04-16 TABLE of CONTENTS:
The splendor that was Greece - for men
Kabuki theater was originated by women
Book review: a woman journalist's double life
Various women whose birthdates are not known
Constance Wilde, Oscar's wife
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Supreme Court Justice J. Blackmun, Kate Mulgrew, Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth
Fox- Genovese, Hildegard von Bingen, Grace King, Deborah Crombie, and Supreme
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The Splendor That Was Greece - for men
380 B. C. "The
Splendor That Was Greece" was for men.
Greek women are permitted
no independent status in what is essentially a masculine society and may
not enter into any transaction worth more than one medimnos of barley;
they are not allowed to own property other than their own clothing and
jewelry and their slaves (slaves make up fully one-third the Athenian population
of 300,000 and are vital to the economy of the city-state). Fathers select
husbands for their daughters without consulting them.
Peasant women of Attica
help their husbands in the houschold, and seeing to the education of her
children.
337 B. C. - Greek girls
of noble birth learn in gynacaea (where no men are permitted) how to spin,
weave, cook and manage their families' workshops and slaves. A few are
taught to read and write. The most intellectually developed and artistically
cultivated Athenian women are prostitutes (hetairai).
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Kabuki theater was originated by women
Event 04-1617: The famed Kahuki theater of Japan began at at Kyoto.
Women led by Okuni Izumo danced at the Kitani shrine and played the men's
roles as well as women's.
However, in 1629 by order
of the Tokugaw shogun Iemitsu, the Kabuki theater is changed to an all-male
show. He decided, under west influences, that it is immoral for women to
dance in public. Unlike the obviously males who play women's roles in Britain,
the the Japanese will take extraordinary measures to make the men playing
female roles appear as women even to other Kabuki players. This, of course,
leads to male prostitution as the young, feminine men sell "their
favors" to playgoers as the women were alleged to have done.
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Book Review: A woman journalist's double life
"By
day, she was Alice Freeman, a nondescript, underpaid and unmarried Toronto
schoolteacher held in disdain by the 19th-century Victorian standards that
constrained her. But by night, the uncomely Alice secretly stepped through
the looking glass to transform herself into Faith Fenton, the fearless
and celebrated newspaper columnist who commanded the women's page of The
Empire from 1888 to 1895."
So E. Kaye Fulton
begins her review of the fascinating A Passionate Pen: The Life and
Times of Faith Fenton, by Jill Downie (HarperCollins, 337 pages, $27)
"In
search of a story, she trudged the gritty backstreets of the city's slums,
mingled with the leaders of Canada's genteel society and summered with
the political elite. In both her public and private lives, Fenton deliberately
kept Alice and Faith apart -- an extraordinary but necessary charade."
A full century
later, Fenton's secret has been exposed by Jill who makes an impressive
debut as a biographer in A Passionate Pen.
Fulton comments that
"with a stylistic repertoire that veered wildly
between crisp insight and bathos, Fenton achieved neither the consistency
nor the lasting recognition of other leading Canadian women journalists
at the turn of the century. The dashing Kit Coleman of The Mail and
Empire, who covered the Spanish-American war, was more colorful."
Downie, a Burlington,
Ontario-based historical novelist points out that novelist Sara Jeannette
Duncan, writing under the name Garth Grafton for The Globe, was
more gifted. The mysterious Amaryllis, the Saturday Night society
columnist eloquently captured in 1984 by Sandra Gwyn in her nonfiction
work The Private Capital, had better Ottawa connections.
Downie argues that Fenton's
humble background lent a distinct quality to her talent: an instinctive
ability to relate to the everyday life of thousands of middle-class women
who lacked the power and wealth to speak for themselves. Downie writes,
"Her inability for so many years to remove herself
from the daily grind to full-time journalism had one great advantage, it
kept her in touch with her public and that public responded well to blatant
sentimentality."
Vigorously pursuing
freelance writing jobs in Boston and New York City to supplement her $11.29-a-week
teaching salary and the pittance ($2 per piece from The Empire)
she received for her Canadian journalism, she paid slavish attention in
her columns to marriage, "the noblest career
for women." Fulton writes, "Fenton
produced a stirring series of articles for the Globe - among her best and
last - described her perilous trek to cover the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898,
but neglected to mention the physical hardships that the slight, determined
woman endured.
