The American woman in fact and fiction; Episode 6 of 13

The following program is produced and recorded in the studios of KPFA Berkeley California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. We present the American woman in fact and fiction from Colonial Times to the present day. A series of 13 programs written and directed by Virginia Maynard and produced by Virginia Maynard and Charles Levy Part 6 go. Right she don't. She wants a chance to wear the pants and so I'm just crazy. Despite the agitation for women's rights what was going on in the second quarter of the 19th century the typical romantic novel of the period continued to picture the American woman as a James Fenimore Cooper Carolyn these paragons of feminine virtue were fragile retiring creatures who blushed or paled at a word or glance from a man who were never so bold as to have a thought of their own. And it was chief function in the story was to serve as objects of worship for the chivalrous males.

Edgar Allan Poe added invalidism to the list of fashionable seven an attribute of the Victorian lady who did any work more strenuous than writing or who was healthy enough to have a long life expectancy was coarse in comparison with the moribund creatures who drifted through all his romantic tales. In the pages of goatees lady's book we find the composite picture of this ideal American woman of the day. Delicately wasp waisted and slope shouldered dressed in confining garments which would seem to rule out her engaging in any activity more vigorous than fashioning the flowers of wax or the ring and brooch sets of human hair. The directions from which were to be found in other pages of the magazine. Yet this was the day of Margaret Fuller and her feminist women of the nineteenth century of a media bloomer and the demand for a more sensible style of dress for women of Lucretia Munt and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and their agitation for women's right to speak in public to receive an education to own their own property to vote Conservative America was shocked and appalled by these upstart females who claim for

their sex all the special privileges of men in polite literature and in the fashionable women's magazines of the day they might be ignored. But in actual experience this was not so easy. Who could ignore for instance Lucy Stone. I just come out before you to make of the moment. I'll put it in the Boston Post and call it to see St.. A name like Caesar's will be news on Mon who shuts up the mouth of Lucy St.. Lucy still was a thorn in the side of respectable America in her day. To lecture for temperance for women's rights for abolition and for education for women. She wore trousers when she wanted to. She refused to change her name when she was married. But despite the widespread disapproval of her Lucy captured the folk imagination the

covered wagons that sang songs about her and her sister rebels on the way to California and Oregon. A legend about her grew and with the legend the knowledge of what she stood for. All our conservative grandfathers and grandmothers shook their heads in despair a whistling girl and a crow in hand always come to some bad end they said of the loosies of the world. Let's go back for a moment to eight hundred thirty five or so when Lucy was about sixteen and looking on a scene in the early life of one of the most famous whistling girls of America. And I desire to be on to a dying husband and he shall rule over the PA Do you have to read drafts you know I can't stand that Lucy. That's no way to talk to your father but why does he always have to read something like that just because he knows how I hate it. Your father knows how rebellious you are Lucy and he wants to help you to be able to submit to the way things are. But why do they have to be that way.

It struck her served evolution's Well there may be a curse on the EU but I am Lucy stalled and nobody has put a curse on me. If I get any curse is that going to be my own. Lucy that strong mindedness of yours is going to be the ruination of you. What man will ever marry a girl I am never going to get marry. Well what else can I do. Oh I've heard other girls talk that way. I'll do something else. You'll see no man's ever going to rule over me. Well look at the kind of life my mother's a nurse they are of manner when one's life seems hard especially to someone young and for a spirit like you. Yes indeed as weak nurses or charm girl and her dependence on men her best protection and I don't want to be charming to anyone and I don't want any one. To protect me I can protect myself. Lucy wishes she was a boy she always wanted to be a boy. I don't I don't either want to be a boy. Maybe I did once but that doesn't do any good.

I just want to be treated like a human being Yeah you're always trying to prove you're as strong as a boy. Look how you work till you're ready to drop. Just to show us you're a strong as we are now live they were. I work so ma I won't have to do it all that's why Luther St.. You boys let her kill herself and part two. And she hasn't got it half bad compared to some deed I have and why I look at old tubs yonder a good church goer in everything and gives his wife a whipping every few weeks because she scolds he says. Well I know but he doesn't. Moment school lets will why shouldn't she scold. Look at Miss Purvis. Left her husband because he he drank so much they didn't have food to eat in the house and when I walked in and took in washing to take care of the children. And why did she have to. Because he kept the farm and everything they had in the world and nobody to say no to him and now he's going to take the children he says and who's to stop him. The law is on his side just because he's a man.

