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‘‘I soon ceased to be the humble woman and spoke boldly what I thought, in defiance of his authority. . . . The end was, that I declared my readiness to leave
the hospital.’’∏≠
Horn would probably have described the encounter di√erently, presenting Zakrzewska as the upstart that he believed her to be. It turns out that the acceptance of presents was a highly regulated a√air; the government’s instruc-tions for the head midwife dictated exactly the conditions under which they were allowed. Most important, presents, whether from her pupils or from the parturient women and their families, had to be o√ered without any coercion and had to be shared with the wards’ attendants. By accepting and then storing the presents, Zakrzewska had clearly broken the rules. Her reasons may have been noble, but Horn, who must have viewed this as yet another example of Zakrzewska’s unwillingness to submit to the regulations governing her position, saw this as the opportunity he needed to encourage termination of her appointment. Zakrzewska must have realized this was coming when she took matters into her own hands and quit.∏∞
By 15 November, six months after she had assumed the position of head midwife, Zakrzewska was contemplating what to do with her life. She possessed an outstanding education in midwifery, had held a position of considerable responsibility, and had become acutely aware of the need for protection if one was to survive as a government employee. Schmidt’s wife, who had retained a friendship with Zakrzewska following her husband’s death, suggested to Marie that she remain in Berlin and establish her own private hospital. Zakrzewska contemplated this option seriously, but ultimately she decided against it. Instead, like so many other Germans at the time, she began thinking about immigrating to the United States. Restless and ambitious, she set her sights on studying medicine abroad, the United States being the only country at the time where women could earn the M.D. Earlier in the year, her mentor had told her about the Female Medical College in Philadelphia, which had opened in 1850
and was granting women medical degrees. ‘‘In America,’’ she claims Schmidt told her, ‘‘women will now become physicians, like the men; this shows that only in a republic can it be proved that science has no sex.’’∏≤
Zakrzewska would soon learn that many of the same prejudices against women that she had had to endure in Germany existed in the United States.
But early in 1853, as she was contemplating this move, she shared the excitement of millions of individuals who had been looking across the ocean for almost a decade with great hope and high expectations. Between 1844 and
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1854, the United States opened its doors to three million immigrants. As far as Germans were concerned, many left for economic reasons, preferring emigra-tion over starvation. In the years following the revolutionary events of 1848, a smaller group of political refugees joined those who continued to leave for economic reasons. Some emigrated because they feared persecution, others because they found Germany increasingly intolerant and believed America o√ered better soil for building a true democracy.∏≥ Zakrzewska, who probably came closer to the latter, had of course the added hope that she would be able to do what remained forbidden to women in her own country: pursue a medical degree.
Zakrzewska claims her mother ‘‘consented with heart and soul’’ when she heard of her plans.∏∂ Her father also gave his approval, although he made it a condition that she take along her younger sister, Anna. Presumably he did not want Marie to travel alone, but perhaps he also suspected that all his children would eventually follow their oldest sister, forming part of the transatlantic crossing that so altered the face of American society. Of all her siblings, Marie would leave the greatest mark on the land that would soon become her home; within a decade of her arrival she would become the director of one of the few hospitals at which women interested in studying medicine could receive clinical training. What she later remembered about her departure, though, was less her excitement than her sadness at leaving her mother. ‘‘Upon my memory,’’ she wrote, ‘‘is for ever imprinted the street, the house, the window behind which my mother stood waving her handkerchief. Not a tear did I su√er to mount to my eyes, in order to make her believe that the departure was an easy one; but a heart beating convulsively within punished me for the restraint.’’∏∑ Zakrzewska, who was all of twenty-three years old, was about to cross the ocean to a land she had read about only in books.
This Land of Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity
In April 1853, Marie and Anna Zakrzewska set sail for New York on board the Deutschland. It was a clipper ship, with room for eighteen people in the first cabin and scores of others down below in steerage. The two sisters, who were among the more privileged, kept to themselves, finding their fellow travelers to be ‘‘not su≈ciently attractive to induce us to make their acquaintance.’’∞ They may have been going to the new world of freedom and democracy, but like other middle-class travelers they carried their old ‘‘baggage’’ of class with them. For forty-seven days they struggled, sometimes with stormy and inclement weather but mostly with boredom, anxious to reach their destination and begin their new lives. On 22 May they finally sighted land, surprised by the greenness of the landscape that met them as they pulled into the quarantine at Staten Island. ‘‘I was at once riveted by the beautiful scene that was spread before my eyes,’’
Zakrzewska later remembered, ‘‘. . . and a feeling rose in my heart that I can call nothing else than devotional; for it bowed my knees beneath me, and forced sounds from my lips that I could not translate into words, for they were mysterious to myself.’’≤
Zakrzewska’s sense of awe grew as the ship continued its journey toward its final destination, the island of Manhattan, where it docked at Pier 13 on the Hudson River. Pastoral scenery now gave way to an urban environment as the Deutschland pulled into a busy commercial port, filled with people and abuzz with the activity and sense of purpose so characteristic of city life. Zakrzewska viewed this sudden transition not with dismay but with excitement. To her, this city, which would be her home o√ and on over the next six years, was ‘‘beauti-
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ful,’’ and whatever joy she had felt as she gazed upon Staten Island’s bucolic setting was now ‘‘mastered by another feeling—a feeling of activity that had become my ideal.’’≥
Zakrzewska thrived on city life. There was something about the pace of life and the intensity of experience that inspired her, making her hopeful that she would be able to fulfill her dream. Of course, all cities were not equal. She had left one because ‘‘a despotic government and its servile agents’’ had not allowed her to continue her study of medicine, but now she had found another urban setting, which she believed would present fewer obstacles to a young woman intent on pursuing a medical career. Zakrzewska had come to New York, believing that ‘‘in this land of liberty, equality and fraternity’’ things would be di√erent.∂
. . .
