Sex Wars

by Marge Piercy

  That evening, Victoria was chatting with a congressional aide in the lounge of her hotel who told her that not only was the press coming in force, but the woman’s rights convention had postponed its opening for a day so that they could hear her. She owed Benjamin a tremendous boon. She could not have asked for better timing or publicity for her entrée into the woman’s rights movement, a possible political base for her.

  She was frightened when the time came for her to go to Capitol Hill. Although Benjamin, James and Stephen had all had a hand in the philosophical, legal and constitutional arguments, if she had not understood it, she would never have signed it and she would never go up to Congress to deliver it in person, as requested by the joint committees. She knew that she had mastered the memorial and the arguments behind it, but still her hands were shaking. The joint committees were meeting in a room big enough to hold them and the press and the audience that had collected, including many women who were probably leaders of the convention that had been postponed so they could see and hear her. She recognized Susan B. Anthony from attending her lectures, but could not find Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the woman she most wanted to meet.

  Benjamin saw that her hands were trembling. He grasped her arm. “You must be strong! Now is no time for feminine modesty. You must speak up so they can hear you and sound competent and confident. Make me proud.”

  “I’m more nervous about the women hearing me than the congressmen and the senators. I know the ladies have heard rumors about me.”

  “Well, Isabella Beecher Hooker may snub you—her family are great snobs who think most highly of themselves and each other next to God.”

  A congressman standing next to them overheard and turned. “It would ill become a Beecher to cast any smirch on Mrs. Woodhull. I am told that Henry Ward Beecher preaches to twenty of his mistresses every Sunday.”

  Victoria smiled at him. At least he seemed to be on her side. She wanted to ask Benjamin who he was, but she was ushered into the hearing room. She drew deep breaths. Spirits be with me, Demosthenes, be with me. I may not be meek, I may not show my fear. I must be bold, as Benjamin has chided me. For a moment, her teeth chattered although the room was overheated.

  Her hands trembled for a moment longer. She felt cold and then hot. The woman finely dressed sitting next to Susan B. Anthony, who was all in black like Victoria, must be Isabella. I must conquer you, I must win you to my side, Victoria thought, and looked straight into Isabella’s eyes. She kept her gaze fixed there for several minutes. Isabella blushed. Victoria touched the white rose she always wore at her neck.

  Benjamin took charge. He got everyone seated, passed out copies of the memorial, spoke to this one and that one, then called the meeting to order. When she was introduced, she rose and the room swam around her. She held tight to the edge of the table. Her voice caught in her throat and once again she trembled, not just her hands but her entire body. This was her grand moment, and she was failing. She was too weak a woman. The men were looking at each other, out the window, one was reading something—a letter? A note? Another was rolling his eyes. Another yawned and scratched himself. Her voice died in the center of the room. Two of the journalists against the wall were chatting. Another was aiming at a spittoon and missing.

  No! She pulled herself upright. I am on the stage. This is a part. I am playing a role I have learned by heart. I have done it many times before. By the fourth sentence her voice rang out as it had when she was acting in silly plays in San Francisco, a strong melodious voice low for a woman and a little husky that could carry up to the second balcony. She breathed from the diaphragm and poured out her words.

  Now their eyes were on her. The man with the note put it down. They had stopped smirking, stopped looking out the window. They were listening. Victoria glanced at Isabella. She was sitting with her mouth slightly open, her eyes glistening. Victoria knew she could win her. She gave her entire speech with passion, with clarity. When she had finished, she stood a moment more and then she collapsed into her chair, the breath gone out of her with her inspiration. Her mind felt empty.

  One of the congressmen seized her hand. “That was amazing.”

  “Do you agree with my arguments?”

  “Can’t say I remember a word you said, but you’re a pretty creature if ever I saw one.”

  She was led out to Benjamin’s office, where Susan and Isabella joined them. Susan was beaming. She had a wonderful warm smile, clasping Victoria’s hands.

  “My dear Woodhull,” Susan said, “you have breathed new life into our movement. You have brought to me hope as strong and energetic as yourself. In two decades of fighting this good fight, I’ve never felt so energized.”

  Victoria kissed Susan on the cheek. “Your faith means the world to me. I long to be of use to our great cause.”

  Isabella was approaching. She had a high forehead and the Beecher jaw, her hair in long curls. Victoria had years of experience sizing up men and women. Isabella was an enthusiast, probably also a devotee of spiritualism, like herself. That was the way to approach her.

  Isabella started to speak, but Victoria got in first. “We have met before.” She held Isabella’s gaze, having discovered already that the woman was susceptible to that kind of mesmerizing eye lock.

  “No…I don’t think so,” Isabella stammered.

  “Not in this life,” Victoria said. “But I sense that we knew each other before… On another plane of existence.”

  Isabella seized her hand and wrung it. “Oh, dear Mrs. Woodhull. You are the savior of our movement. You will lead us like Moses out of bondage.”

  Victoria kept her gaze locked with Isabella’s. “I will try. I have a vision of the grandest revolution this nation has ever seen. And the three of us here will play a great role in this. I know it.”

  Benjamin marched in from the hall. “Your memorial is being set in type. I’ll use my franking and we can send out thousands of copies, also a petition we should draw up directly, to present to Congress after we have enough—impressive numbers—of signatures. We need thousands.”

  Susan wrung Benjamin’s hand. “I can’t wait to tell Mrs. Stanton.”

  “Where is Mrs. Stanton?” Victoria still hoped to meet her, disappointed that the philosopher, the greatest brain of woman’s rights, had not come to hear her.

  “She’s back in New Jersey writing. She’s tired of conventions—she says they don’t move things forward but just act as social events and occasions for infighting. She’ll be furious with herself when she hears what she missed!” Susan did not sound at all unhappy. “She’ll see that important events do occur when women come together determined to act.”

  Victoria met with the women the next day at their convention, gave them money and pledged more for a delegation to remain in Washington to lobby Congress. Isabella offered to head the group. Victoria felt reasonably sure of her now. She was smitten. Victoria was familiar with the looks that Isabella gave her, the doting glances, the fervent handclasps. When they were alone, Victoria was effusive and spoke much of the spirits. When she was with Susan, she spoke of political tactics and how they might proceed with Congress while the fire was still lit.

  Victoria received a note from the president’s wife, Julia Grant, complimenting her on the memorial. Susan told her that Mrs. Grant was sympathetic to the movement. Then an invitation came from President and Mrs. Grant inviting her to tea at the White House. No one in woman’s rights had ever been invited to meet with the president, Susan said in great excitement, hugging her. She liked Susan’s forthright manner. Susan might be an aging virgin, but she had a shrewd mind and she was not a prude. She kept her eye on the goal. Isabella was flightier, more emotional, more prone to enthusiasms and visions and extravagance. Susan would stand by her as long as she was useful. Isabella was a little in love with her, although she would never have phrased it that way to herself. As long as Victoria kept Isabella feeling special, the Beecher woman would never waver.

  The visit to the W
hite House was formal and stiff. But for Victoria, the supreme moment came when the president showed her the Oval Office, shook his finger at her and, pointing to the presidential chair, said, “Someday you will occupy this chair, no doubt, the way you’ve been playing the politician here.”

  When Victoria repeated that to Susan, Susan laughed. “He was teasing you.”

  Victoria shook her head. She knew it was the spirits speaking through the president. “Nonetheless, I think I’ll run for president.”

  Isabella clutched herself in excitement. “What a truly excellent idea!”

  “Why on earth would you do that?” Susan asked. “We need the right to vote long before we can elect a woman to any office.”

  Victoria smiled serenely. She knew she was called on to lead a mighty crusade. “It’s a way to raise issues and force the other candidates to discuss woman’s rights.”

