Hidden Heroines in History

 At the beginning of March, Women’s History Month 2021, I was thinking about little-known women who have made important contributions to our society. I asked my critique group and several non-writer friends if they knew of any such women. They came up with many names, some of whom I had not heard about. Here I have whittled the list to a few who have impacted the world in various fields and historical periods.

Caroline Herschel - U.S. Public Domain

Caroline Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany on March 16, 1750. When Caroline was ten, she contracted typhus. This caused vision loss in her left eye and affected her growth. She reached a height of only four feet, three inches. Assuming she would never marry, her mother decided she should train to be a household servant. Her father, however, thought she should be educated. During her mother’s absences, he tutored Caroline individually and included her in her brothers’ lessons.

Her older brother William became a successful music teacher in Bath, England. In 1772, he brought Caroline to live with him and do the housekeeping. He tutored her in mathematics and trained her as a singer. The siblings gave public musical performances until 1782, when William accepted an appointment to the office of court astronomer to King George III. This position came about after William was credited with discovering the planet Uranus the year before.

While still keeping house for William, Caroline helped with his research by grinding and polishing mirrors for his telescope and executing the calculations related to his observations. Her interest in astronomy grew and she began making her own observations. On February 26, 1783, Caroline made her first discoveries, a nebula that was not previously recorded and a second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy.  In 1786, she became the first woman credited with discovering a comet. The following year, the king gave her an annual salary in her role as her brother’s assistant making her the world’s first professional female astronomer. Over the next ten years she discovered seven more comets.

After her brother’s death in 1822, she returned to Hanover, where she continued her astronomical work, verified and confirmed William’s findings, and produced a catalogue of 2500 nebulae. Her work had gained her the respect and admiration of the general public as well as the scientific  community. In 1828, at the age of 77, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her a Gold Medal for revising and reorganizing their work. No other woman would again be awarded a Gold Medal until 1996.

Caroline died in Hanover on January 8, 1848. The C. Herschel crater on the moon is named after her, continuing her legacy into the twenty-first century.

 

Susan La Flesche Picotte 

Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collections

Susan La Flesche was born on June 17, 1865 to Chief Iron Eyes (Joseph La Flesche) and his wife, One Woman (Mary), on the Omaha Reservation in northeastern Nebraska. Her father was a strong advocate for education. Susan attended school on the reservation until she was fourteen. After a brief period of home-schooling, she was sent to the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey. In addition to her native tongue, she was fluent in English, French, and Otoe. She returned home at age seventeen and taught at the Quaker Mission School on the reservation for two years. A co-worker encouraged her to complete her education and earn a medical degree.

When she was twenty-one, Susan entered the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Philadelphia, one of the foremost institutions for higher education of non-white students in the country. The physician there urged her to attend the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, which she did, graduating as valedictorian on March 14, 1889. Susan was the first Native American to earn a medical degree. As a child, she had seen an Omaha woman die because the local white doctor refused to treat her. Later, Susan stated that this heart-breaking experience had inspired her to become a physician so that she could care for her people. She returned to the Omaha Reservation and assumed her position as physician at the Agency Indian School, where she taught students about health and hygiene in addition to providing medical care. Although she was not obligated to treat people outside the school, she made house calls and cared for the sick in the surrounding area. She became a widely trusted community leader.

 In June 1894, she married Henry Picotte, a Sioux man from the Yankton agency. They had two sons. Susan continued to practice medicine after the birth of her children. In her practice, she treated both Omaha and white patients in the town of Bancroft and surrounding communities. Sometimes she even took her children along on house calls.  She worked to teach her community about preventive medicine and other public health issues such as food sanitation and efforts to prevent the spread of tuberculosis. Alcoholism was a serious problem on the Omaha reservation, including Susan’s husband. Susan advocated temperance and struggled against disreputable whites who used alcohol to take advantage of Omahas while making land deals. She also worked on behalf of community members in their struggles with the bureaucracy regarding land interests.

Throughout her adult life, Susan had worked for the building of a hospital. In 1913, the first privately funded hospital on a reservation was completed on the Omaha tribal land. It was later named in Susan’s honor, and in 1993 the Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital, Walthill, Nebraska, was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Susan died of bone cancer on September 18, 1915 at the age of fifty.

