Whitcher, Frances Miriam Berry (1811–1852)

American satirist and cartoonist who created the characters of the Widow Bedott and Aunt Magwire . Name variations: Miriam Berry; Miriam Whitcher; Widow Bedott; (pseudonym) Frank. Born in Whitesboro, New York, on November 1, 1811; died of tuberculosis in Whitesboro on January 4, 1852; 11th of 15 children of Lewis Berry (a tavern owner) and Elizabeth (Wells) Berry; educated at the village academy; married Benjamin W. Whitcher (an Episcopal cleric), on January 6, 1847; children: one daughter, Alice Miriam (b. 1849).

Showed early talent for drawing caricatures and writing satirical verse and parodies; published "Widow Spriggins" in weekly paper in Rome, New York; began publishing "The Widow Bedott" monologues in Neal's Saturday Gazette (1846); submitted "Aunt Magwire's Experience" to Godey's Lady's Book (1847–49); posthumous collection The Widow Bedott Papers published (1856) and sold over 100,000 copies; her characters were dramatized by "Petroleum V. Nasby" (David Ross Locke) as The Widow Bedott, or a Hunt for a Husband, an acting vehicle for Neil Burgess (1879).

Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher, known as Miriam, was the first American woman to publish a series of satirical sketches. Her work appeared regularly in popular periodicals and was itself extremely popular, outliving her in a posthumously published collection The Widow Bedott Papers (1856) that sold over 100,000 copies, and in a dramatization of her characters written in 1879, The Widow Bedott, or a Hunt for a Husband, that actor Neil Burgess used as a vehicle for his talents.

Whitcher's satiric ability, both in drawing and in writing, exhibited itself early in her life. She was born in 1811 in Whitesboro, New York, and used her fellow classmates and teacher at the local school as her early subjects; her caricature-artistic efforts were not much appreciated. The negative responses of her family and peers caused her to withdraw, growing up lonely and reserved, but they did not stop her from exercising her unique art into adulthood.

Her first public presentation of her parodies occurred before the Maionian Circle, a local social and literary association, to which she read a piece called "Widow Spriggins." The outlandish parody of Regina Maria Roche 's popular sentimental novel The Children of the Abbey was written as an extended monologue in colloquial dialect, and drew from the country humor of the satirists Seba Smith and Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. The malapropisms and incongruous situations that form the foundation of the humor of the piece also figured largely in her future satires. "Widow Spriggins" became her first published piece when part of it was printed in a weekly newspaper in Rome, New York, by a friend.

However, Whitcher did not truly achieve literary fame until her creation of another widow, the Widow Bedott. The horrid, aging woman served as the voice of a set of monologues which Miriam sent to Joseph C. Neal, editor of Neal's Saturday Gazette, in Philadelphia; they were published in 1846. The character's competition with other women for potential husbands and her pretensions to being a society lady revolve around Whitcher's larger satire on rural life and all its politics and customs. Neal, himself a well-known humorist, printed them immediately under the name "Frank" and encouraged her to contribute more on a regular basis. These stories, filled with send-ups of pretentious behavior and malapropisms, were so popular that Louis Godey of Godey's Lady's Book requested a series of monologues for his publication using the character of Aunt Magwire, sister of the Widow Bedott. The monologues from "Aunt Magwire's Experience" are told from the point of view of this slightly nicer character, but are no less biting in their humorous commentary on female hypocrisy, gossiping and social competitiveness. One example is the Sewing Society, intended as an outlet for charitable works, which turns into a battleground of personal pride and prejudice, and is ultimately undermined by the vulgar rich woman who dominates the village. Whitcher's satire included women's rights advocates—both male and female—as well as petty gossips and those with materialistic ambitions and false sophistication. She wrote in a broad dialect, and often illustrated the pieces herself. The "Aunt Magwire" series ran from 1847—the year of Miriam's marriage—to 1849.

Miriam's profession conflicted with that of her husband, Benjamin Whitcher, who was a minister of an Episcopal church in Elmira, New York. Several members of the church and community saw themselves in Miriam's foolish characters and considered such portrayals unforgivable in their minister's wife. A resulting lawsuit eventually forced her husband's resignation from his pastorate. The irony of the situation was that Whitcher herself was very devout. Brought up in Calvinism as a member of the Presbyterian Church, she took great solace in her Episcopal faith, and published several hymns and devotional poems. She also published the lesser-known "Letters from Timberville," of slightly less colloquial flavor.

After the birth of a daughter in 1849, Whitcher contracted tuberculosis, from which she never recovered, dying three years later at the age of 40.

sources:

Buck, Claire, ed. The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature. NY: Prentice Hall, 1992.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1980.

Read, Phyllis J., and Bernard L. Witlieb. The Book of Women's Firsts. NY: Random House, 1992.

Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History. NY: Prentice Hall, 1994.

Malinda Mayer , writer and editor, Falmouth, Massachusetts