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Since it’s Women’s History Month and baseball season is right around the corner (!), we asked our favorite sports expert, author Crystal Hubbard, whether she thought women should be allowed to play professional baseball. Here’s what she had to say:
Pitcher Jackie Mitchell signed a contract to play for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Southern Association minor league team, in 1931. This deal differed from most because Mitchell wasn’t like the other boys. She wasn’t a boy at all. She was a woman, one of the very few to play professional baseball on all-male teams. Although Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an April 2, 1931 exhibition game against the New York Yankees soon after signing with the Lookouts, baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis canceled Mitchell’s contract, claiming that baseball was too strenuous for women. Commissioner Ford Frick, on June 21, 1952, officially banned women from professional baseball.
Marcenia “Toni Stone” Lyle, Ila Borders, and most recently, Eri Yoshida of Japan, are among the very few truly accomplished female baseball players who found spots on the rosters of professional male teams. In 1993, Carey Schueler—the daughter of then White Sox general manager Ron Schueler—was drafted by the White Sox, becoming at 18 years old the first woman ever drafted by a Major League team.
Schueler, a left-handed pitcher, never took the field for a game.
While banning women from almost any other field would lead to a lawsuit, the No Girls Allowed code of Major League Baseball remains. Is it because women are too delicate for the physical challenges of MLB, or because they don’t have the physical ability or talent? Some women, perhaps. But not all, as evidenced by Mitchell, Lyle, Borders, Yoshida, and a fresh generation of skilled female Little Leaguers.
The same physical limitations used to justify banning women from professional baseball can also be applied to most male players—they aren’t strong enough, they aren’t fast enough, they aren’t good enough. Some female athletes are strong enough. And fast enough and good enough. Yet they still don’t have the same opportunities their male contemporaries enjoy. Male athletes who play baseball well have the chance to earn scholarships to college and perhaps even play professionally. Female athletes deserve the same.
No capable athlete should be banned from the Major Leagues because of her gender. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. It’s long past time we redefined that saying.
When Henrietta was a young girl, she spent many hours staring up into the night sky, looking at the stars and getting familiar with their patterns. She was fascinated by “the wonderful bigness of all she saw,” and longed to find out more about space.
When she was a young woman, she attended astronomy class and was one of the few women who did so. After graduation, Henrietta was able to get a job working in an observatory. Though the observatory had a wonderful big telescope, Henrietta rarely got to use it. Instead, she worked with a group of women measuring and calculating, doing the job that calculators and computers do today. Henrietta and the other women were told to “work, not think,” but Henrietta wasn’t going to accept such an existence. She had an enquiring mind and intended to use it, which she did, studying astronomy in her space time.
Day after day Henrietta looked at photographs of stars, measuring and counting, and then she began to notice that there was a pattern. Some of the stars seemed to get dimmer and then brighter. Some blinked slower than others. Henrietta studied the pattern and she mapped it out. The chart that she created helped astronomers to figure out how far away the stars were. Thanks to her work, they also came to realize that our Milky Way was a lot bigger than they thought and that it was only one of many galaxies. Her discovery would have a profound effect on our understanding of our universe.
This wonderfully written book tells the story of a woman who lived at a time when women had very few opportunities to work as scientists. Indeed, most of the time they were prevented from doing research. Henrietta never gave up, and in the end her determination and hard work paid off.
Throughout the book Robert Burleigh’s lyrical prose is paired with Paul Colon’s wonderful artwork to give readers a memorable picture book biography.
Further information about Henrietta, other women astrologers, and more can be found at the back of the book.
0 Comments on A perfect book for women's history month as of 3/19/2013 11:51:00 PM
Today’s guest blog post is from Ann Shaw, Director of Philanthropy for Pi Beta Phi Fraternity. Ann has held this volunteer role for the past six years. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arkansas and her Master’s in Education from the University of New Orleans. Ann taught for over 25 years as an early childhood teacher and is passionate about literacy.
Ann Shaw, Director of Philanthropy for Pi Beta Phi Fraternity
In 1987, the U.S. Congress designated March as Women’s History Month to ensure that the history of American women would be recognized and celebrated in schools, work places and communities throughout the country.
Pi Beta Phi Fraternity for Women was founded in 1867 by 12 students at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois who were the pioneers of the women’s fraternal movement. While our country was rebuilding after the Civil War, few women attended college. The women of Pi Beta Phi were visionaries of their time not only because they founded the Fraternity and patterned it after the men’s fraternal organizations of that time, but also because they were philanthropically minded and wished to better society.
Pi Beta Phi members continued their philanthropic interests by creating a school in 1912 in the remote Appalachian Mountain hamlet of Gatlinburg, Tennessee to provide formal education. In November 2012, Pi Beta Phi members celebrated 100 years of literacy service in Gatlinburg. From their original mission to the continuing legacy of Pi Beta Phi Elementary School and the Arrowmont® School of Arts and Crafts, Pi Beta Phis are proud of their commitment to literacy not only in Gatlinburg but across the United States and Canada.