Shirley Chisholm
Library of Congress

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was an immigrant from Guyana, and her mother was an immigrant from Barbados. She graduated from Brooklyn Girls’ High and Brooklyn College, then worked as a nursery school teacher.

In 1949, she married Conrad Chisholm, a private investigator. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University in early childhood education in 1951. By 1960, she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care. Having encountered discrimination based on her race and her gender, she became active locally in the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Urban League to counter inequality. She also joined the Democratic Party. 

Shirley ran for the New York Assembly in 1964 and became the second African American in the New York State Legislature, where she served through 1968. Her accomplishments included the granting of unemployment benefits to domestic workers and a program that gave underprivileged students the opportunity to attend college while taking remedial education classes. Both programs continue today. In 1968, she won a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. She represented New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983, introducing more than 50 pieces of legislation. Throughout her career, she fought for racial and gender equality, tried to improve conditions for the poor, and advocated for ending the Vietnam War.  

Her autobiography, Unbossed and Unbought, was published in 1970. It chronicled her first-hand account of her journey from her childhood in Brooklyn to her position as the first Black Congresswoman. In it she wrote, “Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men.”

In 1972, Shirley became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Due to discrimination, she was blocked from participating in televised primary debates and, after taking legal action, was allowed to make just one speech. However, she garnered support of students, women, and minorities, entering twelve primaries and winning 10% of the total delegates to the Democratic Convention. While she did not become the presidential candidate, she continued to serve in the House of Representatives.

     Conrad and Shirley divorced in 1977. She kept the last name of Chisholm in her professional endeavors even after she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York state legislator, She retired from Congress in 1983, taught at Mount Holyoke College and co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women. Shirley Chisholm died on January 1, 2005 in Florida. President Barack Obama awarded her a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

 

Maryam Mirzakhani
National Science Foundation

Maryam Mirzakhani was born on May 12, 1977 in Tehran, Iran. She attended an all-girls high school and in 1994 she became the first Iranian woman to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. She repeated the achievement the following year. This recognition of her genius enabled her to pursue a career in pure mathematics, an opportunity rarely accorded to Iranian women. While attending the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, she was involved in a serious accident when a bus she was riding in fell off a cliff. She was one of the few survivors.

In 1999, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Sharif University. That year, she published Elementary Number Theory, Challenging Problems in Farsi with friend and fellow student, Roya Beheshti. While at the university, the American Mathematical Society recognized Maryam’s work, and she traveled to the United States for graduate study at Harvard University. In her doctoral thesis, she connected and solved two long-standing mathematical problems. She was awarded her PhD in 2004.

She accepted a position as assistant professor at Princeton University and as a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute. Soon after, she joined the faculty at Stanford University in California, where she was recognized for her work in the fields of hyperbolic geometry, topology and dynamics. In 2008, she became a full professor at Stanford.

Also in 2008, Maryam married Jan Vondrák, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and applied mathematician. They had a daughter named Anahita.

Working alone and with colleagues, Maryam proved several theories related to simple and complex geodesics, tying together fields including geometry, topology and dynamical systems. In an interview, she characterized her process this way: “It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out.”

On August 13, 2014, Maryam was awarded the Fields Medal. Presented every four years, the Fields Medal is the most prestigious award in mathematics, akin to a Nobel Prize. Maryam was the first and, to date, the only woman to be honored with this recognition since its inception in 1936.

After a four-year battle with breast cancer, Maryam died July 14, 2017. She was 40 years old.

Among the many honors and tributes were accorded to her after her death were having an asteroid and a micro-satellite named in her memory, a documentary featuring her and her work, and recognition by the United Nations as one of seven female scientists who have shaped the world. Beginning this year, the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize will award $50,000 to outstanding women in the field of mathematics who completed their PhDs within the past two years.

Through the millennia, women have made major contributions that have gone largely unrecognized. Hopefully, in the future, our society will do a better job of acknowledging women’s achievements.

 Ann Markim

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Gathering Steam

     The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) continued its quiet state-by-state campaign for the right to vote. Meanwhile, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU), led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, was determined to keep the cause in front of the public.

     In March 1914, the Senate voted on a federal woman suffrage amendment for first time since 1887. The bill was defeated. It was reintroduced the next day.

Chicago's Parade

     That same year, Paul organized May Day parades in cities across the country, garnering local and national publicity for the movement. Additionally, the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, with more than two million members throughout the U.S., formally endorsed the suffrage campaign. In November, women won full suffrage in Montana and Nevada.

