Unmentionables
Page 25
“Are you sure?”
“Here, sit with me.” He swiveled the desk chair toward the window and sat, pulling her into his lap. “This is my favorite spot. Lean against me and we’ll put our feet up on the sill.”
The chair tipped back and, for a moment, Marian had the sensation they were stepping into an unsteady boat. But everything soon righted itself, their legs and feet comfortably entwined. Deuce was talking in low tones about their life together. The vibrations of the words in his chest were like ripples in a pond. She floated on the current, her breath mingling with his, no longer the solitary stone tossed and forgotten.
* * *
On the other side of Emporia, the folding chairs had been stacked, the lights unstrung and neatly coiled, the potted palms and the lecterns packed and loaded. Only the tent remained. And when the center poles were struck, the canvas fell upon itself, exhaling words and music and bits of sawdust that the prairie winds swept away to the far ends of the continent.
Acknowledgments
I would like to offer thanks to a number of people for their support during the writing of Unmentionables. Foremost is Kaylie Jones, author, teacher, and friend, who has been by my side at every step, guiding me on the bumpy road from journalist to novelist. Her courage and heart are valued beyond measure. Ken Moyer patiently read, reread, and read yet again these pages in their many different permutations, and for that, I am deeply grateful. Other readers (and fellow writers) who gave me critical feedback were Taylor Polites, Nina Solomon, Theasa Tuohy, Barbara Taylor, Deirdre Sinnott, Kevin Heisler, and Tom Borthwick. Ellen Athas, Al Ferlo, Patricia Shores, and Bob Bell listened patiently to my angst over each revision and were early readers as well. Deb Hull, bibliophile par excellence, has guided me to many extraordinary books over the years, most noteworthy for this project being Helen Zenna Smith’s Not So Quiet . . . . Finally, I am in debt to Wilkes University archivist and history professor emeritus Harold Cox, who not only shared his extensive knowledge of railroads and trolleys, but lugged a weighty fare register into his office to show me how it worked.
Bibliography
Boudreau, Frank G. “The Problem of Supervision of the Milk Supply in Ohio.” Ohio Public Health Journal XI, no. 11 (1920): 168–170.
Braddan, William S. Under Fire with the 370th (8th I.N.G.) A.E.F. Memoirs of the World War. Self-published, 1920.
Bruns, Roger A. The Damndest Radical: The Life and World of Ben Reitman, Chicago’s Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King, and Whorehouse Physician. University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Canning, Charlotte M. The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance. University of Iowa Press, 2005.
Case, Victoria and Robert Ormand Case. We Called It Culture: The Story of Chautauqua. Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1948.
Chuppa-Cornell, Kimberly. “The U.S. Women’s Motor Corps in France, 1914–1921.” The Historian 57, no. 4 (1995): 465–576.
Conroy, Jack. “Beliefs Mid Customs—Occupational Lore?” American Memory, Library of Congress, Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940.
Cunningham, Patricia A. Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850–1920. Kent State University Press, 2003.
Ebbets, Jan McCoy. “Despair in War-Torn France Eased After Smith Women Arrived in 1917.” NewsSmith, Spring 2008. http://www.smith.edu/newssmith/spring2008/france.php.
Fields, Jill. “Fighting the Corsetless Evil: Shaping Corsets and Culture, 1900–1930.” In Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America, edited by Philip Scranton, 109–136. Routledge, 2001.
Gaines, Ruth. A Village in Picardy. E.P. Dutton & Company, 1918.
Gavin, Lettie. American Women in World War I: They Also Served. University Press of Colorado, 1997.
Griffith, Sally Foreman. Home Town News: William Allen White and the Emporia Gazette. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Harrison, Harry P. Culture Under Canvas: The Story of Tent Chautauqua. Hastings House Publishers, 1958.
Heap, Chad. Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940. University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Israel, Betsy. Bachelor Girl: 100 Years of Breaking the Rules—A Social History of Living Single. Perennial, 2003.
Johnson, Russell L. “Dancing Mothers: The Chautauqua Movement in Twentieth-Century American Popular Culture,” American Studies International XXXIX, no. 2 (June 2001).
Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I. Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.
Quillin, Frank U. The Color Line in Ohio: A History of Race Prejudice in a Typical Northern State. George Wahr, 1913.
Russell, Francis. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968.
Saville, Deborah. “Dress and Culture in Greenwich Village.” In Twentieth-Century American Fashion edited by Linda Werters and Patricia A Cunningham, 33–56. Berg, 2005.
Schultz, James R. The Romance of Small-Town Chautauquas. University of Missouri Press, 2002.
Smith, Helen Zenna. Not So Quiet . . . The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1989.
Stewart, Charles D. “Prussianizing Wisconsin,” Atlantic Monthly 123 (January 1919): 101–102.
Reading Groupe Guide
1. Marian struggles with the tension between independence and isolation. What other characters risk loneliness in service of their independence? How does each accommodate or overcome it?