Kyle Zimmer, president and CEO of First Book, reads to girls at a local DC program
In the next 100 years, Pi Phi’s Read. Lead. Achieve.® literacy platform will continue to provide direction for Pi Phi’s mission “to lead the way to a more literate society” through its partnership with First Book, Champions are Readers program, Arrow in the Arctic, Fraternity Day of Service and local initiatives.
Kyle Zimmer, president and CEO of First Book, is a visionary too, as she had the dream to put books into the hands of undeserved children through the inception of First Book. Both organizations work to end illiteracy and realize the importance of reading and how it is a predictor of success in school and life.
Both organizations work to end illiteracy and realize the importance of reading and how it is a predictor of success in school and life.
Pi Phi strives to lead the way to a more literate society and has supported First Book’s mission financially and through the volunteer efforts of our members. First Book and Pi Beta Phi are making a difference in the lives of children through their philanthropic efforts to create rich literacy environments, improve interest in reading and encourage children to be readers.
While we celebrate the accomplishments of women during National Women’s History Month, let us remember not only the women who have made significant accomplishments to better society but those women who read to their children, surround their children with books and encourage their children to love reading.
In honor of Women’s History Month (and International Women’s Day, which is today!), we’ve pinned a roundup of our titles that feature some pretty amazing women on Pinterest. Check out our board and be inspired to make your mark in history!
About 20 years ago, I participated in the Bay Area Science Project (BASP) through Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science. It was a fabulous six-week teacher workshop conducted at St. Mary’s High School in Berkeley. We covered lots of STEM topics, and, explored the FOSS and GEMS programs. A focus of the workshop was to bring hands-on science into the schools. One of the lead instructors brought in a lovely science themed calendar demonstrating one small way to include science on a daily basis in the classroom. Marie Curie was the only woman celebrated in the calendar. I commented about the lack of gender equity in the calendar and was surprised to hear the instructor declare, “Well, there really aren’t any of note.” This was Berkeley! I was motivated to find and share the legions of women scientists who had not received public acclamation for their work. Fast forward 20 years, and I was delighted to read about the STEM theme of Women’s History Month.
The 2013 Honorees represent a remarkable range of accomplishments and a wide diversity of specialties including medicine, robotics, computer programming, atmospheric chemistry, architecture and primatology. These women’s lives and work span the centuries of American history and come from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. We are proud to honor them and all women seeking to advance these important fields.
About 20 years ago, I participated in the Bay Area Science Project (BASP) through Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science. It was a fabulous six-week teacher workshop conducted at St. Mary’s High School in Berkeley. We covered lots of STEM topics, and, explored the FOSS and GEMS programs. A focus of the workshop was to bring hands-on science into the schools. One of the lead instructors brought in a lovely science themed calendar demonstrating one small way to include science on a daily basis in the classroom. Marie Curie was the only woman celebrated in the calendar. I commented about the lack of gender equity in the calendar and was surprised to hear the instructor declare, “Well, there really aren’t any of note.” This was Berkeley! I was motivated to find and share the legions of women scientists who had not received public acclamation for their work. Fast forward 20 years, and I was delighted to read about the STEM theme of Women’s History Month.
The 2013 Honorees represent a remarkable range of accomplishments and a wide diversity of specialties including medicine, robotics, computer programming, atmospheric chemistry, architecture and primatology. These women’s lives and work span the centuries of American history and come from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. We are proud to honor them and all women seeking to advance these important fields.
I was going to spend a lot of time on this Fusenews. Then I picked up Doug TenNapel’s Cardboard and lost most of my evening in the process. So it goes. I really am going to have to be brief today. To sum up:
The Battle of the (Kids’) Books rages on in earnest! Wish I’d submitted my bracket this year. So far the winners make sense to me.
Opinions I do not share. #1: “Here is a list of eleven children’s books that still have value in a writer’s adult years.” I might agree with you if you meant that Rainbow Fish makes for an excellent source of protein. #2: “Ten Tips for Avoiding Terrible Children’s Books.” This may actually be the strangest collection of children’s book-related advice I’ve seen in years. I live in hope that I misread it and that this is all the stuff you’re supposed to avoid, not do.
Stephen Fry + a pub called The Hobbit = lawsuit city. Actually, you don’t even need the Stephen Fry part.
It’s spine poem time! With Poetry Month right around the corner you just know you want to partake. Spine poem it up!
Of course THIS month is Women’s History Month. So I wrote a little guest blog piece just for the occasion where I noted the little known historical heroines making their debut in juvenile print this year.
Speaking of apps n’ such, did you know that over in Italy where the Bologna Book Fair takes place there is now a Bologna Ragazzi Digital Award? In incredibly good idea. International apps. A whole new world.
