appeal for sectional solidarity depended on rhetorical conventions that the editors of this collection have characterized as neoclassic: It depends in large measure on assuming that consensus is the basis for public acts; it is addressed to a readership of like-minded citizens whose function is to judge the reasonableness of a proposal bearing on the civic good of their community. Yet Hale also introduces onto this common ground two new and ultimately revolutionary factors: She proposes that the community-building function traditionally assigned to oratory in a public assembly now take place through writing produced and circulated privately. Furthermore, she assigns the responsibility for such activity to women. Thus potentially divisive public conflicts are brought under the control of a constituency whose gender-related values will ultimately transcend merely political differences of property, location, or party alignment. (159)
This meant that she ultimately undermined her neoclassical conventions: “Hale's move to enclose education in domestic privacy had the effect of fostering a dangerous individualism that would eventually help to undermine the homogeneous community upon which her practice of neoclassic rhetoric depended. Because the domestically educated woman was not subject to the powerful normative discipline of the school, she was much more inclined to independent thought and action” (168-9).