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scant wages, often unable to keep their children fed. But as with other middle-class reformers, her class prejudices surfaced when she expressed her conviction that the parents were beyond help and should be left to their destiny; it was the children, who were still capable of being educated, who demanded attention.≤π
‘‘Ordinary’’ also did not refer to the women who engaged in casual prostitution as a way of making ends meet. To Dall and Zakrzewska, as to other antebellum middle-class reformers, such women fit poorly into their own understanding of how women fell into prostitution. Accordingly, young prostitutes were cast as victims of duplicitous men who lured them with promises of love and riches, only later to be abandoned and left with nowhere to go but the brothel. This scenario di√ered considerably from one in which women calculated the advantages of exchanging sexual services for a fee. Revealing not only her class upbringing but also her anti-Catholicism, Zakrzewska suggested that such women were found most frequently among the Irish, who ‘‘resort at once to beggary, or are inveigled into brothels, as soon as they arrive,’’ and the French, who ‘‘are always intriguing enough either to put on a white cap and find a place as bonne, or to secure a private lover.’’≤∫
‘‘Ordinary’’ women turned out, thus, to be a narrowly defined group. Modeled on Zakrzewska, they tended to be ‘‘chiefly Germans’’ from ‘‘good’’ families who had, for a variety of reasons, fallen on di≈cult times. Although Zakrzewska told several stories of women who fit this description—one, for example, was the
‘‘daughter of a physician’’—the most poignant concerned a young German woman who had drowned herself because she had been unable to support herself and her ailing mother through piecework in embroidery. O√ering a direct challenge to Dall’s skeptics, Zakrzewska went on:
Stories of this kind are said to be without foundation: I say that there are more of them in our midst than it is possible to imagine. Women of good education, but without money, are forced to earn their living. They determine to leave their home, either because false pride prevents their seeking work where they have been brought up as ladies, or because this work is so scarce that they cannot earn by it even a life of semi-starvation; while they are encouraged to believe that in this country they will readily find proper employment. . . . Not being able to speak English, they believe the stories of the clerks and proprietors, and are made to work at low wages, and are often swindled out of their money. They feel homesick, forlorn and for-saken in the world. Their health at length fails them, and they cannot earn
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bread enough to keep themselves from starvation. They are too proud to beg; and the consequence is, that they walk the streets, or throw themselves into the river.≤Ω
Zakrzewska may well have written this with so much feeling because it came so close to describing her own situation. But Zakrzewska did not, of course, drown herself. This particular story is not her own but that of her shadow; it described what could happen to otherwise ‘‘good’’ women from ‘‘good’’ families who lacked the inner strength and the assistance they needed to take control of their destinies. For those readers who failed to grasp this message on their own, Dall commented in her conclusion to the letter: ‘‘[T]he possibilities of a Zakrzewska lie hidden in every oppressed girl. . . . Hasten to save those whom [the current] has not yet overwhelmed.’’≥≠
Dall’s and Zakrzewska’s intent may have been to save the ‘‘perishing classes,’’
but the focus on ‘‘good’’ education and ‘‘good’’ families reveals the extent to which the imagined recipients of their benevolent actions had middle-class origins or, at the very least, shared the values of this class. Indeed, who else would have been inspired by Zakrzewska’s story, which was not, after all, so much about a ‘‘woman’s right to labor’’ as it was about her right to labor in a man’s world? In the end, A Practical Illustration had most to say about the obstacles that needed to be overcome by women who wished to be gainfully employed in the public sphere. And it was here, in challenging the sexual division of labor within the middle class, that Zakrzewska’s radicalism came to the fore.
. . .
Zakrzewska promoted the transgression of gender norms by framing the stories in A Practical Illustration around two central motifs. The first she modeled on the German materialists’ distinction between truth, justice, and science, on the one hand, and arbitrary authority, sentimentality, and religion, on the other. The second, closely related to the first, entailed subverting the gendered nature of these categories, something about which the German materialists, including Heinzen, showed some ambivalence. Indeed, Heinzen, who once claimed that women had ‘‘susceptible minds,’’ did not totally abandon the idea of a special, woman’s nature. Although at times he viewed this supposed weakness of mind as a product of women’s upbringing, he was not consistent on this point. More often than not he wrote of gender di√erences as though they were fixed: women possessed ‘‘truly humane hearts’’ and ‘‘fine feeling’’; men had stronger nerves
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and a more powerful intellect.≥∞ As a result, he occasionally defended the idea of separate spheres for women and men: women were better adapted to a life
‘‘infinitely richer in service to society,’’ men to the life of ‘‘a scholar and philosopher.’’≥≤ Nor did Heinzen wish to blur the boundaries between the sexes.