And you all know he's never even been a father to those young one you know it's not right and that's a fact. But that's life Lucy. Well it's not life to me and it's not going to ever be I'll show them. You know what I did last week after I joined the church. Something came up to vote on. I didn't know women weren't supposed to vote. And when they called for harems I held my nose up. And went. Pick out my role the preacher called out Don't count her she's not a voting member. Rs 6 more votes were taken in that meeting and I held out my hand. Every time Lucy and what good did it do. Well it'll do good if I keep it up long enough. I'm going to get some books and find out why the rules of things have to be like they are. Live read every book for miles around. And they don't tell how if there is to know about things like some books I've heard about. I've got a list and I'm going to send for them and read them.

Oh Would you loan me the money Paul how I haven't got any money to spend for any such foolishness as girls educating themselves. Then I'll get them when I earn the money it'll take a long time with that dollar a week. Teach yourself of yours. That's why I want to borrow the money I don't want to well because women speakers coming around and talking about women's education and free illustrate just problem turned your head. That's right pa educated women women speaking in public. Sakes all I did you see this letter the preacher sent out against those women speaking loons know what does it say to you. We invite your attention to the dangers which at present seem to threaten the female character with widespread and permanent injury. The appropriate duties and influence of woman are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence are unobtrusive and private but the source of mighty power. When the mild dependent softening influence of woman upon the sternness of

man's opinions is fully exercised society feels the effects of it in a thousand forms. The power of woman is her dependent lowing from the consciousness of that witness which God has given her for her protection and which keeps her in those departments of life that form the character of individuals and of the nation. There are social influences of which females use in promoting piety and the great objects of Christian benevolence which we cannot too highly commend. You don't believe that do you. That's just a lot. Since you are going to be a minister you wouldn't sign that. Well I don't know. But let me finish reading it. We appreciate an ostentatious prayers and efforts of woman in advancing the cause of religion at home and abroad in Sabbath schools in leading religious inquirers to the pastors for instruction and in also associated effort as becomes the modesty of her sex and earnestly hope that she may abound more and more in

these labors of piety and love. But when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer our care and protection of her seem unnecessary. We put ourselves in self defense. Now if she yields the power which God has given her for her protection and her character becomes unnatural. If the vine whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis work and half concealed its clusters. I think think still has the independence and the overshadowing nature of the elm. It will not only cease to bear fruit but fall in shame and dishonor into the dust. That's right. By cracky we cannot therefore but regret the mistaken conduct of those who encourage females to bear and obtrusive and ostentatious part in measure of reform and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to why to enter it in the character of public lecturers and teachers. We think we especially deplore the intimate acquaintance and

promiscuous conversation of females with regard to things which ought not to be named. By which that modesty and delicacy which is the charm of domestic life and which constitutes the true influence in society is consumed and the way opened as we apprehend for degeneracy and ruin. There what do you say lose. I am speechless. I should think so. For once in your life. Great. I'm not. Look I don't believe that women are necessarily any better or more spiritual than men. I know I'm not half so spiritual as Bowman I don't think I could labor in piety and love as it says half so well as he could but but I do think that I. But what does it say. They give it to me. Yes I do think I might bear bear and up truce of an ostentatious part in measures of reform better than him. I know I could and I don't

generate in the character of a public lecturer and teacher and that is what I mean to do. Well if you do I hope you never come back here to shame us all you'll say different than that some day Rhoda I want to know something. I am going to college. Well I never. You're gone crazy literally. I know you're aware what you're fired a college to take in a woman at Oberlin Ohio. Well they've. Got a feminine division there girls in it already and I've got their announcement right here in my sewing box. Here it says it will be for the elderly. Elevation of the female character by bringing within reach of the misjudged and neglected sex all of the instructive privileges which have hitherto reasonably distinguished the leading sex from their running star world come true for evermore or whatever it's coming to father. You'll have to submit to it just as we've been submitting all these years. Is there

any good reason why Frank and Bowman should go to college and I shouldn't. Yes because it's ridiculous and shameful. That's why you're a woman. Work. Could you learn at college. Maybe I could learn Greek. Found out what the Bible really said before it was translated. I can learn a lot of things. Anyway I am going if it takes me ten years of teaching school at a dollar a week before I get there. That. What am I doing sewing on this shirt for some man so he can go to school to see what he could earn more toward his education by teaching all week that I couldn't a year what with the way women salaries are. Was I not going to do another stitch on the shirt. And I hope no other silly woman ever finishes it either. All right here comes Louis overload and here comes Lucy Stone. It did take Lucy almost 10 years to earn the money to start a college. Although her father

