1/1/25
Pioneers in 19th century Women’s Medical Education and Health Care
The Cure for Women, by Lydia Reeder. St. Martin’s Press, 2024. 336 pages.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for an advance readers copy of this book.
This is a fascinating account of the pioneering American women who championed medical training and degrees for women physicians in the late 19th century, and the politics and prejudices they faced.
Filled with details about their lives and careers, it also features the male medical misogynists who put all kinds of obstacles in their way, both in training and treatment. (A large section focuses on the “rest cure” for women. Some of this information is quite shocking and yet strains of it still abound today.)
In fact, while the subtitle focuses on Mary Putnam Jacobi, and she was quite a heroine both in skills, persistence and innovative thinking, many other outstanding figures share the story, both female and male. Dr. Putnam Jacobi is an important part, but only a part, of this gripping and dramatic history.
The writing is engaging, giving both scope and details of the women’s lives and careers, but the organization is not as good as one would hope: repeatedly, histories are interrupted to insert interesting but not relevant anecdotes that are out of the timeline. It can also be distracting to move back and forth between Putnam-Jacobi’s life and the extended social history context in which she lived it.
Despite this, the book is lively, entertaining and informative, and can be highly enjoyed by lovers of American history, medicine’s history, or women’s history.
12/13/24
A history of department stores as uniquely female universes
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, by Julie Satow. Doubleday, 2024. 476 pages (360 before photos and bibliography).
Journalist and author Satow presents us with a colorful journey through the aisles and offices of three of New York City’s upscale department stores, and the lives of the women whose visions and work made their ventures exceptional.
At Bonwit Teller in the 1930’s, Hortense Odlum, who preferred to see herself as a wife and mother, reluctantly became president and turned the failing store into an unexpected success.
In the 1940’s, Dorothy Shaver took the helm as president of Lord and Taylor, championing social causes and nurturing American designers.
And at Henri Bendel, from the late 1950’s into the ‘80’s, Geraldine Stutz spent 29 years creating and sustaining a small, exclusive shopping experience.
While the focus is on these three women, others’ stories are told: Bessie Harrison, a salesgirl in 1906 San Francisco (and beyond); MaryAnn Magnin, who created I. Magnin in the same place and time; Beatrice Fox Auerbach, who in the late 1930’s and ‘40’s ran the largest family-owned department store in the country, and hired married women and African Americans in sales and management; and Lane Bryant (Lena Himmelstein), who originated the maternity-wear market as well as clothes for larger women.
All the stores and lives are set in the changing social contexts of their times, especially in terms of women as business leaders. There also is fascinating social history about the hiring (and firing) of married women and African Americans, as well as the emerging importance of window dressing, ready-to-wear clothes, lightweight mannequins, and discount retailers.
For those who experienced (or heard stories about) the “hey-day” of department stores, this is a welcome time capsule that opens memories of those times.
11/11/24
Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction, by Lynne Olson. Random House, 2023, 427 pages.
This lively biography and history reads like an adventure story of successes and stymies, petty problems and great strides, with an intriguing heroine.
Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt (1913-2011) was a “female action figure come to life” (pg. xx), according to writer Lynne Olson. She became one of the pre-eminent French archeologists of the 20th century, rising in the 1930’s even though frequently shunned by her male colleagues. She was a resistance spy during WWII, and after that led a more quiet life as a wife, mother – and head curator of the Louvre’s Egyptian Collection, coordinating fieldwork, teaching and writing. Then in the 1950s and ‘60s she spearheaded the effort to save Egypt’s ancient temples when the Aswan Dam was built.
Five feet tall, described as talkative, opinionated, curious and self-confident, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt created remarkable alliances with key players in academic, public, and political arenas. In doing so she faced many challenges, not only as a woman, but as someone working in another country’s ancient culture and current politics. Her extensive fieldwork – which she taught was absolutely necessary to be an Egyptologist – was marked by the respect and care she showed to the Egyptian laborers who literally did the heavy lifting at sites.
With great detail, and thrilling descriptions, Olson shows the machinations and mechanics of rescuing the Temple Complex at Abu Sembel, as well as other smaller Temples. She paints a picture of incredible international cooperation as a feat of shared diplomacy, financial support, and engineering skill.
In addition to describing Descroches-Noblecourt’s work, Olson gives a history of the Louvre, and of the post-WWII political conflicts between Britain, Egypt and the surrounding Middle East, including Israel.