2. The title Unmentionables refers to Marian's fight for practical undergarments for women. It also alludes to secrets and hidden agendas that are not mentioned or discussed in public. Which characters have private wounds or secret shames? How do these buried hurts affect their actions?
3. From the restriction of corsets to the discomfort of unisex, company-issued coats, clothing dictates expectations and reaffirms projected roles. How do you choose to present yourself? What are you wearing today that may reaffirm roles or expectations?
4. The author has stated she believes 1917-18 was a pivotal era in the United States. What events in the novel reflect these shifting currents in American life?
5. The argument for women's suffrage changed around the time the novel takes place. Early activists had argued that women should be granted the vote because all humans were created equal and should therefore have equal rights. By 1918, during a period of blossoming social reform, suffragists began emphasizing the ways that women were different from men and underscored what franchised women could do to improve the government and their communities. Which side(s) do you think the various women in the novel came down on?
6. In spite of wearing the same uniform as every other soldier, Emmett's 370th Infantry Unit faced severe racial discrimination. Besides Emmett, who else wears uniforms in the novel, and what impact do the uniforms have? What role do uniforms play in our society today?
Enhance your reading
· Marian Elliott Adams is a prominent lecturer on the Chautauqua Circuit. Learn more about the history of this traveling cultural program, which Theodore Roosevelt called "The Most American Thing in America," by exploring the wealth of photos and pamphlets available from the Library of Congress: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/tc/
· Anne Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan, headed the best known of several relief groups organized by American women to assist French civilians during World War I. The fictitious unit Marian joins is modeled on Miss Morgan's as well as that of Smith College. An online exhibit about Anne Morgan's work includes photographs, films, and voice recordings at: http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/annemorgan/faces-of-war.
· Like Emmett in Unmentionables, many African-Americans hoped that America's entry into World War I would offer them expanded opportunities both in the labor force on the home front and in the front lines of the battle field. This video explores the African-American experience during WWI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BzO9_ghigo
BEHIND THE BOOK
As America’s doughboys marched off to tra
ining camps in their puttees, khaki tunics and cartridge belts, they left behind a country that was on the tipping point of a number of dramatic changes.
TENT CHAUTAUQUA
In the early 20th century, the highlight of the summer for thousands of isolated small town and farming folk across the Midwest was the unfurling of the big Chautauqua tent on the village outskirts.
Tent, or Circuit, Chautauqua, was the commercial offspring of the revered Mother Chautauqua, an educational retreat in western New York, that still pursues its educational mission more than 150 years after its founding in 1874. Circuit Chautauqua took on the mantle of edification, along with entertainment, in an era before radio or moving pictures. For a week or more, everyone put aside their work and settled onto wooden chairs under the canvas to receive enlightenment and culture from the day’s foremost orators, musicians and humorists. Theodore Roosevelt famously called Chautauqua “The most American thing in America.”
Among those who took to Chautauqua platforms across the heart of the country were Williams Jennings Bryan, populist; Jane Addams, settlement activist; the young ventriloquist Edgar Bergen; Ohio senator (and later president) Warren G. Harding; the Fisk (University) Jubilee Singers Negro spirituals and Opie Read, known for his homespun stories. Swiss bell ringers; chalk talkers, who illustrated their stories as they spoke; male quartets; adventurers who had traveled in remote lands and interpretive readers who acted out such favorites as Shakespeare and Dickens rounded out the schedule.
As one young mother explained to the journalist, Ida Tarbell, “It is a great thing for us, particularly for us younger women with growing children. There are none of us in this town very rich. Most of us have to do all our work. We have little amusement, and almost never get away from home. The Chautauqua brings us an entire change. We plan for weeks before it. There is hardly a woman I know in town who has not her work so arranged, her pantry so full of food, that she can get to the meetings at half past two in the afternoon, and easily stay until five. She gets her work done up for Chautauqua week.”
By the 1920s, tent audiences dwindled as radio and moving pictures competed for audiences and travel became easier. Most of the agencies who mounted Circuit Chautauqua had stopped booking by the 1930s. Chautauqua, however, lives on at the distinguished Mother Chautauqua in western New York, and in various communities and states who sponsor variations on the Chautauqua theme with historical reenactors, musical shows and workshops.
WOMEN & THE GREAT WAR
No man’s land, the scoured earth between World War I’s front lines, was already was planted with three year’s worth of rotting corpses, muddy shell holes and shreds of barbed wire, when America declared war on the Central Powers in April of 1917. When the Great War, as it was known, was over, some 20 months later, the changes it wrought spread far beyond the countries of Europe, beyond the dead and mutilated fighting men, beyond thousands of Belgian and French refugees and orphaned children. It had a significant impact on American women.
Cities like Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City, were hit hard when American boys were called up, leaving factories without workers, post offices without carriers and trollies without conductors. Women, like Helen Garland in Unmentionables, stepped into positions formerly closed to them. This stream of women workers joined the women, white and black who had already begun to move, in increasing numbers, from farms to cities in the 1910s. They took up positions as factory inspectors, municians welders, paper box factories and, like Helen, on trolley lines.