Zakrzewska may have left Germany behind her, but she still landed in a city with the third largest population of German-speakers in the world. By 1855, just two years following her arrival, roughly 154,000 Germans lived in New York City, a significant number but still just a small part of the almost 1.5 million Germans who came to the United States between 1843 and the Civil War.∑
Most immigrants chose their final destination based on where they had immediate family, distant relatives, or even close friends. Marie and Anna lacked such intimate ties, but they did arrive with letters of introduction, some to physicians who Marie hoped would help her pursue her medical career, others to friends of her family and even distant acquaintances who had crossed the ocean years before. The two sisters did not, however, expect to be met at the dock and were thus all the more surprised and even a bit shocked when they heard their names being called. An old acquaintance of theirs, a ‘‘Mr
s. G,’’ had heard from her family in Berlin that the two young women would be arriving alone, and she and her husband had decided to extend a helping hand. In this way, Marie and Anna were pulled immediately into New York’s ‘‘Little Germany,’’ or Kleindeutschland, a community located on the lower east side of Manhattan where the vast majority of the city’s German-speaking population resided and worked.∏
Language may have held this community together, but beyond that di√erences abounded. Whether in terms of class, religion, politics, or occupation, the residents made up a markedly heterogeneous group. Still, it would be fair to say that the community tended to be more secular than religious, more Democratic than Republican, more artisanal and skilled in employment than unskilled.
Indeed, the largest occupational group in Kleindeutschland consisted of those
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involved in some capacity with the tailoring business, and it was to this group that Zakrzewska’s hosts belonged. As a manufacturer of fringes and tassels, Mr.
G managed to make a modest living, although by no means a comfortable one.
His dwelling consisted of no more than his shop, a small kitchen, and two additional rooms, one that they used as a sitting room, the other as a bedroom.
Nevertheless, he and his wife did not hesitate to o√er their sitting room to the two sisters, something that touched Zakrzewska deeply but that also increased her resolve to find accommodations as soon as possible. She succeeded by the end of the week in finding what she referred to as ‘‘a suite of rooms,’’ which, given that she paid only $5.50 a month in rent, probably consisted of little more than a parlor, a single bedroom, and a kitchen. But Marie and Anna were pleased, and having moved in the furniture they had brought with them from Germany, they settled in quickly and turned their attention to the more important business of figuring out how to support themselves.π
Most female immigrants who arrived in New York City around midcentury found employment either as a domestic or in tailoring or needlework. The first, although providing better compensation than the others, subjected the women to the scrutiny of their mistresses, who frequently moved beyond supervision of the work routine to the regulation of personal habits and behaviors. The latter trades, whether carried out in small shops or through outwork, allowed greater personal freedom, but the work was poorly paid and unreliable, subject as it was to the whims of the business owner and the seasonal demand for goods. By one estimate, a woman who managed to sew full-time could earn about ninety dollars a year, just barely enough to support herself. But such constant employment was rare, not to mention the impossibility of surviving on such a low wage should there be any dependents. Seamstresses and needlewomen thus lived on the edge of poverty, occasionally engaging in casual prostitution to supplement their income when other forms of work proved inadequate.∫
The latter was not an option for either sister, whose bourgeois upbringing made it impossible for them to think of casual prostitution as an economic choice, part and parcel of a system of sexual bartering that had, by midcentury, come to mark urban working-class culture.Ω Nor, however, was it even remotely a threat, since they always had the option of writing home for additional funds should their situation deteriorate too far. The two sisters had thus a bu√er around them, distinguishing them from most other immigrants who came o√
the boat penniless and therefore dependent upon an exploitative labor market to make ends meet.
