For some reason, I never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Maybe it was the reports of bathos, hand-wringing, and tear-filled emotions, or maybe it was when I convinced myself that I didn’t like nineteenth-century American fiction (spoiler: I do. I just don’t like Emerson all that much), but somehow, that part of my education got skipped. I’ve read several nonfiction accounts of slavery as experienced by the enslaved, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs (who initially published as Linda Brent), and Solomon Northup. My students and […]
Women Behaving Badly (i.e., like men): The Scarlet Sisters
Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin were two sisters famous/infamous in American social and political circles starting in the 1870s. While most would think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when it comes to women’s rights, suffrage and reform, these sisters were renowned orators whose lifestyle fascinated and irritated the general public, especially men in power. They were from the wrong social class and espoused scandalous (for the time) views on sex, women, the poor and wealth. And they were linked to one […]