Science Has No Sex
Page 17
was atheism.≥∞ ‘‘When the believe [ sic] in a God ceases,’’ he announced, ‘‘then ceases also every obligation towards God which you would impose upon man, and only the duty of man to man remains.’’≥≤ For Heinzen, Zakrzewska, and other German radicals—and in contrast to most radical American reformers—
atheism had to be embraced to pave the way for humanism.≥≥
Atheism was key to the German radical program, but so, too, were science, reason, and rationality. Influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach and the so-called scientific materialists, Jacob Moleschott, Ludwig Büchner, and Karl Vogt, the German radical community sought to replace religion with an atheistic philosophy based on scientific materialism. In a pamphlet entitled Six Letters to a Pious Man, Heinzen portrayed the universe as nothing more than ‘‘a physical and chemical laboratory in which material powers carry on an unceasing change and transformation.’’ Even the mind, Heinzen commented, ‘‘is nothing but the result of an organized combination and co-operation of physical and physiological powers.’’≥∂ These assertions were significant to Heinzen because of his conviction that one could not worship a divine being and still be capable of independent thought. ‘‘There is,’’ he once exclaimed, ‘‘no greater contradiction than mind and God.’’≥∑ Adopting religious metaphors to convey his message, Heinzen spoke of the need for a new savior who would free his people from the earlier one. ‘‘His common name,’’ Heinzen wrote,
is Reason, but he is not accustomed to sign himself with this name always, because now-a-days every rascal calls himself reason. The real name of the savior is Atheism or Unbelief, in other words, the belief in reason, the spirit of truth and the will to make these the ruling powers. . . . Yes, the new savior of the world is the spirit of truth—is radical heathenism—is the sov-ereign human nature. This armed with the besom of knowledge and science first sweeps the broad spaces of the universe clear of the spectres and harpies which have hitherto tortured poor mortals on this very toler-
FASHIONING A HOME
110 ≤
able earth, where no Lord God, and no devil, but only the reasoning, free, human being . . . makes its household arrangements as a democratic Republic and provides for all humanity, woman as well as man, food, lodging and education.≥∏
It bears emphasis that Heinzen was insisting upon a link between science, social justice, and radical democracy. More than a rhetorical flourish, the link reflected a conviction among radical Germans (as well as more moderate liberals) that knowledge of the natural sciences would assist them in their struggles for political and social reform. It is crucial to note that most German states in the 1830s and 1840s lacked constitutions and were ruled by monarchs who derived much of their support from churches and a small but powerful landed elite. Those clamoring for change in the decades prior to the revolutions of 1848
sought to increase popular representation in the governing bodies; at the same time, they recognized the need to alter school curricula to educate future citizens of the state for their new responsibilities. In the eyes of these reformers, the method of the natural sciences, not religion or the classical languages, would best prepare the young for involvement in a participatory democracy by providing them with the mental attributes deemed critical in the battle against ignorance, superstition, and arbitrary authority. To nineteenth-century radical and liberal German reformers alike, science was fundamentally prodemocratic and antielitist, for in contrast to claims to power based on birth, talent, genius, or character, they believed that anyone could learn the method of the natural sciences.≥π
Did, however, ‘‘anyone’’ include women? For most Germans, the answer was no, but Heinzen drew a di√erent conclusion. Although on occasion he shared his contemporaries’ belief that women’s minds were not as vigorous and logical as men’s, he always insisted that women (and ‘‘negroes’’) should be granted the same inalienable rights and freedoms accorded to white men in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.≥∫ Their want of mental strength reflected, he believed, exclusion from such rights and responsibilities; the development of greater mental powers would follow their participation in a truly democratic society. For this reason, he was a staunch defender of women’s su√rage throughout his lifetime and insisted that no one had any grounds for denying another human being the same rights that he possessed. To opponents of su√rage who argued that women had enough rights already without also needing the vote, he rejoined that one cannot speak of rights if someone has the power to give them to
FASHIONING A HOME
≤ 111
you or take them away. In that case, so-called rights amount to little more than
‘‘the conferring of permission and the granting of favors.’’≥Ω In adopting this
stance, Heinzen found himself in a minority, even within the circle of German radicals. But he never wavered from this position. He even went so far as to portray su√rage as the sign of the most advanced society, arguing that at the summit of the ‘‘mountain of civilization . . . stands the free, independent woman.’’∂≠ He
may very well have had Zakrzewska in mind as he penned this line.
