Woman of Valor (73 page)

4.
Also see Hersey's interview with Flynn, “Margaret Sanger,” p. 108.

5.
Flynn,
Rebel Girl
, pp. 152-53; Tresca, “Autobiography,” pp. 208-14, 218. Socialist Party resignations are in SPNY, Letterbooks at Tamiment, although Sanger's is not among them, so we have to take her word. Also see Camp manuscript;
The Papers of Eugene Debs
, microfilm ed., introduction, p. 24, Tamiment-NYU; Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All
, p. 257, and Henry F. May,
The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time
(New York: 1959), pp. 219-21, 228.

6.
Flynn, “The Truth About the Paterson Strike,” typed copy of a speech in Tamiment-NYU, quoted in Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All
, p. 272.;
idem
, pp. 266-79, and Robert Rosenstone,
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed
(New York: 1975), p. 123.

7.
Accounts of Sanger in Paterson are in William Haywood,
Bill Haywood's Book
(New York, 1929), pp. 260-62; in
The Call
, Apr. 30, 1913, and
The New
York Times
, Apr. 30 and May 1, 1913, cited in Anne Huber Tripp,
The I.W.W. and the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
(Urbana, Ill., 1987), p. 51. On the pageant, see
The Call
, June 26, 1913 (cited in Tripp, p. 145);
Autobiography
, p. 85; Flynn, “The Truth About Paterson”; Mabel Dodge Luhan,
Movers and Shakers
(Albuquerque, N. M.: 1985), originally published in 1936, pp. 188-89, 194-95, 203-207; Rosenstone,
Romantic Revolutionary
, p. 127; Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All
, pp. 281-83, and the Camp manuscript, Chap. 3. Interpretations of the strike are in David Montgomery,
Worker's Control in America
(Cambridge: 1979), pp. 91-92.

8.
Autobiography
, esp. p. 110. Hersey, “Margaret Sanger,” pp. 89-90, David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), pp. 9-15. The Eastman quote is in
Enjoyment of Living
(New York: 1948).

9.
For his sense of defeat, see W.S. to M.S., letters from Paris, 1914, passim, MS-SS. On the generational conflict between individual and social renewal, see Leslie Fishbein,
Rebels in Bohemia: The Radicals of the Masses, 1911-1917
, (Chapel Hill: 1982), Chap. 1, and May,
End of Innocence
, pp. 195-219 and 283.

10.
W.S. to M.S., Sept. 3, 1913, MS-SS; M.S. “What Every Girl Should Know,”
The Call
, Feb. 6, 1913, Tamiment-NYU, also cited in James Reed,
The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private View to Public Virtue
(Princeton: 1984), p. 76; Hersey, “Margaret Sanger,” p. 110, quoting an interview with M.S. Boyd re: Paterson, also cited in Reed,
idem
, p. 78.

11.
Autobiography
p. 85.

12.
On Flynn's social reticence, see Camp manuscript, Chap. 2. On Goldman, see Candace Falk,
Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman
(New York, 1985); Alice Wexler,
Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life
(New York, 1985) and Richard Drinnon,
Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman
(Chicago, 1961).

13.
Once again, I am indebted to the rich secondary material from this period in American history and women's studies: Carl Degler,
At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present
(New York: 1980), esp. pp. 5-9, and 101-10; John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(New York: 1988), pp. 4-17, 27-30, 40-58. Linda Kerber,
Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
(Chapel Hill: 1980), pp. 51-55, 99-111; Mary Beth Norton,
Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women 1750-1800
(New York: 1980), pp. 188-90, 195-210, 230-32; Nancy F. Cott,
The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman's Sphere in New England, 1780-1835
(New Haven: 1977), pp. 126-59. On illegitimacy in particular, see Ellen K. Rothman,
Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America
(New York: 1984), p. 141. And finally, Sylvia A. Law's reconsideration of women and the Constitution: “The Founders on Families,”
University of Florida Law Review
39:3 (Summer 1987), pp. 583-612. Also see Paul E. Johnson,
A Shopkeeper's Daughter: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
(New York: 1978), pp. 136-41; Mary P. Ryan,
Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County New York, 1790-1865
(Cambridge, Eng., and New York: 1981), pp. 145-85; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” in her
Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America
(New York: 1985), pp. 79-89, 129-33, 137-43; and Peter Gay,
The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud
, Vol. 1:
Education of the Senses
(New York: 1984), esp. 19 and pp. 47-49.
Recent studies of Freud argue the influence on psychoanalytic theory of the distinctive social anomie of the secular Jewish community of nineteenth-century Vienna, alienated on the one hand from orthodox religious and cultural values and on the other from the Christian society around it. An analogous situation may have presented itself in the intensely fragmented culture of nineteenth-century America, accounting perhaps for the unusually receptive audience that psychoanalytic theory and practice subsequently received in this country.
On culture and personality, see especially Christopher Lasch,
Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged
(New York: 1977), pp. 63-75, and for the definitive work on Freud in America and the legacy of popular Victorian culture, Nathan G. Hale, Jr.,
Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876-1914
(New York: 1971), pp. 24-46. On liberal Protestantism see Ann Douglas,
The Feminization of American Culture
(New York: 1977), pp. 17-142. The best analysis of nineteenth-century domestic advice literature remains Kathryn Sklar's biography of Catherine Beecher, popular writer on domestic economy, daughter of the revivalist preacher Lyman Beecher and sister of abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. See Kathryn Kish Sklar,
Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity
(New Haven: 1973), esp. pp. 134-42, 153-93.

