March 13, 2024
March 8, 2024
International Women's Day...Month...Always
February 24, 2024
Second-Class Citizen, Part II: 'That Vote Has Been Costly'
Carrie Chapman Catt may be a name less familiar to some than the name of her mentor Susan B. Anthony, yet with her considerable organizational skills — a brilliant strategist and former teacher — she was the most recognized name in the U.S. suffrage movement in the early twentieth century. Catt led the National American Woman Suffrage Association in its final, exhaustive push to win the vote for women in the summer of 1920. In her brilliant book, The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote published in 2018, Elaine Weiss described the scene when Catt finally returned to her home in New York once the Nineteenth Amendment was signed into law. Catt sat at her desk and, looking out at her garden, wrote “a poignant charge to the women voters of the nation”:
The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guaranty of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Women have suffered agony of soul which you never can comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it!
The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!
With 33 years of suffrage work behind her, Carrie Chapman Catt moved on to voter registration and voter education through the League of Women Voters, an organization she helped launch. (Eleanor Roosevelt was one of Catt’s protégées.) When she turned her energies back to anti-war efforts, Weiss explained, Catt was “monitored by the FBI,” possibly for the rest of her life. “Alarmed by Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, she organized Jewish support groups and lobbied the U.S. government to ease immigration restrictions for refugees.” Mrs. Catt, as she was respectfully known by many, died of a heart attack in 1947 at the age of 88 after a lifetime of service for you and me and the women of the world.
The new century brought many “uppity, contrary women” into the public sphere.... [Continue reading on MEDIUM.] Part II of V.
February 14, 2024
January 1, 2024
Marriage and the 'Prospect of Happiness'
"The Unequal Marriage" by Vasili V. Pukirev, 1862 |
Historically, given the patriarchal nature of most world cultures, the happy expectations that many brides may have imagined at their wedding fell far short during their marriage—disappointment often began before the honeymoon phase, if there was such a thing. To cope with the lack of attention or even abuse by their husbands, women around the globe had limited choices—especially since ill-treatment of wives was often sanctioned by their religions and governments. “A bride,” nineteenth-century journalist Ambrose Bierce said, “is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.” Indeed, for eons, a married woman’s “prospect of happiness” was a dilemma.
In
the middle of nineteenth-century England “marriage was the subject of much
contemporary debate,” wrote best-selling author Kate Summerscale. Divorce laws
were being investigated and reformists were “campaigning to improve the lot for
married women.” One such reformist, novelist and poet Caroline Norton, even
wrote to Queen Victoria—a happily married woman and mother—about the
“injustices of wedlock,” as shared by Summerscale:
“A married woman in England has no legal existence...her being is absorbed in that of her husband.” A wife could not undertake legal proceedings, or keep her own earnings, or spend eons own money as she wished. She “has no legal right even to her clothes or ornaments; her husband may take them and sell them if he pleases.” A wife’s identity was subsumed in that of her husband....
And Caroline Norton should know. “When she left her unfaithful, bullying, profligate husband in 1836,” wrote Summerscale, “he had kept her children from her and had confiscated the money that she earned through her writing.”
[Continue reading this short chapter excerpt on Medium...enjoy!]
October 26, 2023
Herstory
Judy Chicago at the New Museum in NYC as seen in The New York Times |
Judy Chicago is at it again! "The pioneering feminist artist rules the New Museum with a six-decade survey, but she shares the stage with her sisterhood." (See Melena Ryzik's article in the NYTimes, Judy Chicago Makes 'Herstory'.)
October 2, 2023
Ann Lowe: American Couturier
Costume Exhibition at Winterthur Museum Sept 9, 2023 - January 7, 2024 “In
1964, The Saturday Evening Post referred to fashion designer Ann Lowe as
‘Society’s Best-Kept Secret.’ Although Lowe had been designing couture-quality
gowns for America’s most prominent debutantes, heiresses, actresses, and
society brides—including Jacqueline Kennedy, Olivia de Havilland, and Marjorie
Merriweather Post—for decades, she remained virtually unknown to the wider
public. Since then, too little recognition has been given to her influence on
American fashion. “Ann Lowe’s recently emerging visibility as a designer stands in contrast to much of her career and the countless unrecognized Black dressmakers and designers who have contributed to American fashion for generations, including her own grandmother and mother. She blazed a path for others to follow and her legacy is still felt in fashion culture.” [Continue reading exhibition text.] |
Jacqueline Kennedy in her wedding gown designed by Ann Lowe, 1953 |
During the presidential state
visit to
However, the woman who revolutionized a stodgy fashion industry and headlined the best-dressed list for years had not worn the wedding gown of her choice. Jacqueline (Jock-leen) Bouvier was a young bride in 1953 when it was typical for the bride’s mother to plan the wedding, dictate or greatly influence what her daughter would wear (and frequently whom she would marry), and basically run the show.
Of course, the headstrong Jackie
was not just any bride of the fifties. She was the future wife of one of the
wealthiest men in the country and one whose father had great political plans
for his oldest son’s future. So not only did the
The bride’s mother chose Ann
Lowe, an African American designer in
Jacqueline Kennedy wearing Oleg Cassini, appointed as her "exclusive couturier," Elysee Palace reception in Paris,1961 |