Looking at the end of Desroches-Noblecourt long life, Olson discusses how her work – and personality – were viewed by others. These experts have questioned some of her more speculative theories, and her lack of footnotes and references to support them. Apparently, she also was not easiest person with whom to work, convinced of the rightness of her own approach, methods, and interpretations.
At the successful conclusion of the Ancient Temples’ campaign, Christiane Descroches-Noblecourt did not receive the recognition she deserved; in fact, she seemed almost deliberately snubbed, with two major male collaborators denying her central role. Despite this, she continued working until her death at 98 in her efforts to explore the Valley of the Queens, where many Egyptian royal children were buried as well as pharaohs’ wives and mothers. In 2009 she finally was honored by UNESCO, but this is the first biography of her in English or French. It is well worth reading!
(For a lighter look at another strong-willed, female archeologist, try the “Amelia Peabody” mystery series by Elizabeth Peters, the pen name of a real American archeologist, Barbara Mertz.)
9/25/24
A Little Less Broken, by Marian Schembari
Flatiron Books, 2024. 272 pages.
Thank you to Flatiron Books and NetGalley for an advance reader copy of this book.
After over 30 years of feeling “broken” – socially awkward, sudden rages, sensitivity to sound and other stimuli, and imitating others to seem normal – Marian Schembari’s memoir opens with joy: at 34, she has just been diagnosed as autistic, and suddenly her differences and preferences make glorious sense.
Marian then goes back to her experiences growing up, with all the sadness and pain she felt. Her writing is strong and smooth, and there is humor as well as aching honesty. It is clear she is a strong, smart, and insightful person, who is speaking for untold numbers of women (and girls) who are not readily understood as being autistic, and so unsympathetically lectured, punished, and shamed for their behaviors.
She also deals with even larger issues: the lack of credence given to girls’ and women’s experiences of pain, including endometriosis as well as sensitivity to sound and touch, and emotional dysregulation.
Further, she discusses the importance of having a diagnosis, a label to make sense of ourselves and understand our needs, as well as leading to a community of others like us, and self-compassion.
Rarely have I read a memoir that is also a page-turner, and an eye-opener. I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with an emotional or physical difference that has left them feeling beyond the range of what we consider “normal” experience — and also for those who live with and love them.
Brava, Ms. Schembari!
7/1/24
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Simon and Schuster, April, 2024. 480 pages.
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin brings her insightful and engaging focus to the life of her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, whose words and ideas shaped some of the most powerful policies of the 1960s.
Although this is presented as a dual memoir/biography, Dick has center stage throughout. A major speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and others, he is not well-known to the general public. He created the term, “Great Society,” and wrote the speech introducing it to the country; he wrote Johnson’s “We Shall Overcome” address, and built the foundation for the voting rights act and other vital social policy initiatives of the 1960’s. Throughout his life, he created programs as well as policies that addressed the idealism of young people and the needs of underserved people.
Dick Goodwin saved at least 300 boxes of memorabilia from the 60’s, which he never looked at. However, when he turned 80 years old, he and his wife began going through the boxes in chronological order. What a treasure trove! And how well Doris has woven it into a personal and political tale of turning points in a past many of us still can recall.
Doris enters the picture mostly in terms of the conflicting ideas the two have about Lyndon Johnson, whom Doris worked for and greatly admired, and for whom Dick had a harsh assessment. She also is clearly a valued partner in their exploration of Dick’s experiences and emotions in the 60s.
There are some notable gaps in the story: Dick was married in the 60s, to a woman with mental health issues, and had a young child, but the book depicts him as a free agent, traveling widely, working days and nights, and never mentions his domestic responsibilities. Also, the title is ambiguous: what is unfinished about their long, happy relationship? It seems to me that “unfinished” more rightly belongs to the hopes and goals they had for a more equal and fair society.
Despite these questions, this is a beautifully-written story of a little-known man who deserves a great deal of credit for what he accomplished in his life-long efforts to make America a better place.
4/13/24
The Wives: A Memoir, by Simone Gorrindo. Gallery/Scott Press, April, 2024. 415 pages
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.
Simone Gorrindo’s eloquent memoir is an exploration of marriage under difficult circumstances, and the army wives who come to make up her world and broaden and deepen her perspective on others and herself.
