History of Women
Copyright © 1997
Karen Barker -- All Rights Reserved.
Margaret Sanger lived between 1883-1966 and during that time she radically changed American values and attitudes toward women and the family life. She was one of the nation's great pioneers of the birth control movement. She advocated birth-control methods to the poor and immigrant women when any practice and accessibility of information in family planning were illegal by law. Sanger was also an advocate for Women Suffrage and the Women's movement and sought equality between the sexes both socially and economically. Many historians have depicted her as a rebel of the nineteenth century and are still controversial, today.
The National Organization for Women [NOW] lauds her for her contribution to the Feminist Movement and Women Suffrage. Other national lobbying group such as the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America - established by Sanger in 1921 as the American Birth Control League - regards her as a modern hero, the founder of birth control. Others strongly feel that she eroded the notion of family values and detrimentally destroyed the sanctuary of matrimony through planned parenthood and birth-control. Robert Bartlett points out in his book, They did something about it, that, "She was continually misinterpreted and denounced as an enemy of the home, as a woman who despised motherhood, as a foe of children, when her sole object was the protection of the youth and the parents of the World." (Bartlett, 142) The Antiabortionists in the 1980's have cited her as a racist in discrediting the birth control movement and Sanger's contribution to the nation. President Theodore Roosevelt popularized the movement as the "race suicide." Many race suicide moralists propagandized against the "selfishness" of women who avoided their maternal duties by using birth control.
Margaret Sanger was born in Corning, New York of Irish immigrant parents. Being one of the eleven children born of her parents, Margaret attributed the inequality she observed between her parents and the family's lack of prosperity to fact that her parents had too many children. As a nurse, Margaret witnessed many complicated births, miscarriages and the economic effects of unwanted pregnancies in extremely large families and by impoverished women. Sanger recalled that, "Early in the year 1912, I came to a sudden realization that my work as a nurse and my activities in social service were entirely palliative and consequently futile and useless to relieve the misery I saw all about me." (Resek, 83) Women in the late 1800's to the early 1900's had little opportunity to advance in society. They were often tired from house chores and child bearing that they had no energy to prosper as a gender in the society. (Resek, 84) Margaret devoted her life to what she called "her cause" in liberating women from unwanted pregnancies and health risks. Sanger was frustrated with a society that allowed men to be sexually promiscuous while women were forced to restrain themselves because of the risk of pregnancy and abandonment. (Resek, 84-85) She watched as working-class women continued to have more children despite poverty. Sanger saw the root of the evil for women in them not having control of their bodies and not having the choice of choosing whether they wanted to get pregnant. Sanger stated, "I was resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries were vast as the sky." (Bartlett, 136)
Starting in the 1830's, a state-by-state drive to prohibit abortion developed and was largely successful by 1880. A backlash spurred it against the women's rights movement that reflected anxieties about women deserting their conventional position as mothers. Then 1873 all birth control information was specifically included within the definition of obscene and therefore barred from interstate commerce by the federal Comstock Act. Margaret sought to legalized birth control to help the poor to control the birth rate and to help women live a more independent life rather than be slaves to their own sexuality. Margaret joined the Socialist party and worked with the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] in supporting militant strikes to improve the conditions for women workers and suffrage. In 1912, she began to write and speak on sexual and health issues. By 1914 she published several issues in the Woman Rebel - a feminist newspaper - and the Family Limitation (a pamphlet) promoting "voluntary motherhood," and giving explicit instructions for contraception. As a result, the conservatives issued a warrant for her arrest and so she fled to Europe to farther promote and study birth control. When she returned to the United States in 1915, a nationwide birth control movement was under way. Sanger opened the first family planning clinic in the United States in 1916. (Bartlett, 140)
Between 1914 and 1918 birth control leagues developed in every major city of the United States, despite the great deal of opposition to the movement. Although, Margaret Sanger's earlier charges were dropped upon her return to the United States, when she again attempted - in 1917 - to offer birth control services and distributed information at her clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, she was arrested. With these efforts Margaret changed the Comstock Law by allowing doctors to give birth control advice to their patients. Although this was a compromise to her earlier convictions, she conceded to the distribution of contraception at physicians" discretion, however, the movement won little support from the conservatives in politics - the WASP. Opposition came in overt racism, building on fears of Xenophobia - that high immigrant and black birthrates would undermine the WASP dominance. Although she was accused of being a rascist for promoting the limitation of birth for immigrant women and blacks; Margaret Sanger was never herself a rascist, "but lived in a profoundly bigoted society, and her failure to repudiate prejudice unequivocally- especially when it was manifest among proponents of her cause." (Chesler, 15)
Among the conservatives, the American Catholic Church
was one of Sanger's
greatest opposition. The Church depicted Margaret Sanger as a
"dangerous
subversive, intent on destroying the family and limiting the very
people she was trying to help."
