Significant Sisters

by Margaret Forster

  What she did despise wholeheartedly was any inhibitions about sex. Sex was overwhelmingly important in her life and led her to query the nature of her own femaleness. She was quite, quite sure that sex affected women in a way it did not affect men. After Ben Reitman her sex life was by no means over. In Sweden, she took a young lover called Arthur Swenson, thirty to her fifty-three, who accompanied her to Germany before telling her she did not attract him any more. Then in 1934, when she was sixty-five, she had an extraordinary affair with Frank Heiner, a young, blind American osteopath. Frank, she wrote to her niece Stella, was all she had ever longed for – “primitiveness, tenderness, a complete harmonious blending of intellect, spirit and body . . . the capacity for supreme passion and the tenderness of a child.”53 She was decidedly not, she wrote, “an old fool in love.” Frank had given her what love had never given her before – “it is strange, isn’t it dearest, that at sixty-five I should wake up to the realisation that with all the men I have known intimately my love has never been fulfilled.” His letters made her weep – “In your lips, in your breasts, in the sweet maddening intimate ecstasy of you all the anxiety, all the sordidness of the world vanishes and the golden age of legend is once more. My own precious woman, dearest Emma, I love you.”54 But Frank was married and they had only a brief two weeks alone together – Emma could not bring herself to wreck his marriage. She cared nothing for what she knew would be the sniggers of the world at large, a world which thought it acceptable for an elderly man to have a young mistress but disgusting and ludicrous for an elderly woman to have a young lover. But Frank’s wife loved him, too, and there was his future to think about, so they parted. She regarded the affair with him as the highlight of her life and rather scorned Sasha for his last love affair with Emmy Eckstein. By comparison, it was nothing. Emmy was a Hausfrau type, obsessed with getting Sasha to marry her if she could. “What I need in life is affection,” she wrote plaintively to Emma, and even more strangely, “I would not want Sasha at all if you were not in his life.”55 What did either of them know about love, or even sex? “It seems to be my fate,” commented Emma bitterly, “to prepare my lovers for other women and then act as confidante of the women.”56

  But she never regretted any of her love affairs. They had shown her secrets about herself she would never have learned otherwise. “Sex is like a double-edged sword,” she wrote, “it releases our spirit and binds it with a thousand threads, it raises us to sublime heights and thrusts us into lowest depths.”57 For a woman it was more important than for a man because “it creates a greater storm in her being and lingers on when the man is satisfied and at ease.”58 As well as sexual fulfilment women needed with it affection, devotion and tenderness and as they aged they needed it even more. This was where nature, that old enemy of feminism, was cruel to them, making them far less likely to attract what they needed than men: What she called “a new medium” had not yet been devised to deal with this. There was “a longing for fulfilment” in love as in all other spheres and it could not yet be realized. “The modem woman cannot be the wife and mother in the old sense, and the new medium has not yet been devised, I mean the way of being wife, mother, friend and yet retain one’s complete freedom. Will it ever?”59 Her own experiences had led her to doubt it though not in the end to regret the existence of “modem” woman.

  She never intended her searing criticisms to be interpreted as meaning she did not think anything worthwhile had been gained. She was proud of modern women, especially the American variety. “The fact is,” she wrote in 1929, “the only woman who stands out today as an entity is the American woman, not only in her independence but in her eagerness to assert herself in creative forms . . . Granted that the modern American woman is running after effects – that does not seem to me any reason why she should swing back to the days of half a century ago when women lived and died in the kitchen and behind the washtub.”60 In short, Emma Goldman had faith. “I confess I prefer the modern woman,” she wrote, “the modern mother too . . . she knows that the child is not brought into the world for her pleasure . . . she knows that in order to be of any help to her child she herself must grow and develop – to give her own life purpose and meaning.”61 However much she berated “so called emancipation” she also praised it. “I do insist,” she wrote, “that there is in America a large minority of women, advanced women if you please, who will fight to the last drop of their blood for the gains which they have made, physical and intellectual, and for their rights to equality with the man.”62 All she asked them to do was beware the direction they took: she wanted feminism to stop and consider what was being lost as well as what was being gained and in the process to decide to preserve those differences between men and women which were valuable and unharmful.

  Emma Goldman re-orientated feminist ideology. In her own life she tried to combine her anarchism and her belief in sexual liberation and it was through achieving this difficult combination that she was able to point women in a new direction. But for a long time her voice was not heeded. In the 1930s, and for three decades afterwards, feminism appeared to languish, resting on its laurels. When it emerged again in the late sixties it was to concern itself with that “true emancipation” Emma Goldman had envisaged. It was the soul that was now fought for, just as she had predicted. In the first big public demonstration of the “new” Woman’s Liberation movement in New York on August 26th, 1970 a group calling itself the Emma Goldman Brigade marched down Fifth Avenue with a banner bearing her name and as they marched they chanted, “Emma said it in 1910/Now we’re going to say it again . . .” What they said was what she had said in her speeches and essays. The link was direct and proclaimed as direct yet the world at large acted as if it were new, as if feminism had only just been discovered, as if it had no history, as if nothing had already been achieved. “There is only one thing that is stronger than armies,” said Victor Hugo, “and that is an idea whose time has come.” Emma Goldman quoted this in the fourth issue of Mother Earth. She thought then the time for women to liberate themselves from themselves had come. The marchers in 1970 thought it again. Some of the feminists of today are afraid it will still be necessary in the future for yet another generation to repeat what has gone before. Feminism seems to progress only by a method of two steps forward, one step backwards. “I hold,” wrote Alexander Berkman in 1919, “that ultimately it’s the ideal that conquers and having conquered it mounts to still higher and further visions. As to the individual – he is the stepping stone of man’s progress . . .”63