  “That’s quite clever,” Susan said. “It should garner publicity for our cause.”

  Victoria rode back on the train to New York with Susan while Isabella remained in Washington to head the small delegation of women who would lobby Congress. Susan was eager to introduce her to Cady Stanton. She must make a favorable impression on Stanton or she would not have the leverage in the movement that she needed.

  That week, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly carried her memorial in full, and the week after, it bannered her intention to run for president. The idea of running was all her own. Had not the spirits promised her that she would be a great leader and had they not spoken through Grant? Everything was working out according to plan. They had come to New York, Tennie and she, and snared Vanderbilt. They had made enough money to feel rich. She had encountered men and women of ideas who educated and stimulated her. She had become famous. Reporters wrote up everything she did. She had entered the woman’s rights movement with a great splash and now she was counted among its leaders. All was happening as the spirits had instructed her so many years before, that she would be rich and famous and lead a great cause.

  “Running for president is fine, so long as you don’t take it too seriously or waste time electioneering,” James said. “It gets your name in the papers. It could provide you a springboard for the lecture circuit. But otherwise, best to treat it as a publicity stunt.”

  She felt an unusual anger toward him, but she concealed it. He did not believe in her as she believed in herself. His attitude belittled her. She decided she would not open herself and her plans to him as fully as she always had. She felt just a sliver of distance between them. She said nothing and she did not act any differently toward him, but in her heart she knew he did not believe in her as fully as she had always hoped.

  She had to return to Washington again briefly, because Isabella, Benjamin and she had been invited to lecture at Lincoln Hall on constitutional equality. Isabella came to her—Victoria was staying with Benjamin, as his family was out of town—almost in tears. “I have never spoken to a large audience before. How can I? I just cannot do it, Victoria.”

  “Do you remember how frightened I was when I first began to speak before the joint committees of Congress? I know you saw how I was trembling. Call on the spirits, Isabella. They will aid you. The spirits are inspiring and protecting you! You need only feel their presence, draw upon their aid, and you will succeed.”

  Victoria was far more confident this time. Her ability to memorize stood her in good stead, because she could speak without a written text, apparently extemporaneously. Audiences liked that. They felt that a speaker who did not read her speech knew her stuff.

  Benjamin was powerful, as always, a master of rhetoric. The surprise was Isabella. Victoria was sure that Isabella had been asked because of her connection with the powerful, famous and respected Beecher clan. But Isabella spoke well. Her voice was higher-pitched than Victoria’s but carried well and sounded convincing. She understood what she was discussing—she had a kind of legal mind, in spite of her effusiveness and her romantic side. She made an elegant presentation, dressed in mauve velvet and white satin with a huge bustle that emphasized her tiny waist, amethysts plaited into her hair and at her throat. The audience was silent and engrossed. She lacked Butler’s rhetorical flair or Victoria’s ability to fascinate, but she was coherent, logical and persuasive. Isabella was thrilled with her own success.

  “This is what I was born for. I could never draw or paint, never write like Harriet, I have no gift for educating girls like Catherine—but I have discovered at last my own true gifts. I have found my métier at last—because of you, dear Victoria. Because of you!”

  Victoria was growing accustomed to women developing crushes on her. Her charm worked on women as well as men. She had always had women friends, but these new conquests were a more accomplished type than she had encountered before. It was all going very well indeed.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ELIZABETH KNEW ONLY what she read in the papers, accounts of Victoria Woodhull addressing the joint committees of Congress, apparently triumphantly. There were, of course, cartoons—Woodhull as a schoolmarm lecturing Congress, Woodhull as a circus performer riding an elephant labeled Benjamin Butler. But most of the coverage was surprisingly respectful. Susan was going to gloat over her that she had missed the most spectacular and meaningful advance of their movement in several years. She could hardly endure waiting till Susan appeared. She considered going off by train to Washington, but that would be too abject—to arrive after everything important had happened, as a sort of caboose to the powerful engine Mrs. Woodhull seemed to embody.