New Blog Alert: New to me anyway. We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie which describes itself as “Being a Compendium of Children’s Books by Twentieth Century ‘Adult’ Authors Currently Out of Print”. It’s beautifully done. Go see.
there I was, aboard a Southwest Airlines jet, paging through the March issue of Spirit magazine, when I came upon Brad Meltzer’s article “No One is Born a Hero” in which he shares how he came to write his newest book, Heroes for My Daughter (Harper, April ’12).
Faster than a finger snap, today’s assigned blog post celebrating National Women’s History Month took front and center in my TeachingAuthor’s mind!
Meltzer chose fifty-five remarkable and diverse individuals – from Eleanor Roosevelt to Amelia Earhart, from Anne Frank to Lucille Ball, from Sally Ride to Randy Pausch, to guide his daughter’s journey to adulthood. Each was a fighter in his or her own way.
I couldn’t help think, though: many were the very same “fighters,” female “fighters especially, whose childhoods I had read about in the “orange true books” that marked my childhood’s most special occasions.
And I couldn’t help ask: which Heroes would I choose, or rather, which Heroines, to include in my collection had I mothered a daughter?
Which then got me thinking: who would I choose were I to write a collection entitled Heroines Who Keep Me Moving on My Writer’s Plotline?
Lickety-split, I had my top three Heroines + this Golden Opportunity to introduce them to our readers.
(Note: I happily surprised all three when I emailed last week to ask for their permission to share their stories in this post; not a one knew how meaningfully she’d impacted my life, both Writer’s Life and otherwise.)
So,
please meet Phyllis Harris of Ames, Iowa. When I first met Phyllis, at an SCBWI Woodstock, Illinois Writers Retreat, in the late ’90’s, she’d just begun her graduate studies at Vermont College. She was 71 and 4 years widowed, earning her MFA in Writing for Children! “I saw the ad in Horn Book,” Phyllis shared, “and I thought to myself: all those authors in one place instead of two or three at a conference. What a bonanza!” Phyllis ’fesses up that she was “looking for the girl I was before I was married with responsibilities.” It would put pep in her step like no other decision she could make. “I knew nothing and brazenly went forward, in my life-changing event.” Phyllis’ short stories have been anthologized with those of Margaret Atwood, Carol Farley, Lisa Wheeler and our very own TA JoAnn Early Mackin in Stories Where
What a wonderful tribute to three amazing women, Esther. I had the honor of graduating from Vermont College with Phyllis, and she continues to inspire all the members of our class (known as the "Hive"). Your post is especially timely, as Monday was her birthday. :-)
Beth Finke said, on 3/15/2012 11:35:00 AM
[This is Carmela, posting on Beth's behalf because she had trouble with the "captcha" software:] . . . just wanted to let you know how flattering it is to be chosen as one of the three heroines you highlighted in this post, I know you meet TONS of people in your intrepid life and I am so glad to have been one of the lucky women to cross your path - I think you're swell.
It is widely believed that March is the cruelest month, boasting thirty-one days of wet and chilly weather, not one of them a holiday. Arguably its one redeeming factor may be the opportunity given to society to celebrate one of its most outstanding, intelligent, and beautiful groups of the population—women, of course. Since its official U.S. origination in 1981, Women’s History Month has been
0 Comments on Overlook Readers Roundup: Women's History Month as of 1/1/1900
Now, back to the subject of Women's History: Like Mary Ann, I love reading well-written historical fiction featuring female protagonists. It's the next best thing to time travel! However, I despise books where female protagonists are not portrayed authentically. One of my specific "pet peeves" is the absence of church or prayer in novels set in times and places where daily life revolved around religious practices. Historical novelist Linda Proud expressed similar feelings on her blog:
"I’ve just read a book set in the 13th century where neither the feisty heroine . . . nor her lover nor her horrible husband nor any other character ever goes to church. Never a priest wanders into the story, never a bell rings, never a new cathedral appears on the skyline. Don’t get me wrong – it was exceptionally-well written and a gripping read. It was just that something was missing, . . . ."
As an author, though, I know it can be tricky to incorporate religious practices without boring our readers, especially when those readers are children or teens. My current work-in-progress is a young-adult novel set in 18th-century Milan and inspired by two real-life sisters. More is known about the elder sister, Maria, a child prodigy who could speak seven languages by her teen years and who became famous as a female mathematician. I originally considered making her the novel's main character. But Maria was a devoutly religious girl who spent her teen years trying to convince her father to let her become a nun. I decided it would be too challenging (for me, at least) to hook today's average teen reader with such a main character.
Great post, Carmela! Funny, I am working on a YA historical, and I switched my protagonist to the younger sister who was not the one that originally caught my attention. Once I made the shift, writing the story became so much easier!
