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Free thinker : sex, suffrage, and the extraordinary life of Helen Hamilton Gardener / Kimberly A. Hamlin.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2020]Copyright date: ©2020Edition: First editionDescription: xiv, 386 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781324004974
  • 1324004975
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
A Chenoweth of Virginia -- The best and cheapest teachers -- A very bad Beecher case -- Purgatory and rebirth -- Ingersoll in soprano -- The cultured poor -- Sex in brain -- The fictions of fiction -- The Harriet Beecher Stowe of fallen women -- Wee wifee -- Around the world with the sun -- Mrs. Day comes to Washington -- Old fogies -- NAWSA's "diplomatic corps" -- Twenty-two favors -- Our heroic dead.
Summary: "How one "fallen woman" battled religious ideology, pseudoscience, and political resistance to women's right to vote. Exposed in Ohio newspapers for an affair with a married man, Alice Chenowyth refused to cower in shame. Instead she changed her name to Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York, pretended to be married to her lover, and became a wildly popular lecturer and author, brazenly opposed to sexist piety and propriety. The "Harriet Beecher Stowe of Fallen Women," she supported raising the age of sexual consent for girls (from twelve or younger), decried double standards of sexual morality, and debunked scientists' claims that women's brains were inferior. With liberal doses of feminine charm, Gardner networked tirelessly to persuade Woodrow Wilson and other male politicians to support the Nineteenth Amendment. Her effort, according to suffrage leader Carrie Pitt, was "the most potent factor" in its passage. As more women enter politics than ever before, Kimberly A. Hamlin recovers the wildly entertaining and illuminating life of a brilliant, effective woman-all but forgotten-who paved the way"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography Gardener H. H223 Available 33111009635570
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

When Ohio newspapers published the story of Alice Chenoweth's affair with a married man, she changed her name to Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York, and devoted her life to championing women's rights and decrying the sexual double standard. She published seven books and countless essays, hobnobbed with the most interesting thinkers of her era, and was celebrated for her audacious ideas and keen wit. Opposed to piety, temperance, and conventional thinking, Gardener eventually settled in Washington, D.C., where her tireless work proved, according to her colleague Maud Wood Park, "the most potent factor" in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Free Thinker is the first biography of Helen Hamilton Gardener, who died as the highest-ranking woman in federal government and a national symbol of female citizenship. Hamlin exposes the racism that underpinned the women's suffrage movement and the contradictions of Gardener's politics. Her life sheds new light on why it was not until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the Nineteenth Amendment became a reality for all women.

Celebrated in her own time but lost to history in ours, Gardener was hailed as the "Harriet Beecher Stowe of Fallen Women." Free Thinker is the story of a woman whose struggles, both personal and political, resound in today's fight for gender and sexual equity.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A Chenoweth of Virginia -- The best and cheapest teachers -- A very bad Beecher case -- Purgatory and rebirth -- Ingersoll in soprano -- The cultured poor -- Sex in brain -- The fictions of fiction -- The Harriet Beecher Stowe of fallen women -- Wee wifee -- Around the world with the sun -- Mrs. Day comes to Washington -- Old fogies -- NAWSA's "diplomatic corps" -- Twenty-two favors -- Our heroic dead.

"How one "fallen woman" battled religious ideology, pseudoscience, and political resistance to women's right to vote. Exposed in Ohio newspapers for an affair with a married man, Alice Chenowyth refused to cower in shame. Instead she changed her name to Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York, pretended to be married to her lover, and became a wildly popular lecturer and author, brazenly opposed to sexist piety and propriety. The "Harriet Beecher Stowe of Fallen Women," she supported raising the age of sexual consent for girls (from twelve or younger), decried double standards of sexual morality, and debunked scientists' claims that women's brains were inferior. With liberal doses of feminine charm, Gardner networked tirelessly to persuade Woodrow Wilson and other male politicians to support the Nineteenth Amendment. Her effort, according to suffrage leader Carrie Pitt, was "the most potent factor" in its passage. As more women enter politics than ever before, Kimberly A. Hamlin recovers the wildly entertaining and illuminating life of a brilliant, effective woman-all but forgotten-who paved the way"-- Provided by publisher.

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