     The House of Representatives voted for first time on a federal woman suffrage amendment in January 1915.  The measure was defeated.

     That same month, the CU opened a "freedom booth" at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where they displayed exhibits in support of expanding full women’s suffrage beyond the eleven states that already had it. Helen Keller, a famous supporter of the cause, spoke at the booth. The CU representatives collected 500,000 signatures on their suffrage petition at the exposition. Suffrage envoys left California in September, carrying the petition by automobile across the country to Congress and President Wilson.

Suffrage Envoys

    Carrie Chapman Catt again assumed leadership of the NAWSA in 1915. She continued the state-by-state efforts to win suffrage. Attempts to reconcile with the CU failed. Despite NAWSA objections, the CU restructured as a national organization and sent organizers to all states to plan conventions and establish state branches. In September, the CU held the first Woman Voters Convention with delegates from states where women had full voting rights.

     In December 1915, the CU held its first national convention in Washington, D.C. The event coincided with the opening of the 64^th Congress and the arrival of the suffrage envoys carrying the petition. On December 7, a federal woman suffrage amendment was introduced in the Senate. On the 16th, CU members testified in favor of the amendment before the House Judiciary Committee. The next day, a final attempt at reconciliation with the NAWSA failed.

      To keep the cause before the public, 23 CU members left Washington, D.C. in April 1916 on "The Suffrage Special," a five-week train tour to garner support for the federal woman suffrage amendment among women voters in the West. Subsequently, Alice Paul organized the National Woman’s Party, which was made up of women who already had full suffrage. They supported the efforts of their disenfranchised sisters, who were still represented by the CU. The two complementary organizations coexisted until they merged into the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in 1917.

                                                    

NWP  Flag

      The NWP met in Colorado Springs in 1916 to discuss the upcoming election. They chose not to endorse either candidate during the presidential campaigns.  Instead, they decided to oppose all Democratic congressional candidates in order to hold the party in power responsible for failure to pass the suffrage amendment.

      On October 20, a mob attacked NWP members who were demonstrating against Woodrow Wilson outside a Chicago auditorium. Three days later, Inez Milholland Boissevain, leader of the 1913 parade in Washington, D.C. and an NWP organizer, collapsed from exhaustion on the stage while giving speech against President Wilson and the Democratic Party in Los Angeles. She died of pernicious anemia on November 25 at the age of 30, becoming widely regarded as the first martyr of the women’s suffrage movement.

     In the November election, Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President.

     NWP members silently demonstrated at Wilson’s annual address to Congress on December 5. They held a banner that read: “Mr. President, What Will You Do For Woman Suffrage?” A memorial service for Boissevain was held on Christmas Day in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Attendees drafted suffrage resolutions for presentation to the President.

     After two weeks of stonewalling, Wilson finally met with a delegation of 300 women on January 9, 1917. They presented him with the resolutions drafted during the memorial service and asked him to use his influence to promote a federal woman suffrage amendment. Wilson angrily refused and walked out on the women.

Silent Sentinels

     In response to Wilson’s rejection of their request for his support a federal amendment, NWP members began picketing the White House. These “Silent Sentinels” stood outside the fence day after day, despite rain, snow or whatever weather they encountered. They held banners with pro-suffrage messages and other banners of purple, white, and gold, the colors of the NWP.

 

Grand Picket

     On March 4, the eve of Wilson’s second inauguration, more than 1000 women staged a “Grand Picket.” They marched around the perimeter of the White House, where all gates to the grounds were locked, in driving icy rain, waiting to present him with resolutions from their national convention. After several hours, Wilson and his wife left the White House, driving past the picket line.

     In April, federal women’s suffrage amendments were introduced in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Additionally, the United States entered World War I. Carrie Chapman Catt promised President Wilson that the NAWSA would cease efforts on behalf of winning the vote in support of the war effort. Meanwhile, the “Silent Sentinels” continued their daily pickets.

      The battle had risen to a new level.

Ann Markim

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Into the Storm

     As the twentieth century dawned, women had full suffrage in only four states – Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Utah. Women failed to win full voting rights in any additional states until the dam broke in 1910,  when the state of Washington granted women’s suffrage.

