women's history

Elizabeth Packard: A Noble Fight

andrea — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In 1860, it was legal for a man to send his wife to an insane asylum against her will, based on his word and that of one or two witnesses. The asylum could deny patients the right to legal representation as well as visits and uncensored correspondence with friends. And a man could sell his property and take his children across the country without consulting his wife, because the property and children were considered his, even if her inheritance and income had contributed to that property. This was the world in which Elizabeth Parsons Packard lived.

Born in 1816 in Dare, Massachusetts, she lived a fairly conventional life her first forty-four years, marrying Calvinist minister Theophilus Packard, bearing him six children, and moving from town to town and state to state as he sought ministry opportunities. But during the family's residence in Manteno, Illinois in the 1850s she began to exhibit greater independence from her husband, dabbling in Spiritualism, espousing unorthodox (some would say heretical) religious opinions and confessing to romantic (although unconsummated) feelings for another man. Prompted by this “abnormal behavior,” in 1860 Theophilus had his wife committed to the insane asylum in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Packard was released after three years and declared sane in the jury trial she was denied when forced into the asylum. While her release may have been partially due to efforts of friends on her behalf, it was also because Andrew McFarland, the superintendent of the Jacksonville asylum and a leading figure in the psychiatric community, had become exasperated with her demands and complaints, terming her “an unendurable annoyance.” The antagonism between Packard and McFarland, which continued after her release through both of their writings, is painted in detail in this book, as are the evolving psychiatric standards and practices of the time.

Packard was not reunited with her children upon her release, as her husband had taken her younger children back to Massachusetts with him. (Her oldest sons were living on their own by that point.) A woman of tremendous resources, she began writing pamphlets and lobbying state legislatures for changes that would give both the mentally ill and married women greater rights.

Elizabeth Packard: A Noble Fight is an engaging portrait of Packard's life and crusade. She emerges as a shrewd campaigner who took advantage of stereotypes of weak females who needed the protection of strong men (legislators) because of their powerlessness; her personal charisma went a long way in lobbying efforts. Modern readers may be disappointed that she did not broaden her efforts to include greater rights for all women or claim full equality with men. Nor did she divorce her husband (although they never lived together after her time at the asylum) since she viewed divorce as scandalous. However, such statements and actions might have turned society against her and hurt her cause.

Kudos to Linda Carlisle for bringing to light the forgotten story of a woman who challenged prevailing ideas about the treatment of the mentally ill and the rights of women. Academic biographies of this sort are often quite dry, but Packard crafts an engaging narrative. Her passion for this cause shines through and creates a compelling read.

Written by: Karen Duda, April 26th 2011

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago

brittany — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Douglas Perry

Viking

During the 1920s, a rash of killings rocked Chicago. The murderers were young women who drank, and most killed their lovers. Most were white and all-male juries that refused to believe women were capable of cold-blooded murder released most of them. During this time, the crimes were reported in the newspapers by “sob sisters,” female reporters who were able to interview female inmates and victim’s family members.

The Girls of Murder City is about this period in time, two killers in particular, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, and a female reporter, Maurine Watkins. Beulah and Belva both killed their lovers after the men threatened to leave them. Both were beautiful, rich, white, and relatively young. The newspapers gave both women a chance to be famous, and both used it to their advantage.

Maurine Watkins was a hardworking, pious Christian who came to Chicago with the plan to use her column to show the evils of the world. Her sarcastic, strong-willed writing was often the only counterpoint to the sob sisters’ tales of woe in the papers. She would eventually use her stories to write the play Chicago, which would become the long-running musical.

The book tells an interesting story about the rise of the “girl gunners” and the creation of Chicago. The problem is that the story feels a bit unfocused. Maurine is not the main focus of the book, but neither are Belva and Beulah (or Chicago characters Velma and Roxie, if you will). The book explores their cases and delves into the lives of the other women in jail with them, but then switches to focus on Maurine. As a result, the story feels a bit shallow. I wanted more from both of the stories. Other narratives, like the story of the murder of Bobby Franks by teenaged killers Leopold and Loeb, are shoehorned into the story and feel tacked on.

Most importantly, the book is very poorly cited. For a while, I did not know if I was reading a non-fiction book or a “non-fiction” fiction book like In Cold Blood. Douglas Perry included details he seemingly could not know unless he had been there. There is an extensive note section in the back of the back of the book, but without explanation as to where each note belonged, reading them was slow going. More confusingly, there are footnotes in the book, but not to the main facts. They function more as author asides. Actual footnotes would have made the book much better, and given it much more authority.

I enjoyed The Girls of Murder City, but it could have been much better.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, April 12th 2011

The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century

mandy — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell, Leslie Paris

University of Illinois Press

The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century is an anthology of influential essays written by top scholars that have defined the field of American girls’ history and culture over the last thirty years. Girl-centered research is considered a relatively new and dynamic field of investigation that is believed to be critical for gaining a deeper understanding of women and gender, and a fuller appreciation of how generation influences American culture and society. Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris, The Girls’ History and Culture Reader addresses twentieth century forces such as fashion, consumerism, immigration, civil rights, music, leisure and labor and how these factors impacted the lives of girls.

The twentieth century was marked by increased choice and freedom for women, which translated into change, albeit not identical, for their younger counterparts. With more opportunities in society, girls took part in sports, went to camp, pursued higher learning in greater numbers, became consumers and members of the labor force, and participated in pop culture like never before. However, their greater independence also meant increased scrutiny by older generations. Girls were still seen as innocents requiring protection in an increasingly predatory world, while their sexual curiosity and independence induced considerable anxiety.

For those of you who thought you had a good handle on the events that influenced women’s history in the twentieth century, you might glean some interesting new information from this book. I certainly did. For instance, menstruation was taught to girls in the 1900s devoid of any instruction on fertility. Instead, teachings were from a purely hygienic point of view, and unsurprisingly, had strong backing from companies manufacturing disposable sanitary napkins. Equally surprising was the fact that single mothers in the Los Angeles area were known to initiate juvenile court proceedings to bring their wayward daughters and their much-needed incomes home. However, the most astounding in this collection was the essay on mid-century psychoanalysis, which posited that a healthy Oedipal relationship between daughter and father was the pre-eminent path to sexual maturity. At its limits, it appeared to condone incest as an expression of a girl’s own desires.

My personal favourite in the collection was an essay by Susan J. Douglas on the acceptance of Black music in the 1960s, and how girls groups gave a voice to the struggles of young women and showed them the potential for strength in numbers. For all those fans of Nancy Drew, there is also a great essay on our favourite sleuth. Ilana Nash convincingly shows that while our heroine was a model of intelligence, independence and empowerment, her stories also reinforced patriarchal privilege and conservative gender ideology.

Although there is a focus on White middle glass girls, which the editors acknowledge, The Girls’ History and Culture Reader also contains compelling essays on the double bind of Mexican, Chinese, and Italian-American girls, who had to deal not only with the cultural constraints of their own homes but also with those of American society at large. While there is an essay on Black girls and the institutionalization of double dutch, the book falls short in providing an idea of how Black girls’ lives changed throughout the twentieth century.

This book is a great resource for anyone wanting to research the lives of girls in a specific decade of the twentieth century, as each essay ends with an extensive bibliography. This is also a great reference for fledgling authors wanting to create an accurate depiction of the lives of girls in the twentieth century. After reading this book, I came away thinking that twentieth century history should be revised to reflect the changes experienced by girls, an area thus far ignored.

Written by: Heather Leighton, March 27th 2011

Revolutionary Women: A Book of Stencils

barbara — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Queen of the Neighbourhood

PM Press

I'm all for learning more—and for disseminating information to a wide audience—about women who have played significant roles in history. All too often, women who have contributed to movements for change have been given all too little (or no) attention or credit.

I agree that we need to have a more complete picture of the female revolutionaries who risked and sometimes gave their lives for a cause. Many of the women in this book are conspicuously missing from history textbooks, as are their images: for this reason Queen of the Neighbourhood added stencils to each of the thirty women profiled in this short book. As one of the editors notes, we have seen so many images of Che Guevara that it has almost “become kitsch from overuse,” but where are the women?

That said, the celebration of some of the women profiled in this book gave me pause—namely, because I am a pacifist who believes that violence begets violence. While I love the DIY element of Revolutionary Women, I would have a serious problem if my little sister copied some of the stencils that the editors offer to “commemorate these women and their actions.” Why should we commemorate someone who hijacked a plane (Leila Khaled), for instance? It's insulting to include her alongside a modern-day heroine such as Malalai Joya, Afghanistan's youngest member of parliament, who has risked her life for daring to demand rights for women in her nation.

That said, I was thrilled to see some lesser-known activists honored here, notably Silvia Rivera, an American transgender activist who died in 2002 and even led meetings from her hospital bed; Olive Morris, a Black women's movement activist from the U.K. who died of cancer at age twenty-seven; and Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist who assists movements all over the globe.

Despite my disagreement that violent actions should be commemorated, I'd include this as a must-read for informational and historical purposes.

Written by: M.L. Madison, March 18th 2011

The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century

payal — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell, Leslie Paris

University of Illinois Press

In 1982 Harvard professor Carol Gilligan published In a Different Voice, a revolutionary body of research articulating the unique psychological experience of being female in America. Responding to research that drew conclusions from studying boys, Gilligan’s exploration of the female experience was one of the first to focus on girlhood as an independent site for research rather than as a sub-category of Women’s Studies.

Since this formative publication, much headway has been made in researching girls’ lives both in and out of the academy. Following the format of a traditional academic collection, editors Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris have succeeded in compiling a thoughtfully organized collection of girls’ historical research published in the past few decades. Though limited to American history and culture, the The Girls’ History and Culture Reader includes a diverse selection of essays that explore both the personal and political aspects of girls’ lives and lends itself to deeper reflection of girls’ participation in contemporary American Society.

A thoughtful introduction by the editors suggests, “In the nineteenth century, girlhood took many forms, reflecting the nation’s diversity, its divisions, and the particular circumstances of individual girls’ lives.” The The Girls’ History and Culture Reader explores the significance of age, education, race and class structure and the ever evolving and diverse experiences girls have with their bodies. Developing almost chronologically, each essay in one way or another leads up to the one that follows making for a coherent and well-executed read.

The collection begins with “The Life Cycle of the Female Slave” by Deborah Gray White, which documents adolescence on the plantation and the shift of younger girls’ socialization in sexually integrated atmosphere to a more strict separation when entering the workforce. This piece is followed by Anya Jabour’s “Grown Girls, Highly Cultivated,” a biographical telling of two sisters that offers an insightful look into female education in the Antebellum South. An insightful reflection on prostitution, Christine Stansell’s “Women on the Town” investigates the complex reasons for girls’ participation in this still stigmatized profession such as homelessness, companionship and autonomy. However, the essay I found to be most thought provoking and relatable was Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s exploration of “The Female World of Love and Ritual.” Smith-Rosenberg highlights the importance of female relationships and the safety of female intimacy. The text relies on diaries and correspondence between females whose affections, though not physical, would challenge contemporary sexual categories. This essay also pays particular attention to mother-daughter relations positing a mother’s stable domestic role created a “closed and intimate female world” for girls to grow toward womanhood.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, March 17th 2011

Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock

tina — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Vere Chappell

Red Wheel/Weiser

One of the best things about reviewing books is the exposure I get to the fabulous females in feminist history who would otherwise be consigned to the cobwebby corners of academic obscurity had some enterprising writer not plucked them from the depths and held them up for the delight of feminist history nerds. This was what I experienced with Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic, which is part biography and part collected works of Ida Craddock. The editor and biographer intersperses five (long) chapters of Craddock's own writings with well-written biographical detail explaining Craddock's often puzzling rhetoric.

Ida C. Craddock was a writer and teacher and at the age of twenty-five, she challenged the status quo by being the first woman to apply for admission to the University of Pennsylvania. She passed the entrance exam and was recommended for admission, but the board of trustees quickly passed a resolution barring women from attending the school. Her career as a teacher would be limited as a result of this setback. She spent the next several years traveling, teaching stenography, and studying spirituality, until 1893 when the Chicago World's Fair opened. The belly dancers imported from the Middle East scandalized America—and Anthony Comstock in particular. Comstock was a powerful proponent of “blue laws” (laws created to enforce strict moral and religious standards of behavior) and the self-appointed postal inspector. Craddock took advantage of the scandal by writing an editorial in the New York World defending the dancers and poking gentle fun at Comstock. It's what she said at the end of the piece; however, that caught the attention of the world: Craddock claimed she had a “spirit husband” named Soph, with whom she had sex nightly.

Craddock’s editorial and claims of spirit-world sexual relations aside, she made a powerful enemy of Comstock by publishing and distributing “sex manuals.” Craddock, though an ardent freethinker, was not a proponent of sex outside of marriage and her sex manuals were intended for married couples only, but this was not good enough for Comstock (or Ida's mother). Both sought to have her institutionalized and jailed. Avoiding the asylum but not an arrest, Craddock refused to plead insanity and was sentenced to five years in prison for distribution of obscene material. Viewing this as a life sentence (she was forty-five years old then), Craddock penned a lengthy suicide note condemning Comstock and the society that judged her and then killed herself. Comstock, for his part, merely added Ida's name to the list of fifteen persons whom he proudly claimed he had driven to suicide.

