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Title: Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith ISBN: 0-06-095332-2 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.76 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Treasure Chest of Fascinating, Little-Known History
Comment: Goldsmith has done a real service with this book. It is more or less the history of the 19th-century women's suffrage movement, with special emphasis on the influence of Spiritualism and on the life of Victoria Woodhull (of whom I had never before heard, even though I regard myself as fairly well-versed in American history).
The book is full of fascinating characters and events, most of which are given unconscionably short shrift in our educational system. Goldsmith fleshes out the stories and personalities of many people who were previously just vague images in my mind, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Henry Ward Beecher. It seems from this book that female suffrage could have occurred as much as 50 years earlier than it did, if it hadn't been for a couple of missteps on the part of the supporters of suffrage. For one thing, there was a bitter division among the suffragettes about whether the female right to vote should be part of the movement for enfranchising the recently freed slaves. Sadly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, despite her many wonderful and even heroic contributions to the movement, comes across as an out-and-out racist on this issue, and probably damaged the very cause to which she devoted her life. Secondly, some of the foremost spokespeople for female suffrage got caught up in unrelated, controversial issues, and even in personal sexual scandals.
If you have an interest in American history, you may very well have the same reaction I did while reading this book. Almost every other page, I found myself exclaiming, "Hey, I didn't know that! How come that's not in any of the history books?"
The only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five is that I think the organization and focus could be a little better. The book isn't organized strictly chronologically, and it jumps from one character to another without apparent reason.
But there's just too much really good stuff here to give anything less than four stars, and I have no quarrel with those who have given it five. You won't often pick up a book written for a general audience and learn so many interesting facts that you probably didn't know.
Rating: 4
Summary: Exciting, disturbing, well-presented history/biography!
Comment: This book is huge at 560 pgs; of course, i guess that's nothing compared to these past couple Harry Potters so perhaps i should just say, "substantial." It covers literally Woodhull's entire life (and a good deal of her sister's, Tennessee Claflin), as well as offering am in-depth view of the political and social climate at the time. It devotes a particular amount of time to the changing nuances of her "free love" doctrine and other participants in that movement (one which was, most certainly, ahead of its time--we don't generally think of Victorian times and Free Love in the same boat these days), and the Beecher-Tilton adultery trial.
I found the book to be facinating from a suffrage-history POV, contrasting events depicted/documented within with my memories of the "women's movement" from history classes. Goldsmith isn't afraid to throw stones (mostly by quoting their own less than tolerant words) at suffrage icons Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B Anthony, and others, in the course of depicting an unbiased view of the debate that raged for both women's and black men's suffrage at the time. She is both sympathetic to Victoria and Tennessee (she does a very good job in depicting the bizarre, abusive, nomadic carnival-like nature of their childhoods and family life while growing up), and willing to point out their flaws and transgressions (both women engaged in prostitution, blackmail, and other acts of "questionable ethics").
There's not as much focus on the Spiritualism movement, though the overview is thorough and the author depicts in great detail the ways in which Victoria and Tennessee were involved in it as trance speakers and predictors of the future, both from a very young age. She presents the oracles and visions and claims of spiritualists without passing judgement on them, though it's hard not to do so onesself as a modern skeptic reader--the descriptions of Victoria's frequent "possession" by spirit guides, particularly when speaking in public and in other stressful situations, coupled with her traumatic childhood, are reminiscent of depictions of modern dissociative identity disorders.
To read the book as a modern woman is somewhat horrific; one can't help but think along the lines of "what would I have done back then," when Anthony Comstock was arresting people for even discussing contraception and women were considered the property of their husbands. Goldsmith investigates a lot of related issues, giving brief synopses of cases of abortionists, midwives, spinsters-by-choice, servant-class mothers of illegitimate children who were imprisoned for "infanticide" when their babies died in childbirth...ugh. Horrible reading, but important.
All in all a facinating overview of activism, alternative spirituality, and the tumultuous political climate of post-civil-war America, centered around the life story of the country's first female Presidential candidate.
Rating: 5
Summary: what a great read!
Comment: You couldn't make this stuff up. I was mesmerized.
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Title: The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull by Lois Beachy Underhill, Gloria Steinem ISBN: 1882593103 Publisher: Bridge Works Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
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Title: Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored by Mary Gabriel ISBN: 1565121325 Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill Pub. Date: 28 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, Second Edition by Ann Braude ISBN: 0253215021 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Talking to the Dead : Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg ISBN: 0060566671 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 13 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Rereading Sex : Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America by HELEN LEFKOWITZ HOROWITZ ISBN: 0375701869 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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