Title: Free thinker : sex, suffrage, and the extraordinary life of Helen Hamilton Gardener /
Authors: Hamlin, Kimberly A.
Year: 2020
Subjects: Gardener, Helen H.; Gardener, Helen H.; Suffragists United States Biography; Women intellectuals United States Biography.; Women's rights United States History; Sex customs United States History; Sex customs; Suffragists; Women intellectuals; Women's rights; Suffragists Biography.; Women intellectuals Biography.; Women's rights United States.; Sexual behavior History.; United States
Abstract: "How one "fallen woman" battled religious ideology, pseudoscience, and political resistance to women's right to vote. Exposed in Ohio newspapers for an affair with a married man, Alice Chenoweth refused to cower in shame. Instead she changed her name to Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York, pretended to be married to her lover, and became a wildly popular lecturer and author, brazenly opposed to sexist piety and propriety. The "Harriet Beecher Stowe of Fallen Women," she supported raising the age of sexual consent for girls (from twelve or younger), decried double standards of sexual morality, and debunked scientists' claims that women's brains were inferior. With liberal doses of feminine charm, Gardner networked tirelessly to persuade Woodrow Wilson and other male politicians to support the Nineteenth Amendment. Her effort, according to suffrage leader Carrie Pitt, was "the most potent factor" in its passage. As more women enter politics than ever before, Kimberly A. Hamlin recovers the wildly entertaining and illuminating life of a brilliant, effective woman-all but forgotten-who paved the way"--
Contents: A Chenoweth of Virginia -- The best and cheapest teachers -- A very bad Beecher case -- Purgatory and rebirth -- Ingersoll in soprano -- The cultured poor -- Sex in brain -- The fictions of fiction -- The Harriet Beecher Stowe of fallen women -- Wee wifee -- Around the world with the sun -- Mrs. Day comes to Washington -- Old fogies -- NAWSA's "diplomatic corps" -- Twenty-two favors -- Our heroic dead.