Craddock's personal writings read as completely lucid, intelligent, and intense; they are not the scribblings of a deranged mind. Whether her “spirit husband” was a hallucination, a tale to prod her enemies, or (who knows?) a real experience, is anyone's guess. Her work was important to feminism, spiritualism, religion, history, philosophy, freethinking, and social reform, and her name deserves to be better known. I'm personally not a religious/spiritual person, but I loved Ida's utter outrageousness in her public claims of “spirit sex” and her audacity in flouting convention in her writings and speech. Her pieces are long-winded and full of references to obscure academia, but they are entirely absorbing. Craddock was clearly a learned woman with plenty to say. I think her suicide note, the last piece of writing she left the world, is my favorite. It's a nice “you can't fire me—I quit” and a scathing indictment of Comstock as well. Read Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic so more people will know of Ida Craddock, and not just the warped ideas of Anthony Comstock.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, March 6th 2011

The Pious Sex: Essays on Women and Religion in the History of Political Thought

gita — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Andrea Radasanu

Lexington Books

I could comment extensively on each of the essays in The Pious Sex, but seeing as there are eleven in total (not counting the introduction) and I have limited space here, that will not be possible.

At the beginning of the introduction, the editor, Andrea Radasanu, immediately apologizes for calling to mind “the worst of the prejudices associated with women over the ages: the characterization of women as superstitious and inherently irrational creatures that must be kept firmly in hand by the patriarchal establishment.” I admit the first thing I thought of when I read the title (and subtitle) was the injustice levied on ‘the fairer sex’ by the religious order(s) of the day. This set of essays tries to untangle the mistreatment of women by religious sects and leaders and more fully examine the relationship of women to religion (and vice versa) in the history of political thought. In other words, it’s sort of like reading a meta-history: history about the history of women and religion.

The titles of the individual essays hint at what kind of education (formal or otherwise) the reader must have in order to fully grasp the essays themselves. For example: “The Piety of Esther,” by Clifford Orwin, requires having read the Book of Esther in the Old Testament of the Bible; “Love and Piety in Machiavelli’s Mandragola,” by Catharine Connors, assumes prior knowledge of Machiavelli and his work, or La Mandragola if nothing else; “Jane Austen’s Education of Women: A Study of Mansfield Park,” by Amy L. Bonnette, requires having read Mansfield Park, if not other works by Jane Austen as well as information pertaining to the author.

Each of the essays has endnotes for further reading in case you, like me, aren’t as well read as the writing assumes you to be. (Actually, I would have preferred footnotes over endnotes because it’s annoying to have to keep flipping back and forth between the page and the note, but at least the endnotes for each essay are at the end of said essay and not at the end of the collection.)

All that said, I really benefited from reading and learning about the relationship between women and religion in a more complicated way than, “Eve ate the forbidden fruit first; therefore she is the root of all evil.” Also readers should note that the essays are written from a Western philosophical viewpoint and focus primarily on ancient Roman, Jewish, and Christian settings. I would be interested to read a similar collection about women, piety, and religion that are written from a more Eastern viewpoint and focus on other world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Native American and native African religious traditions.

Overall, I recommend reading the introduction before you commit to the bulk of the collection. I was able to enjoy most of the pieces, but I would have to be much more well-read to understand these essays at any great depth. I got the gist of it, but I think I was hitting the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.

Written by: Viannah Duncan, February 6th 2011

Marion Manley: Miami's First Woman Architect

priyanka — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Catherine Lynn, Carie Penabad

University of Georgia Press

Marion Manley was not merely Miami’s first female architect, she also played a crucial role in the area’s planning. Responsible for much of the design of the University of Miami—dubbed “the first modern university”—Manley was also a pioneer in what we now call “green building” and ecological preservation.

Authors Catherine Lynn and Carie Penabad, both professors of architecture at the University of Miami—where Manley spent much of the 1940s designing a wide variety of buildings, from housing for veterans to student worship centers—have done much to bring Manley’s legacy back into the spotlight. This beautiful book, complete with photos and artist renderings of the buildings Manley designed, also includes technical details that architects and design-buffs will appreciate. Above all, however, it’s an overdue tribute to a woman who accomplished so much so far ahead of her time.

Throughout most of her career, though she was a groundbreaking professional, Manley’s work was largely eclipsed by lower-ranking men in her field. She got little credit for the work she did—which was impressive not just because it was a first for her gender, but for their architectural and technical merit—and what credit she got, she had to fight for. Working into her eighties (Manley died in 1984 at age ninety), Manley also served on numerous state and national boards and commissions, donated her design work for charitable causes, and did professional work to support the war efforts in WWI and WWII.

