Treacherous Texts
Treacherous Texts
An Anthology of U.S. Suffrage Literature, 1846-1946
Uncovering startling affinities between popular literature and propaganda, Treacherous Texts samples a rich, decades-long tradition of suffrage literature created by writers from diverse racial, class, and regional backgrounds. Beginning with sentimental fiction and polemic, progressing through modernist and middlebrow experiments, and concluding with post-ratification memoirs and tributes, this anthology showcases lost and neglected fiction, poetry, drama, literary journalism, and autobiography; it also samples innovative print cultural forms devised for the campaign, such as valentines, banners, and cartoons. Featured writers include canonical figures as well as writers popular in their day but, until now, lost to ours.
Includes writings by:
• Sojourner Truth
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Frederick Douglass
• Fanny Fern
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Djuna Barnes
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Marianne Moore
• Sui Sin Far
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Gertrude Stein
And many others.
This exciting anthology has no competitors. With an impressive historical range and a great diversity of primary documents and useful reference materials, Treacherous Texts offers an original contribution to scholarship and an important classroom teaching tool.
Treacherous Texts highlights diversity and contestation within the U.S. suffrage movement by mining activists' innovative use of literature and print culture. This rich and varied collection addresses critical issues in the suffrage campaign in ways that will engage history and literature students and scholars alike.
Treacherous Texts is an invaluable resource, one that reminds twenty-first-century readers of the richness, complexity, innovation, and experimentation of the American suffrage movement and makes a strong argument for the continued study of this burgeoning field.
Angela Mills is a former assistant professor of English at Brock University.
Acknowledgments ix
Chronology of the U.S. Woman Suffrage Campaign xi
Introduction 1
PART I
Declaring Sentiments, 1846–1891
Introduction 10
“Petition for Woman’s Rights” (1846)
Eleanor Vincent, Susan Ormsby, Lydia Williams, Amy Ormsby, Lydia Osborn, and Anna Bishop 18
“Declaration of Sentiments” (1848)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, and others 20
Speech at Akron, Ohio, Woman’s Rights Convention (1851)
Sojourner Truth 24
Christine, or, Woman’s Trials and Triumphs (1856)
Laura J. Curtis [Bullard] 26
“Independence” (1859) “Shall Women Vote?” (1860)
Fanny Fern [Sara Willis Parton] 41
“Woman and the Ballot” (1870)
Frederick Douglass 43
“Aunt Chloe’s Politics” (1871)
“John and Jacob—A Dialogue on Woman’s Rights” (1885)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 47
My Wife and I; or, Harry Henderson’s History (1871)
Harriet Beecher Stowe 51
“Cupid and Chow-Chow” (1872)
Louisa May Alcott 62
“Trotty’s Lecture Bureau” (1877)
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 74
“How I went to ’lection” (1877)
Marietta Holley 77
Fettered for Life, or, Lord and Master (1874)
“A Divided Republic: An Allegory of the Future” (1885)
Lillie Devereux Blake 86
“Another Chapter of ‘The Bostonians’” (1887)
Henrietta James [Celia B. Whitehead] 100
Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891)
Sophia Alice Callahan 108
PART II
Searching for Sisterhood: Two Case Studies of Transnational Feminism, 1907–1914
Introduction 114
Interactions between U.S. and British Campaigns 119
Votes for Women (1907) Elizabeth Robins 120
“The March of the Women” (1911)
Dame Ethel Smyth and Cicely Hamilton 133
“The Diary of a Newsy” (1911)
Jessie Anthony 135
Julia France and Her Times (1912)
Gertrude Atherton 138
“How it Feels to be Forcibly Fed” (1914)
Djuna Barnes 148
Interactions between U.S. and Chinese Campaigns 152
“The Inferior Woman” (1910)
Sui Sin Far [Edith Maude Eaton] 153
“The Oppression of Women” (1915)
“In All Earnestness, I speak to all my sisters” (1915)
Anonymous 163
“Catching Up with China” Banner (1912)
New York Suffrage Party 165
“Heathen Chinee” Cartoon (1912) Anonymous 167
PART III
Making Woman New! 1897–1920
Introduction 170
“Women Do Not Want It” (1897)
“The Anti-Suffragists” (1898)
“The Socialist and the Suffragist” (1911)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 177
“The Australian Ballot System” (1898)
Mabel Clare Ervin 182
Portia Politics (1911–1912)
Edith Bailey 186
“Disfranchisement” from Mother Goose as a Suffragette (1912)
“Taffy” from Mother Goose as a Suffragette (1912)
New York Woman Suffrage Party 190 “Women March” (1912)
Mary Alden Hopkins 193
“The Arrest of Suffrage” (1912)
Ethel Whitehead 200
“Brother Baptis’ on Woman Suffrage” (1912)
Rosalie Jonas 206
“Mirandy on ‘Why Women Can’t Vote’” (1912)
Dorothy Dix [Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer] 207
Hagar (1913)
Mary Johnston 211
“The Parade: A Suffrage Playlet in One Act and an After-Act” (1913)
Mrs. Allan Dawson [Nell Perkins Dawson] 220
“The Woman with Empty Hands: The Evolution of a Suffragette” (1913)
Anonymous [Marion Hamilton Carter] 225
“How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette” (1914)
Anonymous 231
“Our Own Twelve Anti-Suffragist Reasons” (1914)
“Representation” (1914)
“The Revolt of Mother” (1915)
“A Consistent Anti to Her Son” (1915)
Alice Duer Miller 235
“A Plea for Suffrage” (1915)
Miss M. M. [Marianne Moore] 239
“The President’s Valentine” (1916)
Nina E. Allender 241
Fanny Herself (1917)
Edna Ferber 243
The Sturdy Oak, chapter 7 (1917)
Anne O’Hagan 254
For Rent—One Pedestal (1917)
Marjorie Shuler 263
“President Wilson says ‘Godspeed to the Cause’” Cartoon (1917)
“Come to Mother” Cartoon (1917)
Nina E. Allender 270
“President Wilson’s War Message” Banner (1917)
Anonymous [National Woman’s Party members] 273
“Telling the Truth at the White House” (1917)
Marie Jenney Howe and Paula Jakobi 275
“We Worried Woody Wood” (1917)
Anonymous [Jailed members of the National Woman’s Party] 280
“Prison Notes, Smuggled to Friends from the District Jail” (1917)
Rose Winslow [Ruza Wenclawska] 282
“Switchboard Suffrage” (1920)
Oreola Williams Haskell 284
PART IV
Carrying the Suffrage Torch, 1920–1946
Introduction 290
Jailed For Freedom (1920)
Doris Stevens 294
“Upon this marble bust that is not I” (1923)
Edna St. Vincent Millay 298
“The Suffrage Torch: Memories of a Militant” (1929)
Louisine W. Havemeyer 300
The Mother of Us All (1946)
Gertrude Stein 306
Notes 311
Selected Bibliography of U.S. Suffrage Literature 321 Index 325