A report from the U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, in 1918, included first-hand comments by women trolley conductors, including this woman:
“(The) hours are irregular and I can pick the hours I want I found inspecting small parts in a factory very hard on my eyes and I found it so hard to attend to my duties at home For a long time while my children were small I had to do washing at home but it was so hard on my back I couldn t stand it Why do I like this better Well I have lived through years of want and have not had sufficient food for my children so naturally I like being able to provide enough for them No one who has worked in a factory can fall to appreciate or understand why we prefer this outdoor work I tried driving a taxlcab but found that too cold This is not work it’s being on duty without special exertion and being on duty under pleasant conditions with constant change of scenery always seeing people and interesting things Then the good wages have lifted my children out of the ranks of those in want I am supporting four and thank God my earnings now make It possible to give them the food clothing and shelter they need.”
Like Helen, however, many of the women entering what was formerly considered men’s work found lower wages and resistance from the established male workers. Women, it was widely assumed, would step back into the domestic realm at the end of the war.
Helen Doublas of Atlanta, Ga., and Florence Eadie, two of the “chauffeuses whose robustness surpasses the imagination.
Their hair pulled up in utilitarian topknots called pugs, hundreds of American women served as nurses, canteen workers, ambulance drivers and as telephone operators alongside the Doughboys in the embattled French countryside.
A minority turned their attention to French civilians in the Picardy region, who had lived under German occupation until 1917 when the occupiers pulled out to establish to establish a stronger trench system to the east. Foremost among these was Anne Morgan, the saavy daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, who established a well-run organization, in conjunction with the French military, to rebuild the villages, distribute supplies, provide medical care and schools. The American Committee for Devasted France (ACDF) worked on well after the Versaille Treaty ended the war and, in honor of these efforts, the Franco-American Museum at the Chateau de Blérancourt was established.
The Smith College Relief Unit, upon which the fictional Fielding College is based, also oversaw the needs of 16 devasted villages, mostly composed of the very elderly and very young. Rubble was cleared, wounds bound, classrooms and libraries were established beginning in late 1917 as the war raged on. In March, the relief units began distributing seeds to the villagers and helping them clear ground for planting, when the German Army propelled from its new fortifications and propelled itself westward, laying waste to the newly reconstructed villages and driving civilivian refugees toward Paris. The American women, like the fictional Marian, helped shepherd the fleeing villagers to safety and, after the war, returned for the rebuilding process.
SMALL TOWN PRESSES
As in so many other areas of American life, the newspapers of the early 20th century were in transition. The Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cincinnati Inquirer and other big-city presses were regularly publishing stories by their own national and foreign correspondents, as well as investigative journalists. For the majority of newspapers in the country, however, the meat and potatoes were news stories about new stores opening, local boys joining up and local items about subscribers comings and goings — all with an eye to boosting the community.
Photo courtesy of the Early Office Museum. http://www.earlyofficemuseum.com
“It is very doubtful if there is a community wherein the women are more earnestly engaged in the great work of providing comfort for the soldiers than right here in our town,” reads one front-page story of an Ohio newspaper of September 6, 1917. “Not only are the regular meetings of the Red Cross Society attended by a large number of the working members, but the ladies of the Lutheran church have organized into a working corps and are doing splendid work especially in the knitted goods that are so greatly needed in the trenches.”
About Laurie Loewenstein
LAURIE LOEWENSTEIN grew up in the flatlands of western Ohio and now resides in Rochester, NY, where Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872. Unmentionables is her first novel.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2014 by Laurie Loewenstein
Back cover illustrations from The Completeness of Spirella Service, The Spirella Company, Inc., 1924, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
All vintage photos in the "Behind the Book" section are courtesy of the Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa, unless otherwise noted.
ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-194-3
eISBN: 9781617751998
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938804
All Rights Reserved.
Kaylie Jones Books
c/o Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
info@akashicbooks.com
www.akashicbooks.com
Kaylie Jones Books, Editor’s Note
___________________
The increasingly commercial nature of mainstream publishing has made it difficult for literary writers to find a home for their more serious, thought-provoking works. Kaylie Jones Books will create a cooperative of dedicated emerging and established writers who will play an integral part in the publishing process, from reading manuscripts, editing, offering advice, to advertising the upcoming publications. The list of brilliant novels unable to find homes within the mainstream is growing every day.
It is our hope to publish books that bravely address serious issues—historical or contemporary—relevant to society today. Just because a book addresses serious topics and may include tragic events does not mean that the narrative cannot be amusing, fast-paced, plot-driven, and lyrical all at once. Our flagship publication, Unmentionables by Laurie Loewenstein, is exactly such a novel. The book takes place in 1917 Illinois, on the verge of US involvement in WWI. While the larger topics are race and women’s suffrage, the characters and their courageous stands against oppression and reactionary bigotry could not be more relevant today.