Though I enjoyed the book, I would have loved to have read more about Manley’s personal life. The authors throw out teasers now and then (her “cussing out” of incompetent contractors, and telling interviewers that she was “a hedonist” in her eighties both come to mind), but for the most part stick to the straightforward—and at times, dry—account of her work. Nevertheless, it is a step toward restoring Manley’s contributions to their rightful place in design history.

There is precious little to be found about Manley on the internet; most of what does exist is related to this book. Let us hope, then, that this tome on her body of professional work spurs a renewed interest in Manley and her accomplishments.

Written by: M.L. Madison, December 10th 2010

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature

farhana — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley

Duke University Press

Tinsley’s fascinating study of “women loving women” examines their colonial and postcolonial experiences in Dutch, French, and English-speaking areas of the Caribbean. This volume, in the Perverse Modernities series by Duke University Press, takes its title from the writing of Trinidad-born poet-novelist Dionne Brand, whose cane-cutter character Elizete uses the phrase “thiefing sugar” to describe her feelings for another woman, Verlia. The metaphor refers to the time when slaves could be whipped for selling sugar from the plantations for any reason; it embodies both transgression and forbidden pleasure. Tinsley points out that using the term is “stealing language itself” to evoke a “transformative desire” to change the status of women and challenge the injustices of society.

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature incorporates black, queer, and feminist theory into its analysis. It draws on literature, history, geography, anthropology, economics, and linguistics to paint a colorful, multilayered portrait of Caribbean women. Texts from Suriname, Jamaica, Haiti, Martinique, and Trinidad (along with occasional references to Cuba, Grenada, Aruba, the Bahamas, and elsewhere in the region) are used to explore the history of sexuality and the complications of Creole traditions. Tinsley begins with love songs sung by black working-class women to their female lovers, along with accounts of birthday parties and erotic dances and religious ceremonies, as well as messages exchanged in the symbolic language of flowers, to show the intricacies of gender identities in the West Indies.

In succeeding chapters she turns to Luminous Isle, an autobiographical novel by the white Jamaican woman writer Eliot Bliss, then to the erotic poems written in the 1920s by Haitian poet Ida Faubert, Mayotte Capécia’s novel I Am a Martinican Woman, Jamaican writer Michelle Cliff’s novel, No Telephone to Heaven, and, finally, Dionne Brand’s poetry collection No Language Is Neutral, in order to trace “their poetics of decolonization” and to point out how these texts suggest reconfiguring gender history to acknowledge the strength and beauty of Afro-Caribbean woman-identified women. Tinsley’s brilliant, sensitive explications, her frequent references to artworks from the area, and her descriptions of lush landscapes make reading her work a delight and a surprise.

However, I do wish that she had studied more than one Hispanic writer, Fidel Castro’s niece Mariela Castro Espín. But I understand that bringing in a substantial number of texts in Spanish would have enlarged her project’s boundaries to perhaps unmanageable proportions. Several references to U.S. interventions in Grenada also left me wanting more information on the effects of North American activities in the region. I hope that Tinsley herself or one of her readers will expand on the groundbreaking work she has done in this book. I highly recommend it to a cosmopolitan audience.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, December 3rd 2010

Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes who Shaped the Virgin Queen

barbara — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Tracy Borman

Bantam

Tracy Borman’s book, Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen, is an account of the women in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and her relationship with them. As an avid reader of historical accounts of royals, I found this particular book to be notable for a number of reasons. It was well written, honest, and reflected Borman’s passion for the life of Queen Elizabeth I. It also draws upon issues in female leadership that are still relevant today.

First and foremost, what makes this a powerful read is Bowman’s ability to convey her passion for Elizabeth’s life, without painting a romanticized account of her leadership style and relationship with the women around her. She paints her not as a sanctified royal, but rather in a very human light. However, this humanization is not meant to make the reader pity or love Elizabeth more. For example, I remember reading Lady Antoina Fraser’s biographical work, Marie Antoinette: The Journey . Despite being an interesting and historical read, the sympathetic tone interfered with the authenticity of the book. In contrast, Borman does not try to apologise for any of the inequalities that Elizabeth perpetuated. Instead, she tries to show the roles played by the various female courtiers and relatives around her, and ultimately, Elizabeth’s role as a woman in a man’s world, and how the other women around her played into that. Rather than showing her as a revolutionary feminist figure, as others may try to paint her, Bowman’s account is very sober. It was refreshing to read about women I had not heard about before. Through the discussion of women in Elizabeth’s court, Borman also explores the influence of the private sphere on Elizabeth’s public life, and it was very interesting to learn about.