Hats of to the elegant Phylicia Rashad, who in the 80s and 90s portrayed the uber mom on the sitcom The Cosby Show. Back in those days, Phylicia also served as a mentor and a friend to me. When I phoned her to tell her I was diagnosed with breast cancer, her teacher came out. “Amy, get some flax seed, celery, nuts and enzymes that will kill the cancer cells.” She was then off the phone and on to her photo shoot in the city. So today’s Women’s History Month tribute is to Phylicia Rashad.
Amy, Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad (Backstage on Broadway)
Hooray! It's Women's History Month! I love historical fiction. I write historical fiction. These two facts are something of a miracle, considering that I grew up disliking historical fiction. OK, let's back up a little bit here. As I have said in (way too many) other posts, I am a compulsive reader. I have always loved history, although not the kind that in my social studies books. According to those texts, the only important women in American history were Molly Pitcher (who may not have been a real person), Betsy Ross and Dolly Madison. Their contributions to history were (maybe) bringing water to soldiers, sewing a flag, and rescuing George Washington's portrait in the burning of the White House during the War of 1812. There had to be some other women who were famous for somewhat less domestic feats. Lots of us of "a certain age" fell in love with biography reading those Childhood of Famous Americans books, which I just discovered are still being published. Ah ha! Here were the female role models I was looking for; astronomer Maria Mitchell, Mary Lyons who founded Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female American physician, Annie Oakley, Olympian Babe Didrickson, choreographer Martha Graham. My all time favorites are still Clara Barton and Amelia Earhart. These women broke the rules, stood up to society, danced their own dance, went where no woman had ever gone before (sorry Star Trek fans.) But what does all this have to do with historical fiction? A lot. When I was in elementary school, female characters in historical novels were far and few between. Granted, the very nature of society before the mid-20th century relegated women to the most passive of roles in both life and fiction. Fictional boys tamed wild animals, survived in the wilderness, rode the Pony Express. Girls sewed samplers, looked after siblings and were pretty much under domestic house arrest. Not only that, but girls were rarely the main characters. Finding a female character who didn't spend the whole story dipping candles and churning butter was a true treasure. I still own The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz (autographed, too!). The main character, Ann, appealed to me because she missed her old home when her family moved to the Pennsylvania frontier. My family moved a lot, too. Also, Ann was the first character I encountered who kept a diary! The minute I returned Ann's story to my third grade "class library shelf," I was off to Woolworth's to buy my first diary. (A side note here; not only is The Cabin Faced West still in print, it's also an e-book! Not to shabby for a book published in 1958.) There was Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink, who roughhoused with her brothers, and played pranks on her sissy girl cousins. In one memorable episode, she wins a logrolling contest. Caddie was my kind of girl! Like every other girl I knew I worked my way through Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series. I learned a lot about hog-skinning, sewing samplers (again!) and making molasses candy. OK. Fine. Laura was a tough minded girl who frequently got in trouble for her "boyish" ways. As far as I could tell, the only "boyish" thing about Laura was her determination to what she wanted and not always as she was told. The series seemed awfully predictable to me; Mary, the good sister, Laura, the "naughty one", stern Ma, fun-loving Pa (who I never once imagined to look like Michael Landon) and lots of bad crops, insect plagues and unfortunate weather.) I had just about given up on the Ingalls when I came at last to The Long Winter. At long last, Laura's strong mind and sturdy body took front and center as she and her father kept the family alive during an endless winter of blizzards in the Dakota Territory
0 Comments on What if Laura Ingalls Hung Out at the Mall? as of 1/1/1900
Their blog, “KidLit Celebrates Women’s History Month 2011, is only for this month, and features daily posts by well-known kidlit authors, illustrators, booksellers and bloggers. More than 17 authors, including Kathleen Krull, Tanya Lee Stone, Tonya Bolden, and Carolyn Meyer have already contributed posts – most have been moving and inspiring.”
This is the type of information and blog that I have been seeking. These are the amazing stories that must be read, pondered, and shared this month and all months. I particularly liked the article on Haunted by History which remembers the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (since I’ve been working on reviewing two books for the 100th remembrance of that tragedy) and Real History was not Meant for Publication.
It is not too late to check out this blog. I hope it lasts far longer than just one month. The collaborations and contributions of all of the authors are worth reading and re-reading. The links from the blog were helpful. I spent time examining the White House Report on women.
[On March 1, 2011,] the White House released a new report entitled Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being, a statistical portrait showing how women are faring in the United States today and how their lives have changed over time. This is the first comprehensive federal report on women since 1963, when the Commission on the Status of Women, established by President Kennedy and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, produced a report on the conditions of women. View Women in AmericaHERE.
I am reposting from the White House blog in case you missed the opportunity to ask your questions on women in the workplace, education and work-life balance:
Last August, in honor of Women’s Equality Day and the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, we had a thoughtful conversation with the BlogHer community about how far women have come since gaining the right to vote in 1920. And given the recent release of the new White House report, “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being”, we thought it would be an opportune time to revisit the conversation.