finally relented and help pay or expenses and was at that time a station on the Underground Railway when a school was started for the fugitive slaves he was asked to teach it. But the colored man sharing the prejudices of their day thought it beneath their dignity to be taught by a woman. Lucy herself talked him into accepting her at the time of her graduation from Overland. Lucy received an appointment to represent her class at the commencement exercises. However she was told that she must merely write her essay and allow a male member of the class to read it. Since the majority of the faculty felt that it was improper for women to participate in public exercises with man Lucy of course declined this dubious honor. After her graduation in 1847 Lucy Stone became a lecturer for the women's rights movement. Despite the violence of the opposition to women speakers she soon began to acquire a reputation as a public lecturer or pleasing manner and a remarkable voice proved to be a great asset Stuart overcoming this widespread prejudice and with her commanding eloquence she could often hold in check the most unruly

audience. She soon found herself in demand for speaking assignments requiring more than ordinary finesse and argumentative powers whenever the early feminist gained a hearing before a legislature. They always tried to draft Lucy Stone to present their case. She could persuade the lawmakers they felt if anyone could. Lucy was one of the first women to cut her hair short and to wear the bloomer costume when it was introduced this practical garment consisted of a fairly short skirt worn over a pair of ankle length trousers that women's writers found it very suitable to their active lives very convenient for travelling and adopted it with enthusiasm. But the public was no more hospitable toward this reform and dress than it was toward the doctrines the women preached. The outcry against the bloomer extended from one end of the country to the other everywhere the women daring enough to wear it appeared the inevitable group of hecklers followed jeering I O carrion crow. Twenty tears take this. But I know women wear the bridges. Oh Carry

on. Never you never. Know when that could. Happen. That's where the band never never to even the most strong minded of the women eventually gave up the costume. But not before the public city they received help to make the public conscious of the necessity of a more rational style of dress for women. Not long after Goldie's latest book introduced in its pages a short skirted bicycling dress for women and with acceptance from this stronghold of respectability dress reform was on its way. Lucy did not marry for some years. I actually believe that in marriage perhaps more than in any other condition of life. Did women lose their independence. Even the fact of the woman taking her husband's name at marriage she felt was a symbol of her subservient status. When at last she did marry her husband Dr. Henry Blackwell himself a prominent woman's rightest agreed that his wife should keep her own name and retain in every way her identity as an individual. Such was the young Lucy Stone who devoted her

entire long life to the task of freeing the women of America from the bondage of tradition and prejudice. She was. The most distinguished whistlin girl of her generation was Susan B Anthony. Susan was the only great figure in the early woman's movement who never did marry. She once said that she could never consent to marry any man that would be willing to degrade himself by spending his life with a creature so inferior as a woman was held to be at that time she preferred to devote her life to proving women were not inferior. Susan B Anthony had been brought up in a well-to-do Quaker family in a society which recognized the equality of the sexes and encouraged women speaking in public. She received a good education for a day at a private seminary near Philadelphia. The Anthony home was a favorite meeting place for liberal spirited men and women of the time.

Wendell Phillips Frederick Douglas will have annoyed garrison were regular visitors at the house during Susan's girlhood. Her own father and mother and her sister Mary were among the signers of the Declaration of Rights at the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls New York. Susan had been prepared since childhood for the position she was to assume in the woman's movement. After her father's bankruptcy in 1830 she had started teaching in order to earn a living. But she soon learned that women teachers could not expect more than one half or even one quarter of the salary which men receive for the same position. And she refused to continue in a profession in which as she said the brightest woman must compete on equal terms with the dullest man. She became a temperance lecturer and here her experience was typical of the day in which she lived. Time after time she was refused permission to speak because she was a woman. And when she did obtain the floor she was often howled down and insulted until she was forced to discontinue or talk. She gradually became convinced that all of women's freedom must be obtained before any of it could be secured and turned her attention to the struggling

young woman's movement. In 1852 she attended her first women's rights convention at Syracuse New York. This meeting was notable for an exceptionally scurrilous speech by a Massachusetts minister which attracted much notice in the public press. The New York Herald an inveterate foe of equal rights for women contained the following editorial The next morning. Women first become subject to man as she now is all over the world by her nature her sex just as a negro is and always will be to the end of time. Inferior to the White race and therefore doomed his objection. But she is happier than she would be in any other condition just because it is the law of her nature. What do the leaders of the women's rights conventions want. They want to vote and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls. They want to be members of Congress and the heat of debate subject themselves to coarse jests and indecent language like that of Rev. Mr. Hatch.