14.
Smith-Rosenberg, “Female World,” pp. 115, 129-64, 173; Linda Gordon,
Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America
(New York: 1976), pp. 17-21, 23-95, 108-109, 123; N. Hale,
Freud and the Americans
, Sklar,
Catherine Beecher
, pp. 116-27: Cott,
Bonds of Womanhood
, pp. 197-206: Ryan,
Cradle
, esp. 191-210, Degler,
At Odds
, esp. pp. 26-51, 279-98; Sheila M. Rothman,
Woman's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present
(New York: 1978), pp. 67, 82-83; and Rosenberg,
Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism
(New Haven: 1982), introduction.

15.
Peter Gay,
Bourgeois Experience
, pp. 168-69, 230-32; D'Emilio and Freedman,
Intimate Matters
, p. 45; Smith-Rosenberg, “Female World,” pp. 182-96; 217-44; Degler,
At Odds
, pp. 249-78 (takes the most skeptical view of the significance of repressive ideology and of the conspiratorial theories linking it to status anxiety on the part of doctors). Also see Nancy F. Cott, “Passionless: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850,” in
A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women
, edited by Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck (New York: 1979), pp. 162-79 and especially p. 168; Judith Walzer Leavitt,
Brought to Bed: A History of Childbirth in America 1750-1950
(New York: 1986), pp. 32-55; Ann Douglas Wood “The Fashionable Diseases: Women's Complaints and Their Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America,” Regina Morantz, “The Lady and Her Physician,” in
Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women
, edited by Mary Hartman and Lois W. Banner (New York: 1974), pp. 1-22, and 38-53. The most extreme of the misogynist interpretations of female sexuality were in the writings of Drs. William Acton and William A. Alcott, see Gay,
Bourgeois Experience
, and Rosenberg,
Beyond Separate Spheres
. Contrarily, examples abound of physicians who stressed the value of sexual pleasure for women such as Dr. Edward B. Foote, the advocate of contraception, and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman physician in the United States, see Degler,
At Odds
. Nonetheless, sexual control for both sexes was widely endorsed. Finally, for a modern-day, Freudian analysis of these gender arrangements, see Dorothy Dinnerstein,
The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Social Malaise
(New York: 1976).

16.
Smith-Rosenberg, “Female World,” pp. 167-81, 197-216. A compelling case study of how gender tensions undermined one brilliant but sensitive Victorian daughter and led to a lifetime of neurasthenic conditions is in Jean Strouse,
Alice James: A Biography
(Boston: 1980), pp. 97-143. Feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman powerfully recorded her own breakdown in
The Yellow Wallpaper
(New York: 1973).

17.
The Goldman quote is from “Rebel Thoughts,” in Margaret Sanger,
The Woman Rebel
1: 4 (June 1914). Also see Emma Goldman, “The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation,”
Anarchism and Other Essays
(New York: 1910), p. 237; and Emma Goldman, “Anarchism” in
Mother Earth
9: 7 (Sept. 1914), p. 212.

18.
Goldman,
Anarchism
, p. 237, also cited in Falk,
Love, Anarchy
, p. 193, and Wexler,
Emma Goldman
, p. 153.

19.
Wexler,
Emma Goldman
, p. 166; Gordon,
Woman's Body
, pp. 213-21; Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, pp. 46-53. The Reitman verse is in Reitman to Norman Himes, Feb. 13, 1938, in the Norman Himes Papers, Countway Library, Harvard University, cited in Reed,
idem
, p. 53.