President Roosevelt was able to gain the support of the alliance
of the Catholics and rural southerners - conservatives against
Margaret Sanger, "And
birth Control was denied a a place in the Social Welfare and public
health agenda of the triumphant New Deal."
(Chesler, 15) Sanger became increasingly angered by the Left's
refusal to make birth control priority and decided on a strategy
of making legalization of contraception a single-issue campaign.
Her aggressive campaigning, however, did play a large part in
the legalization of contraception by many states between the 1920's
and 1960's. She fought the American Judicial System tiredlessly
and her crowning achievement occurred in the 1965 decision, the
Supreme Court expanded the constitutional right of privacy in
the Griswold v. Connecticut. Under this statute two officers of
the Planned Parenthood Legue were convicted of providing contraceptive
information to married couples. On appeal, the Supreme Court overturned
the convictions, ruling that the 1879 Connecticut law was unconstitutional.
In conclusion, Margaret Sanger was truly an American hero and
her contribution to the culture is seen the fact that the right
to Pro-Choice is something that many Americans value today.
Endnotes
1. Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor, pg.
2. Http://www.awinc.com/partners/bc/commpass/lifenet/saint.htm
3. Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor, pg. 339-341
4. Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor, pg. 12-13
5. Archer, Jules. Breaking Barriers. Pg 82-83
6. Margaret claimed the rights "to live..to love... to be an unwed mother..to create (life)...to destroy (life)," in her articles in The Woman Rebel. Taken from, "Margaret Sanger: Planned Parenthood's Patron Saint." Http://www.awinc.com/partners/bc/commpass/lifenet/saint.htm
7. Archer, Jules. Breaking Barriers. Pg. 86-87
8. Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America. 1970
9. Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor. Pg 11
Women of Ancient Greece, contrasted
and compared with Homer's Penelope and Aeschylus' Clytaemnestra
"Although women in fact play virtually no public role other than a religious one in the political and social life of ancient Greece, they dominate the imaginative life of Greek men to a degree almost unparalleled in the Western Tradition. Greek writers used the female -in a fashion that bore little relation to the lives of actual women to understand, express, criticize, and experiment with the problem and contradictions of their cultures." (Foley 1301-02)
Almost every book or article ever written on women in ancient Greece ranging from myth and history attempted to capture the essence of women's lives was constructed exclusively by men. And almost every book has continued to treat ancient literature as if it provided a direct window onto the real lives of women. Ancient literature does not give thoroughly enough evidence for women's lives and consequently, show exactly how they were treated in reality. Both Homer and Aeschylus' version of the status of women present a fictional image of women which largely is exaggerated. A woman in Greek literature played an important role - in which she can be either heroic or mean; splendid or sordid; infinitely beautiful or hideous in the extreme - but this woman is fictional. Women's role in Greek literature seemed parallel to that of men's role. A woman in Greek literature cannot be submissive to her husband, for example Clytaemnestra's tone to Agamemnon upon his return in which she mocks him,
"But Priam- can you see him if he had your success?........And you fear the reproach of common men? " (Aeschylus 573)
This was neither commonplace nor permitted in reality. A woman is ultimately submissive to her husband and father in ancient Greek society. (Foxhall 22-43) Women were not equals in ancient Greek society. The society confined women to their homes or assigned them duties as helpmates or servants. They systematically excluded them from full participation in public life. As remarked by Foley the women portrayed in literature were fictional and were not realistic. (Foley 1301-02)
Ancient Greek women had restrictive roles and duties to the society, to the family and to their husbands. In reality ancient Greek women had no power. The society excluded them from politics; from the army, navy, and war; from the law court; from the Olympic and other games; from agriculture and trade. In short, they excluded women from the male agonistic world of challenge and response, from what Greek males saw as the real world.(Just 20) Greek men effectively silenced women by speaking for them.(Just 20) There were no female actor or actress in ancient Greece. Women were not allowed to attend public affairs, such as the dramas in which they were depicted and impersonated by men. (Just 20-22) Political responsibility entailed military service, a fact that sharpened the distinction between the lives of men and women.(Hunter 39-48) The lives of men were spent in public; women lived, for the most part, in the private domestic world of the home,
" First, when a woman sits at home and the man
is gone, the loneliness is terrible, unconscionable..." (
Aeschylus 571)
A married woman's first obligation is to her husband. She is the caretaker of the household and the bearer of the children,
" There is Leda's daughter, the keeper of my house." ( Aeschylus 572)
Her place is within the home, her tasks were spinning,
weaving, and cooking,
I had the happy thought to set up weaving
on my big loom in hall." ( Homer, 466)
The ancient Greek society clearly defined male and female roles which undoubtably hardly overlapped. Women in Greek literature took on many other roles, from the faithful wife to the revengeful murderer, from the beautiful and innocent maiden to the destructive and threatening monster. These characteristics stem from the dual conceptions of women in Greek society. (Shaw 255-66 and Foley 1-21) In Greek literature, on the one hand, women are controllable, submissive to their husbands (Penelope) and fathers (Iphigenia); on the other hand, they are the bearers of evil (Clytaemnestra).