. . .
This brief synopsis of Heinzen’s views sets the stage for an examination of Zakrzewska’s own, subsequent writings: the introductory address she gave shortly after she assumed her position at the New England Female Medical College; her autobiographical sketch, which she published during her first year in Boston; and a lengthy lecture on hospitals she delivered six months after she founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children. In each and every one, she linked social progress to a rejection of religion and the church and an embrace of rationality and the natural sciences. Indeed, a vision of the world as a battleground between religion and arbitrary authority, on the one hand, and science and political democracy, on the other, colored most aspects of her life. An avowed materialist and atheist, she engaged in constant disputes with her neighbor William Lloyd Garrison, whose ideas of freedom derived precisely from his faith in a divine being. Many an afternoon she spent debating whether people had to feel directly answerable to God in order to be capable of true
humanitarianism.∂∞ Her refusal to be converted led to the demise of friendships.
She grew especially to hate Sundays at her hospital, where she had to ‘‘see a whole company sitting together doing nothing, saying nothing, and thinking nothing, because it is Sunday and they can’t go to church, in order to hear nothing—but words and phrases.’’ ‘‘The Golden Rule,’’ she once exclaimed,
‘‘must be practiced every day and not merely formulated as a pious recital on Sunday.’’ Her views also encouraged her later in life to refuse any religious ceremony at her funeral, even writing her own eulogy in which she told, or perhaps assured, her friends one last time ‘‘that the deep conviction that there can be no further life is an immense rest and peace to me. I desire no hereafter. I was born, I lived, . . . and I am satisfied now to fall a victim to the laws of nature, never to rise again.’’∂≤
Zakrzewska’s friendship with Heinzen was thus grounded deeply in their shared political commitments. Unfortunately we know little more about the nature of their bond. One of the mysteries when trying to understand their
FASHIONING A HOME
112 ≤
relationship is how little we know about Heinzen’s wife, Louise Henriette. The daughter of a widow (Louise Schiller) with whom Heinzen had been emotionally involved, she and her three siblings were adopted by Heinzen when their mother passed away in 1835. Four years later they married, when he was thirty years old and she just sixteen. Although Heinzen’s enemies in Germany—
and he had made quite a few by then—accused him of marrying his own daughter, what evidence we have suggests that they had a good marriage. How Louise felt about moving in with Zakrzewska we will, however, never know.
There does not seem to have been much closeness between the two women—it is noteworthy that Zakrzewska
did not include Mrs. Heinzen within her ‘‘closer family circle’’—but neither is there any record of tension. Mrs. Heinzen did leave the Zakrzewska household after her husband’s death in 1880 in order to move in with the Prangs, whose daughter her son had wed five years earlier, but the two women remained in touch, even crossing the ocean together the year after Heinzen died.∂≥ They also continued to celebrate Christmas together long after he had died. Perhaps the most one can say is that while Zakrzewska may not have felt the same closeness toward Mrs. Heinzen that she did toward her husband or even toward many other women, by all appearances they sustained a cordial relationship over the years.∂∂
Despite the appearance of propriety, at least one individual considered it morally questionable for two women to be living under one roof, both of whom felt a strong connection to the same man. That person was Adolf Douai, a radical German Forty-Eighter, who had once been a coeditor of Heinzen’s Der Pionier. When the two men had a falling-out in 1859, ostensibly because Heinzen attacked Douai for being soft on slavery, Douai retaliated by casting aspersions on Heinzen’s integrity. The two men carried on their feud in the German-language press, with everything escalating in 1869 when Douai published a small pamphlet entitled Heinzen, Wie er ist. After accusing Heinzen of considering himself as infallible as the pope, he turned to his opponent’s personal life. ‘‘Our cause,’’ Douai wrote, ‘‘needs morally clean and honorable characters. Whoever would defend woman’s rights cannot be himself an adulterer. . . . Among men of honor, even that is adultery when a man, over fifty years of age, makes his faithful wife, who has loyally fulfilled all her obligations to him, boundlessly unhappy on account of a love a√air. He who would champion the cause of labor must not live from the support that comes from women’s skirts
[Schürzen-Stipendien].’’∂∑
There was no question that Douai was referring to Zakrzewska. Such accusa-
FASHIONING A HOME
≤ 113
tions angered many, not least among them Heinzen. In a rejoinder he published in the 10 November issue of Der Pionier, he challenged each and every claim Douai made, denied his financial dependence on anyone, and accused Douai in turn of being a liar and a slanderer. To further aggravate and alienate Douai he purchased one hundred copies of the pamphlet, o√ering them to anyone who wished to read its falsehoods. Louise Henriette Heinzen even urged her husband to take Douai to court, but he preferred to battle out their di√erences in the free press. After the initial uproar, however, things settled down quickly, and the entire a√air faded into the background.∂∏
Whether Douai was truly troubled by Heinzen’s living arrangement is, of course, unclear. He may simply have hoped to destroy his adversary’s reputation by accusing him of being both sexually and financially enmeshed with Zakrzewska. But Douai’s motives matter less here than what this incident suggests about contemporary attitudes toward alternative living arrangements. No one appeared to be much concerned about the way the Zakrzewska household deviated from the idealized norm. The 1860s may have marked the beginning of increased legislation designed to preserve the institution of marriage, but at the local level considerable tolerance (or perhaps indi√erence) appeared to be the rule.∂π That said, it is possible that the deviations in Zakrzewska’s household were not always so evident. At least initially, for example, she took in boarders (usually individuals who needed some medical care), a practice that was not uncommon in middle-class households.∂∫ Thus the cohabitation of unrelated individuals would not in and of itself have attracted any attention. But whatever the reason, we must acknowledge that none of the descriptions of Zakrzewska’s home that have survived include anything about the makeup of the household other than to mention who resided there.
. . .
Perhaps it also helped to mute potential criticism that the permanent members of the household included not only Zakrzewska and the Heinzens. In the summer of 1862, the thirty-seven-year-old Julia A. Sprague also moved in, and she remained until the doctor’s death forty years later.∂Ω How Zakrzewska first met Sprague is unknown; nor is it clear why she moved into Zakrzewska’s home, although occasional references to the fact that she was an ‘‘invalid’’ suggests that she may have started out as one of Zakrzewska’s boarders. The living arrangement was initially supposed to be temporary; indeed, some tension developed at first between Sprague and Heinzen.∑≠ By 1863, however, all signs of discord had disappeared. As Zakrzewska wrote Lucy Sewall, who was studying in Europe at
FASHIONING A HOME
114 ≤
the time, ‘‘Miss Sprague is now in Minna’s place, and she heads the Roxbury house beautifully. I like her very much in this position, she takes such an interest in the whole a√air.’’∑∞
Not much is known about Sprague, although her name turns up frequently among Boston’s leading women reformers in the immediate post–Civil War period. Apparently, she was a schoolteacher and one of the early architects of the kindergarten movement.∑≤ She was also a founding member and historian of the New England Women’s Club, a largely social club designed to bring together women reformers in the hope that common events and the sharing of ideas would generate further good works. Other founding members, and thus her circle of acquaintances, included Harriot K. Hunt, Mrs. James Freeman Clarke, Abby W. May, Caroline M. Severance, Lucia M. Peabody, Lucy Goddard, Julia Ward Howe, and Ednah Dow Cheney. Most of these women had cut their political teeth on the abolition movement, moving quickly to the forefront of other reform campaigns, including the fight for women’s rights. It was, in fact, a desire to keep alive the reform spirit, kindled both before and during the Civil War, that led them to form the New England Women’s Club in 1868.∑≥
The friendship between Sprague and Zakrzewska blossomed over the years.