They want to feel all other post which men are ambitious to occupy to be lawyers doctors captains of vessels and generals in the field. How funny it would sound in the newspapers that Lucy Stone pleading her cause took suddenly ill in the pains of partition and perhaps gave birth to a bouncing boy in court. Or the Dr Harriet hunt while attending a gentleman patient for a fit of the gout or fist surely an A No. Found it necessary to send for a doctor there and then. And to be delivered of a child who perhaps twins a similar event might happen on the floor of Congress in a storm at sea or in the raging tempest of battle. And then what is to become of the woman legislator. Susan B Anthony you came away from Syracuse resolved to waste no more time before entering the struggle to secure for women a more respected and advantageous position in life. Not long after this she attended the Rochester convention of the New York State Teachers Association of which she was

a member and made social history as a woman's rights speaker. Two thirds of the membership were women but none of them had ever taken part in the debates but sat modestly behind their veils while the men spoke voted and made all the decisions that were to affect their lives and work. Susan decided to break with precedent. The question under discussion was why the profession of teacher was not as much respected as that of the lawyer a minister or a doctor. Suddenly Miss Anthony arose. I did the Harper and was present tells us what happened. If all the witches that had been burned and hanged in the Old World in the new had suddenly appeared on the platform threatening vengeance for their wrongs the officers of that convention could not have been thrown into greater consternation. There stood the Quaker girl calm and self-possessed while with hasty consultations running to and fro those frightened men could not decide what to do how to receive this audacious invader of their sphere of action.

At length president Davies of West Point in full dress buff blue coat button stepped to the front. While I wish to speak to the question on it it's got a short. Discussion pro and con followed lasting for half an hour when a vote of the men only was taken and permission granted by a small majority. It was lucky for Susan B Anthony too that the thousand women crowd in the hall could not vote on the question for they would have given a solid no. The president then announced the vote. Yes the decision of the convention. That.

We can easily imagine Miss Anthony's embarrassment after that half hour of suspense and the bitter hostility she noted on every side. It seems to me gentlemen you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect. Do you not see that so long as the Society says a woman is incompetent to be a minister that has an ability to be a teacher. That every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledged that he has no more brains than a woman. And this is the reason that teaching is a less lucrative profession. As Here men must compete with the cheaper labor of women. What you it's not your profession.

It's not they don't leave you. Would you maybe British increase the salaries of the women gauged in the noble blood of educating our future presidents senators and congressmen. The said Miss Anthony took her seat amid the profoundest silence broken at last by three gentleman who walked down the broad aisle to congratulate the speaker on her pluck and perseverance and the pertinacity of her remarks President Davies sat in disapproving silence. After some time which he had evidently spent in preparing himself for the great oratorical effort of his career he rose in all his lofty dignity and delivered himself of the following. By several persons. Why no provisions have been made for women to speak to vote. From committees to send letters. Thirty years. Home to go to hold the

last of this super home contemplated pedis told. Its charge its rejection of the draw. The crowing. Appropriate place. Contributing to the straight. Symmetry. View of the whole. Who die. Taking that to a magnificent good time at the top from a prior elevation. I've later said it is not just time that for right on the pedestal the. Nard are put I tried to drive home the mother wife five daughters whom we worship. Best of all are you all to come and played live with

all. The women schoolteachers had no wish to pull down the building and tablature and all about the head of the lordly Davies and his following. But Susan B Anthony and many others present felt that his flattering estimate of womankind had little relation to the low salaries they were receiving for equal work with man. To the astonishment of the eloquent professor now that the ice had been broken many other school teachers found their voices. A teacher from Rochester presented to resolution of the race was that it. Can recognize the right of female teachers to share in all the privileges and deliberations of this board. Resolved that female teachers do not receive an adequate and sufficient compensation and that has to be regulated only according to the amount of labor performed. This association will endeavor

by conditions and efficient action to remove this existing evil. An attempt was made to quash the resolutions but the women insisted they be brought to a vote. Susan B Anthony made a forcible speech in their favor and they were passed unanimously to the great discomfiture of President Davies. Even the newspapers were impressed. The editor of the Rochester Democrat stated the next morning whatever the schoolmaster's might think of Susan B. It was evident she hit the nail on the head with such women as Susan B Anthony and Lucy Stone determined to achieve recognition for their sex and with the changing economic situation in the country which was rapidly revolutionizing the folkways of the people. The American woman could not long remain the timid retiring creature which she was pictured as being in the early half of the century before the 19th century came to a close. She was a very different person.

That was pot six of the American woman in fact and fiction from Colonial Times to the present day. A series of 13 programs written and directed by Virginia Maynard. The cast included Charles Levy Angela Goldsby Edwin Smith Marquis Patterson Eileen George Marquis Ernest land Margaret Doyle and Virginia Maynard engineering was by David L. Talcott the American woman in fact and fiction was produced and recorded in the studios of KPFA Berkeley California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center and is being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the energy B Radio Network.