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Volume CXXXII, Number 18 |
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New Deal politician, feminist, author lectures at Bowdoin
SAMUEL DOWNING
STAFF WRITER
Forty years from now, a group of prominent historians will unplug their cars from rooftop chargers and power out to Radcliffe to argue, over bad coffee, which of the hundreds of thousands of recently deceased women deserve to be included in the latest installment of Notable American Women. And they will look twice at the lady who spent most of the early twenty-first Century huddled in the Library of Congress, focusing her hands on knitting and her ears on Depression-era radio interviews, who read obituaries as most would the want ads, searching for that "special spark."
But this particular woman, who spends her leisure time writing and lecturing at Harvard, won't be included in the anthology anytime soon. First of all, she's still alive. Second, she has a whopping conflict of interest. She heads its admissions committee.
The editor for the next volume of Schlesinger Library's biographical dictionary Notable American Women, Susan Ware, spoke at Bowdoin March 4.
Ware argued that biography is a critically important form of "doing History," particularly when the subject is women's history.
"The struggle for a career, the decision not to marry, the challenge of pursuing a satisfying personal life at the same time as a job," she said, combined to make the years of many working women, like the radio host Mary Margaret McBride, more difficult-but also more interesting. "The personal story of these women must be told as a critical component of their lives as a whole."
The key to understanding Molly Dewson, a New Deal politician and feminist Ware has studied extensively, was discovering how the 52-year relationship she maintained with another woman shaped her own life. "Dewson made virtually every decision, both political and professional, on the basis of how it would affect her partner Polly Porter" she said.
Another woman included in the newest dictionary, set for publishing in 2005, married seven times. Many looked to chosen, rather than biological families, for support. Several chose not to marry. Of those who did, the author said half did not have children.
For Ware, a challenge of editing Notable American Women, the fifth volume, which will cover individuals who died after 1976, is resisting the temptation to impose contemporary standards of sexual orientation on the subjects. She said it would be easy to label two women who lived together lesbians, but might misinterpret the nature of the relationship.
Ware has covered women's history and feminism extensively, researching and writing several books, most notably Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism and Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal, a collection of biographies of 28 women who gained political power in the age of the Roosevelts. She has also co-authored a textbook, America's History.
As the editor of the next edition of Notable American Women, Ware said she is trying to overcome several oversights of the previous volumes, some less obvious than others. She is concerned about eliminating the East Coast bias. The book is on target for having 25 percent minority subjects and will give special emphasis to women who were notable, but not necessarily famous.
For the first time, she said, First Ladies are not an "automatic admit." The volume will have 492 women, each chosen for the individual's influence on her time and field, her innovations and the relevance of her story to American women's history.
One of the key points of telling these women's tales, she said, is helping the next generation learn how to integrate personal and professional lives.
"What we are doing is compiling shoulders," she said.
Ware is confident that the next generation will have quite a view.
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