On Wednesday, March 30, join White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, and Preeta Bansal, General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, for a discussion with Shine about women in the workplace, education and work-life balance.
If you’re looking for an excellent nonfiction picture book about one of America’s most daring and courageous women to share with children during Women in History month, I highly recommend Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic. The book was written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Wendell Minor. It is an outstanding package of text and art that provides a gripping account of Earhart’s historic transatlantic flight from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to a pasture in Northern Ireland in May 1932.
Burleigh’s text is lively and lyrical. Here is how he describes the takeoff of Earhart’s Vega—her Little Red Bus:
The plane swoops like a swallow Over dark puddles and patches of tundra.
The shore gleams in waning light. The waves are curls of cream-colored froth.
As the pilot flies east into the darkness, Burleigh describes how the sky appears to her:
The moon peeks between wisps of shimmering clouds. Distant stars flicker and fade. Her mind soars.
Earhart’s flight appears to be off to an auspicious start—but around midnight it becomes an adventure fraught with danger. That’s when her plane is pummeled by rain during a thunderstorm. About an hour later, her altimeter breaks. Earhart tries to climb above the storm. Her plane becomes sluggish because ice has formed on its wings. It begins to pitch and spin. Then the plane starts to nose-dive downward. Earhart finally gains control of it after it bursts through the lowest clouds. She manages to level her Vega just ten feet above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean!
Earhart isn’t out of danger yet. She still has many miles to go before she’ll reach land. Alone in the cockpit, she sniffs salts and sips juice from a can. Around three o’clock, flames stream out of the cracked exhaust pipe. By 6:00 a.m., Amelia’s eyes burn and her stomach “churns from the smell of leaking gas.”
Then…
Black turns to a watery silt. The gloomy sky pales.
Splinters of sunlight stab down through cloud slits And brace themselves on the vault of the open sea.
Earhart looks out of her cockpit and sees: a boat…a drifting gull…an emerging coastline...train tracks. She find
4 Comments on Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic--A Book by Robert Burleigh & Wendell Minor, last added: 3/24/2011
Thanks for this review, Elaine. I've been waiting for ages for this book, and hope to pick it up when the Minors have a signing at the Cradle of Aviation on L.I. The illustrations truly capture the feeling and beauty of flight.
Wendell and Florence Minor are two of the loveliest people that I have ever met. You are right about Wendell's art capturing the feeling and beauty of Earhart's transatlantic flight in the book.
I read the book reviewed below many years ago, and yet I still remember it with great fondness. Reading the book reminded me that women have brought about change in many ways. Some have done so in big ways that made them front page news, like Amelia Earhart example. Then there are those women who have brought about change in big but quiet ways, like Fannie Farmer. I grew up with a Fannie Farmer cookbook and made my first very flat cake (I forgot to put in something vital) using one of her recipes. I know that when my daughter is ready is strike out on her own, I will give her (among other things) a set of basic tools in a tool box, a sewing kit, some wonderful fabrics for making cushions and curtains, a set of Jane Austen novels, and a Fannie Farmer cookbook.
Marcia is most annoyed. Her mother has told her that they are getting a new cook, someone who will be “mother’s helper.” Why should they need such a person when Marcia herself is her mother’s helper? Marcia sincerely hopes, therefore, that the new cook, Fannie Farmer, is going to be terrible. No such luck though. Fannie is an excellent cook, and she is soon teaching Marci some of her kitchen wisdom. It must be noted however that Marci does not always succeed in her culinary exploits and there are some food disasters which Fannie has to help her sort out.
Not surprisingly Marcia finds herself getting very fond of Fannie, and since her mother is so busy with the new baby, the little girl spends a lot of time in the kitchen, watching and learning. Marcia wishes very much that she knew all of the wonderful cooking secrets that lie in Fannie’s head. When she tells Fannie this, the red-headed cooking wonder comes up with the idea of writing down all the things she knows in a book; the secrets, the tips, the recipes.
Soon word gets around about the book that Fannie has created, and everyone wants to use it, not just Marcia. It would seem that Fannie Farmer has something very special to offer the world.
Deborah Hopkinson has created a delicious story about a woman who changed the way thousands of women cook. Fannie made it possible for just about anyone to learn how to cook by developing the first real recipes with exact measurements of ingredients. Her book is still widely used today by cooks of all ages.
At the back of the book the author gives us a more detail
0 Comments on A review for Women's History Month - Fannie Farmer cooks up a storm as of 1/1/1900
Quiz #95 Answer the question and your name will be entered in a monthly drawing. Post your reply to the comment box. Must include your e-mail to be eligible to win. Winners choose their own book from our Prize Bucket.
[She]was gang raped in an "honour" revenge issued by tribal council. She was expected to have committed suicide after this, but took the case to court instead. The perpetrators were charged and arrested, and later acquitted. Nonetheless, she started an organization to empower girls and women in Pakistan.
Who is she?