20.
Goldman's reference to Sanger is in
Living My Life
(New York, 1931). Also see Falk,
Love, Anarchy
, pp. 212 and 379. Sanger denies their association in M.S. to Ethel Clyde June 12, 1935, MS-LC. The quote is from M.S. to James Pond, Feb. 23, 1934, in MS-LC.

21.
William Sanger to Emma Goldman, Mar. 17, 1916, in MS-LC. For the nature of Goldman's lecture material before 1915, see “Review of New York Activities 1913-1914,”
Mother Earth
9:2 (Apr. 1914), p. 54. For escalation of her rhetoric and activities after 1915, see Emma Goldman, “The Social Aspects of Birth Control,”
Mother Earth
, 11:2 (1916), pp. 468-75. A copy of the pamphlet entitled
Why and How the Poor Should Not Have Many Children
, is in the Ben Reitman Papers at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, also cited in Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, p. 393, f.n. 17.

5: BOHEMIA AND BEYOND

1.
William Sanger to M.S., Dec. 8, 1914, and Jan 5. 1914, which says how he hates “wage slavery,” MS-SS.

2.
Mabel Dodge Luhan,
Movers and Shakers
(New Mexico: 1985), pp. 25-38, 90.

3.
On the Dodge artists see Patricia R. Everett,
Mabel Dodge: The Salon Years, 1912-1917
(New York: 1985), the catalog of a show at the Barbara Mathes Gallery. On art as liberation, see Leslie Fishbein,
Rebels in Bohemia: The Radicals of the Masses, 1911-1917
(Chapel Hill: 1982), p. 30. For an assessment of Bill Sanger's painting, I have relied on the discussions in his letters to Margaret from Paris, especially W.S. to M.S., Jan. 14 and Jan. 20, 1914, MS-SS, on my own observations of his work in the possession of his children and grandchildren, and on the comments of Joan Sanger Hoppe in a letter to me of Mar. 21, 1985. Also see Caren Sands and Donna McWhalen, “William Sanger,” a paper prepared for the Smith College seminar on Margaret Sanger, May 13, 1977, MS-SS.

4.
W.S. to M.S., Mar. 25, 1914, MS-SS, and also his letter of Feb. 25, 1914, which says: “So ‘Art' is in the Parlor with its present Rendezvous at Madame Dodge. If art doesn't get out ‘quick like' it will share the same fate with all the Revolutions that have swept over the movement in New York.”
Also see Luhan,
Movers and Shakers
, pp. 84, 88-91, Fishbein,
Rebels in Bohemia
, pp. 37-38, 85-86, Henry May,
The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time
(New York: 1959), pp. 233-36, and Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(New York: 1980), pp. 50-53.

5.
The “overbearing” quote is from W.S. to M.S. Mar. 25, 1914, MS-SS. The Hutchins Hapgood quote is in
A Victorian in the Modern World
(New York: 1939) p. 170. Also see
Autobiography
, 93-94.
Sanger critics have argued that she artificially inflated her own place in history by undervaluing the quality of information available in this country before her efforts, but the undeniable fact is that her initial endorsement and support of the rubber-spring diaphragm and later, of the oral contraceptive pill, would permanently alter medical opinion about birth control and dramatically change the preferred contraceptive choices of American women. She never claimed to have accomplished anything more.
David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), p. 19, indicts her for saying in her autobiography that she found information no more reliable than that exchanged by “back-fence gossips in any small town.” Kennedy points out that the U.S. Surgeon General's index listed two pages of books and articles on “prevention of conception,” discussing such methods as condoms, vaginal douching, suppositories, tampons, and pessaries. But this was precisely her point. She never claimed, as he says, that before her work doctors knew little about contraception, only that they changed their advice after her work--which, as we shall see, was substantially true. For statistical information on the shift to diaphragm use between 1910 and 1930, see the data on contraceptive practices of white, married women collected by the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, and in Paul Gebhard et al.,
Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion
(New York: 1958), Table 46, p.131, cited in James Reed,
The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue
(Princeton: 1984), pp. 123-25. Reed persuasively refutes Kennedy on this point. This material is discussed further in Chaps. 14 and 15.