"Unlike
her female peers with established families and full-time newspaper jobs,
Fenton's subterfuge was a necessity rather than an affectation."
[This
article is based on a review by E. Kaye Fulton in MacCleans magazine.]
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Women from the files without known birthdate
Maria Nikolaijevna Yermolova (1853- 928) - Russian actor. She
changed Russian theater by interpreting tragic heroines as active and independent
women instead of passive victims.
Stanislavsky called her
the greatest actress he had ever known.
An active liberal, she
mounted several plays that favored the oppressed including one about the
Spanish peasantry. The play was banned by the Czarist government.
She supported the revolution
of 1917 and in 1920 she was awarded the title of People's Artist of the
Republic on her 50th anniversary as an actor. The Yemolova Theatre was
named for her.
Yoko, Madam, Queen of Seneghun (c1849-1906) became chief and
a Sierra Leone leader at the death of her husband in 1878. She extended
her terribtorial influence with the help of the British but she had a dislike
for Christianity and refused to convert. She had been active in politics
all during her marriage and was recognized as a skilled diplomate.
Donna Weinbrecht of the United States won the 1992 gold medal
in women's freestyle skiing moguls at the Olympic games in Albertville,
France.
Walladah bint al-Mustakfi (ft 11th century). Hispano- Arabic poet
who after poverty following her father's death inherited money at age 30.
She cast off the veil and began operating a salon for writers and artists.
She was considered a poet of great ability but most of what has survived
are love poems to her lover.
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American women honored on Turkish stamps.
Constance Lloyd Wilde
"For each mankills the thing he loves"...
was this aimed at his wife?
Constance Lloyd, the
daughter of a wealthy Cork barrister, married the already lionised writer
Oscar Wilde when she was 26 and bore two children, Cyril (who was killed
in the First World War) and Vyvyan, Mr. Holland's father.
According to an article
in The Times of London in 1998, they were at first happy, and Constance
refused to believe rumours of her husband's homosexuality.
She left London when
Wilde was arrested and tried as a sodomite following his ill-fated libel
suit against the Marquess of Queensberry and the subsequent scandal over
his relationship with Queensberry's son, Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie").
Her grandson Merlin Holland
said, "My grandmother was an innocent abroad,
sucked into the maelstrom."
She fled to the Italian
Riviera with the two boys, hoping Wilde would join her after his release
from jail. But he went to Naples instead and took up with Bosie again,
not arriving in Genoa until a year after his wife's death, when he wept
"bitter tears of remorse" at her
grave and covered it in red roses.
Mr. Holland said the
view that Constance maliciously kept Wilde from joining her was wrong.
Anne Clark Amor, author
of Mrs. Oscar Wilde: A Woman of Some Importance, said that although
as a bachelor Wilde was drawn to famous beauties of the day such as Lily
Langtry, he was besotted by Constance. Some Wilde scholars believe the
phrase, "For each man kills the thing he loves,"
in the poem the Ballad of Reading Gaol refers to Constance.
The Times article
goes on, "After fleeing to Italy, Constance
changed her name to Holland and lived in a villa at Bogliasco, along the
coast from Genoa. She died on April 7, 1898 at the age of 40 after surgery
on her spine. The grave at Genoa originally simply bore the inscription
'Constance Mary Lloyd', but the words 'Wife of Oscar Wilde' have been added."
The Oscar Wilde society
is restoring the gravesite.
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04-16 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
Died
04-16-1689, Aphra Behn - English playwright, novelist and poet. AB
is believed to be the first British woman who earned her living by writing.
And write she did. Her
plays often criticized the male prerogatives and was spared from discipline
because of her immense popularity both professionally and personally. She
lived a free lifestyle that surrounded her with scandal.
Her novel Oroonoko
(1688; reprinted 1933) is considered the forerunner of the modern novel.
Her poetry is outstanding
but has been relegated to the obscure by modern critics who often judge
such things by sex rather than ability.
