Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy Elizabeth Bush Fradin, Judith Bloom Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy; by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin. Clarion, 2006216p illus. with photographs ISBN 0-618-50436-2$21.00 R Gr. 6-10 Although Jane Addams is best known in her roles as advocate for immigrants and the poor through the establishment of Chicago's Hull House, proponent of women's suffrage, and Nobel Peace Prize–winning pacifist, the Fradins look beyond her many agenda to portray a privileged young woman with more education than opportunity for service, a chronic sufferer from depression, a gadfly battling Chicago machine politics, and quite likely a naïve dreamer who truly believed in the possibility of total disarmament. Their coverage of this beloved (and, at least for a time, reviled) woman is admirably broad but, in spots, somewhat uneven: whereas the authors fairly address evidence for and against Addams' possible lesbian relationship with [End Page 290] Mary Rozet Smith, they pay far less attention to her Hull House collaboration with Ellen Gates Starr. Likewise, they offer adequate background for understanding the public backlash against "Saint Jane" in World War I but overlook much of the controversy that accompanied her early reform efforts and her struggles against popular (if corrupt) alderman Johnny Powers, even among the population she most wished to serve. Nevertheless, this balanced view of Addams' public and private personae, with its wealth of photographs that trace her journey from serious child through kind but steely adult, and careful source notes, bibliography, and index, should provide young adult readers with a solid introduction to one of the premier figures of the last century. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois