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The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, And Scandal In The Gilded Age (2014)

by Myra MacPherson(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0446570230 (ISBN13: 9780446570237)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Twelve

review 1: It is hard to imagine these sisters and their incredible lives. You follow them from a childhood that is painfully hard to read about (how did they ever live through it?) to their celebrity and later in life (perhaps) successful marriages. They advocated causes that were far from the norms of the day. They had what today we call “baggage” and lots of it.If you bemoan the recent Supreme Court decision on birth control, you can take comfort that things were worse in the Gilded Age when, despite the mortality rate for newborns and their mothers, most people would have agreed with the court. Men laughed at women having the right to vote and most women did not want it. Suffragettes faced ridicule and abuse. The undeterred Chaflin sisters took their stand.The story is rem... morearkable; and while the book is good, it should have been remarkable too. While the author recounts the events of these two long lives, and records what they said and wrote in speeches, interviews and letters, there is almost nothing personal about them. There is more on their clothes than their personalities and character. As close as it gets is how nervous they could be and that they were hurt by slander. Were they so naive as to think there were no consequences to speaking out for "free love" (when they really mean the right to divorce)? Was their motivation commitment to the cause or were they they narcissists who thrived on headlines and celebrity? Maybe they were just plain quarrelsome or rigid. Among the cause oriented people were they patrons or pseudo-intellectuals? There are no clues as their actual relationship since what survives is Victorian era prose. Victoria did not answer Tennie's pleas for a visit when she was ill (or perhaps abused by her wealthy husband). How did they respond to their role in British society? Were they Beverly Hillbillies? Nouveau riche? Did they enjoy martyrdom?The sisters transcended a family that seems ever present, ready willing and able the bite the hand feeding them. The family situation is significant, but unclear. Do these parents and siblings merely love a good argument? Or do they mean harm? Are they too intoxicated to know what they are doing and saying? Were the sisters successful in presenting their father to British society as a "noble father"? In the Epilogue, there is more narrative about the state of women's issues today than about the sisters. It reads as the right to vote, the ability to divorce, have access to education, etc. have made no impact. There no conclusions about the legacy of the two sisters, citing some who feel they advanced women's issues and others feel the rifts they created in the movement held the women's cause back.It sounds like I’m down on the book, but I’m not. It is at its best when it is describing the anti-feminist (or is the better term, anti-woman) nature of the times. While there are areas of too much attention (i.e. the Beecher trial) and gaps (especially the various domestic situations such Victoria's living with past and present husbands, and the later in life marriages/society situations) the author narrates and documents the sisters’ public lives. There is some very good research.As a pre-teen I read a biography of the woman who ran for President. My 7th grade history teacher assured me that it never happened.
review 2: Before I heard of this book, Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennie Claflin weren't known to me. But reading about their lives and struggles, and their prescient cries for progressive social justice was thrilling.MacPherson doesn't lack for subject matter, these two women were firecrackers. And I appreciated her focus on truth and mentioning other sources that used conjectures and hearsay as fact. When MacPherson conjectures about motive, or an incident that can't be cited in personal notes or a diary, she says so explicitly. Victoria and Tennie had such a tumultuous life, campaigning for so many causes that they made friends and enemies with a wide variety of people. The only major criticism I have of MacPherson's writing is that her storytelling was a little unwieldy at times. I had trouble understanding the succession of some events because they involved so many people, or things that occurred years ago in the sisters' lives came back to bite them later. So I see how it would be hard to put everything together and come up with a coherent story, and I applaud MacPherson for her success, but at times I found it confusing. I think because the last non-fiction books I've read recently are by Erik Larson who is amazing at telling a story and evoking a mood that makes it seem like fiction but it is all true.Finally, I really enjoyed the epilogue. Not many non-fiction authors today will write about their own opinion concerning their subject matter. But a woman's right to her own body is a battle we are still fighting. And writing about women who fought the same battle 150 years ago makes it absurd that it's still a contentious issue today. This type of balanced, honest, and forward-thinking biography about women who made history is what we need more of in our society. less

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