Simone was a 28-year-old who had lived and worked in New York City for a decade. A writer and editor, she had her “dream job” when she left New York in 2012 to follow her husband, Andrew, to Columbus, Georgia, because he decided to enlist in the army. They had met in high school, and though they had not reconnected for some years after, their relationship seemed grounded in shared values and beliefs, and especially in communicating their thoughts, ideas, and feelings to each other.
His decision came as a shock to Simone. He had immersed himself in specialized martial arts training, but that seemed as much an intellectual as a physical discipline. Simone’s values and ethics were quite liberal, as her husband’s had been. But Andrew feels called to soldiering, to the extent that he says if he had to choose between Simone and the army, he would choose the army (words that would haunt them both).
Andrew also presents his enlistment in an elite special operations unit as a chance for Simone, too, to have a new start, a writer’s life. She does establish herself as a free-lance editor and writer, but at the cost of loneliness and anxiety. Andrew is deployed to Afghanistan for months at a time, and sent to lengthy trainings when not on deployment. Perhaps most difficult is the secrecy that surrounds his work. He can tell her very little of what he does, and learns to hold in his feelings and thoughts about it. This feels to her as a betrayal of their marriage.
Simone, college-educated and middle-class, has more in common with the officers’ wives, but because of the army’s rigid hierarchy, cannot socialize with them. Instead she spends time with other enlisted men’s wives, most of whom are much younger than she, have no more than a high school education, and are raising young children in their husbands’ absences.
The book covers her experiences between 2012 and 2016. It involves much anxiety and depression, recovery from serious injuries in a car accident and finally, the happy end to a difficult pregnancy. Through it all she learns to admire, love, and depend on a group of women with whom she would never have spent time in other situations – among them evangelical Christians and right wing loyalists. Perhaps most of all, she learns to live with paradoxes in her ideas, feelings, and relationships, including her marriage.
This unusual look into the lives of military wives would make an excellent book club choice.
3/31/24
If A Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard, by Jennifer Rosner. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2 010. 250 pages.
In 2000, Jennifer Rosner had just finished her Ph.D. in moral philosophy at Stanford University, when her daughter, Juliet, was born. Almost immediately, post-natal tests showed Juliet had a severe hearing loss.
Jennifer and her husband, an attorney who directed a non-profit finding the best placements for neglected and abused children, were shocked. While Jennifer’s mother had acquired deafness, it was from childhood illness and surgery. Only in pursuing the history of her father’s family did Jennifer learn that in the 1880’s a branch of his family also had been born with total deafness.
In the modern world, the couple was faced with decisions they never contemplated: should their daughter be raised in an oral culture or a deaf one?
Because Jennifer and her husband were both talkers by predilection and profession – and she was trained as a classical opera singer – after much research they chose the hearing world – and were greatly criticized for this by deaf advocates.
Their first daughter could be helped with hearing aids. Three years later, when their second daughter, Sophia, was born with profound deafness, they decided to give her cochlear implants as soon as possible, with the surgery performed during infancy.
This moving memoir recounts not only this family’s journey toward wholeness, but also the author’s imaginings of the lives of her father’s deaf great aunts, Nellie and Bayla. Through the stories about them that Rosner created, she found “company, escape, and guidance,” and also a growing understanding of her own mother’s need for emotional distance. Rosner’s struggles and resolutions speak to the importance of being heard emotionally as well as physically. And her forays into creating stories about her older relatives has led to a career writing novels, including the critically acclaimed Yellow Bird Sings and Once We Were Home. A review of the latter novel can be found in the Fiction Reviews on this blog.
2/20/24
Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women, By Pashtana Durani and Tamara Bralo. Citadel: February 20, 2024. 224 pages.
Thank you to Citadel Press and NetGalley for an advance reader’s copy of this book.
With honesty and drama, this inspiring account by a young Afghan woman activist focuses on two major concerns of the modern world: refugees and girls’ education in non-Western societies. It is also a love letter to the author’s father, whose progressive, often heroic, views and actions paved the way for her life’s work.
Unlike many grass roots activists, Pashtana Durani came from the richest family in her refugee town. Her father was the tribal leader of their Pashtun clan. Living in the largest house adjacent to the Afghan refugee camp in Quetta, Pakistan, he used two rooms as a school for girls from the camp. Service to community was a prime value for him. He succeeded almost too well: his eldest child, Pashtana, gave up a scholarship at Oxford in order to commit herself to educating Afghan girls in rural communities.
