Nellie Bly--Intrepid Woman

Nellie Bly is one of the women I am writing about for my biography series on Intrepid Women for middle grade readers.

In 1864, Elizabeth Cochran Seaman was born into a well-to-do family outside of Pittsburgh. She changed the spelling of her surname to “Cochrane” while in boarding school because she thought it was more sophisticated. Because of her clothing color of choice, she was known as Pink or Pinky to family and friends.

When her father died she had to quit boarding school since the family money was gone. The family struggled for many years and Pink tried various things to help support the family. Little did she expect that her response to a newspaper article would set her on her life’s path. She had little formal schooling

In 1880, when Pink was sixteen, she was upset by a newspaper column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch entitled, “What Are Girls Good For?”. Pink took exception to the relegation of women to the barefoot-and-pregnant role, dismissing their worth outside the home. Her response to the article impressed the editor and he offered her a reporting job.

At the time, the few women newspaper reporters wrote articles about housekeeping, gardening, and social events. But Elizabeth, renamed by her editor as Nellie Bly, was assigned to write topics on women’s issues and wider issues. At one point, she traveled to Mexico reporting on corruption and the poverty of the Mexican people. These artciles were collected and subsequently published in a book as Six Months in Mexico.

In 1887, Nellie left Pittsburgh and headed for New York City. She approached Joseph Pulitizer’s New York World for a reporter position. One of her first investigations was undercover at Blackwell’s Island where an infamous women’s insane asylum was located. Details of what happened at the asylum were shrouded in mystery since few ever were released. Nellie fooled a panel of psychiatrists and got herself committed for ten days to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum.

At the end of the ten days, Nellie wrote a series of articles for The World (later collected and published as the book, Ten Days in a Mad-House) that led to a grand jury investigation of the abusive, unsanitary conditions. The grand jury ordered the changes she had suggested and called for increased funding for the mentally ill as well as more thorough examinations before commitment.

In 1888, Nellie suggested to her editor that they capitalize on the popularity of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and send her around the world in a race against another woman reporter from a competing newspaper. Both wanted to beat Phileas Fogg’s record (the protagonist in the book) and one another. They took off in opposite directions and reported on their separate progress. The world watched with great interest, particularly since The World offered a Grand Prize of a European trip to the person who guessed Nellie’s arrival time. Over a million people entered the contest.

On the last leg, the paper transported her from San Francisco to New York City by train. She took 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds to circumnavigate the world. She beat the other reporter by four and a half days. Nellie published her adventures, Nellie Bly’s Book: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and people played the Nellie Bly board game of her trip. She was the most famous woman reporter in the world.

Nellie’s life took another turn when she married millionaire business man, Robert Seaman in 1895. She was only 31 years old and had accomplished so much. Robert was forty years older than she and died in 1904. They reportedly had a happy marriage and Nellie left reporting for her new life.

After Robert died, Nellie lost her husband’s fortune through fraudulent dealings from her employees. But she was still one of the world’s leading women industrialists, obtaining two patents for her inventions, a new kind of milk can and a stacking garbage can. Still it was not enough to support her so she returned to reporting.

She wrote stories about World War I’s Eastern Front and reported on the Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913. She accurately predicted that it would be 1920 before women would get the right to vote.

Nellie contracted pneumonia in 1922 and died in a New York hospital at age 57.

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Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood--Intrepid Woman

Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood is one of the women I am writing about for my biography series on Intrepid Women for middle grade readers.

Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood was born in upper New York state in 1830. She was an educator, attorney, author, and politician, an ambitious woman back when ambitious women weren’t generally valued or encouraged. Her family had neither wealth nor social standing so her accomplishments are all the more remarkable for not having that support. Education was important to her and she worked hard to obtain it.

She became a teacher in a rural school at age 14 and was upset even at that young age that she was paid half what the male teacher was paid. Social justice would be a theme throughout her life.