B. 04-16-1693, Mary Provost Alexander - New York merchant and
importer of the American colonial period.
B. 04-16-1755, Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun - French portrait
artist of international reputation. LEVL served as court painter to
Marie Antoinette. Following the French revolution, LEVL and her daughter
went into exile to Italy. There LEVL continued to be a much sought after
artist.
She continued to roam
Europe, even returning to Paris but she did not like the Napoleon influences
and went to London where she painted many members of the court. She also
lived in Switzerland.
At 15 she was already
supporting her widowed mother and brother through her art. She was admitted
to the Academie Royale in 1783. In her memoirs, LEVL estimated she painted
more than 700 portraits and 200 landscapes. Her subjects appear to be in
motion, or doing things rather than being passive statues.
Her memoirs, Souvenirs
de ma vie (1835-37; "Reminiscences of My Life") provide and
insight into the turbulent times she lived through as well as details of
her life and art. mary louise vigee
B. 04-16-1773, Maria Stella - Italian adventuress who contested
the parentage of Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans, upon his accession
to the French throne in 1830.
Died 04-16-1796, Molly Brant - Mohawk consort of the Britsh superintendent
of Indian Affairs for the northern American colonies.
She bore nine children
beginning the year of Sir William Johnson's wife's death and he recognized
them as his natural children by his "housekeeper."
However, it is widely believed that Brant insisted on an Indian marriage.
Such claims are further
enhanced by the fact that she openly presided at Johnson's baronical home
and her children were sent ot the best schools.
At the death of Johnson,
his son took over the property and MB and her eight remaining children
moved to a farm in New York. They had all received bequests but MB "engaged
in trade."
A visitor described her
in 1775 as having "an air of ease and politeness,"
and as "dressed after the Indian Manner, but
her linen and other clothes, the finest of their kind."
She aided the
British during the revolutionary war and when displaced by American forces,
she moved west and influenced the Cayugas and Senecas to support the British.
It was said she had more influence over the Indian tribes "far
superior to that of all the Chiefs put together."
Following the
end of the revolution in 1783, she moved to Canada where she lived in comfort
as a respected member of the community. She received a British pension.
B. 04-16-1838, Martha McClellan Brown - U.S. temperance leader.
MMB not only helped form the national prohibition party but also organized
the first women's state temperance group. She was probably the first one
to bring together the group that would become the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union.
MMB was a noted temperance
speaker At various times in her life she helped edit her husband's newspaper
and taught at his school.
B. 04-16-1865, Grace Livingston Hill - U.S. author. GLH published
more than 78 novels from 1887 to 1947 that sold more than four million
copies. Almost all of the books use a girl protagonist, usually in a rural
enviornment, who faces a series of moral and physical challenges and solves
them with great moral fortitude and certainty. They are being reprinted
today.
B. 04-16-1885, Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen Blixen) - Danish writer
best known for her short stories and tales of Africa.
B. 04-16-1888, Eloise Lownsbery - British author of children's books.
B. 04-16-1889, Frieda Segelke Miller - U.S. state and federal official,
and labor reformer. FSM succeeded Mary Anderson as director of the Woman's
Bureau of the Labor Department from 1944-52.
She was the first woman
elected to the ILO executive board, New York State industrial commissioner.
She emphasized equal pay and equal opportunities for women but originally
opposed the Equal Rights (for Women) Amendment (ERA) because it would endanger
the protective legislation for women. She gradually moved away from protectionism
to the equality philosophy.
She adopted a daughter
Elisabeth (b. 1923) in Germany and returned to the U.S. to share a home
and child care with lifelong companion Pauline Newman who was an organizer
for the Women's Trade Union League and representative of the ILGWU. They
were friends with Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.
B. 04-16-1890, K(Kate). Frances Scott - U.S. activist. KFS waspresident
of National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, physician,
and a professor at Smith College.
B. 04-16-1890, Gertrude Chandler Warner - U.S. Children's author.
B. 04-16-1892, Florence Mary Austral - Australian soprano and voice
teacher.
B. 04-16-1893 GuŠvremont, Germaine -French-Canadian novelist.
She recreated the enclosed world of the Quebec peasant family
B. 04-16-1900(?), Polly Adler - Russian-born American operator of
the most famous New York house of prostitution.