Claiming that ‘‘there is nothing more repulsive in this world than a masculine woman,’’ he insisted that the goal of emancipation had to be ‘‘to establish the liberty and the right of women within the limits prescribed by the feminine nature.’’≥≥
Zakrzewska left no documents directly criticizing Heinzen’s comments, but her autobiographical sketch ultimately challenged such policing of gender boundaries. Indeed, she pushed these boundaries to the limit by embodying traits traditionally gendered masculine, portraying herself as a powerful woman whose courage, mental and physical fortitude, and self-determination allowed her to triumph over adversity again and again. At the time Zakrzewska wrote her autobiographical sketch, she did not yet talk explicitly of crossing gender lines, but later in the century she became more direct. Commenting on the antebellum period, she complained that when ‘‘a woman claimed the right of gaining intellectual power, it appeared as if she stepped out of her sphere. And this claim, so simple and natural, was perverted by a hostile spirit into the claim that she wished ‘to become a man.’ ’’ This reached such an absurd level, she added, that some people, upon hearing about Elizabeth Blackwell’s medical studies, fully expected ‘‘to behold a woman on whom a beard had developed.’’≥∂
Zakrzewska did not, however, wish for women to become men. In her battle to claim for women those traits that entitled one to power, she struggled instead to dissociate power from a person’s sexual attributes completely.
Judging from the dozen or so reviews that came out just after A Practical Illustration appeared, Zakrzewska enjoyed some success in this regard. Considered by one author ‘‘better than many pages of theory,’’ the autobiography was judged by others to be ‘‘exceedingly interesting’’ as well as ‘‘stimulating and encouraging.’’≥∑ While several commented specifically on its powerful depiction of the plight of young immigrants—thus vindicating Dall’s claims about the deplorable working conditions women faced—most focused on Zakrzewska’s unusual success in challenging gender norms.≥∏ The Liberator, for one, hoped that Zakrzewska’s story would ‘‘stimulate many, now content to live and die mere females, to aspire to and attain the rank of intelligent and useful human beings.’’ The Portland Transcript read A Practical Illustration as ‘‘a serious and successful protest against all those narrow philosophies which while allowing
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to men every va
riety of temperament, character, and activity, would restrict women to only one style of pattern and method of development.’’ In the author’s view, Zakrzewska accomplished this by showing how women often ‘‘establish themselves in the localities where they are forbidden to enter, and this, too, without lessening their womanhood.’’ The Christian Examiner, as well, after commending Zakrzewska’s ‘‘rare quality of unity and singleness of purpose,’’
added that this story ‘‘shows a realization of the greatest obstacle in the way of the reform in which she [Dall] is engaged,—namely, the supineness of the sex whose ‘rights’ she advocates.’’≥π
With her ‘‘determined spirit,’’ ‘‘inexhaustible invention and resources,’’
‘‘courage,’’ and ‘‘brave endurance,’’ Zakrzewska was considered by some of her reviewers to be a model for ‘‘every daughter of America.’’≥∫ To this extent, she had succeeded in providing an alternative image to that of the demure Victorian woman. Yet as the comment from the Portland Transcript suggests, some of the reviewers tried to downplay Zakrzewska’s transgressions, assuring readers that women like her had not ‘‘lessened their womanhood.’’ The Boston Journal, for example, cast Zakrzewska as an ‘‘illustration of woman’s ability for patient labor and faithful perseverance,’’ while the Christian Inquirer emphasized her
‘‘womanly refinement, culture, and sensibility.’’ Other reviews went so far as to combine praise of Zakrzewska with an attack on the women’s movement. The reviewer for the London Critic, for example, recommended A Practical Illustration
‘‘to the consideration of those who prate more loudly, but less logically, than Mrs. Dall, about those flimsiest of phantoms, ‘Woman’s Rights.’ ’’ Another, writing for Harper’s, placed Zakrzewska among the ‘‘heroines without halos,’’
adding that ‘‘one such life is worth a torrent of talk about woman’s sphere.’’≥Ω
Thus, despite the praise being lavished on A Practical Illustration, a fair number of reviewers felt the need either to restore Zakrzewska’s femininity or to demonize women’s rights advocates, suggesting thereby a considerable level of discomfort with the way Zakrzewska was attempting to blur the line separating the sexes.
The reviews’ mixed messages may, however, also have reflected ambiguities in the autobiographical sketch itself. Indeed, despite Zakrzewska’s attempt to explode gender stereotypes, it was not possible for her to fully escape the gendered tropes that marked nineteenth-century discussions and debates about human nature and individual rights. We have already noted the way she criticized religion by associating it with the weak, sentimental, and melancholic young Elizabeth. In other stories, she continued this depiction of women as sentimental and misguided, ridiculing, for example, antebellum reformers for
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supporting a cause by ‘‘knitting a baby’s stocking’’ rather than going door to door to raise funds.∂≠ Wishing, moreover, to create an image of herself as dia-metrically opposed to these women, she ended up casting herself as more akin to men. Not only, as we have seen, did she proclaim her preference for the company of boys, but she also announced proudly that the male students at the Charité ‘‘never seemed to think that I was not of their sex, but always treated me like one of themselves.’’∂∞ By placing herself, as a woman, among the men, Zakrzewska may have been trying to remove gender from any discussions of power, yet these stories also demonstrate the di≈culties women encountered in trying to come up with alternatives to the gender divisions that marked almost every aspect of Western culture at the time.
