Lyddie: Voices from the Field - Chapter 23 Ambition

What do you think of ambitious people? Do you look up to them as hard workers, or do you worry that they are “up to something”? In general, would you say that ambition is a good or a bad quality for a person to have?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. Throughout history, people have argued about whether ambition—meaning the desire for fame and visibility in the wider world—is a virtue or vice. But in Lyddie’s world of rural and industrial New England in the early-to-mid 1800s, this debate was especially intense. Some people were convinced that ambition was a dangerous “fire” that would destroy families and communities. Others wanted to harness that energy to build a more open, modern, and prosperous country.

Lyddie was born into a typical rural family, at least until her father left and her mother said that a bear foretold the end of the world. In rural New England from the earliest colonial times into the Nineteenth Century, the household—usually a farm run by a man, along with his wife and children—was the center of the world. People grew up in what historians call a “household economy,” in which the father organized daily work for the boys while the mother did the same for girls like Lyddie. Parents were bosses, coaches, principals, and policemen all at once. Everyone had to work for the household, not for themselves.

In such a world, ambition didn’t make much sense. In fact, people tended to see ambitious people as lazy and shiftless, dreaming of greater things instead of completing their chores. Church leaders often denounced ambition as a sin, a selfish “passion” that led people away from their duties. In many ways, these ideas grew stronger at the start of industrialization in the early 1800s, because households had to work even more to keep up with the faster pace of buying and selling things.

But a new idea of ambition was also emerging. In this view, children were not just members of their households but also of the new nation created in 1776. Farm communities weren’t just groups of households, but parts of the new United States. Ambition became good if it came with a desire to improve the nation.

Usually, ambition was for young men. They had more options in life. But even for girls, the new ideal of ambition had real consequences. New schools called academies, many of which were coeducational, opened new horizons from the 1790s to the 1820s. By the 1830s, female seminaries dotted the countryside, giving girls like Betsy and others Lyddie met at Lowell a real sense of alternative. And as some rural families like Lyddie’s fell apart because of debt or desertion, the household lost its place as the dominant institution in life.

Over time, American society became more “individualistic.” People began to embrace ambition as not only good but also as natural—the best way to get ahead in a world where everyone was out for him- or her-self. Ambition itself no longer had to mean service to the nation.

Today, our culture celebrates ambition, for everyone. But we still worry about this individualistic desire, because we also need friends and family in our lives—and because most of us will never be famous, even if we want to be.

About the Author

Dr. Jason Opal, Professor of History and Classical Studies, McGill University and author of Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England