After having been raped
while working as mill girl in a Brooklyn factory, she had an illegal abortion
from the resultance pregnancy.
She then abandoned her
orthodox Jewish life and sought the bright lights of show business. Almost
accidentally she began procuring women for gangster friends to avoid poverty.
She vowed "to be the best goddamn madam in America."
With a combination of panache, publicity, and bribery she did so, hosting
the sensual pleasures of government officials, actors, business tycoons,
and gangsters for several decades.
Arrested a number of
times, she served only 24 days in jail (her male clients none) from 1924
to 1943 when she retired and moved to Los Angeles. Even "reformer"
Thomas Dewey, the New York city district attorney who parlayed crime into
a bid for the presidency was unable to close her down. Her autobiography
A House is Not a Home (1952) was an international best seller translated
into most languages and it was made into a movie.
B. 04-16-1912, Joy Batchelor who with husband John Halas form
the husband-and-wife motion-picture director-producer team that greatly
influenced the development of film animation
B. 04-16-1913, Constance Shacklock - British opera singer. CS
was considered one of the finest Wagnerian singers of Britain where she
starred at the Royal Opera house 1946-56. She was a mezzo-soprano.
She was often "an
eloquent and passionate Brangaene singing opposite Kirsten Flagstad's imperious
Isolde in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde" many times until Flagstand
retired in 1951.
CS was also known for
her Strauss opera interpretattions.
B. 04-16-1921, Marie Maynard Daly - Afro-American biochemist,
the first AA to earned a Ph.D. in chemistry. Dr. Daly's area of research
focuses on nucleic acids.
Event 04-16-1926: Sylvia Townsend Warner's - U.S. author. STW's
Lolly Willowes, or the Loving Huntsman became the first selection
of the renowned, still continuing Book-of-the-Month Club.
B. 04-16-1929, Edie Adams - U.S. pop singer and TV entertainer.
Following the death of her husband, noted comedian Ernie Kovacs who had
put them in terrible debt, singer-comedian EA maintained a murderous work
schedule that included advertising endorsements and was able to off all
the bills without going bankrupt.
B. 04-16-1939, Dusy Springfield - British vocalist who made her
mark as a female hitmaker and icon during the 1960s beat boom that resulted
in the British Invasion of U.S. popular music.
B. 04-16-1940, Margrethe II - Queen of Denmark. She suceeded
her father, King Frederick IX, on Jan. 14, 1972 . She was the first woman
to occupy the throne of Denmark in her own name after the constitution
was changed to allow female ascendancy because her father had no boys.
B. 04-16-1944, Sam McMillan who took the time to post the first
episodes of Women of Achievement and Herstory on the fledgling web in the
mid 1990s. We thank him. The site is long gone, but the encouragement was
wonderful.
B. 04-16-1946, Margot Susanna Adler - U.S. author. MA, producer
of All Things Considered, morning edition for National Public Radio
penned Drawing Down the Moon. MSA was chief of the Washington bureau,
Pacifica News Service network, 1971-72.
B. 04-16-1953, All B. Grinfeld - Russian International Chess grandmaster.
It is not well known but there are a number of women chess grandmasters.
B. 04-16-1954, Ellen Barkin - U.S. actor. EB is recognized as
one of Hollywood's premier actors and has been nominated for Golden Glove
awards several times. Recently she has carved a niche on TV as playing
wise judges. Her credits include Diner (1982), The Big Easy
(1987), and Sea of Love (1989).
Event 04-16-1975: Lila Cockrell , became the first woman mayor
of San Antonio, and the first woman mayor of a top ten city.
Event 04-16-1979: Beverly Kelley is appointed the first woman
commander of a Coast Guard ship.
Event 04-16-1992: the first ever Japanese sexual harassment suit
settled in favor of a woman occurred in Fukuoka. The court held the
woman's rights had been violated by vile remarks which forced her to quit
her job. The company for which she worked spread rumors she was promiscuous.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
An excerpt from Roe v. Wade
ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court as written by Justice J. Blackmun:
"The Aristotelian
theory of 'mediate animation,' that held sway throughout the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance in Europe, continued to be official Roman Catholic
dogma until the 19th century, despite opposition to this 'ensoulment' theory
from those in the Church who would recognize the existence of life from
the moment of conception.