These di≈culties may also have led Zakrzewska to struggle at times with her own gender identity. Although we are engaging in speculation here, it is possible that her total rejection of any traditional feminine markers, and her enthusiastic embrace of masculine-coded traits, signaled not only a strategic move on her part to model an alternative image for women but also a level of confusion about how to express her own femininity. Zakrzewska did not think of herself as an attractive woman. Indeed, in her autobiographical sketch she described herself as ‘‘neither handsome, nor even prepossessing,’’ and claimed that one of her aunts would describe ‘‘plain people’’ by commenting that they were
‘‘[a]lmost as ugly as Marie.’’∂≤ To be sure, Zakrzewska’s goal in telling this story was to emphasize that women should care about more important things than their looks, but there is a certain sadness in this story as well, especially when she goes on to describe the loneliness she felt when her peers, who cared for neither her obstinacy nor her looks, chose to avoid her. My suggestion is not that we view her political work as being driven by feelings of insecurity about her own womanly nature; her passion for justice had much deeper roots. Nevertheless, her stated preference for men and her characterization of women as sentimental and weak, both of which legitimized the very stereotypes she was trying to disrupt, may have been fueled in part by her own di≈culties trying to embody a di√erent type of femininity in a society that drew such clear lines between proper masculine and feminine behaviors. Small wonder the reviews of her book were ambiguous as well.
. . .
Whatever confusion we may recognize in A Practical Illustration, Zakrzewska considered it an unambiguous contribution to the woman’s movement.∂≥ Nor
was this sketch her only attempt to support this cause through the written word.
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In the spring of 1862, she and Mary Booth declared their intention to establish a women’s journal. Drawing attention to the great social and political changes that the Civil War was having on women’s lives, they deemed it timely to publish a journal that would ‘‘centralize and give impetus to the e√orts which are being made in various directions to advance the interests of woman.’’ Announcements in both the Liberator and Der Pionier explained that the journal would
‘‘collect and compare the divers [ sic] theories promulgated on the subject’’ but that its central motto would be ‘‘Equal Rights For all Mankind.’’ They intended to cover ‘‘current social and political events, articles on literature, education, hygiene, etc., [and] a feuilleton composed chiefly of translations from foreign literature.’’∂∂ They had, moreover, already amassed an impressive list of contributors, including Lydia Maria Child, Caroline M. Severance, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and William H. Channing.
As it turned out, the war, although an inspiration to the founding of this journal, ended up acting as a deterrent because of the di≈culty of raising funds. In September the Liberator and Der Pionier announced that the journal would be postponed until the end of the war.∂∑ By that time, however, Zakrzewska had become so involved in her hospital that the project was never taken up again.
In the early 1860s, Zakrzewska thus made two concerted e√orts to contribute to the women’s movement. The women’s journal, however, never got o√ the ground, and A Practical Illustration, despite the positive reviews, soon ran into financial problems, perhaps because of its ambiguous message. In the fall of 1861, the publisher of the book, Walker, Wise, and Company, wrote to Dall, complaining about poor sales. It had sold only 500 copies, with 150 going to Dall and Zakrzewska. Thus despite Zakrzewska’s assertion that ‘‘more than two thousand people read the book,’’ A Practical Illustration was not a financial success, Dall ended up losing money on the book, and Zakrzewska had moments when she regretted ever having taken on this project.∂∏ As she wrote to Dall in 1867,
The little book gives me daily annoyance, I am not made for being called famous nor to be so. It annoys me to have people know me. If I could have patients without seeing them, I assure you, I would have those alone. To be known is so painfully disagreeable to me, that I don’t buy my shoes, till the toes really show through so as to avoid going in a store. I think it is even a monomania with me, to wish to be away from people. It is by for
ce of will, that I follow my desires to work for women, as an example, and I feel it al-
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most a blessing that the time has come, when it is not any more necessary to speak in Public. . . .
I cannot tell you how much I felt, and how hard it was when Mary Booth was willing to give to you my truest feelings for publication and only the idea that it may stimulate some better woman to come forward, has reconciled me to the constant annoyance I su√er whenever I am asked, where the little book is to be had.∂π
A Practical Illustration had not turned out exactly as Zakrzewska had hoped.
When she had first sat down to write her autobiographical sketch, she had been intrigued by the possibility of using writing as a way of ‘‘stimulat[ing] some better woman to come forward.’’ Recording her life story, although ostensibly a way of sharing ‘‘a few facts’’ about her past with her friend Mary Booth, had really marked Zakrzewska’s attempt to continue her battle to dismantle the barriers preventing her and other women from claiming their place in what was being defined as a man’s world.
Zakrzewska never, however, intended the written word to be her central contribution to the women’s movement, despite her brief experimentation with this venue. She knew her strengths rested in her capabilities as both a teacher and an administrator, and it was here that she had been focusing her e√orts since her graduation from medical school. Helping to found and then run the New York Infirmary for Women and Children had been only the first step. She had left this position in 1859 not only to follow Heinzen to Boston but also to assume a position at the New England Female Medical College as professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children and to take on the responsibility of creating a new clinical department. The trustees of the college, who had recently been granted permission to award the M.D., had seen in Zakrzewska someone who would help raise the school’s standing among the Boston elite.
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