Science Has No Sex
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Dall’s primary focus had been on women of what she called ‘‘the perishing classes’’: those who had to work because they needed to eat. Influenced by the emerging field of social science, she filled her essay with statistics documenting the large numbers of women employed throughout the economy both in the United States and in England. She also engaged in more traditional forms of persuasion, o√ering anecdotes of women who often lost the battle to earn an honest living, struggling to support aging parents, invalid siblings, or dependent children on the paltry wages they earned sewing caps or tatting lace. These women, she argued, often turned to the streets, but only when they had exhausted all other possibilities. Quoting the French social scientist Duchâtelet, Dall challenged her readers to ‘‘Compare the price of labor with the price of dishonor, and you will cease to be surprised that women fall.’’∫
In discussing the reactions to her book, Dall described how a handful of reform-minded businessmen felt inspired to hire young women as apprentices but found that women themselves often bridled at the idea of investing so many years in training for a job. Dall encountered, moreover, considerable resistance to her claims that working conditions in the city of Boston could be so bad. She thus came to believe that a specific example would help her to convince her readers of the seriousness of the situation.
In the introduction to Zakrzewska’s autobiography, Dall admits to having originally considered some great personages, but she had rejected in turn Florence Nightingale because her ‘‘father had a title’’; Dorothea Dix, who ‘‘had money and time’’; Mrs. John Stuart Mill, who had never ‘‘wanted bread’’; and George Sand, who ‘‘wasn’t respectable.’’ A conversation with Mary Booth, in which she learned that Zakrzewska had already penned a brief sketch of her life
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in the form of a letter to her friend, led her to believe that the young immigrant would make her case perfectly.Ω Booth, who was intrigued by the project, agreed to edit the autobiography should Zakrzewska be convinced to go along.
Dall had first met Zakrzewska in the fall of 1856, when the young physician had come to Boston to raise funds for the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. On that occasion, Dall had heard Zakrzewska speak of her experiences in the syphilitic wards at the Charité and had been most impressed by the young doctor’s insistence ‘‘that the most sinning, su√ering woman never passed beyond the reach of a woman’s sympathy and help.’’ ‘‘For the first time,’’ she later mentioned, ‘‘I saw a woman who knew what I knew, felt what I felt, and was strong in purpose and power to accomplish our common aim,—the uplifting of the fallen, the employment of the idle, and the purification of society.’’∞≠
Dall’s language was common to antebellum middle-class female reformers, who frequently followed a familiar script when describing their work. Idealizing their own role as benevolent protectors, they saw themselves as extending a helping hand to those who no longer wished to be ‘‘fallen,’’ ‘‘idle,’’ or ‘‘impure.’’
When Dall identified Zakrzewska as a kindred spirit, she saw her, of course, as a fellow reformer. However, the part Zakrzewska was to play in the autobiography was of the young immigrant who had to figure out how to survive in a city filled with peril. Only in this way could Zakrzewska’s story verify firsthand Dall’s claims about the dangers that awaited women who sought work in the cities.
Zakrzewska’s success story was illustrative of several points that Dall hoped to underscore. First, she was living proof that the fate of a young immigrant could be influenced by women with power and connections. She may never have fulfilled her dream of studying medicine had Elizabeth Blackwell and Caroline Severance not supported her cause. But more than demonstrating the need for greater involvement on the part of the ‘‘higher classes,’’ Zakrzewska’s story provided a potent symbol for the power of self-determination. Here was a young woman who had faced countless obstacles, struggling to make her way in a strange land, to earn a livelihood, protect her younger siblings, and master a foreign language, and through it all she had never abandoned her dream of studying medicine. In short, for Dall, Zakrzewska was someone who could reach ‘‘ordinary women’’ because she had ‘‘a life flowing out of circumstances not dissimilar to their own, but marked by a steady will, an unswerving purpose.’’ According to Dall, if nothing prevented women from succeeding more than their own weakness, then nothing could help them more than the story of a
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woman who persisted in the face of adversity. ‘‘I had felt, from the first,’’ Dall wrote, ‘‘that her life might do what my words never could: namely, inspire women with faith to try their own experiments.’’∞∞
Dall had wanted to set ‘‘an example before young girls,’’ but why did Zakrzewska agree to tell her life story? At the time A Practical Illustration was published, autobiographies by women had not yet achieved the popularity they would enjoy by the end of the century. Instead they were considered a sign of an author’s self-indulgence and egotism, a departure from the demureness and submissiveness expected of women at the time. Although Zakrzewska spent much of her life fighting this traditional image of women, she shared enough of her culture’s discomfort with conceit in women to feel uneasy about placing herself at the center of attention. She thus claimed to have been reluctant when Booth and Dall first approached her and to have been persuaded only by Dall’s argument that the publication of her life’s story would benefit other women.∞≤