By her late teens she had founded a non-governmental organization, LEARN, and by her early twenties she had attained an almost unprecedented role of authority in her tribal clan, the largest in Afghanistan. All were left behind when she had to flee the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.
These simple sentences cannot reflect the effort, skill, and introspection that helped her towards success and that have kept her committed to her mission, despite political events that have overturned her world. Nor do they reflect her insight about her stubborn and often headstrong approach to her work, which she wryly acknowledges.
One must travel with her through this book, sharing her struggles and triumphs, to understand and appreciate what she already has contributed to women’s education and health among the poorest of refugees. Her future is uncertain as is that of her beloved Afghanistan. One hopes she will find more ways to help women, girls, and her country, and that she will share them with us.
11/25/23
Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science, by Catherine McNeur. Basic Books, October 31, 2023, 432 pages.
While doing research for another project, author McNeur, an environmental historian, came upon references to two sisters: Elizabeth Carrington Morris (1795-1865) and Margaretta Hare Morris (1797-1867). Intrigued, she decided to pursue them, and this book is the fruit of those efforts.
In the first half of the 19th century, Elizabeth studied botany, and anonymously published many articles in agricultural and horticultural periodicals and supplied rare plant specimens to some of the best-known men of the era. As she grew older, Elizabeth embraced her role as the “behind-the-scenes” supporter of the community of botanists.
Margaretta allowed herself to be identified publicly for her ground-breaking work in entomology, and suffered criticism and derision, primarily based on her gender. However, she was also recognized as one of the first women admitted to the American Association for the Advancement in Science. (Though without the right to present her own work – a man had to do it – or even attend meetings.)
The sisters, white and wealthy, and never married, lived together throughout their lives in the large family home in Germantown, PA. The extensive grounds and adjacent woods and creek gave them ample opportunities to explore and experiment with nature.
This book gives an overview of Early American science, as well as the role of women in it. Interestingly, for decades women’s seminaries taught the sciences, while men’s did not; not surprisingly, as it became more mainstream and professionalized, women were not included in its growth.
In fact, much of the book is about how gendered power struggles impacted environmental knowledge. The Morris sisters were part of the transformation of natural science into a recognized and elevated field of study; because of their gender they were either not given credit for their work, or if their identities were known, had their work belittled.
McNeur restores their work and their contributions to history, and with her clear, almost deceptively simple writing, introduces them to our generations.
For two novels that address women scientists in the same period, please go to Fiction Reviews to learn about The Signature of All Things, and Remarkable Creatures.
11/6/23
The Criminalization of Abortion in 19th century America
The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime, by Nicholas L Syrett. The New Press, Oct. 31, 2023, 248 pages.
Thank you to The New Press for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.
In 1839, when Madame Restell started her career as a “female physician,” early term abortion (before “quickening,” a very imprecise measure of the start of life) had been criminalized for just a decade, but these rarely enforced laws made providing abortions only a misdemeanor. By 1872, abortion at any stage of pregnancy had become a felony, with both the provider and the recipient charged, as well as anyone who had helped access this service.
The author, Nicholas L. Syrett, is Associate Dean and Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. Trained as an historian, he uses the case study of Madame Restell’s notorious career to explain many trends, attitudes and political and professional interests that led to the criminal view and punishment of abortion, as well as contraception. (I did not realize that it was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that married couples had a constitutional right to use contraception.)
The story of Madame Restell (real name: Ann Trow) provides an unusually rich source of information on how abortion, practiced by trained women for centuries, became a hotly contentious cause of medical men and obscenity activists. While based in New York, her experience reflects much of what was happening in other parts of antebellum America. Not only was she well-known even beyond her home state, but she seems to have flaunted the riches she earned through her work, making her an easy target for obsessed reformers like Anthony Comstock, and the increasingly professionalized male medical establishment. In fact, the American Medical Association, founded in 1847, made anti-abortion one of their first causes.
Perhaps because of his academic background, the author seems to go into too much detail about many events, especially the actual trials of Madame Restell, and there is repetition of information, most noticeably the importance and difficulty in defining “quickening” of life. Although this may not be a book for the casual reader, those interested in U.S. social history, and especially of women’s reproductive rights, will find this an intriguing story that can, unfortunately, be applied to contemporary events.