While many accounts have romanticized Elizabeth’s life in the bedroom, Borman steers clear of the topic. What was most profound for me was learning about the influence of women on Elizabeth’s leadership style. I have read a number of articles and accounts commenting on the relationship of Elizabeth with the men in court, but only vague references to her relationship to the women around her. Rather than holding her on a pedestal, Borman is able to convey the conflicts Elizabeth had with her own sex. I was reminded of debates surrounding more contemporary female leaders, and their relationships to “femininity.”

Elizabeth’s Women is rich in historical accounts, easy to read and enthralling. Beautifully written and thought-provoking, Elizabeth’s Women is one of the most impressive books I have read this year.

Written by: Sara Yasin, November 7th 2010

Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France

tina — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Christine Adams

University of Illinois Press

The women-run organization The Society for Maternal Charity survived more than a hundred years of wars, revolutions, and government changes. Initially the group began because of the number of children being abandoned due to poverty. Not only were these foundlings expensive for the state, but they also had a very high mortality rate. Women’s societies were viewed as more ideal than orphanages and seen as an extension of the women’s domestic sphere.

In following the growth and demise of the Society, Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France covers the themes of rich/poor, government/private, national/local, stay at home v. working mothers, male v. female-run, and the resentment by the poor/blindness of the rich. The author, Christine Adams, also outlines hot button issues that existed in the nineteenth century: the worthy poor versus the lazy hordes; married women versus single tarts; breast feeding versus wet nurses; and the question of whether or not women were positive influences in society, there to “clean up messes.”

Even after the French revolution women remained barred from politics and civic affairs, but through participation in these organizations they gained valuable skills and leadership training. Many of the societies had large budgets and staff, giving the women executive experience. The Society raised money, lobbied politicians, and ran formidable businesses. Women from the elite classes proved that they could make a difference by going into rough neighborhoods and aiding in situations they had never imagined, let alone encountered.

As Adams illustrates in Poverty, Charity and Motherhood, these maternal societies created many business principles, such as accountability, transparency, and sustainability. The societies understood that a husband’s interests often didn’t align with the wife’s, so aid must be given directly to women.

The Society was eventually brought down because it was believed they were enforcing religious doctrine; the Society insisted women have religious marriages and it required them to act as “proper women.” As a whole the Society was faulted for relying on these religious precepts, though less than fifty percent of the organizations held these beliefs.

As France became more secular and organized, they recognized the potential power of civic organizations and tried to rein them in. They created model statutes and bylaws and required the Society to adopt them. When the Society refused, the funding stopped and the Society died.

Prior to the welfare state, all assistance was charity. By demanding money from the state, the Society made it clear that the State had a responsibility to care for the poor. Adams claims that these societies are the reason that France and other European countries have a much better welfare state, with specific provisions for pregnant women and families, more generous vacations, health care, paternity leave, etc. The women’s Societies should be given due credit.

While the Societies signaled many of the issues that remain today, as Adams points out, they were not strong enough to consider the implications of inequality in their own lives; a different brand of woman had to do that. As with the “club women” of today, they do offer a valuable service: they are training grounds for women’s leadership and they should be given credit for the work they do.

Written by: , October 30th 2010

Contesting the Archives: Finding Women in the Sources

annette — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Sherry J. Katz, Nupur Chaudhuri, Mary Elizabeth Perry

University of Illinois Press

The collection of essays that encompass Contesting the Archives: Finding Women in the Sources will resonate well with those scholars who have endeavored to conduct research on women in a historical, cultural and/or economic context, for these scholars are well aware of the dearth of complete and detailed historical records on their subjects. In addition, the compilation of essays can serve as instructional material for those scholars who are just beginning to delve into such research.

Unfortunately, incomplete historical records plague the compilation of histories of women not only in the distant past, but also in the present. It is stated in the foreword for the text that while “an archive is merely a repository of information”, the scholars whose research efforts are detailed in the text consider the archives “as a site for the production of knowledge.” As the contributors to this text exhibit in their essays, the information presented on women in official and unofficial archives should not be taken at face value. Rather, the information should be contextualized using a variety of other sources in order to provide a more holistic view of that particular woman’s place in history. This is the main takeaway from the text.