3 Comments on Color Online Quiz: Literature and Women's Studies, last added: 3/29/2010
Today on OUPblog we’re celebrating the 100th International Women’s Day. I’ve invited intern extraordinaire Hanna Oldsman to contribute her thoughts on “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A groundbreaking and important early piece of American feminist literature, it was first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine and has been subject to countless interpretations, as it powerfully illustrates 19th century attitudes about women’s physical and mental health.
By Hanna Oldsman (Publicity Intern)
For me, one of the most interesting lines of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” appears near the very beginning of the story. The words are an aside, a nervous excuse—and the only part of this rambling, uncomfortable tale to be cordoned off with parentheses: “John is a physician,” the narrator writes furtively, “and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind—) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.”
“The Yellow Wall-Paper” is a story in which dead things come to life. The narrator, ill with what her husband calls a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency,” imagines that the wallpaper that covers her bedroom moves, that behind the “sprawling” pattern creeps a woman, trapped, who shakes the bars that confine her. When I first read this story, I found it odd that the narrator believes the pages of her diary to be dead while the wallpaper sprouts heads like hydras and its curves “commit suicide—plung[ing] off at outrageous angles,” while its “pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare.” Odd, and also devastating: later in the story, she wishes that she had someone to whom she might divulge her thoughts—someone who might provide “any advice or companionship about [her] works.” There is some connection between the paper on which she writes and the papered walls on which her imagination paints a Gothic tale; it is as if her first imaginative impulses, suppressed, press themselves into the walls.
The irony of the words “but this is dead paper,” is, of course, that they don’t remain hidden: as we read this story, we are made party to the narrator’s madness and forced to take the place of her friends and family who refuse to listen. Her words make the nightmarish hallucinations seem real to us. Reading Gilman’s private writings is a similar experience. I recently had the chance to peruse two books from OUP on the work and life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories, edited by Robert Shulman, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of “The Yellow Wall-Paper”. Wild Unrest, in contrast to other books about this late 19th-century feminist and author, is less about Charlotte Perkins Gilman the public figure and activist than it is about Charlotte’s p
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Today on OUPblog we’re celebrating the 100th International Women’s Day with posts about inspirational women. Here, OUPblog Contributing Editor Kirsty Doole writes about why she’s chosen 19th century writer Mona Caird and brings us an excerpt from Caird’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry.
These days, not many people outside of academia seem to know who Mona Caird was. I certainly didn’t until I was studying for my Masters degree and decided to write on the New Woman writers of the late 19th century. Through that I came to read her novel, The Daughters of Danaus (1894), which is the story of Hadria, a girl from the Scottish Borders who wants to be a composer. However, the pressure to fulfil the traditional roles of wife and mother is insurmountable and her musical ambitions are ultimately sacrificed to her family obligations. The book is rightly regarded as something of a feminist classic, and it has become one of my very favourite books.
Caird is most often remembered as the woman who wrote an essay in 1888 for the Westminster Review on marriage and the many injustices that she believed it forced onto women. The Daily Telegraph, in response, asked readers to write in with their answers to the question ‘Is Marriage a Failure?’, which prompted something in the region of 27,000 responses from readers (male and female). She went on to write more essays on marriage, as well as on anti-vivisectionism and animal rights. Both her feminism and her animal rights position made her very controversial in her day, and it’s for her bravery and outspoken ways that I admire her.
As far as I can tell, there are only two of her novels still in print (The Daughters of Danaus and The Wing of Azrael), which is a shame as I really think she deserves to be better-known. So, in the spirit of International Women’s Day (which didn’t exist in Caird’s lifetime, but of which she would surely have approved) here’s an excerpt from her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. You can read the full entry here.
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Caird [née Alison], (Alice) Mona (1854–1932), writer, was born on 24 May 1854 at 34 Pier Street, Ryde, Isle of Wight, to John Alison, an inventor from Midlothian, and Matilda Ann Jane, née Hector. As a child she wrote plays and stories. It seems that she spent part of her childhood in Australia and she uses this experience in her first novel, Aunt Hetty, published anonymously in 1877. On 19 December 1877 she married James Alexander Caird (d. 1921), son of Sir James Caird, at Christ Church, Paddington, London. The couple resided at Leyland, Arkwright Road, Hampstead, London, for the remainder of their forty-four-year marriage. Their only child, Alison James Caird, was born at Leyland on 22 March 1884.
At the beginning of her writing career, Caird briefly used the pseudonym G. Noel Hatton, but of the five novels she published between 1883 and 1915, The Wing of Azrael (1889), A Romance of the Moors (1891), and The Daughters of Danaus (1894; repr. 1989), published under her own name, have received the most attention from literary critics…
…Her general ideas are focused on equality for women in marriage and for equal partnerships in the home which will ‘bring us to the end of the patriarchal system’ which she described as repressive both for men, who were trained to see only ‘the woman’s-sphere and woman’s-responsibility condition of things’, and for women, whose ‘
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Émilie du Châtelet, wrote Voltaire, ‘was a great man whose only fault was being a woman.’ Du Châtelet has paid the penalty for being a woman twice over. During her life, she was denied the educational opportunities and freedom that she craved. ‘Judge me for my own merits,’ she protested: ‘do not look upon me as a mere appendage to this great general or that renowned scholar’ – but since her death, she has been demoted to subsidiary status as Voltaire’s mistress and Isaac Newton’s translator.