  Finally Susan appeared, rosy-cheeked and scarcely able to take the time to throw aside her cloak and gloves before launching into an account of the Washington adventure, as Elizabeth had been calling it to herself.

  “So Isabella stayed in Washington?”

  “She’s heading our delegation. Woodhull is paying. Also Senator Butler has sent out thousands upon thousands of copies of Woodhull’s memorial along with petitions requesting that Congress make a declaration of our right to vote according to the Constitution.”

  “Is she paying for all this?”

  “It’s free, Mrs. Stanton. The petitions are going out on Senator Butler’s franking privilege. We could never have afforded this.”

  Elizabeth asked Amelia to make coffee. “We certainly couldn’t. Now I’m sorry we let go of the Revolution. Perhaps Woodhull would have helped us with our debts.”

  “We still have them. I don’t know how I’ll ever pay them off.…If you could manage to contribute something?”

  “Susan, I have my younger children still to support. I have this house, where you are a member of the household whenever you wish. I live off the lecture circuit, the same as you. I have no money to spare. Nothing!”

  “I wish we could ask Woodhull to pay off a creditor or two, but she has her own paper.” Susan pulled a copy from her reticule.

  Elizabeth poured them both big mugs of coffee with hot milk. “It’s pretty progressive. She seems bright. Is she?”

  “You can judge for yourself, Mrs. Stanton.” Susan drank her coffee, holding the cup in both hands to warm them. “I’ve invited her for luncheon next Sunday. Here.”

  “Will she come?” Elizabeth turned to Amelia. “Bring Susan some soup.”

  “She’s eager to make your acquaintance. She was bitterly disappointed that you weren’t in Washington.”

  “All right, Susan, admitted: I’m sorry I didn’t go. But I’ve been to so many of these conventions, I’m heartily sick of them.”

  “It was a most hopeful and stimulating experience, Mrs. Stanton. I’m convinced Woodhull will be a great asset for our movement.”

  In the papers the next morning was an account of President Grant receiving Woodhull at the White House. Elizabeth shook her head in wonder. In a couple of weeks, Woodhull had accomplished more for the cause than they had been able to do in the last year. Sunday she would meet this marvel. All that buildup and probably she would meet someone flashy, arrogant or just a p
awn in a male game. There were always rumors circulating that the Weekly was written by various men, from Woodhull’s husband to Stephen Pearl Andrews. Pearlo was an old friend of hers; she could ask him directly. She dashed off a note at once.

  The first issue of the Revolution was out. Susan looked at it and threw it across the room in a rare fit of anger. Elizabeth read it, sighing and muttering over the watered-down paper full of homilies and arguments that women and men had common interests and should all just get along. She was not overly fond of Tilton these days, but what could they do? She and Susan had sold it to Laura Bullard for a dollar so that it would continue—but what a pallid continuation. She felt as if they had given away a child and now that child was being turned into a simpering fool. Certainly this paper would anger no one, inspire no one. Isabella was upset with the change and quit as literary editor. Besides, she was immensely busy in Washington carrying out the great work that her dear Queen, as she called Victoria, had given her. Now “Queen” was a common term of endearment among women Elizabeth knew, but this particular usage made her wince. Isabella was enamored, there could be no other word for it. Isabella had that enthusiastic side, a dither of spiritualism.

  Elizabeth liked the spiritualists well enough—they were a far gentler less doctrinaire religious group than most, and more egalitarian. The Quakers and the spiritualists were the only religions that gave women a strong role—and among spiritualists, many leaders and prominent mediums were women. Elizabeth had seen how comforting spiritualism was to mothers who had lost children, which included most women. A mother could feel her beloved son or daughter had simply passed onto a higher plane of being where they were still evolving and from which they could communicate. It was marvelously comforting to the bereft, and most Americans were often enough in mourning. After all, just about every family had a son or brother or husband killed in the Civil War.