The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

the 1830s, women started to become writers, critics, and editors for periodicals, and were able to earn a living by writing (Trela 90). Even though magazine writing was beneficial to women, they were still subject to men in the literary sphere. D.J. Trela, in “Introduction: Nineteenth Century Women and Periodicals,” writes, “the success they enjoyed was generally uncertain, temporary, and frequently dependent on masculine overlordship” (92). Separate spheres ideology reinforced such patriarchal structure in the magazine workforce. Despite these masculine restrictions, periodical writing was a liberating field for women. Aleta Feinsod Cane and Susan Alves, in their book “ The Only Efficient Instrument”: American Women Writers & The Periodical, 1837- 1916 ,” argue that Victorian periodicals were “the only efficient instrument” for women to “make themselves and their ideas known” (1). Magazines and journals allowed American females to have a voice in American society and gave them “further dissemination of their political, social, and moral ideas” (Cane and Alves 89). Because men were in charge of the most influential American periodicals, like Westminster, Quarterly, or Blackwood’s , women were often in lesser- known, “second-tier” periodicals (Cane and Alves 90). However, even this obstacle proved to be a benefit for women—because the periodicals they wrote for were smaller, it gave them stronger editorial control and ideological influence. This helped women “develop and sustain a constituency within the dominant culture,” and allowed them greater cultural sway (Cane and Alves 2). Women’s work as editors and writers for Victorian periodicals shows that women did have a part in scholarly, moral, and intellectual discourses of the day. Many of the women’s periodicals gave women power through the domestic sphere. Cane and Alves emphasize Godey’s , a magazine formed after the merger of Ladies’ Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book . Godey’s , and domestic periodicals like it, were “instrumental in instructing women in the Victorian politics of gender and in inscribing separate spheres of 48