Title: The Scarlet Sisters Author: Myra MacPherson
Published: March 4, 2014
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Page Count: 323
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee "Tennie" Claflin-the most fascinating and scandalous sisters in American history-were unequaled for their vastly avant-garde crusade for women's fiscal, political, and sexual independence. They escaped a tawdry childhood to become rich and famous, achieving a stunning list of firsts. In 1870 they became the first women to open a brokerage firm, not to be repeated for nearly a century. Amid high gossip that he was Tennie's lover, the richest man in America, fabled tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, bankrolled the sisters. As beautiful as they were audacious, the sisters drew a crowd of more than two thousand Wall Street bankers on opening day. A half century before women could vote, Victoria used her Wall Street fame to become the first woman to run for president, choosing former slave Frederick Douglass as her running mate. She was also the first woman to address a United States congressional committee. Tennie ran for Congress and shocked the world by becoming the honorary colonel of a black regiment.
They were the first female publishers of a radical weekly, and the first to print Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in America. As free lovers they railed against Victorian hypocrisy and exposed the alleged adultery of Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous preacher in America, igniting the "Trial of the Century" that rivaled the Civil War for media coverage. Eventually banished from the women's movement while imprisoned for allegedly sending "obscenity" through the mail, the sisters sashayed to London and married two of the richest men in England, dining with royalty while pushing for women's rights well into the twentieth century. Vividly telling their story, Myra MacPherson brings these inspiring and outrageous sisters brilliantly to life.
It’s really astonishing how certain figures are left out of our history. Prior to reading this biography, I had no idea that Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, existed. Yet when one speak about pioneers in areas of women’s rights, the two of them deserve to be remembered just as much as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Myra MacPherson’s work here in highlighting the public lives of these women is tremendously important, and if The Scarlet Sisters was slightly dry at times, it was never because the information it relayed was unimportant.
The majority of the book covers the years 1870-1875, the years when Victoria and Tennessee (Tennie) were extremely active in the politics of the United States. Between the two sisters, there are a lot of firsts. They were the first female stockbrokers, the first women to own a newspaper. Tennie was the first woman to hold an official rank in the military, and Victoria was the first woman to run for president of the United States (she ran twice). All these things (the latter especially) to their credit, and not once were these sisters mentioned in any history class I ever took. That’s really quite apalling.
Beyond just relaying details about the sisters’ lives, MacPherson also spends a good deal of time discussing the social and political climate of the late 19th century, which really highlighted the progressiveness of what Victoria and Tennie advocated. For instance, I learned while reading The Scarlet Sisters that the “Father of Modern Gynecology,” J. Marion Sims, became famous, and was lauded by his peers, for forcibly removing woman’s clitorises and ovaries to cure their “hysteria”. I also learned that “Female hysteria” was still listed as a mental disorder in official diagnostic manuals until 1952! A 1886 study found that 90% of married women in the United States were suffering from gonorrhea, which they had doubtlessly received from their unfaithful husbands. Take all this (and more) into account, and what the Claflin sisters attempted to do becomes truly heroic.
Yet while the author gives ample detail regarding the public lives and political agendas of these sisters, there is no real sense of their personalities revealed. MacPherson is mostly concerned with facts, statistics, and concrete data, so this biography can at times read something like a textbook (though goodness knows I’ve never had a textbook so interesting or relevant). The Scarlet Sisters could certainly be improved upon if it attempted to reveal something about these women’s mental state, though I understand that MacPherson wanted to stick strictly with facts, as much of Victoria and Tennessee’s lives were sensationalized and falsely misrepresented based on hearsay.
In many ways, The Scarlet Sisters is both informative and inspiring, telling the story of women who attempted to enact change that was decades in coming, and who really fought back against the patriarchy in a way that gave women’s issues a high profile. Yet after 1880, the two women fled to England after having their name dragged through the mud by the media, and they renounced most of their former politics in order to be accepted socially. By the end of the novel, when I was reading the epilogue, I was hopelessly depressed and near tears. 150 years ago, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were fighting for things that women today do not have—and some people like to say that we’ve achieved an egalitarian society and have no need of feminism anymore(!!!).
Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin always said they were a hundred years ahead of their time, but one hundred and fifty would be more like it—and then some. Case in point: “Put a woman on trial for anything—it is considered a legitimate part of the defense to make the most searching inquiry into her sexual morality, and the decision generally turns upon the proof advanced in this regard.” These words are not a contemporary comment on the disparaging treatment of victims of domestic violence or rape—one of the reasons 54 percent of rapes go unreported today—but rather, Tennie Claflin speaking in 1871.
Today, juries still bring into question a woman’s prior sexual conduct in a rape trial—even the question of “legitimate rape” is still being debated. Access to contraception is hardly universal in 2014, and women are still not being paid equal wages. In some ways it seems like very little progress for women has been made, and MacPherson’s choice to end her book by emphasizing that fact is sobering and unpleasantly thought-provoking. The Scarlet Sisters not only highlights the amazing accomplishments of two women in the fight for women’s rights, but also causes the modern-day reader to examine today’s society and recognize the continued need for change.