Another theme was the importance of education for women. After the death of her first husband, she had to support her daughter and knew education could provide that. She eventually got a degree from a Methodist women’s seminary so she could attend Genessee College. Women at the time, especially widows, did not typically seek higher education and she was viewed negatively by many. Though the school did not have a law program, one professor offered private classes that she participated in. That’s where her interest in becoming an attorney was fostered.

After graduating with honors, she became headmistress of a school. It was more money than she got teaching, but yet again found that men in her position earned twice as much. While headmistress at a different school, she met Susan B. Anthony and became involved in women’s rights issues. She also worked on world peace issues.

In 1866 she and her daughter moved to Washington, D.C. since she viewed it the center of power and would giver her opportunities in law. She remarried in 1868, a Baptist minister and dentist, who shared her progressive ideas about women’s roles.

After being rejected by the Coulmbian Law School, she entered a different program. Belva completed course work for her law degree from National University Law School (now George Washington University Law School). However, due to her gender they would not confer her diploma. If she had not diploma she couldn’t be admitted to the bar.

She wrote a letter to President Ulysses S. Grant presenting her case and asking for fairness in getting her degree awarded. A week later, she had her diploma. She applied for and was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar.

However, the prejudice continued. She was told repeatedly that judges and other attorneys had no confidence in her. But she built a practice and won cases, gradually getting other to accept her. She fought for women’s rights issue mainly. Eventually, she was the first woman attorney allowed to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Belva was the first woman presidential nominee to run a full campaign in 1884 and 1888. Victoria Claffin Woodhull was the first proclaimed woman presidential nominee in 1872, but her campaign was localized and not national. Belva knew that even if women supported her, they couldn’t vote for her. She couldn’t even vote for herself.

In 1884, Belva ran her first presidential campaign for the National Equal Rights Party with Marietta Stow as her vice president nominee. In 1888, after a kerfuffle, she ended up with Charles Weld as her running mate. Newspapers took her seriously enough to run editorials warning against “petticoat rule.”

After the 1884 election, she alleged wide-spread voter fraud in Oregon and Pennsylvania and said she had far more than the 4100 votes reported.

Belva also wrote frequent essays on women’s rights issues and the need for legal equality for women. She co-edited The Peacemarker, a journal dedicated to seeking world peace. She represented the U.S. at the International Peace Congress.

Belva died in 1917 before women got the right to vote but she must have seen it was imminent. She also was disappointed that the U.S. entered WWI. Unfortunately, her grandson destroyed most of her papers after her death, so we have to piece her life together from the papers of her contemporaries.

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Cultural Appropriation

A hot area in historical fiction, heck, any fiction is cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is assuming to know what one can’t know first hand. My on-line dictionary says “appropriation” is the "action of taking something for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission."   Sort of like stealing, right?

You may remember the brouhaha raised when a white woman so dramatically identified with blacks that she altered her appearance and tried to pass as black in the black community. People, including her own family, “outed” her but she continued to insist that she was black, if not genetically, then culturally and emotionally. A lot of people didn’t buy it. (Hmm. I can see a story of a reincarnated person insisting to her host body that she is someone other than who she looks to be. Hmm.)

On the Historical Novel Society’s Facebook page, we had a lively discussion discussion about cultural appropriation when a member, Marina J. Neary, posted the link to her blog on cultural appropriation. There were lots of reactions to her piece, “Microaggression in the World of Historical Fiction.” Take a look and see what you think of her points.

Many historical fiction writers (and other writers) are assailed for telling the story of someone not of their culture. Only blacks should write the stories of slavery. Only Native Americans should tell of the genocides perpetrated. Only Chinese should write about dynastic China. Only hillibillies should explain coal country. Only prostitutes should . . . Oh, got me.

While not historical fiction, I wrote an erotic romance under the pen name Angelica French. I do not know, nor have I ever been, a prostitute. Yet, Carrie’s story is so much more than being a prostitute. It is a woman’s story of resolution, redemption and recovery. And I am a woman, albeit one who never experienced the abuse that Carrie did. I had no reluctance telling this story.