Alice Paul

     That same year, Alice Paul returned to the United States from London, where she had been studying and working as a case worker in a settlement house. While in England, she became involved in the struggle for women’s rights. Through her experiences with arrests, imprisonments, hunger strikes, and forced feedings, she learned how to generate publicity for the cause and how to capitalize on that publicity from the British leaders of the movement. Paul returned to the University of Pennsylvania to continue her studies and began participating in National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) activities, including speaking at the national convention.

     Finally, in the culmination of a long struggle, California women won the right to vote in 1911.

     In 1912, the Progressive Party, led by Theodore Roosevelt, included voting rights for women in their platform. That same year, women won the right to vote in Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas. But eastern states continued to stand in staunch opposition to the cause.

     After earning her Ph.D. in sociology in 1912, Paul dedicated herself to American suffrage efforts. She strongly supported a federal suffrage, which ran contrary to the entrenched state-by-state plan of the NASWA. She and Lucy Burns, who had also been involved in England’s women’s rights movement, joined forces. Paul asked to be assigned to the association’s Congressional Committee.

     One of her first major efforts on the committee was to plan and execute a parade in Washington, D.C. to bring national attention to the suffrage movement and to put pressure on newly elected President Woodrow Wilson. The event was scheduled the day before his inauguration in in March 1913.

     She recruited approximately 8000 marchers from around the country and organized floats, bands and chariots to intersperse with the suffragists. A contingent of men who supported women’s suffrage made up one unit. To placate the southern marchers, the black women were asked to march at the end of the procession.

     Many participants carried banners or wore sashes demanding votes for women. The parade was led by notable labor lawyer Inez Milholland, dressed in white and riding a white horse,  and by a huge banner proclaiming, "We Demand an Amendment to the United States Constitution Enfranchising the Women of the Country."

     The police force was insufficient to keep the peace. More than half-a-million people turned out to view the parade, including large numbers of men in town for the inauguration. When the crowd pushed into the streets, creating chaos and preventing the procession from passing, many of the policemen did nothing to protect the marchers. Approximately 100 women sustained injuries and were hospitalized. Ultimately, national guardsmen were called in to restore order. A Senate hearing was called later in the week to review the  performance of the police. Many women recounted the inaction of the police and one Senator testified to the badge numbers of police officers he had seen standing idly by rather than coming to the aid of the marchers.

     The parade succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement. That same year, the Alaska Territory granted full suffrage to women.

      Paul's methods and her emphasis on the goal of a federal amendment created tension with Anna Shaw, president of NAWSA, and other leaders of the organization. They thought Paul was moving too aggressively in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere and were unhappy that she didn’t support their state-by-state approach. Disagreements about strategy and methods led to a break with NAWSA.

      By the beginning of 1914, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage to campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing suffrage for women throughout the United States of America.

     The fight was on.

Ann Markim

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A Lull Before the Storm

     By the end of the nineteenth century, women had won full suffrage in only four states — Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah. In 1900, Susan B. Anthony turned over the presidency of the now-united National American Woman Suffrage Association  (NAWSA) to Carrie Chapman Catt, signaling a new generation of leadership.

     During this period, little effort was devoted toward passage of a constitutional amendment. Instead, the association’s work centered around winning voting rights in the individual states. Catt gave speeches and organized women to help plan and execute suffrage campaigns. In many states, men feared that enfranchising women would interfere with political efforts to disenfranchise African-Americans and immigrants. Despite its Quaker roots, NAWSA was not immune to Jim Crow influences. While the national organization did not explicitly prohibit non-white members, it allowed state and local affiliates to set their own membership requirements. Many groups, especially in the South, admitted only white women.

     Catt devised the ‘society plan’ to recruit wealthy members of women's clubs into the NAWSA. These women had organizing experience, time to volunteer, and money to contribute to the cause. While there was a strong black woman’s club movement, Catt did not extend her recruiting efforts to them, even though those groups were often engaged in promoting women’s rights, including suffrage. Consequently, the NAWSA became predominantly white. 

     In 1902, Catt helped to found the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). The IWSA brought together groups pursuing votes for women around the world, eventually representing 32 nations. The organization is now known as the International Alliance of Women.

    When Catt’s husband fell ill in 1904, she resigned her NAWSA presidency to care for him. He died in October 1905. 

