The book, Unbecoming a lady : the forgotten sluts and shrews who shaped America by Therese Oneill is a whirlwind read! I finished it in two days and found it a page-turner, a can’t-put-downer (although I had to for one night) read that had me laughing at the casual and humorous style of the author but still providing nuggets of new information and topics to think about after I finished the book. The author provides a list of further reading on the topic as well as a generous “works consulted” section at the end of the book.
The women highlighted in this book lived during the turn of the 20th century. You know, when women were ladies that knew their place and were happy in it, not like the modern women lamented by many of the current manosphere podcast or YouTube creators. The women that want rights (including to vote), the ones that choose to have tattoos and facial piercings while making up their own minds and not being “led” by the men (hopefully only the one man she will be smart enough to snatch up and marry while in her late teens) in her life. The crazy ones, the ones that don’t know a good thing when he’s standing there right in front of her next to his restored 1977 Pontiac Firebird Grand Am (nicknamed “Good Girl”) with the “screaming chicken” hood art and his faithful dog, Sweetie.
Back in 1973 (as backlash to second wave feminism), Marabel Morgan wrote The total woman, a book written to teach young wives how to be a trad wife before the term trad wife was created.
A present day “trad(itional) wife” is a woman who chooses to embrace ultra-traditional, submission-oriented gender roles within her marriage according to AI. No job outside the home, focused on a perfect home, scratch cooking, gardening, child rearing, and letting her husband have the final say in what will and won’t happen in the family’s life.
But back to this book. The introduction to this book is entitled, “Upon finding ones to be plain, cranky, a bit self-absorbed, and a tad slutty.” Okay, you’ve got my attention. The author posits that what women are supposed to be:
- Small.
- Pretty.
- Not very talkative, but when she does, with a cute, girly voice.
- Morally upright; no naughty pleasure for you, girl, but don’t judge others (men) for participating in what would make you considered to be nasty.
- Unwittingly sexy. Be it, but don’t acknowledge it and certainly don’t act on it.
The author takes these guidelines and highlights some notable women of the late 1800s/early 1900s that broke all of these rules unapologetically.
Oneill breaks the women into groups according to which rule they’ve primarily broken (many break more than one). We have the gals that make a spectacle of themselves. Instead of being demure and staying in the background, they place themselves front and center, proudly flaunting their disdain of the status quo placed upon their gender. Other women dare to play with the big boys, showing women indeed do have business acumen. Other women make things better, not just accepting what the world hands to them. Then you have the good girls that maybe ain’t so good after all. The next chapter covers the big mouths— ‘nuff said. And the final chapter covers some women that were just plain ahead of their time and not appreciated for it.
Oneill covers three standout women (or in the case of one, a group of women that happen to be sisters) for each chapter/topic. I’ll just highlight one from each of the chapters, hoping to encourage you to check out her book and read her coverage of all the women in each chapter. I’m just here to whet your appetite to an excellent, witty, fast, but thoughtful, read.
Chapter 1: The Look-At-Me Girls
Celesta had been fat since her childhood; she was also outgoing, vivacious, loved having a good time and even more so, a good meal. Celesta hated to be bored. Mocked for being overweight, she quit school early. She tried working “good girl” jobs at a candy factory and the telephone company, but it wasn’t enough. She became a successful aesthetician and makeup model. She liked to keep questionable company. She even rode horses. Eventually she met Frank Geyer and they married. While at a carnival during the Depression, when she and Frank were having the same kind of financial issues many in the US were experiencing, she met “the fat lady.” Celesta was convinced that if she was going to be fat and laughed at, she might as well make money off of it— Dolly Dimples was born. She also worked as a psychic: Madame Celeste. Celesta took the lemons life gave her and made lemon cream pie with them. And she ate them, lots of them. But as she aged, she saw the other fat ladies (in the carnival and otherwise) die off earlier than they might have otherwise due to their obesity. She had a heart attack at the age of 50, at 4’11” and 555 pounds. Her doctor told her she could diet or die. That became the title of her autobiography, Diet or Die. She’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for losing 440 pounds in about a year by sticking to an 800 calorie a day diet. Celesta lived life the way she wanted; she turned being bullied into income and, when her excess weight was no longer a benefit to her, lost it on her own terms. She lived her 81 years the way she wanted to, not conforming to anyone else’s expectations of how she should look, who she should hang out with, or how she should earn her money (pp.11-19).