Every female character either exemplifies the duties established for women in the Greek society or dramatically steps out of her bounds. The classic comparison is that of Penelope and Clytaemnestra. Both find themselves alone at home while their husbands are at war in Troy. Penelope exemplifies the good wife who weaves, while waiting for her husband Odysseus to return,
" Odysseus my lord among the rest. If he returned,
if he were here to care for me,
I might be happily renowned!
But grief instead heaven sent me - years of pain."
( Homer, 466)
Clytaemnestra, on the other hand, finds a lover and murders her husband Agamemnon upon his return from Troy,
" the architect of vengence
growing strong in the house
with no fear of the husband
here she waits
the terror raging back and back in the future..."
( Aeschylus 552)
It is ironic that a woman, in the name of revenge, caused the death of her husband,
" Woman made him suffer,
woman struck him down." ( Aeschylus 588)
In Greek society by attempting to control her husband's emotions and actions, Clytaemnestra steps out over her role as a woman and a wife. Therefore, she cannot be considered an innocent player, let alone justified in avenging the death of her daughter Iphigenia ( who was sacrificed in order to appease Artemis who prevented favorable winds for Agamemnon to travel to Troy). In reality ancient Greek women had no power. Women were uneducated and thus men had a low opinion of their intellectual capacity. The Greek male could be held incompetent at law for being under the influence of a woman (Just 20-22), as inferred by Aeschylus portrayal of Clytaemnestra's lover, Aegisthus. This was seen in the attitude of the one of the leader towards Aegisthus
" You rule Argos? You who schemed his death but cringed to cut him down with your own hand?" (Aeschylus 593)
Although he plotted with Clytaemnestra to kill Agamemnon he did not do actually the killing, Clytaemnestra admitted,
" and here my work is done.
I did it all." ( Aeschylus 586)
" by this right hand- masterpiece of Justice." ( Aeschylus 587)
A Greek woman had to have a guardian in law, a male with authority over her. (Hunter 39-48 and Halperin 8) A woman had access to the judicial system through a male guardian. She may not have appeared in Court even when charged with a crime. ( Just 20-22) As referred to by Homer in The Odyssey in which Penelope was sought after by many suitors during Odysseus twenty years absence,
" If he returned, if he were here to care for me."( Homer 466)
" How could I?
wasted with longing for Odysseus, while here they
press for marriage." ( Homer 466)
The domain of the classical Greek woman was the house. So while men worked in public space, in the law courts, the streets, women worked in private space at cooking food, spinning clothes, supervising slaves. They entered an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen to a much older man and the purpose of the marriage was to produce legitimate children [in the upperclass, where they tied property and politics up in marriage alliances]. (Louis ix) Homer expressed this value in Penelope confession to Odysseus,
" And now, as matters stand at last,
I have no strength left to evade a marriage,
cannot find any further way; my parents
urge it upon me, and my son
will not stand by while they eat up his property."
( Homer, 457)
The land represented stability, and the transfer of land measured success from a father to a son. The birth of a daughter in a marriage meant the lost of land through her dowry,
" I join my life with his, leave this place,
my home,
my rich and beautiful bridal house, forever."
( Homer 491-492)
Therefore producing a male child was vitally important for the wife and thus offers another explanation as how Agammenon could sacrifice his daughter for wind. Women were treated like property, to be bartered with at the will of men.
Aeschylus expressed this value in Clytaemnestra. Although she is Penelope opposite also fulfilled part of her obligation to the demands and values of society which was to bear legitimate children. In contrast to Penelope who evaded suitors for twenty years while awaiting Odysseus return and/or Telemachus legitimacy to the throne, Clytaemnestra was not the trusted guardian of the household because she took a lover while Agamemnon was away, reinforced by her ambiguous implication here,
" And for his wife,
may he return and find her true at hall,
just as the day he left her, faithful to the last.