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How they ended up supporting themselves their first year in New York highlights the ambiguity of their situation. For a while their only income came from piecework Anna was doing as a sewer for a dressmaker. Working eleven hours a day, six days a week, she would have made $2.75 a week had she received her wages regularly. But Anna, like other pieceworkers, was not always paid for her work, and she and Marie watched their savings dwindle rapidly. The anxiety they experienced stemmed in part from their concern that they might have to seek additional support from their parents, but in some ways the shrinking of any economic separation between themselves and the poor seemed to matter less than the indications that socially the line was blurring as well. Thus when Anna had initially sought the piecework, she had done so, she explained to Marie, only because ‘‘no one here knows me.’’ And when Marie decided to pawn a watch chain in order to get some additional money, she did so ‘‘by giving a fictitious name,’’ reasoning that it was tolerable to borrow money in this way because ‘‘[n]o one knows us.’’∞≠ Much like their parents, they seemed most concerned with the appearance of impropriety, especially any behaviors that would suggest their abandonment of bourgeois values.
Marie is the one who finally secured the family’s finances, and she did so by engaging in outwork as well. However, rather than seek piecework, as Anna was doing, she set up a small business knitting worsted into fancy wares. To do so had been risky; she had had to take the last few dollars out of the family’s funds.
But Marie had neither the personality to work for others nor much fear that she would fail. Indeed, she turned out to be a shrewd businesswoman—much better than her mother had been—and at one point had thirty women in her employ.
That she had basically become an exploiter in this labor market never occurred to her. Instead, she viewed herself as a savior to many women who would otherwise have been unemployed. Whether she was indeed a compassionate employer or not, the truth is that her business did so well that she and Anna were able, by the fall of 1853, to move into more comfortable quarters in a better neighborhood, renting part of a house on Monroe Street for two hundred dollars a year.∞∞
Zakrzewska had not, though, come to the United States to run a business but rather to pursue a medical career. In fact, her original plan had been to go directly to Philadelphia to try to gain entry to the Female Medical College, but she had realized quickly that she lacked the language skills to do so. Still, even before she had turned to the worsted business, she had called on a Dr. Reisig, a physician who had worked with her mother back in Berlin. Her hope was that
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he would consent to be her preceptor, a standard arrangement at the time that paralleled the artisanal relationship between master and apprentice. Accordingly, an established physician took a young physician-to-be under his wing, introducing him (rarely her) to basic medical theories and practices while the young protégé worked as his assistant. For many physicians, four to seven years of such an apprenticeship was all the education they received before setting up their own practice; others began their studies this way, entering medical school after a few years of such training. Zakrzewska had hoped that with her midwifery skills a physician might be willing to take her on, but much to her disappointment the reception she received di√ered little from what she had experienced in her native land. Her visit to Dr. Reisig ended in his o√er of a nursing position, and Zakrzewska, refusing to be patronized in this way, decided she would be better o√ trying to establish a midwifery practice on her own. It was only when this failed to bring in su≈cient income that Zakrzewska had turned to the worsted business; but now, in the spring of 1854, with the household finances fairly stable, she decided that it was time to return to her original plans.∞≤
Zakrzewska was beginning to recognize that American society had its own obstacles in place, making it hard for women to pursue a medical career. Finding a preceptor had proved di≈cult. Gaining acceptance to medical school did not promise to be much easier. In the early 1850s, few medical schools accepted women, although since most schools relied upon student fees to finance their operating budget (in contrast to Germany, where medical schools were financed and operated by the state), every once in a while opportunities did present themselves. Thus, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to receive a degree from a regular medical college, had gained admission in 1847 to Geneva Medical College in upstate New York beca
use of a misunderstanding.
The dean of the college had given the students, whom he had no wish to antagonize, the final word as to whether Blackwell should be allowed to attend, fully convinced that they would say no. The students, however, believing the entire a√air to be a joke, voted to accept her application. Two weeks later, Blackwell turned up to begin her studies, and although the students stayed true to their word, she spent the two years it took her to earn her M.D. in relative isolation. Upon her graduation, Geneva closed its doors once again to women.
‘‘Miss Blackwell’s admission was an experiment, not intended as a precedent,’’ the dean firmly told another female applicant in 1849.∞≥
Slowly, however, the number of women who gained acceptance to medical
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school did grow, so Zakrzewska had reason to have some hope. Progress was slowest among orthodox medical schools, but even here some changes took place. Most important was the opening of the Female Medical College in Philadelphia in 1850; two years later Cleveland Medical College began accepting a small number of female students each year (although it, too, ended its ‘‘experiment’’ after four years); and in 1856 the New England Female Medical College gained the right to confer the medical degree. Women who applied to unorthodox medical schools had somewhat greater success, although they, too, encountered resistance. Still, their acceptance rate was higher than at regular institutions. Whether this reflected unorthodox physicians’ greater tolerance of female practitioners or the pecuniary needs of the medical institutions is unclear. But the outcome was that, of the roughly 250 women who received a medical degree from a chartered medical school by 1862, more than half had attended an unorthodox institution.∞∂
Science Has No Sex Page 9