Chapter 2: Yep, I Earned All of This Myself
Poker Alice Stubbs moved to Colorado with her first husband; he died in a mining explosion. She didn’t retreat east to family or become a prostitute or a schoolmarm. Alice began to play cards for money. She started dealing in saloons, card sharking after work to load more cash into her pockets. She married her second husband and they travelled around while she raked in the cash, heading to New York every so often to live it up in a snazzy hotel and buying some even snazzier duds. Then her second husband up and dies on her so she moves to South Dakota, buys a house, and takes in some gals of questionable repute as “roommates.” Lucky for them, it was located near Fort Meade, and the fellas there nicknamed Alice’s place the “Poker Palace.” After shooting a dude (court determined it was in self-defense) no charges were filed but she was found guilty of running a brothel. She never served any time for the offense though. Then Alice marries a third time. Number 3 dies on her too, leaving Alice pretty much broke at the age of 70-something. But there was a kind of revival in interest of some of the folks of the Wild West and Alice rode that wave. She threw a party (this was during the time of Prohibition) and was arrested for possessing liquor; she served 30 days for that. Her old brothel sentencing came back up. She asked the governor for a pardon (while nursing a hangover from a party in her hotel room the night before meeting up with him). She received it. Alice lived her life under her own rules. She managed to outlive three husbands, run a brothel and never serve time for it, and empty men’s pockets, outsmarting them as a card shark over and over again. Alice lived the way that Alice wanted to live (pp.51-59).
Chapter 3: Here, Let Me Fix That
Remember, women are supposed to be small? Well, like Celesta, sometimes women are overweight and sometimes women spend part of their lives pregnant. Back in the day, fashionable clothing for “odd size” (the term of the time for what we now refer to as “plus size”) was not easy to come by and the well-to-do pregnant women would stay at home as being seen in public “in the family way” was not done. They’d have to make do with oversized clothing not cut to fit their specific figures. What to do, what to do?
A young, widowed, mother-of-one Lithuanian immigrant widow, Lena Himmelstein Bryant, knew: pleats.
She sewed for the well-to-do women, including expectant mothers, to make money for herself and child. She was asked to create a dress by one of these moms-to-be to accommodate her growing bulge(s) while still being fashionable. So, she did: Maternity Dress #5, a loose dress with an elastic waistband, pleated skirt, and a top that used lace overlay to hide every-growing lumps and bumps. Other mothers-to-be heard about the dress and the trend exploded. When Lena was filling out bank paperwork so that she could open her own dress shop, she misspelled her first name. Thus was born LANE BRYANT.
But she wasn’t allowed to advertise her product until 1911 because the topic of clothing for pregnant women was considered too offensive for the sensitive public (pp.75-83).
Lena felt that all women deserved to have clothing that fit well and was fashionable, no matter their size or whether her size was do to pregnancy or otherwise. Lena made sure “her employees had profit sharing, pension, disability, group life insurance plants and fully reimbursed physician’s visits and hospitalizations. 25% of the stock was reserved for employee subscription when the company went public.” (p.82)
Chapter 4: Not-So-Goodie Two-Shoes
1 Corinthians 14:34-35 – “The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak…”
Aimee Sempleton McPherson and her first husband went to China as Christian missionaries; he died there of cholera. Widowed with a child, she returned, married husband number 2, had another child, and subsequently divorced husband number 2. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, with her children by her side, Amiee made her way across the country to San Diego as an itinerant preacher. She started out with faith healing, but gave that up and founded the Foursquare Church. She had built the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles. She was the first woman to own a Christian radio station; the station was located in the Angelus Temple. She was very well-known and beloved in the US as a leader of a Protestant sect. Everything seemed to be going well for Aimee and her followers.
However, in 1926, she “vanished” from a beach in California. There were searches conducted to locate her, but they were unsuccessful. Five weeks after she first went missing, she reappeared in Arizona. She claimed she was kidnapped and held against her will for ransom in Mexico, but she escaped! Hallelujah!
But… there were many people who testified that they saw her in Carmel, CA with her station’s radio operator during this time. Yeah, he’d “gone missing” during that same period of time. Aimee claimed the hussy the radio operator was seen with in Carmel was a look-a-like. Turns out, Aimee had paid this woman to say she was with him, but this gal later admitted she was lying and explained how she and Aimee had coordinated the ruse.
Aimee was never charged with perjury for her lies about the “kidnapping.” As you can imagine, she was not regarded as the woman of God she had portrayed herself to be by her parishioners or the general public. Most lost faith in her. She was found dead in a hotel room in 1944 from what is believed to be an accidental overdose of sedatives (pp.117-125).
What Aimee accomplished was that she bucked conservative Christians in founding and leading a Protestant sect, so that kind of makes her a feminist, but she didn’t or couldn’t live up to the life a church leader was expected to live.
Chapter 5: Runnin’ Her Mouth
All married men had to do in Illinois after Illinois Statute, Session Laws 15 on page 96, Section 10 (p.141) was ratified in 1851 was, if they wanted their wife committed to a hospital, was to REQUEST IT. Period. Full Stop. Didn’t have to prove insanity. All he had to do was say, “Yep, come git her. She crazy.”
And they did, whoever “they” were. The cops, I assume. She was breaking the law, according to her husband, and his word was the law.
Elizabeth Packard’s husband, her dearly beloved husband Reverend Theophilus Packard did just that in 1860 to her. The mother of his six children. She was involuntarily placed in the Illinois State Hospital for 3 years.