  So is the woman to woman’s. Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Blackwell, Florence Nightingale, Emily Davies, Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman were stepping-stones too important for any water, especially the brackish water of ignorance, to wash away. Without them, feminism would have been nothing.

  Conclusion

  WHAT THE HISTORY of feminism has always appeared to lack is continuity and also development. The tendency in the 1970s was to imply that no matter how heroic the struggles of the nineteenth-century pioneers had been, and no matter how much these struggles appeared to have achieved, nothing had really changed. This conclusion was both stupid and inaccurate. The study of active feminism shows clearly that there has been a continuous if not easily identified development which has succeeded in substantially redressing the balance between the sexes. It is quite absurd to maintain that women are as grossly disadvantaged in the western world as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They are not. On the contrary, in historic terms the changes in women’s status in society has been both violent and swift. It would be a salutary experience for those who sneer that a century and a half of strenuous effort has made no real difference to compare, say, Barbara Bodichon’s list of laws regarding women with any contemporary list. What, by comparison, have women now to complain of?

  The short answer would seem to be: themselves. The women in this book changed lives for future generations of women dramatically. What
they could not change was how women themselves approached their own problem (because not even the most ardent feminist would deny a problem remains and that its existence is not entirely due to men). At first, the obsession was with justice. Women “only” wanted men to admit they were penalized in the existing social system and to put it right. But Caroline Norton and the many like her proved naïve. Justice, after all, was not enough. It was no good asking men to protect and look after women if, in all essentials, their role remained as subordinate. Women, however cherished and safeguarded by “rights” in law, were always going to remain stunted beings if they had to conform to the feminine stereotype of that era. Justice must surely give way to choice or there was no real justice at all.

  When Elizabeth Blackwell and Florence Nightingale claimed the right to do real work instead of staying within the proscribed domestic sphere they took feminism onto a new stage. It was no wonder that feminism then seemed exciting – the possibilities before girls were suddenly thrilling. If they wished, there was a respectable and attainable alternative to marriage and motherhood (or to penurious servitude for the legions of unfortunate spinsters). Not all girls could, or would, choose careers but those who did no longer believed their lives were poorer. There was something noble about actually choosing not to marry or have children. Instead, one dedicated one’s life to others. This was no philanthropic drudgery: one used one’s talents and got paid for doing so and this added up to making a career which was highly satisfying. But it was also dangerous. There was no doubt that, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, feminism was asking for and getting martyrs. The traditional path of marriage and motherhood began to look soft – how much better to take the hard road, to choose a worthwhile career, than to succumb to the desires of the flesh and the luxury of materialistic security. Choice, even then, began to look like a trick although it was not until the twentieth century that the full extent of the trickery became evident.

  This was the point in its historical development at which feminism approached its most dangerous corner. Feminists had done with the quest for justice and then the demand for choice. By the third quarter of the nineteenth century they had realized that the entire role of women needed reappraisal and with it the very concept of femaleness. They saw that the old stereotype had indeed gone, or at least been seriously undermined, but that in its place was – what? With the new rights and privileges came new responsibilities which in turn created a very confused image of how a woman saw herself. If she no longer claimed to be purer, feebler, more delicate and modest than her male counterpart where did that leave her? There was the fear that a great deal that was valuable had been lost through the gaining of so-called emancipation. Margaret Sanger tried to convince women that actually, through birth control, they were now for the first time stronger than men. But women did not feel strong. On the contrary, in the first quarter of the twentieth century they felt particularly vulnerable. Instead of less being expected of them they found twice as much was. They were glad to be educated, to have careers, to keep their own earnings, to vote, to control their own bodies but for most of them the result of all this was not salvation but exhaustion. The promised land may have been reached but only for them to work twice as hard in it. Was this what feminism had intended? Was this the desired destination towards which the women in this book, those who initiated radical change, had been travelling for so long? And if not, what had gone wrong?