"The latter is now, of course, the official belief
of the Catholic Church. As one brief amicus discloses, this is a view strongly
held by many non-Catholics as well, and by many physicians. Substantial
problems for precise definition of this view are posed, however, by new
embryological data that purport to indicate that conception is a 'process'
over time, rather than an event, and by new medical techniques such as
menstrual extraction, the 'morning-after' pill, implantation of embryos,
artificial insemination, and even artificial wombs.
"In areas other than criminal abortion, the law
has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it,
begins before live birth or to accord legal rights to the unborn except
in narrowly defined situations and except when the rights are contingent
upon live birth. For example, the traditional rule of tort law denied recovery
for prenatal injuries even though the child was born alive."
-- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Blackmun, J. -- Opinion of the Court.
MULGREW, KATE:
Edwin den Braber Nijmegan, interviewer from the
Netherlands:
"Captain Janeway,
do you think it will take until the 25th Century before women are trusted
with jobs as important as captain of a starship?"
Kate Mulgrew who portrayed
Captain Janeway on the TV series "Voyager," (and who her publicists
claim is not a feminist, said):
"Thank you for that
question, Edwin. The fact is that women have been in power throughout the
history of the world.
"If you cast your mind back to the 10th, 11th,
12th centuries, great queens, great diplomats, in fact, were women.
"Janeway has been one of millions who have done
this throughout the history of mankind."
BRADSTREET, ANNE:
"Nay, Masculines,
you have thus tax'd us long,
"Let such, as say our sex is void of reason,
"Know 'tis a slander now, but once was treason..
.
"She [Elizabeth I] has wip'd off th' aspersions
of her Sex
"That woman wisdom lack to play the Rex."
Anne Bradstreet wrote in her defense during the
terrible days when women weren't allowed any literary freedom (or much
others in Colonial America.)
"These poems are
the fruit but of some few hours curtailed from sleep and other refreshments."
Anne Bradstreet, recognized
as America's first woman poet was born in approximately 1612 and with her
husband was with the first group of English settlers in Massachusetts with
John Winthrop. Even enduring the unbelievably the rough life of a woman
in the early colonies and eight children, somehow she managed to write.
Her first poems were published in England without
her knowledge by a brother-in-law. She kept developing and her later works
showed greater maturity and warmth. One wonder how good she could have
been without the burden of motherhood, wifehood, and back breaking work
of a colonial homemaker - and the disaproval of the patriarchy which kept
all the "creations" for themselves - even the belief that any
child was ALL that of the husband and the wife was merely the field into
which his seed was planted.
FOX-GENOVESE, ELIZABETH:
"Despite differences,
most feminists seek equal eonomic rights; support reproductive rights,
including right to abortion; criticize traditional definitions of gender
roles; and favor raising children of both genders for similar public achievements
and domestic responsibilities. Many wish to reform language so that it
does not equal man with humanity. Many also campaign vigorously against
violence aginst women (wife battering, rape) and against the denigration
of women in the media."
-- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
BINGEN, HILDEGARD von:
"We cannot live
in a world that is not our own. In a world that is interpreted for us by
others. An interpreted world is not a HOME. Part of the terror is to take
back our own listening. To use our own voice. To be our own light."
-- Hildegard von Bingen, 12th century mystic, writer, and abbess
KING, GRACE:
"Patience! Patience!
Patience is the invention of dullards and sluggards. In a well-regulated
world there should be no need of such a thing as patience."
-- Grace King, U.S. author (1852-1932).
CROMBIE, DEBORAH:
In her book Leave the Grave Green, Deborah
Crombie writes a divorced woman's reflection of her ex- husband:
"Gemma thought of
Rob's automatic assumption that she would provide for his every need, both
physical and emotional. It had never occurred to him that she might have
a few of her own."
GINSBURG, RUTH BADER:
"People who are
well-represented at trial do not get the death penalty.''
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, April 2001.
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