Excluded from Suffrage History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth-Century American Feminist

Abstract

Excluded from Suffrage History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth-- Century American Feminist. By Leila R. Brammer. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000. Pp. xvii, 136. $58.00.) History has often been written by winners, but Leila R. Brammer's Excluded from Suffrage History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth-Century American Feminist reveals that not all victors find a place in historical record. Some are sidelined by historians in search of clear, uncomplicated narratives. Moreover, experience of Matilda Joslyn Gage demonstrates that suffragists themselves sometimes obscured contributions of their own colleagues. Gage herself frequently tackled problem of women's invisibility in historical record. She argued vehemently that male historians suppressed evidence of what women had accomplished in past times. Brammer sees a painful irony in fact that Gage appears to have suffered a similar fate, not just at hands of her contemporaries, but, until fairly recently, at those of feminist historians as well. Brammer asks why, given extent of Matilda Joslyn Gage's contributions to suffrage movement, do we not know more about her? She concludes that radicalism of Joslyn Gage's thought, especially her attacks on the patriarchate (81) of Christian church, led nineteenth-century female activists to distance themselves from her opinions. Brammer maintains that this suppression has continued through twentieth century because, until recently, historians have been unwilling to confront negative behavior on part of suffrage icons such as Stanton and Anthony. In principle, Brammer is right. She clearly documents marginalization that Gage experienced in 1890s. Leaders of newly united National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), fearing that Gage's radical views on organized religion would destabilize their fragile coalition, refused to endorse her view that Christian orthodoxy lay at heart of women's oppression. However, an unfortunate air of conspiracy permeates Brammer's discussion. Brammer's analysis seems to be predicated on assumption that every aspect of Gage's critique of organized religion was and remains beyond dispute. Therefore, Brammer indicates, fair-minded women's rights supporters ought to have championed Gage; instead, they turned their backs on her. Gage's views, however, were highly contentious. Even among those who might have shared them privately, her views posed a clear liability to a struggling movement. Suffrage leaders responded to reality that not all of their supporters were sympathetic to Gage's positions, while to general public, they were anathema. For no small number of suffrage supporters, especially those who came to suffrage by way of temperance movement, religious convictions underlay their activism. Gage's assertion that state functioned as willing minion of clerical tyrants may be palatable to some late twentieth-- century feminists, but it deeply offended many late nineteenth-century women and did nothing to encourage them to work for vote. Yet Brammer's analysis seems to suggest that suffrage leaders knew that Gage was right but that they ostracized her and excised her contributions from their history for sake of expediency. The difficulty Gage faced-and one that troubles Brammer's analysis as well-was/is conviction that woman suffrage organizations should have been all-encompassing movements for women's rights. …