She also tried to di√use any accusations of conceit on her part by emphasizing both her own humility and the usefulness of her story. Thus, as she explained at the beginning of her letter: ‘‘I am not a great personage . . . ; yet you may find, in reading this little sketch, that with few talents, and very moderate means for developing them, I have accomplished more than many women of genius and education would have done in my place, for the reason that confidence and faith in their own powers were wanting. And, for this reason, I know that this story might be of use to others.’’∞≥
The use of such qualifiers was not uncommon among nineteenth-century female autobiographers, who struggled with the social impropriety of writing about themselves. But whereas most other writers also deemed it necessary to assure their readers that they were ‘‘feminine’’ and ‘‘ladylike,’’ downplaying their accomplishments and the heroic nature of their lives, Zakrzewska further challenged gender stereotypes by portraying herself as strong, stubborn, and frequently alone in the battles she fought.∞∂ She may not have been alone in this endeavor—other women physicians, such as Hannah Longshore and Mary Dixon Jones, also advertised their accomplishments in public settings—
but women who engaged in acts of self-promotion were clearly in the minority.∞∑
Booth began editing the autobiographical sketch sometime in 1860. By October she was able to write to Dall that she had completed her task and was sending the final manuscript to Zakrzewska for approval. ‘‘I have preserved the simple letter form in which it was written,’’ she informed Dall, ‘‘and endeavored to keep her own personality and phraseology in the whole, and to translate her
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pretty foreign idioms with equally idiomatic English.’’ Booth had planned to see the work through to the end, but she decided that Dall could complete the project more e≈ciently ‘‘and in the way best calculated to be of use to the world and of credit to Marie.’’∞∏ Booth had figured correctly. By the beginning of December the letter was available in print under the title A Practical Illustration of
‘‘Woman’s Right to Labor’’; or, A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Zakrzewska, who had celebrated a birthday in October, was all of thirty-one years old.
. . .
‘‘I do not,’’ Zakrzewska wrote Mary at the beginning of her autobiographical sketch, ‘‘intend to weary you with details of my child
hood, . . . I shall, therefore, only tell you a few facts of this period of my life, which I think absolutely necessary to illustrate my character and nature.’’ The chapters on her childhood are, indeed, some of the sketchiest in the book. We learn very little, for example, about her parents, her siblings, or her experiences at school. Indeed, one reviewer commented that there was very little of Zakrzewska anywhere in this sketch (although he meant this as a compliment). To be sure, the book progresses through the important phases of her life, from her childhood to the study and practice of midwifery at the Charité, to her years in New York and Cleveland, and finally to her move to Boston. But this framework merely provides the structure for a series of stories, each of which seems to be carefully selected for a specific purpose. The ‘‘few facts’’ from her childhood, for example, which she promised to share with Mary, depicted a strong, willful, and courageous child, who walked nine miles at the age of two, staged funerals with her dolls, was not frightened when she found herself accidentally locked up with a corpse in a dissecting room for hours on end, and dominated the relationships she had with friends and siblings alike. She was, she explained, always making up stories for her younger sister, in which she ‘‘led [her heroes and heroines] into all sorts of adventures till it suited my caprice to terminate their career.’’ When she played with others, she always ‘‘took the lead, planning and directing every thing; while my playmates seemed to take it for granted, that it was their duty to carry out my commands.’’ Such strong-mindedness eventually led her, not surprisingly, into considerable trouble. When she went to school at the age of five, teachers noticed and disliked this independent streak. Except for the teacher of arithmetic, she explained, they all ‘‘called me unruly because I would not obey arbitrary demands without receiving some reason, and obstinate because I insisted on following my own will when I knew that I was in the right.’’∞π
Already in these first stories, Zakrzewska was portraying herself as a formi-
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dable force, confident and in control of her actions. That she was intentionally challenging traditional gender stereotypes becomes evident in subsequent stories when, for example, she informs her readers that as a child she preferred the company of boys, with whom she ‘‘was merry, frank, and self-possessed,’’
whereas with girls she ‘‘was quiet, shy, and awkward.’’∞∫ Unlike other girls, moreover, she cared little about her looks. Once, upon seeing herself in the mirror, she ‘‘could not help laughing heartily’’ at the comical sight, ‘‘with one braid of hair commencing over the right eye, and the other over the left ear.’’
Rather than fix her hair, however, she simply ‘‘hung a map’’ over the mirror and went back to her studies.∞Ω A woman’s mind, she was insisting, must take center stage, not her appearance.
Zakrzewska’s greatest challenge to the gendering of mental and moral traits came, however, when she claimed truth and reason for herself, as a woman. As in her battle with Herr Both, she wore the mantle of rationality throughout her many stories, which she repeatedly juxtaposed with arbitrary authority of any kind. Her account of the di≈culties she encountered as a young child in school (except, of course, with the teacher of arithmetic) was just the first of many stories with this motif. She also took on more formidable opponents, most notably the great enemy of the German materialists—the church.