As an academic who has done a significant amount of research on women’s peace movements, the challenges in research of women’s histories presented by the authors in Contesting the Archives: Finding Women in the Sources served as inspiration for additional research I would like to undertake. I believe this would be the reaction of many academics to this text. In particular, I found the chapter on constructing oral histories in Mozambique extremely interesting in terms of my own research experience. In conducting field research in Liberia, the compilation of the oral history of the women’s peace movement in that country gave a depth and feeling to the story of that particular movement that otherwise would not have been able to be rendered.

It is incumbent upon scholars conducting similar research to endeavor to give voice to histories of women at all levels of society that otherwise would go untold. This text provides an in-depth tool-kit on how to go about meeting this challenge.

Written by: Katie Tyrrell, October 27th 2010

No Silent Witness: The Eliot Parsonage Women and their Unitarian World

mandy — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Cynthia Grant Tucker

Oxford University Press

Group biography is notoriously difficult, for all the reasons that biography itself is hazardous, compounded by the number of people brought to center stage, and, in this case, the geographical and temporal sweep of the subject matter. To make a single life a coherent narrative with episodes that build systematically and climax, with a psychologically complex yet recognizably unified character, and with a sense of thematic consistency is to fashion something that life is not.

For projects such as Tucker’s to succeed, the author must create at least the illusion of a shared experience among a group of women traversing the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the American landscape from Boston to St. Louis to Portland. They are connected genealogically—Abigail Adams Cranch (1817-1908) and William Greenleaf Eliot (1811-1887) and their descendants—and they are bound by their often contentious, often radical, and often underestimated participation in the history of Unitarianism in the United States.

In portraying the “full-throated wives and daughters” of the men who were most prominent in the Unitarian Church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the author offers some sharply focused details about the challenges women faced and the different types and degrees of oppression they suffered as they struggled to be heard as members of their religious communities. As almost all nineteenth century memoirs and documentary accounts reveal, women’s lives were inevitably consumed by disease, the death of children, and the constraints placed upon them by marriage. That some of these women could become religious leaders, advocate for women’s suffrage, and defy even the expectations of their own congregations is a remarkable testament to their courage and resilience.

No Silent Witness is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the development of American liberal theology in its opposition to Calvinist Protestantism. But the author’s resistance to chronology and the multiplicity of characters that appear in this panorama mitigate against the reader’s strong desire to spend time with some of these women, to get to know them as they negotiated roles for themselves as ministers’ wives, and even, in a couple of instances, as preachers themselves.

One of the troubling through-lines in the narrative is Unitarian resistance to women’s influence in the church. Instead of celebrating the remarkable creativity and energy of the women who were such a central part of the early success of the Unitarian movement, leaders of the movement self-consciously sought to “masculinize” it by purging women preachers, downplaying women’s contributions, and appropriating rhetoric from the cult of masculinity that has loomed so large in the American lexicon. The result of this strategy was a near-catastrophic decimation in the church’s numbers by the turn of the century, with a large number of women permanently alienated and finding new homes in other emerging religious traditions or in a more liberalized “mainstream” Protestantism.

In the twenty-first century Unitarian Universalism (the name reflecting the merger in 1961 of two liberal theological traditions) is a relatively small liberal religious organization proud of its historical commitment to social justice and its rejection of doctrinal dogmatism. It is now, as in its formative days, a spiritual home for powerful and unorthodox women committed to social justice and to breaking taboos against women’s religious leadership. No Silent Witness is a helpful corrective to the tendency to romanticize Unitarian history and to offer hagiographic accounts of the early Unitarian leadership. Although this book is ostensibly about the contributions women made, it is also about the resistance they faced from their preacher-husbands and fathers and from their own congregations. Not surprisingly, the narrative is replete with the sort of fractious theological and denominational disputes, rivalries, and even scandals that seem inevitably a part of human experience and which we erase from our historical memories at our peril.

One editorial correction must be made for any subsequent printing of this book: the author writes about ministers’ wives complaining about being “gypped by their husbands’ low pay.” This is a stunning racist slur in an otherwise thoughtful and erudite book.

Written by: Rick Taylor, October 23rd 2010

The Red Queen

brittany — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Philippa Gregory

Touchstone

Philippa Gregory’s most recent work of historical fiction, The Red Queen, describes the bloody War of the Roses from the perspective of Margaret Beaufort, a member of the house of Lancaster and, perhaps most famously, grandmother to Henry VIII. Gregory’s second book in the Cousins’ War series, The Red Queen serves as a foil to The White Queen, which presented the war from the perspective of the York Queen Elizabeth Woodville.