10-26-23
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter, by Margareta Magnusson. Scribner, 2018, 137 pages.
The author of this short book places herself “between the ages of 80 and 100,” and uses her experience to offer clear, simple, and good humored advice about not just how, but why to go through this process: for your own comfort, as well as saving others.
Much of the advice may be found in other “how to de-clutter” books, but I especially appreciated her thoughts on what to do with photos – which she says is the last thing to go through. Photos have so much meaning; starting with them can slow down the whole process. In addition to advice on how to proceed with photos, she has some good ideas for using family photos as a game, or at a family event.
With Magnusson’s stories of her life and experiences, and some dark wit along with the gentle humor, this is an excellent guide to begin what can be a difficult and complicated undertaking.
For a gentle novel about the preciousness of ordinary items, please see the Fiction Review for The Museum of Ordinary People.
9-13-23 – Stories of My Life, by Katherine Paterson
John Knox Westminster Publishers, Sept. 13, 2023, 319 pages.
Thank you to the Publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.
Born to Presbyterian missionary parents in China in 1932, Katherine (Womeldorf) Paterson gives a lively and sympathetic recounting of her early life and the important people in it, framed by the Japanese-Sino War in the late 1930’s. Her family returned to America at the start of WWII, where for the first time she felt alien, and she tellingly compares her trepidation and anxiety with going to a public school in America to experiencing war and evacuation. The public schools were worse.
Paterson goes on to be a missionary herself, in 1950’s Japan, and writes that being loved by people you thought you hated is something she wishes everyone could have.
After a whirlwind courtship, she marries minister John Paterson, and together they have two children, adopt two more, and act as foster parents. And she begins to write and publish her celebrated books, including The Bridge to Terabithia, The Great Gilly Hopkins, The Sign of the Chrysanthemum, Jacob Have I Loved, and many more that are either based on her fascination with history or her own lived experiences.
One of the most appealing parts of the book, to me, was her description of the links from her life to the inception and themes of her books, and the power of stories to make sense of life. She writes that while a critic has said it is hope that runs through her creations, she believes it is grace, “unmerited favor that has poured down on [her] all the days of [her] life.”
While it can be difficult to untangle the details of generations of her large family and the chronology of her many journeys, included charts of both are helpful. And it is a pleasure to read such a sensitive reflection on a busy life, full of unusual events yet with delight in common ways of living we all can share through loved family and friends.
8-23-23 – Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life, by Anna Funder
Knopf, August 22, 2023, 464 pages.
Thank you to Knopf and to NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.
This is more than a biography of a woman mostly hidden behind her husband’s fame, first by domesticity and then by history. It is a meditation and exploration of what it means to be the quiet but vital partner in a relationship. This silent partner almost always is a woman, who gives up her talent and aspirations in the service of her husband’s ambitions.
George Orwell’s work is precious to the author, Anna Funder, and she turns to it at a time of great stress in her own life as mother, wife, and writer. Wondering about Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Funder begins writing this book in an effort to become visible to herself – to determine what is important to her as a modern-day woman and writer. Not only does she discover much about Orwell’s little-known wife; she describes the process of self-discovery through research and writing.
Though Funder begins by saying she does not want to disparage Orwell (real name: Eric Blair), the events she describes make it difficult to forgive him for the ways in which he used Eileen not just domestically and financially, but as a sounding board, thinker, and editor, yet omitted her from recognition, let alone mention, in his work. His attitudes and behavior towards women in general are disturbing and at times disgusting. He is no hero, whatever the importance of his work.
As sources for her work, Funder uses recently found letters from Eileen, memoirs and diaries of her close friends and colleagues. The book is rich in research and in imagination, as she details scenes with no record in order to bring Eileen to life. This raises a question: in a sense, is Eileen being used again, this time as a warning of the effects of patriarchy?
Eileen seems to have had little sense of self-worth, and her effort to spend as little as possible on herself may have cost her life, as she died from a hysterectomy done at the smallest expense. At one point Funder writes that “wifedom is a wicked magic trick we’ve learned to play on ourselves.” Her thoughtful and thought-provoking book shows some of how that “magic” is conjured, through a patriarchy that makes what a woman does disappear, and then makes the woman herself vanish.
