Fb2 American Women's History ePub

Very good encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of American women. A good book to start your study of women's history.

Who knew so many women have steered history in our country

I picked up this book at a yard sale (a great source for all sorts of interesting books, incidentally, especially if you live in a big college city like Boston). As I'm nowhere near the orthodox feminist I was in my teens and early 20s, I figured I'd have major disagreements with Weatherford, but hey, it was cheap, so I grabbed it.

Well, my guess was about right. The book is, in practical terms, a very good reference to both celebrated American feminist icons, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, full of many facts and quotations. On the other hand, its ideological slant makes it rather hard to swallow for anyone, man or woman, who does not fully agree with feminist orthodoxy, let alone radical feminism.

In my opinion, the book's greatest moral failing is its glossing over of Communism and Socialism. Many, many feminists, especially in the early to mid-20th century, were very active in these movements -- or, should I say, "this movement," because they were both forms of a specific type of collectivism. And collectivism, no matter what type, was the deadliest ideology of the 20th century.

Yet when the subject comes up in her book, Weatherford either glosses it over or mentions it with what I perceive to be an approving tone. And though many entries are about specific phenomenon rather than individual women -- "Department Stores," "Domestic Servants," "Prostitution," etc. -- there are none for "Communism," "Socialism," or even "Radicalism."

The book having been published in '94, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I'm wondering if Weatherford was at least astute enough not to come right out and celebrate that failed ideology. That might have been a shrewd thing to do, but neither an intellectually nor a morally honest one. However, given the stringent policing of orthodoxy within the orthodox and radical feminist community/ies (don't believe me? try contradicting the professor in a "womyn's studies" class and see how quickly you get labeled "unsupportive" or "hurtful"), I don't really expect her to join fellow male liberals like Christopher Hitchens, Paul Berman, and Martin Amis in denouncing collectivism.

I was also put off by the entry on Dorothy Parker. Now, don't get me wrong: she wrote marvelous satiric verse, and you're reading the words of a person who in general has little use for poetry. But -- let's face it -- Dottie was more than a bit of a drama queen. Weatherford chides Ernest Hemingway for being one of many who "made heavy-handed bids at humor based on Parker's unhappiness." Well, we're talking about a woman who not only made multiple suicide attempts, but who took to tying bright red ribbons around her wrists to "hide" the slash marks. I've had my trials and tribulations, for sure. But it takes a will of steel *not* to poke fun at someone that self-absorbed and self-indulgent.

Perhaps even worse is the complete omission from the Parker entry of Robert Benchley. The two writers seem to have enjoyed a genuinely Platonic friendship for many years, and to have inspired each other's work; and Benchley was also there for Parker in some of her darkest moments. Mentioning him certainly would not have diminished Parker in any sense -- in fact, were she herself to read the entry, I'm sure she'd be peeved that her best friend was left completely out of it. After all, Weatherford was able to write that John and Abigail Adams enjoyed "an uncommon marriage of intellectual equals" and produced volumes of letters "filled with mutual love and respect." Why, then, does she slight Benchley (who certainly never belittled Parker by calling her "saucy," as Adams did his wife)?

I'm also quite dismayed at the entry "Aunt Tom," used to refer collectively to anti-feminist women in general, and with the implication their stances are based less in conviction than in opportunism. I'm sure that's true of some, but anti-feminist sentiments were also expressed by some of the very women Weatherford celebrates, such as the journalist Nellie Bly -- not that you'd know it from the entry on her.

Finally, the soft-pedaling of Margaret Sanger's involvement with eugenics is a disservice. Sanger was indeed tremendously important in freeing women from broodmaredom, but her motives were not 100% altruistic, and I wish Weatherford would have addressed this head-on rather than just mentioning it blandly and briefly, then mentioning with equal brevity how Sanger started back-pedaling as Nazi racism began its poisonous ascent.

I myself would like to see a complete volume of American women, remembered and forgotten, who have made their mark on this country...and who represent a wide swath of the ideological spectrum. Although I have no love for radical anti-abortion protestors, for example, even some feminists have admitted that their work in that movement has afforded them power and prestige not otherwise open or acceptable to them.

On a more moderate note, there are women like Ayn Rand, whose work sparked the formally weak but enormously influential libertarian movement. And I'd like to see more discussion of female sexuality outside of issues like reproductive rights, especially the inclusion of writers of erotica such as Anais Nin.

One point I would like to make in the book's favor, however, is Weatherford's complex and nuanced treatment of Prohibition and the women who brought it about. It's unfortunate that she tries to shift the blame away from them by repeatedly mentioning that they were ineligible to vote when it was passed...which, of course, has the unintended effect of making their anti-alcohol activism appear to have not mattered at all.

Mostly, though, Weatherford redeems the subject by pointing out the various tensions in American society that led to the Volstead Act: not just suffering housewives versus abusive husbands, but teetotaling Yankees versus immigrants whose moderate drinking habits were seized upon as "proof" of the social threat they were seen to pose. I'm glad to read Weatherford's conclusion that liberalizing property, divorce, and domestic violence laws in women's favor, not banning alcohol, would have been a better solution to the problem of husbands gambling away milk money and beating their wives.

Her entry on Carry Nation, in particular, is very well-done. Although I think Weatherford writes with a bit too much glee for my taste of the woman's sheer physical violence and destructiveness, balance is provided by evidence that Nation's personality may have been shaped by hereditary mental illness, childhood conflicts, and perhaps syphilis courtesy of a cheating husband.