The hospital released her after 3 years saying they couldn’t fix her. Her mental illness, you ask? She didn’t want to be a Presbyterian anymore.
So, her husband came and got her, took her home, put her in a room, nailed the windows closed and locked her in.
Oops. Bad reverend. Now THAT was illegal. That’s called kidnapping.
Elizabeth got a note to the outside and eventually there was a trial. Not for his kidnapping, but a trial to determine her sanity. She was initially deemed insane (by virtue of having a high pulse rate) by two doctors the reverend hired to ambush her the morning before the trial started.
According to one of the doctors during the trial that examined her, here’s why he deemed her insane (besides the high pulse rate):
- She didn’t like to be referred to as insane
- She “failed to illuminate me and fill me with light” WHAT?
- She refused to shake hands with him when he left
There’s more, but I can’t make heads or tails of it (p.144-145).
The second doctor said she was insane because she wanted to leave the Presbyterian church. No sane person would want that (pp.141-149).
After a jury deliberation of 7 minutes, Elizabeth was declared NOT insane. Her loving husband sold the house, took the kids, and moved out of state. Elizabeth had her freedom and that was it. Since she was a married woman, she had no legal existence; “…You are nothing and nobody in law. Your husband has a legal right to all your common property…” (p.146).
After going through this, Elizabeth fought to have married women be able to hold autonomous human rights in the State of Illinois. Politicians enacted “An Act for the Protection of Personal Liberty” that guaranteed everyone accused of insanity, including married women, a jury trial. She is credited with influencing 34 bills in various state legislatures, as well as success on the national stage, including an 1875 law allowing asylum inmates mail access (p.148).
She never divorced Theophilus.
Chapter 6: Before Her Time
Not only was Mary Edwards Walker ahead of her time, but her parents were also. Forward-thinking, they started the first co-ed free school in the state of New York. Her dad was a self-taught doctor, so he had a lot of medical books laying around the house. Mary read them and headed off to Syracuse Medical College; she was the only female graduate in 1855. But being a lady doctor wasn’t the most unusual thing about Mary.
Mary wore pants. She was written about often, not for her work as a field surgeon during the Civil War, but because she wore pants in public and it was a misdemeanor to do so. One article, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (June 14, 1866, page 2 bottom of first column under the title “The Dress Question”) states that Mrs. Dr. Walker (note that Mrs. precedes her professional title; were male doctors referred to as MR. Dr. Smith? I doubt it.) wearing pants is “a public annoyance” (due to the “mob of idle gawkers” that surround her). Oh yeah, and go ahead and ignore the fact that she was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor too.
Mary wore pants at her wedding, kept her maiden name, and removed the word “obey” from the vows (pp.182-183). Four years after the event, she kicked out her cheating husband. It took five years to obtain a divorce decree at that time.
The Civil War broke out. Mary offered her services as a field surgeon to her local Union Army office. They turned her down. She was a woman! Now, they’d take her as a civilian nurse. Nope. She volunteered.
Eventually, the U.S. Army hired her as a contract acting assistant surgeon (civilian); she was the first woman hired by the American military (p.184). She tried to use hygiene and time to heal wounds rather than jumping to amputation. She offered to be a Union spy; they told her no. She was arrested as a spy anyway and spent four months in a prison camp (p.185).
By the late 1800s, Mary was in full “male” attire: dinner jacket, top hat, and walking stick (p.187). If wearing pants was illegal, this was REALLY illegal; she was arrested many times for cross-dressing.
Mary wanted a pension for the work she did for the Army during the Civil War. She was given a Congressional Medal of Honor instead. Cheaper, that.
In 1916, the government reviewed all who had received the medal and took them away from about 1/3 of them. This included Mary. Their names were removed from the medal list. She lost hers because she was a civilian, not an active member of the Army at the time. It would be a misdemeanor (another misdemeanor) for her to wear it it—she was to return it to the War department (p.188).
Her response? “Let them come get it.” She wore it every day. She was buried in it. Her Medal of Honor was reinstated to her in 1977.
Mary defied cultural norms by being one of few women doctors at the time. She was ahead of her times by wearing pants, including being arrested for wearing what was considered to be male-only clothing and accessories. She knew she could help the Union soldiers even if the Army was not willing to hire or pay her for it officially. She fought to get paid as an employee of the Army (and failed) but was awarded the medal of Honor and would not let anyone take that from her (pp.181-189).
These women are wildly divergent but do have something in common (besides the fact that 3 of the 6 of them were widowed before they stepped out on their own). They did not bend to the status quo of their times in regard to their gender and expected behaviors deemed normal for their sex. No one and nothing were going to make them behave other than the way they decided they wanted to. I encourage you to check out Unbecoming a lady : the forgotten sluts and shrews who shaped America by Therese Oneill; i have only given you the highlights she presents on these women– she has written more on them, as well as introducing us to at least two other women in each of the categories in her book. It’s a great read!