Anna Howard Shaw

     Anna Howard Shaw succeeded Catt to the NAWSA presidency. Although she was a talented speaker, she lacked the leadership skills of her predecessors. However, when southern NAWSA members formed the Southern Woman Suffrage Conference in 1906, Shaw refused to give the national association’s endorsement to the overtly racist organization.

     During Shaw’s term, members organized other new affiliates. In 1907, Harriet Stanton Blatch (Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter) formed the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, with membership comprised of professional and industrial working women. This contrasted with Catt’s ‘society plan’ which appealed to upper-class women. The Equality League adopted tactics of English suffragists, including parades, street speakers, and pickets. The League became the Women's Political Union in 1910.  

  

    The National College Equal Suffrage League became an affiliate of the NAWSA in 1908. The organization had been founded in Boston at the beginning of the century as the College Equal Suffrage League.

     The death of Carrie Chapman Catt’s husband was followed by a rapid succession of more deaths among people important to her. Susan B. Anthony died in February 1906, and Catt's mother and younger brother both died in 1907. These sorrows plunged Catt into despair. Her doctor and friends convinced her that traveling abroad would help her recover from the devastating losses. She spent much of the following eight years promoting equal-suffrage rights worldwide as the IWSA president.

      In 1909, Catt and some of her friends founded the Woman Suffrage Party to fight for the vote in New York. Within a year, the Party had 20,000 members. The organization remained independent, but Catt and its other leaders remained loyal to the NAWSA.

      By the end of the decade, the public’s attitude toward the suffrage movement had improved dramatically. Working for the cause had come to be viewed by many as a respectable activity for middle-class women. Infrastructure in support of the suffrage movement had been built. However, from 1896 to 1910 there had been six state campaigns for suffrage. All six failed.

     But the tide was about to turn.

Ann Markim

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Unconventional Heroines and Women of Destiny

The end of this month will mark the first anniversary of the publication of my first novel, Courting Anna.  I wanted to do something to celebrate, and thought it would be fun to have a conversation with a couple of my favorite Prairie Rose authors about a topic dear to all of us.  C. A. Asbrey, author of The Innocents mystery series (most recently the concluding novel, Innocent to the Last) is an online friend who’s become one of my favorite Internet writing comrades.   She introduced me to Prairie Rose, when she posted an announcement for the Women of Destiny series on Facebook.   Mary Sheeran is a friend of several decades’ standing with whom I’ve sung in choirs and ensembles.  She was already the author of three books, when she saw that my project had been accepted to the Women of Destiny line, and realized that her A Dangerous Liberty would fit in well.  Geographically, we’re two New Yorkers and a resident of the original York, across the Atlantic – not an actual Westerner among the lot of us.

Each of us has a heroine who’s not precisely typical of the 19^th century time period in which we’re all writing.  Abigail MacKay, Christine’s heroine, in the 1870s, is a female Pinkerton agent.  My Anna Harrison, in the 1880s, is an attorney.  And Mary’s Elisabeth Winters is a touring musician and composer in the 1860s, a concert pianist at a time when women played piano in the parlor, but men commanded the stage.

I’m guessing that we’ve all read books where the heroine is a modern woman in period costume, with no real concessions to historical veracity.  You know the type – she’s always done exactly what she wanted, she absolutely refuses to wear a corset, and quite possibly she substitutes trousers for long skirts whenever possible.  On the other hand, if you read the fiction actually written in the nineteenth century, for every Elizabeth Bennet, there are dozens of female characters who can be very difficult for twenty-first century readers to relate to.  In historical fiction, there are plenty of appealing traditional heroines who are beloved by readers.  But one approach which can work very well is to create a heroine who operates within the culture and conventions of the time period in which her story takes place, but who is an outlier, pushing at those boundaries.

I know that other Prairie Rose authors have written about such heroines -- I logged in to post this and just saw Becky Lower's post about Revolutionary Heroines!  I hope you’ll join in and share about the characters you’ve created in the comments.  Or, as readers, which characters have you loved reading about.  This post will be in several parts, and I’d love to extend the conversation.

An unconventional heroine in historical fiction is still someone of her time.  What are some ways your Prairie Rose heroine is unusual for her time period, and what are some ways in which she is grounded in it?