They vacationed together, including taking several trips to Europe; they worked together to advance women’s rights; and they cared for each other during illnesses. Sprague once described how Zakrzewska, who ‘‘disliked being thought bodily weak or ailing,’’ would claim Sprague was fatigued when she felt unable to accept an invitation to join an excursion. Like an old couple who learned to live with each other’s quirks, Sprague added that she ‘‘had let it pass, because I understood why she did so.’’∑∂ When Zakrzewska passed away in 1902, Sprague grieved her death deeply. ‘‘Some day,’’ she wrote Caroline Severance about six weeks after Zakrzewska’s death, ‘‘I may be thankful for her release—but I cannot honestly say that day has yet come. I know it is selfish in me, I strive against the selfishness, but I cannot yet succeed. . . . You see, we had lived 40 years together sharing every thing, work, and leisure, travel, and home-life.’’∑∑
Women’s historians have radically altered our understanding of same-sex relationships by insisting that we study them on their own terms rather than forcing them into categories that did not become established until the post-Freudian era. Women lived, worked, and traveled together at a time when emotional attachments between women did not evoke suspicion of a lesbian relationship. Quite the contrary, as Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has argued, nineteenth-century women, whether single or married, young or old, frequently
FASHIONING A HOME
≤ 115
sustained loving, caring, and even romantic relationships with one another throughout their lives. This did not necessarily preclude whatever intimacy they might have had with their husbands (if they married); rather, female networks of love and support existed outside the marital bond, satisfying emotional needs that few expected to be met through marriage. Of course, the decision of two women to live together signaled a greater commitment than what was implied by the extended visits and constant letter writing that typically sustained female friendships. Yet within a climate that viewed strong emotional ties between women as normal, such relationships enjoyed a level of acceptance greater than what many experience today. Those of Sprague’s letters that have survived, most of which date from the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth, attest to the love and a√ection that had developed between these two women over the forty-year period that they shared their home and their lives. ‘‘I know her,’’ Sprague wrote to Kitty Barry in 1896, ‘‘better of course than any one else.’’∑∏
The sharing of a household by two women, usually both middle-class professionals, had become common enough by the late nineteenth century to earn the label ‘‘Boston marriage.’’∑π Indeed, several of the women in Zakrzewska and Sprague’s circle of friends and colleagues had female companions. These included Susan Dimock and Elizabeth Greene, Mary L. Booth and Anna W.
Wright, and, for a short while, Lucy Sewall and Sophia Jex-Blake.∑∫
There has been much curiosity about whether these female partnerships were sexual in nature, but several scholars have insisted that the focus on genital contact reveals more about our own understanding of companionship and intimacy than that of women in the past.∑Ω Zakrzewska, who had shared her bed with Mary Booth and now her home with Sprague, certainly did not worry that her relationships would be misunderstood. In 1862, in a letter she wrote to Lucy Sewall, she blurred the line between conventional marriage and same-sex relationships with great confidence and ease, providing further evidence that the anxieties that would surface later in the century about lesbians were not yet present. Sewall was at the time being courted, and Zakrzewska felt compelled to o√er her some advice:
Lucy, never marry a man with whom you do not agree on all points! I feel it more and more, the older I grow, that love grows stronger only towards those with whom we sympathize; and that we become more and more a burden to each other if we do not agree well. And although we may avoid
FASHIONING A HOME
116 ≤
quarreling yet coldness is sometimes harder to bear than an absolute quarrel. I feel all this with Miss ——, and yet she is far more agreeable to me than a good many other of my acquaintances. I really feel an attachment for her, perhaps for the very reason that I feel we will not be obliged to be always