Historical fiction writers are challenged for writing out-of-culture, out-of-age, or out-of-gender. Is that fair? None of us are ancient Greeks or biblical-era prophets or thanes or Chinese warlords. Does thorough research count for nothing? Must one be of the appropriate culture instead of being accused of appropriating the culture?

I would take some issue with the term “cultural appropriation” among writers. After all, we are not trying to “pass” as the black-assumption woman did. We acknowledge we are male/female, White/Latin/Asian/Native American/et cetera writing a tale we have carefully researched. There is no attempt to deceive.

Is it better to have fewer stories, but ones told only by those “permitted” to tell them? What do you think? Must we stick with “what we know”? Stick with our own identities? Or is it okay to tell the stories of others.

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Judith Starkston-Writing Fiction from History: The Silver Stag Rhyton

For a novelist, a beautiful or mystical object preserved from the past can trigger an entire scene. An ancient setting with so many exotic and intriguing elements is particularly fruitful this way and that is especially true of the world that I write about, the Hittite Empire of the Late Bronze Age in what is today Turkey.

I thought when I started writing fiction that my training as a classicist and years of teaching humanities, with its interplay between cultural artifacts, history and literature, had taught me enough to portray a town near Troy on the eve of the Trojan War. Every time a character reaches for something, wears clothes, eats food, travels or sits down, I had to know what might actually have existed—a tough project it turns out, requiring multiple more years of research.

One of my favorite “finds” can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, part of the Schimmel collection. You can see a photo of it in this post, part of the wonderful open access process that has made many photos of art objects at the Met available for public use. This silver rhyton—a rhyton is a libation cup in the shape of an animal (although there’s another shaped like a fist)—is one of the loveliest of the treasures we have from the Hittites, the empire whose cultural and political presence is felt throughout the area surrounding Troy. This cup was produced sometime during the 14^th – 13^th centuries B.C. during the height of the Hittite empire.

The rhyton is shaped like a stag with branching antlers, regal face, graceful neck and neatly tucked forelegs. The part that resembles a cup is attached to the stag’s foreparts at a right angle so that when the cup is tilted upright to be filled with wine, the chamber formed by the stag’s head points down and must also fill with wine. At 18 cm tall from antler tip to hoof it’s about the height of a standard wine glass when resting with the stag’s head upright, but it makes a far greater impression and a much less convenient drinking cup. This cup, like its bull-shaped brethren seen on Crete and elsewhere, was used to make libations to the gods.

The “cup” part of the rhyton, the brim and cylindrical portion, is decorated with a frieze, a raised design portraying a religious procession and offerings to the gods—just the sort of situation in which the rhyton would have been used.

We know about these religious rituals in great detail because the Hittites left behind extensive

archives written in cuneiform script on clay tablets. I’ve included a photo of one of these tablets—they look like a lot of birds walked on them.

Tablet after tablet describes elaborate festivals in honor of their gods lasting days or weeks. In many of these the king and queen traveled to different cities in central Anatolia (modern Turkey) to perform stages of the festivals. Offerings of animal sacrifices, a wide array of breads and cakes, grains, wine and beer were given to their “pantheon of a thousand gods.” At times the king dropped everything in the midst of waging a war to hurry back in order to perform such duties. These festivals clearly held the highest importance.

So imagine the king or queen, priest or priestess lifting high that silver stag. This is how I pictured it for the young priestess Briseis in my novel Hand of Fire:

The final cycle of prayers—those to Kamrusepa—began. As Briseis lifted the goddess’s silver libation cup, shaped like a silver stag, and recited the hymn of thanksgiving, she felt the presence of the whole gathering in her voice, their hopes and needs. She tipped the stag cup to pour the libation over Kamrusepa’s ancient stone altar. The blood red wine soaked into the rough surface as the goddess received her honor. Briseis scattered barley over the sheep and goat to be sacrificed. An assisting priest cut their throats, let their blood drain away, and while everyone waited, the priests who were trained in ritual butchering, prepared them for the fire. The townspeople would partake along with the goddess of the roasted meat, so they could be patient. 

 

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