Christine:  In the same way as the female attracted to the work in law enforcement in the 19^th century will be out of the norm, she will also be very much part of that society. Abigail understands the social mores, the rules, and the strictures imposed on 19^th century women, even as she rejects them. When she challenges, she picks her battles. Abigail MacKay isn’t a complete rebel. She’s a woman who has found life constrains her skills and intelligence, but is pragmatic enough to understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat than to constantly turn to direct challenge – although she isn’t afraid to do just that when it’s needed.   

Cate:  Anna is a lawyer, which is obviously unusual in the 1880s, though it’s actually historically plausible.  She’s independent, and she’s able to support herself comfortably through her work, which obviously many women could not do at that time.  Her father was an attorney, as well.  From a very early age, Anna was fascinated by his work and hung around his study, and then his office, as much as she could.  Her parents were followers of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas, and they felt that their daughter should follow her own inclinations and talents.  At the time, some lawyers were educated at law school, but others trained in the offices of senior attorneys.  Anna did the latter, clerking for her father, and later practicing law by his side.  Thus, she was able to avoid some of the worst of the barriers against women in the profession.  After her father’s death, Anna carried on the practice, and because she was already so well-known in her community, it continued to flourish.  Of course, the further afield she went from Carter’s Creek, the more difficulties she encounters in being accepted.  In the book, she’s called to another part of the territory to defend the hero in court, and finds herself treated as quite the spectacle.  People sometimes try to do an end run around her and deal with her male law clerk, later partner, but he’ll have none of it.

Mary: I have spent so much time in the far west during the 1860s that I pretty much think it's MY time.  Elisabeth is of her time and she's also me. When she stays away in Europe, having told herself that the United States has lost the dream and that the country doesn't care that it has lost the dream, she's also me. I wrote A Dangerous Liberty a little more than ten years ago, and I think I still feel that way. As for Elisabeth. Is she of my time, yes.  Is she of her time? Yes, because there have always been expatriates, and she was one early on, having seen her father and Abraham Lincoln killed. Certainly, a dream lost. Her father was an abolitionist US Senator with a powerful voice, respected by many and highly regarded abroad. 

Christine:  Abigail was brought up to expect to marry and have children, and it was a revelation for her to find there was another option. She was educated, but like many of her era, expected that her education would help her sons. It’s only after being widowed that the job accidentally found her. She didn’t seek it out, but accepted the role with gusto as a solely domestic life was not enough for her. She does fit in her era, in that she longs to be a mother and enjoys domesticity. It’s important to her, but she’s not prepared to compromise in her choice of partner – but she’s unusual in wanting a partner, and not to accept the subordinate role, or submit to a husband. He has to accept her as an equal.

Cate:  Anna is simply hopelessly undomesticated.  She can’t cook and she’s terrible at needlework.  She had a fiance, David, who was her father’s law clerk.  He supported her joining the firm and practicing by his side, at the same time that they planned to have a family.  But when he caught sick and died, not long before the wedding was meant to have happened, she decided never to marry.  It took her a long time to get over her broken heart, and besides, she felt that her subsequent suitors expected her to adopt the more traditional role that she knew she’d never fit.   I don’t see her as a stereotypical spinster, but as the late Victorian New Woman – she’s made her own choices.   She loves pretty dresses and she loves talking about the law.  Courting Anna is obviously wordplay, between the courtroom in which she flourishes and the unexpected courtship of Anna by Jeremiah Brown.

Mary:  Elisabeth loves to wear great clothes, too. She does feel lonely without a man, and she does seek male companionship, not always wisely. In fact, hardly ever wisely. The safety she seeks is part of a time when women were supposed to have a male protector always around, and if they didn't - what was wrong with them, and although she tosses out her guardians and doesn't sleep with that playwright and feels sorry for that banker, she is of her time even as she fights it. 

Christine:  Abigail has a scientific bent, and enjoys studying, something which was not seen as very feminine in her day, but she is confident enough not to care.   She also has enough insight to understand that she alienates certain types of men, as well as women. That doesn’t matter to her either, as they bore her.   My heroine doesn’t defer to men, which is unusual in her époque, unless they have a greater degree of skill or experience in an area. She also isn’t prepared to let the man take the lead all the time. She’s not a side-kick, or a woman looking for security, or social position. Abigail is as skilled as anyone else, and isn’t afraid to challenge up.

