Dahlgren's world. Her strong religious convictions and their ramifications in the political world surface in Lights and Shadows of a Life (1887), which upholds the American prejudice against racial and social intermixture as a providential means of preserving the superiority of the Republic's governing race. The novel traces the complicated life of a young Southern girl and her relationship with a Frenchman who might have a black ancestor.

As a founder of the Literary Society of Washington and president of the Ladies' Catholic Missionary Society, Dahlgren remained a noted literary and religious leader of Washington society until her death.

Other Works:

Pius IX and France by Montalembert (translated by Dahlgren, 1861). An Essay on Catholicism, Authority and Order by J. Donoso Cortes (translated by Dahlgren, 1862). Memoir of Ulric Dahlgren (1872). Etiquette of Social Life in Washington (1873). The Executive Power in the United States by A. de Chambrun (translated by Dahlgren, 1874). South Sea Sketches (1881). Memoir of John A. Dahlgren (1882). The Lost Name (1886). Divorced (1887). Chim: His Washington Winter (1892). Samuel Finley Vinton (1895). The Secret Directory (1896). The Woodley Lane Ghost and Other Stories (1899).