A watchdog gentle to him alone. ( Aeschylus 564)
Adultery with an aristocratic woman was considered a heinous crime, a more serious crime than rape, because it was the offence against the man that mattered; it was an offence against his honor and, besides, how could he know whether his children were legitimate? The penalties for such adulterous man caught by a citizen could be death on the spot. (Woolfe 45-46) In this instance, Aeschylus's version of justice for adultery was right on target. Although Aeschylus' Agamemnon was referring to the need for a change of the justice system, the fate of the adulterous lovers would have been in reality and was in the play inevitable death,
" My heart is steel, well you know. Praise me,
blame me as you choose. It's all one. ( Aeschylus
587)
It was the fate of women to be confined to the home bearing children, spinning and weaving, and maybe managing the domestic arrangements. Consequently, at home, women were kept very much in their place. The job of the wife was to produce children, to be a mother; it was not to be a companion to her husband. She was not on equal standing with men. Aeschylus reinforced this idea when describing Clytaemnestra,
" That woman - she manuevers like a man." ( Aeschylus 548)
In fact boys had more authority over women. When Telemakhos publicly canceled his mother's request, sent her off to women's business (weaving) and declared that her fate was a man's concern, clearly defined the boundaries between what is considered a male's prerogative and what evidently was not female's.
"Mother, as to the bow and who may handle it
or not handle it, no man here
has more authority than I do - not one lord
of our own stony Ithaka nor the islands lying
east toward Elis: no one stops me if I choose
to give these weapons outright to my guest."
( Homer 499)
The ancient Greek house was divided into male and female quarters;
" Return to your hall. Tend your spindle.
Tend your loom. Direct your maids at work.
This question of the bow will be for men to settle,
most of all for me. I am master here," ( Homer
499)
while the wife stayed with the children and domestic slaves, the husband in his quarters would entertain his men friends and the courtesans. Women's fates were determined on the whim of men.
Another aspect of women's lives which is not adequately dealt with in ancient Greece literature is the question of sexuality. Because aristocratic women were not available sexually and adultery was highly prohibited, widespread prostitution by both young boys and females was prevalent. (Halperin 88-112) The sexual act was symbolic of dominance and empowerment, in which the male exert power over the an inferior being; which was either a boy or a female. The inferior being must be submissive to the will of the superior being. The women in ancient Greece did not possess sexual power because their role was to be submissive and to bear legitamate children. The purpose of the sexual act with an aristocratic woman was for procreation and therefore did not offer women the role of enchantress. Only the prostitutes were given that freedom to wander the streets or appear in public place. (Halperin, 104) The main characters in Greece literature depicted the picture of aristocratic women, for example, both Clytaemnestra and Penelope were wives of kings.The heroic role was based on the fact that they were virtuous, pure and submissive. If otherwise such as Clytaemnestra, they were considered unloyal, evil and unfaithful.
After the ancient Greeks had defined the roles of
women, it is noteworthy to add that this definition had not changed
until approximately two centuries ago. Many societies had viewed
and treated women in much the same light as the ancient Greeks,
for instance the Victorian society in nineteenth century England.
Today women's roles are more liberated than the Greek writers
feared they would be. Perhaps the Greeks' writers had a premonition
of what the status of women will be in the future. Or deep within
the chauvinistic values in society they saw the need for a change
which manifested the fictional women of their writing and at the
same time exposed the societal value.
Work Cited
Homer, The Odyssey in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Sixth Edition. Maynard Mack. New York: W.W. Norton and Company 1992.
Aeschyclus, The Oresteia. Agamemnon in the Norton Anthology world Masterpieces Sixth Edition. Maynard Mack. New York: W.W. Norton and Company 1992.
Helene Foley, Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome, M. Grant and R. Kitzinger eds. New York 1988. Pp.1301-02 and 1-21 <p>
Lin Foxhall, ' Household, Gender and Property in Classical Athens', Classical Quarterly
39. 1989. Pp 22-43.
Roger Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life London; New York :Routledge 1991. Pp 20-22<p>
Virginia Hunter, 'Women's Authority in classical Athens', Echos du Monde
Classique/Classical Views 8.;1989. Pp 39-48.
Marion Shaw , For the concept of female intruder 1975.; Chap 70, pp 255-66
Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal, section ix.
David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, New York: Routedge. 1990. Pp 104 and (note 5), pp. 8, 88-112.
Virginia Woolfe, a Room of One's Own
Blackwell Publishers; Cambridge, Mass. U.S.A: Three Cambridge
Center 1992. Pp.45-46.
Bibliography
1. Http://www.awinc.com/partners/bc/commpass/lifenet/saint.htm "Margaret Sanger: Planned Parenthood's Patron Saint.";
2. Archer, Jules. Breaking Barriers: The Feminst Revolution from Susan B Anthony to Margaret Sanger to Betty Friedan.</u> Viking: Penquin Group 199, pg 74-123.
3. Bartlett, Robert Merrill. They did something about it. Books for Libraries Press: New York 1969, pg 126-144.
4. Chester, Ellen. Woman of Valor. Simon & Schuster Publications: New York, New York, 1992.
5. Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America; the career of Margaret Sanger. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1970.
6. Resek, Carl.The progressives. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis and New York, 1967.
7. Cutrigh, P & Jaffe F.S. Impact of
Family Planning Programs on Fertility: The U.S. Experience. Praeger
Publishers: New York, 1977.