Mary:  Already a precocious musical talent, Elisabeth entered the professional music scene just before women were entering the professional music world ever so slowly. Girls and women could play instruments at home, but entering the professional world of music was tough. Men were certainly in the majority of professional pianists. Women were not admitted into conservatories until the 1870s, and then, very few. From reading music critics of the time, it's apparent that the music world assumed women did not have the upper body power to perform the piano music of Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt. Critics usually regarded women in this light, excusing their deficiencies or, if the woman did play with "masculine" power, noted it as an oddity - the hint being that the woman was unwomanly.

Elisabeth has difficulty in presenting her own voice. Certainly talented, she was respected because of her father. Audiences in Europe - and those when she returned the US - considered her playing as the voice of her father. Thus, her powerful musical phrases were not unwomanly - her father's voice was coming through her. She also composed piano concerti, and although these were not seen as being on the level of Chopin or Liszt, they were considered as her hearing her father's voice. So she was perceived as a good daughter. However, conductors who supported her piano artistry would not conduct her compositions. She conducted her choral symphony.  Women conductors were unheard of - pretty much almost to our lifetime.

Christine:  None of that means Abigail isn’t a woman of her time, though. Some educated 19^th century women were pushing for more rights and greater equality, since they turned their attention to social causes after the abolition of slavery. Abigail finds herself drawn to these people, and very much agrees with their causes.  She is motivated by a need for improvement for all, rather than simple personal security and happiness. Even at the end of the series, there’s every indication that she intends to continue to work when the children are old enough for her to do so. I think it is rare to see a progressive feminist as a heroine in a romantic role in a historical novel. She fits squarely into a movement within the time the stories are set, even if that was a minority view at the time. Some of the other characters are loosely based on real people. In fact, the more outrageous they are, the more likely they are to be based on real people. Vida is inspired by Mary Edwards Walker, who was captured in the Civil War as a spy, while working as a nurse (she had been refused permission to enter as a doctor despite being qualified), and became the first female surgeon in the army. She found female clothes restrictive and often wore men’s clothes and a top hat. The night hag is based on a Hungarian killer, Viktoria Foedi Rieger. Basing some characters around real people is another way of anchoring characters in time and place with a degree of veracity.     

Cate:  Anna is also firmly grounded in her time period.  The germ of the novel came from my watching some Westerns while I was in graduate school specializing in the 19^th century novel.  The British Victorian novel, especially, portrays such a different world than the Western does, even while they’re happening at the same time.  So while Anna has grown up in Montana territory, there’s also that Victorian element to her.  As a lawyer, she’s lived in a more masculine world, but some things still easily shock her.  Her family came from Massachusetts, and were great readers of Emerson and some of the more progressive thinkers of the day.  She’s been exposed to big city culture:  her parents have taken her to San Francisco, Chicago, and even to New York and to Boston, where they have relatives.   So, in addition to the books her parents have had shipped to them regularly, she’s also been exposed to art and music.   She enjoys her afternoon tea, with good china cups and silver service.   And despite her nonconformity to certain gender roles, she’s aware that as a guest in a man’s world, she needs to guard her respectability in other ways, quite strictly.  With her wards, Sarah and Caroline, she tries to protect their innocence, as she assumes they will live more conventional lives than she has done.     

She does have a commercial law practice, but she takes some cases for the money so that she can afford to do pro bono work, representing people who need her help.  And she does legal work for several of the Native American nations in the area.  If I ever get the chance to write the sequel, that’s how Sarah will find her father, who’s a Blackfoot.

Mary:  It's not that Elisabeth doesn't push the boundaries as her father would. She hires a black singer for her vocal piece, attends black churches, and rescues a Chinese prostitute being beaten on the street when no one else will help the girl. She engages in discussions about women voting and lobbies legislatures for women's rights - with liquor. Of course, having someone out to kill her can be a little unsettling, so being a public face takes considerable courage. People want her bloodline at an end; that's how crazed they are. She suspects she is a target, but she still stays. She has work to do.  Is she ahead of her time in these situations? I hesitate to say that a courageous woman is ever ahead of her time, and the more we delve into history, we keep finding women who were ahead of our time. 

It's always going to be a struggle for Elisabeth to have her own career with her own voice heard. Will she give up on the country? On her place in it? I'm not sure, given the ending of the book, if she'll be able to find a way for her voice to be heard. Readers should wonder: Is that a happy ending? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

For more of this conversation, tune in next month -- Monday, August 17!  Read our books!  Tell us about your favorite heroines, that you've written, or that you've read!

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