Too often moulded into hackneyed stereotypes – the learned eccentric, the flamboyant lover, the devoted mother – du Châtelet deserves more realistic appraisals as a talented yet fallible woman trapped between overt discrimination and inner doubts about her worth. ‘I am in my own right a whole person,’ she insisted. I hope she would appreciate how I see her …
Émilie du Châtelet (1706-49) was tall and beautiful. Many intellectual women would object to an account starting with their looks, but du Châtelet took great care with her appearance. She spent a fortune on clothes and jewellery, acquiring the money from her husband, a succession of lovers, and her own skills at the gambling table (being mathematically gifted can bring unexpected rewards.) She brought the same intensity to her scientific work, plunging her hands in ice-cold water to keep herself awake as she wrote through the night. This whole-hearted enthusiasm for every activity she undertook explains why I admire her so much. The major goal of life, she believed, was to be happy – and for her that meant indulging but also balancing her passions for food, sex and learning.
Born into a wealthy family, du Châtelet benefited from an enlightened father who left her free to browse in his library and hired tutors to give her lessons more appropriate for boys than for marriageable girls. By the time she was twelve, du Châtelet could speak six languages, but it was not until her late twenties that she started to immerse herself in mathematics and Newtonian philosophy. By then, she was married to an elderly army officer, had two surviving children, and was developing intimate friendships with several clever young men who helped her acquire the education she was not allowed to gain at university.
When Voltaire’s radical politics provoked a warrant for his arrest, she concealed him in her husband’s run-down estate at Cirey and returned to Paris to restore his reputation. Over the next year, she oscillated between rural seclusion with Voltaire and partying in Paris, but after some prompting, she eventually made her choice and stuck to it. For fifteen years, they lived together at Cirey, happily embroiled in a private world of intense intellectual endeavour laced with romance, living in separate apartments linked by a secret passage and visited from time to time by her accommodating husband.
For decades, French scholars had been reluctant to abandon the ideas of their own national hero, René Descartes, and instead adopt those of his English rival, Newton. They are said to have been converted by a small book that appeared in 1738: Elements of Newtonian Philosophy. The only name on the title-page is Voltaire’s, but it is clear that this was a collaborative venture in which du Châtelet played a major role: as Voltaire to
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Well, it's March, rgz, and do you know that means it's our 4th birthday? Woohoo! Raise a book and drop a comment in celebration. Share your love!
Looking over the past 4 years, I recall our launch, March 1st, 2007, in honor of Women's History Month. How about our migration from MySpace to Facebook and Blogger and Twitter? I think of great chats like the midnight worldwide extravaganza with Stephenie Meyer, Halloween, 2007. I think of 31 Flavorites where we hosted a different author everyday. I think of celebrations for Teen Read Week, donations of 30,000 books to underserved teens through Operation Teen Book Drop with YALSA and Guys Lit Wire, and the recent A Novel Gift with First Book, driving hundreds to register for 125,000 books. I think of winning the National Book Award for Innovations in Reading and the James Patterson Grant.
I think of great dialog, passionate teens, and those who work to serve them. I think of an amazing crew of ladies who has donated their time to sustain this site.
Here's to YA literature. Here's to you, rgz! Happy 4th birthday!
Girls will feel like they've strapped on wings after reading these captivating true stories of early 20th Century women who refused to let their future be decided for them.
Just in time for Women's History Month come two stellar accounts of women who challenged themselves to dream bigger than women ever had: Wheels of Change by Sue Macy and Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming.
Each book is meticulously researched, and packed with gems of information -- anecdotes, quotations, even poems -- that will make readers' spirits soar and inspire girls to be confident in their pursuits and not let anyone hold them back.
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Award-winning Fleming strips away the mystique that surrounds the legendary aviatrix to show a woman as fallible as any other but driven to conquer the air like no woman before her.
"All I wished to do in the world was to be a vagabond in the air," Amelia Earhart once said, and though Earhart met criticism in her later career for profiting from aviation, it was this guiding dream that defined her until her death.
When Earhart's plane vanished in 1937, her husband, late publisher George Putnam, worried that her disappearance would overshadow her legacy, and for some perhaps it has, yet Fleming doesn't dwell on Earhart's disappearance but lets it fade in and out of chapters about her life.