6-2-23 – Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages through the Women Written Out of It, by Janina Ramirez. Hanover Square Press, 2023; 448 pages (including over 100 pages of endnotes)
I found this book fascinating, if a bit uneven. The author puts together information from old, contemporaneous, well-studied documents, and views them through the lens of modern archeological tools. She makes the case that what we have traditionally known of medieval women (7th through 14th centuries) was recast as reflections of what Victorian society wanted, and now that we have so many new techniques and aids for study, it is time to revisit the original texts.
“Femina” refers to the label scribbled along medieval texts known to be written by women, and so less worthy of preservation.
There are chapters on 7th century English queens, highlighting the importance of women in bringing Christianity to Britain; on 9th century Viking women warriors, which also corrects our conceptions of Vikings in general. The chapter on the Bayeux Tapestries of the 11th century features the wives and sisters of kings. Twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen, canonized in 2012, is surrounded by a cast of important, influential, and exceptional women. In the 14th century, Jedwiga/Hedwig of Krakow actually had the title of “King,” and Margery of Kempe, a merchant, mystic, and self-proclaimed “mad” woman, wrote the first known autobiography in English.
Ramirez looks at nobles, saints, and also the lower classes, and through her descriptions of trade, pilgrimage, migration and exploration, presents strong evidence that throughout the middle ages cities were made up of diverse populations. She also attests that gender nonconformity has ancient roots.
Sometimes the detail is daunting, especially when names are unfamiliar – there is a series of confusing “Aethel…s” in the first chapter – and some evidence seems thin, as with the 12th century “Cathars,” who may or may not have existed. But the writing is lively, sometimes seeming like myths retold with women at the forefront, as they apparently really were.
The book is long – but the last 100+ pages are endnotes and bibliography, helpful for scholars but not necessary for those wanting a good read in women’s social and cultural history.
For a vivid novel of a medieval woman, please see Matrix: A Novel by Lauren Groff in the Fiction Reviews.
5-18-23 – Group Biographies of Women
I love biographies of women in groups by profession, situation, historical or social moments – with one caveat: that they are not over-inclusive, covering so many women that it is hard to keep the stories clear and maintain the focus on major themes.
These are not always easy to find, but I have read several excellent ones that I’m eager to share:
The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship and Liberation in the 1960’s, by Maggie Doherty. Vintage: 2020, 359 pages.
In 1960, Harvard’s “sister school,” Radcliffe, created the Institute for Independent Study, which offered paid fellowships to women with Ph.D.’s or “equivalent” artistic experience, and for whom motherhood had limited their opportunities to move forward in their careers.
In the first two years these women included the poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen. They became firm friends, and referred to themselves as “The Equivalents.”
The book provides nuanced biographies of each, and shows how their lives and work intertwined over the years after their fellowships.
It is well-written, absorbing, and a window into what talented women contended with mid-century, and continues to resonate today.
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars, by Francesca Wade, Crown: 2020, 383 pages.
Five different women, in a different time and place, cross the pages of Square Haunting, referring to Mecklenburgh Square on the outskirts of Bloomsbury, in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
These women all lived in close proximity to each other, and were writers and academics, some still well-known, others lost to time: novelist Virginia Woolf, detective story-writer (and literary critic) Dorothy Sayers, modernist poet Hilda Doolittle, known as “H.B.,” economic historian Eileen Power, and classicist Jane Harrison.
However, this book covers a 20-year time-space, and the women’s lives did not so much intersect as move in similar circles, and each highlights the effects of the social, educational, economic, and political environment that talented women faced in those years. The writing is lively, and the juxtaposition of slightly different times gives a mosaic of the various ways women with little power but much intellect, navigated their lives.
No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain’s Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I, by Wendy Moore. Basic Books: 2020, 369 pages.
While this book focuses on a pair of female physicians in the early 1900’s, it gives a wider view of others in their orbit as well.
Before World War I, the few women who managed to become physicians were restricted to treating women and children. These female doctors were not considered either strong enough or competent enough to have male patients, and of course, the thought of women examining naked men offended Victorian propriety.
Then came the devastation of the first World War, and with it the dire need for increased medical practitioners. Into this void came Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray, suffragettes, medical doctors, and life-partners.
They set up two military hospitals in France, and then one in the center of London. This was staffed completely by women – orderlies and nurses, as well as female physicians from the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And their high success rate in treating dreadfully wounded men opened doors – not easily or many – for future women doctors.
Have you read a group biography that you would recommend? I’d love to know. Please either put it in a comment, or write to me at [email protected]