As a child, Margaret is fervently devout, with a special devotion to Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary. Her desire to join a religious order is, however, of little importance to her family, who hope that she will provide an heir to the throne. She is married at the age of twelve to Edmund Tudor, King Henry VI’s twenty-four-year-old half brother, and widowed shortly after becoming pregnant. Margaret faces death herself during a difficult childbirth, and becomes convinced God spared her life in order for her to fulfill her destiny and make her son the King of England. Devoting her life to this ambition, Margaret carefully navigates the shifting court politics of a nation seething with civil war. Her determination and clever plotting allow her to infiltrate the house of York and orchestrate one of the greatest rebellions in British history—calling her son back from exile in order to wage war, seize the crown, and become the king she always knew he would be.

Margaret is presented as the antithesis of her rival Elizabeth, the protagonist of The White Queen: Margaret is plain, Elizabeth famously beautiful; Margaret’s life lacks romance, Elizabeth’s is a love story; Margaret is a pious Catholic and Elizabeth practices magic. Allied with opposing sides, the women’s experiences of the wars are also quite disparate. It was interesting to see the events presented from the women’s different points of view, but as divergent as their stories were, this approach to the series occasionally made it feel as if I had already read the book.

One of the most interesting aspects of Margaret in The Red Queen is her central role in the murder of the two princes in the tower, both Elizabeth’s sons. The person responsible for their murder is left a mystery in The White Queen, and remains one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Gregory’s choice to have Margaret order their execution, while a historically plausible theory, is a risky one for an author. It is a testament to Gregory’s writing and character development that she can create a sympathetic character out of a cold-blooded killer.

Another intriguing aspect of the book is Gregory’s exploration of women’s religious beliefs and practices, which is also a central theme in The White Queen. Margaret’s constant assertions that she is favored by God and that her political plots are in accordance with divine will is repetitive and tiresome at times, but using religion to legitimize ambition and power was a frequent trope in women’s lives. Gregory uses this device, not to suggest any divine origin of Margaret’s unlikely rise to power, but to demonstrate the way Margaret herself might have negotiated and viewed that power. Furthermore, Gregory’s depiction of Margaret’s constant recourse to prayer—like Elizabeth’s use of magic—elucidates how women viewed their relationship with the divine as a way to control events over which they actually had very little control.

Serious historians may be frustrated with Gregory’s highly fictionalized writing, and Margaret is a very complex character to be explored in such an easy-to-read, breezy novel. Ultimately, however, Gregory is to be commended for bringing attention to women’s history. Margaret is a fascinating historical figure whose role in her son’s climb to power and influence over the early Tudor kings has often been overlooked. I recommend The Red Queen as a thoroughly enjoyable examination of Margaret and the War of the Roses, a delightfully crafted story of the woman who brought the Tudors to the throne.

Written by: Shannon Hill, October 13th 2010

The Words of Extraordinary Women

kristin — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Carolyn Warner

Newmarket Press

I have a confession to make. As a little baby nerd-in-training, I would spend hours in the living room reading Bartlett‘s Familiar Quotations along with various other reference works that weren‘t really meant to be read in that way. Despite my complete lack of understanding of anything resembling cool and my utter ignorance of virtually everything pop cultural, I still knew that that wasn‘t something you went around telling people unless you aspired to pariah status. Despite being years away from earning feminist street cred, I knew that there was something wrong with virtually everyone in these books being male. Where were all the quotable women?

Fortunately, for the future word nerds of the world, Carolyn Warner noticed that problem too and decided to do something about it. In The Words of Extraordinary Women, Warner collects the bon mots of than 400 famous, and occasionally infamous, women, organizing them into eleven broad categories: the arts, character, education, faith, family, humor, leadership, politics, self-image, success, and women. From Sappho to Sonia Sotomayor, from former slaves to presidents, prime ministers and princesses, the women Warner chooses fit no particular mold. Although they are drawn overwhelmingly from the United States, there is more representation of the various races, cultures and classes than one usually sees in your standard book of quotations.

It would be easy to find fault, nonetheless, in her choices. The categories are, at times, a bit too broad, so much so that one wonders how a particular quote fits at all. The quotes are given without context, depriving them, in places, of the power they wield within their proper setting. Some women, beloved by writers and readers alike, are notably absent. I find myself wondering what book of women’s quotations could possibly ignore the witticisms of the imminently quotable Molly Ivins, but surely that is merely a matter of personal taste.

However, I think overall The Words of Extraordinary Women, while not suitable as a reference tool for the advanced writer, would serve well as a young woman’s introduction to the women who came before her and the contributions they made to the sum of human wit and wisdom. Perhaps, it will inspire her to some day join them.

Written by: Melinda Barton, October 2nd 2010