Fleming, the acclaimed author of The Great and Only Barnum, makes sure we know what we need to know about Earhart, and that we see her for what she was, a real, but unusually driven woman. As biographer Mary S. Lovell described Earhart, she was "an ordinary girl growing into an extraordinary woman who dared to attempt seemingly unattainable goals in a man's world."
We meet a woman who was at times impulsive and headstrong, who with Putnam could work the media and profited greatly from her record-setting feats, yet who had unstoppable courage and enthusiasm, and who not only earnestly believed a woman could do everything a man could do, but wanted other women to believe that to.
Two years before her fateful flight around the world, Purdue University hired Earhart to inspire female students to take up careers in male-dominated fields, and while teaching there, Earhart became so enthusiastic about her mission that she asked to live in the women's dorms and would talk late into the night with female students.
She told the young women to "look beyond the comfort and security of marriage and instead 'dare to live,'" Fleming wrote, and counseled them to study whatever they wanted to. "Don't let the world push you around," one student recalled her saying.
What makes this biography stand out is Fleming's diligence in sorting fact from myth, her clarity about what Earhart stood for, and the clever way she sets up the book: she immerses readers in a chronology of Earhar
I am pleased to be hosting the Nonfiction Monday Round-up this week! If you would like to participate, please leave a comment below including the title of the book you are reviewing, the name of your blog and a link to the post, and I will add links throughout the day.
In December, I wrote about the death of Geraldine Hoff Doyle, whose photograph served as the prototype for Rosie the Riveter. Rosie immediately became a well-known figure for the country’s campaign to recruit women into the labor force during World War II. But women did so much more than riveting and Christine Petersen’s book Rosie the Riveter does much in explaining to young readers just what their great grandmother’s might have done outside the home to help the war effort. The book begins with a brief history of women’s participation in past wars, including Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War I, as well as the prevailing attitudes that women’s place is in the home.
It then goes on to give a short account of Hitler’s rise to power and the actions he took that eventually led to another World War. This is followed by a description of how the United States entered the Second World War.
With so many men being drafted or enlisting, a labor shortage was created. Yet, employers were as reluctant to hire women as women were to seek jobs outside the home.
As factories were converted for defense, machinery was rebuilt to accommodate women and assembly line production methods instituted. Then the government launched an all-out propaganda campaign to tempt women to fill these new, sometimes dangerous jobs in ordnance work making military supplies, such as bombs and ammunition. And so the image of Rosie was created:
J. Howard Miller's original Rosie in 1942
Women, as Ms. Petersen points out, did more than factory work. Some of the other jobs women held were as lumberjacks, miners, and fire fighters, while others worked on farms in the land army. And they also did volunteer work, like Civil Air Patrol, working nights, watching for enemy aircraft
Sadly, as needed as home front workers were, many minorities, for example, African-Americans, were usually overlooked for these positions. In 1941, under
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It's almost baseball season! I've got a great new baseball book, The Unforgettable Season. http://shelf-employed.blogspot.com/2011/03/unforgettable-season-book-review.html
KidLit Celebrates Women's History has a guest post by the HappyNappyBookseller, a review of favorite Women's History books featuring women of color. http://kidlitwhm.blogspot.com/2011/03/women-of-color-make-their-presence.html
Thank you for hosting. Today at SimplyScience I have Elephant Talk by Ann Downer--and I loved it. http://simplyscience.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/elephant-talk-the-surprising-science-of-elephant-communication/
I've written about some books on going to school around the world at Books, Dogs, and Frogs, http://booksdogsandfrogs.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/non-fiction-or-not-fiction-going-to-school/
Thanks for hosting today! I'm in with Gold! Gold from the American River!: January 24, 1848: The Day the Gold Rush Began by Don Brown http://wp.me/pWySC-b9
Great post! Thank you for hosting this week. I would love to share a review of This Book Made Me Do It. It's full of ideas for projects, and grabs kids right away.
Thanks for looking after today's event. I'm looking at the book One Well: the Story of Water on Earth at Apples with Many Seeds. http://applewithmanyseedsdoucette.blogspot.com/2011/03/world-water-day-march-22-2011.html Tammy
Bookends is headed behind the scenes in sports today with a post for Sports Illustrated Kids All Access. http://bookends.booklistonline.com/2011/03/21/sports-illustrated-kids-all-access/
Pitcher Jackie Mitchell signed a contract to play for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Southern Association minor league team, in 1931. This deal differed from most because Mitchell wasn’t like the other boys. She wasn’t a boy at all. She was a woman, one of the very few to play professional baseball on all-male teams. Although Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an April 2, 1931 exhibition game against the New York Yankees soon after signing with the Lookouts, baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis canceled Mitchell’s contract, claiming that baseball was too strenuous for women. Commissioner Ford Frick, on June 21, 1952, officially banned women from professional baseball.
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If you’re looking for an excellent nonfiction picture book about one of America’s most daring and courageous women to share with children during Women in History month, I highly recommend 
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Thanks for sharing this information. There should be an equal treatment for men and boys.
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