  Nothing. What the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century active feminists had done was forge all the right keys to woman’s genuine emancipation. They had fitted them to the appropriate locks and turned them successfully, if with difficulty. But what they had failed to do was make sure all the now opened gates were used – and therein lies the basic difficulty still confronting feminism. “The woman is greater than the wife or mother; and in consenting to take upon herself these relations she should never sacrifice one iota of her individuality . . .” said Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Unfortunately, few women find themselves agreeing. They may wish to agree, but come the testing time and the woman is rapidly submerged by the wife and mother sometimes never to reappear. It may be that feminism will always have to face this fact and adapt accordingly. Certainly, there is a great deal which could still be done to make the chances of the woman surviving marriage and motherhood more likely, particularly when it comes to every kind of working-condition. But what the history of feminism shows is that, in spite of this basic and very important difficulty, real progress has been made. The challenge is to hold on to it. Women, said Caroline Norton, believe themselves isolated. They are not. They have a joint purpose – never to accept artificial limitations imposed upon them solely through reason of their gender – and a joint investment in the future. Feminism is not something new that sprang up fully armed in the 1970s: it has a long and worthy history. If it were recognized for what it is, a force purely for the good of both men and women, its future would be assured, and the enmity shown towards it might cease.

  Appendix

  List of publications by

  CAROLINE NORTON

  1829The Sorrows of Rosalie and Other Poems (John Ebers & Co.)

  1830The Undying One & Other Poems (H. Colburn & R. Bentley)

  1835The Wife, and Woman’s Reward. Two prose tales. (Saunders & Otley)

  1836A Voice from the Factories. A poem. (John Murray)

  1837The Separation of Mother and Child by the Law of Custody of Infants Considered. A pamphlet. (Ridgway)

  1839A Plain Letter to the Lord Chancellor on the Infants Custody Bill by Pearse Stevenson (nom de plume). Printed by Ridgway for distribution to MPs.

  1840The Dream and Other Poems (Henry Colburn)

  1845The Child of the Islands (Chapman and Hall)

  1851Stuart of Dunleath. A Novel. (Hurst & Blackett)

  1854English Laws for Women in the 19th Century (Privately printed)

  1855A Letter to the Queen on Lord Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill (Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans)

  1859Verses on Burns

  1862The Lady of la Garaye. A Poem (Macmillan)

  1863Lost and Saved. A Novel (Hurst & Blackett)

  1867Old Sir Douglas. A Novel (Hurst & Blackett)

  Caroline Norton also wrote fifty-one songs, most of which are now impossible to trace. Some of her sketches and poems for magazines were published in collections:

  1832–4Poems and Sketches in The Belle Assemblée and Court Magazine for 1832–4 (J. Bull)

  1845–8Fishers Drawing-Room Scrapbook

  1847Aunt Carny’s Ballads for Children

  Several of her letters to newspapers were also published in a collection:

  1848Letters to the Mob (first published in the Morning Chronicle)

  ELIZABETH BLACKWELL

  1852The Laws of Life, with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls (Putnam, NY)

  1856Address on the Medical Education of Woman (Baker & Duyckinck, NY)

  1870How to Keep a Household in Health (Ladies Sanitary Association)

  1871Lectures on the Laws of Life with Special Reference to Girls (Samson Low & Co.)

  1878The Religion of Health (John Menzies & Co.)

  1880The Human Element in Sex (McGowan’s Steam Printing Co. Ltd)

  Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children (Brentano’s Literary Emporium, NY)

  1881Medicine and Morality (W. Speight & Sons)

  Rescue Work in Relation to Prostitution and Disease: an address (T. Danks)

  1882Christian Socialism (D. Williams)

  1883Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil (D. Williams)

  1887Purchase of Women: The Great Economic Blunder (John Kensit)

  1888A Medical Address on the Benevolence of Malthus (T. W. Danks & Co.)

  1889The Influence of Women in the Profession of Medicine. An Address (G. Bell &

  Sons)

  1891Erroneous Method in Medical Education (Women’s Printing Soc.)<
br />
  On the Humane Prevention of Rabies (J. F. Nock)

  Christian Duty in Regard to Vice. A Letter (Moral Reform Union, London)

  1892Why Hygiene Congresses Fail (G. Bell & Sons)

  1895Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (Longmans, Green &

  Co.)

  1898Scientific Method in Biology (Elliot Stock)

  1899Essays in Medical Sociology (privately printed until 1902 2 vols. Ernest Bell)

  Elizabeth Blackwell also wrote numerous articles for magazines on a large variety of subjects some of which were later extracted and printed (for a complete list see Nancy Sahli).

  FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

  1851The Institution of Kaiserworth on the Rhine for the Practical Training of Deaconesses

  (printed by Inmates of the London Ragged Colonial Training School)

  1854Letters from Egypt (privately printed)

  1858Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the

  British Army (privately printed by Harrison & Sons)

  Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War (privately printed by Harrison & Sons)

  1859A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army During the Late War with Russia (Harrison & Sons)

  Notes on Hospitals (John W. Parker & Sons)

  1860Suggestionsfor Thought to the Searchers after Religious Truth among the Artizans of England (privately printed in 3 vols by Eyre & Spottiswoode)

  Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is not (Harrison & Sons)

  1862Army Sanitary Administration and its Reform under the Late Lord Herbert (M’Corquodale & Co.)

  1863Observations on the Evidence Contained in the Stational Reports Submitted to the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India (Edward Stanford)