Zakrzewska’s first encounter with the church, she tells us, occurred when she was just twelve years old. At that time, she met a quiet, melancholic, and sentimental girl who ‘‘won her a√ection.’’ Elizabeth was a devout Catholic and destined to become a nun, and Zakrzewska, who felt such love for this friend, began attending church with her and even considered converting to Catholicism. Her own parents, she emphasized, were ‘‘Rationalists’’ and did not belong to any church, but they did not prevent their daughter from following ‘‘her own inclinations.’’ Everything went sour, however, when Elizabeth, under pressure from her priest, explained that their friendship could not continue unless Zakrzewska became a Catholic. ‘‘Never in my life,’’ wrote Zakrzewska, ‘‘shall I forget that morning. For a moment, I gazed on her with the deepest emotion, pitying her almost more than myself; then suddenly [I] turned coldly and calmly away, without answering a single word. My mind had awakened to the despotism of Roman Catholicism, and the church had lost its expected convert.’’≤≠
Zakrzewska’s strategy for discrediting the Roman Catholic Church was to link it with sentimentality, the very trait she deemed so harmful to her sex. That this and other stories may reveal some ambiguous feelings on her part toward her own gender identity is something we will return to later. For now what is
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noteworthy is the way Zakrzewska both embraced and extended the German materialists’ attack on the church. Like them, she viewed this institution, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, as one of the greatest threats to personal and political freedom. Indeed, in almost every essay she published or lecture she delivered throughout her life, she found a way to blame the church for the passivity and ignorance that prevented individuals from taking control of their lives. But Zakrzewska was also especially concerned about the impact of the church on women; by associating this institution with sentimentality she was criticizing the growing feminization of religion, which she considered detrimental to the advancement of women’s rights.≤∞
Zakrzewska’s animosity toward the church is evident as well in the story she told of spending the night in the dead house with a corpse, for she used it as an alternative conversion experience that mimicked the stories that female religious leaders, such as Mary Baker Eddy and Ellen G. White, told of the illness experiences that led them to embrace God.≤≤ Zakrzewska’s account begins as well with a malady: she was having trouble with her eyes and wished to be close to her mother, who was training that summer at the Charité. However, instead of finding God, Zakrzewska found a corpse. God, moreover, did not heal her; rather, ‘‘a few days after this adventure,’’ Zakrzewska wrote, ‘‘I recovered the use of my eyes,’’ thus suggesting that the knowledge she had acquired of the human body had given her sight. Zakrzewska’s conversion did not, finally, lead her to find religion but rather to her professional calling. ‘‘From this time,’’ she claims, ‘‘I date my study of medicine.’’≤≥
Zakrzewska’s project—to present an alternative model of womanly behavior and activity—led her as well to distort certain evidence in her autobiographical accounts. Her story of her experience trying to secure the position of head midwife at the Charité is a case in point. As we mentioned earlier, Zakrzewska claimed that Schmidt wished to have her assume his position as professor of midwifery, even though he would never have considered bestowing a professorship upon a woman, let alone one who never attended the university. It is true that he wished to make her head midwife, but that was a position that had always gone to a woman. Thus, the resistance Zakrzewska encountered had little to do with her sex and everything to do with her age and lack of experience.
However, by blaming her problems on the opposition of male physicians to the idea ‘‘that a woman should take her place on a level with them,’’ she could make this a ‘‘question of ‘woman’s rights.’ The real question at stake,’’ she drove home, ‘‘was, ‘How shall women be educated, and what is their true sphere?’ ’’≤∂
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Notably, one reviewer of her autobiography was confused enough by Zakrzewska’s discussion of her experiences in Berlin to describe her as ‘‘formerly at the head of the hospital charité.’’≤∑
Taken together, the stories in A Practical Illustration all emphasize Zakrzewska’s forcefulness, clarity, and sense of purpose. But what allowed her to forge ahead? How were her readers to understand the conditions that promoted her success? Zakrzewska gave some weight to the assistance she received fr
om others, including Joseph Hermann Schmidt, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Caroline Severance. But however much importance she may have placed on the benevolence of others, the central message in A Practical Illustration is that her success derived from her own spirit of determination and sense of mission.
Describing the powerful feelings she had when she first spotted land after her long voyage across the ocean, Zakrzewska told her readers in a heavy-handed fashion: ‘‘I had come here for a purpose,—to carry out the plan which a despotic government and its servile agents had prevented me from doing in my native city. I had to show to those men who had opposed me so strongly because I was a woman, that in this land of liberty, equality, and fraternity, I could maintain that position which they would not permit to me at home.’’≤∏
Women, Zakrzewska was declaring, had to fight for what they believed in, but first and foremost they had to believe in something. ‘‘Something’’ could not, however, be the church, their teachers, or some other authority figure. No, they needed to believe in themselves, to determine what they wished their purpose in life to be, and then to find the inner strength to execute their plans. Women had choices, she was implying, and they needed to start taking action to improve their own lot.
. . .
A Practical Illustration was not a text that encouraged women to acknowledge the many ways in which they were victims of forces beyond their control. Quite the contrary, to use a modern phrase, here were stories of empowerment. Given this, one may very well wonder who Zakrzewska and Dall imagined their audience to be, especially since Dall had selected Zakrzewska as a model for
‘‘ordinary women.’’ But Zakrzewska had, after all, a bourgeois upbringing, and the women she cast as most worthy of help ended up bearing a marked resemblance to her. They certainly did not come from the uneducated poor who struggled to earn a living. Not that such women were absent from Zakrzewska’s story line. Especially in her portrayal of the first year she spent in New York City, she wrote movingly of the plight of working-class women who slaved away for