Weekly Reader: The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the GIlded Age by Myra McPherson; An Entertaining Biography of Two Memorable, But Naughty Sisters

Weekly Reader: The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra McPherson: An Entertaining Biography of Two Memorable But Naughty Sisters

By Julie Sara Porter,

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: If Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is right that “well-behaved women seldom make history,” then Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin certainly made it. Myra McPherson’s winning biography tells and excellent and entertaining book about two sisters who lived life according to their own terms and proved to be very memorable colorful women who yes indeed made history.

Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin made a lot of firsts in their lives. They were the first woman to start a Wall Street brokerage. Woodhull was the first woman to run for President in the United States and was the first woman to address a United States Congressional committee. Claflin ran for Congress and became an honorary colonel for an all-black regiment. They also were the subjects of much scandal in their lives. They were Spiritualists and strong advocates for Free Love, Freedom of Speech, and Women’s Suffrage. They were also frequent targets because of their active love lives and their willingness to talk about it.

The Claflin Sisters came from scandal naturally. Their father, Buck was a snake oil salesman who put the sisters on stage to conduct séances and communicate with the dead for paying customers. (Despite their shady early connections with Spiritualism, the sisters particularly Claflin remained ardent Spiritualists for the rest of their lives. They always claimed that talking to the spirits helped get them through their difficult childhood with their idle abusive father). They also had several siblings mostly sisters who were involved in unhappy marriages and lived off of Victoria and Tennessee’s earnings. Despite the bad upbringing the sisters spent a great deal of time telling people lies about their father.
They said that he was “once a successful merchant and possessor of a large fortune who lost money in speculation.”  McPherson writes that the Claflin Sisters deceived people about their background in an attempt to gain respectability, a respectability that was often challenged by their avaricious and obnoxious family.

Like the rest of their family, the Claflin Sisters were not ones to live by rules and societal conventions. This was particularly noticeable in their sexual relationships with men. Tennessee Claflin was the lover of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who helped the duo finance their brokerage. Victoria Claflin had an early marriage to Canning Woodhull, an alcoholic doctor but she was a believer in Free Love so also had an affair with Col. James Blood, a Civil War hero. Though they were the targets of suspicion, ridicule, and damaging gossip the sisters publically acknowledged their lifestyle. Woodhull proudly declared, “Yes, I am a Free Lover,” in a public trial. The two hid no secrets about their romantic relationships in public and in their periodical, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.  While many would argue about the Sisters’ private lives, they were certainly true to themselves and their beliefs.

Because of their very open lifestyle, the Sisters made many enemies. Even though they were ardent suffragists, many of the leaders in Women’s suffrage did not care for them. The conservative Lucy Stone head of the American Women’s Suffrage Association was appalled by their behavior.  Susan B. Anthony, leader of the more liberal National Women’s Suffrage Association, initially befriended the sisters impressed by their brokerage. She later became a mortal enemy when they threatened to reveal the private lives of many of the suffragists. Later Anthony told someone “Both sisters are regarded as lewd and indecent. I would advise against any contact.”

However they also had supporters. Elizabeth Cady Stanton supported the duo’s Free Love lifestyle even at the point of arguing with her best friend, Anthony. McPherson said that Stanton’s friendship with the Sisters and Anthony’s dislike of them was one of the issues that caused friction in the suffrage giants’ friendship. They also had a steady friend in escaped slave/author, Frederick Douglass. In fact when Victoria Woodhull ran for President in 1873, she selected Douglass as her running mate, a selection that he did not support, opting for re-electing Ulysses S. Grant instead. However, there were no hard feelings and when Woodhull and Douglass reunited, Douglass said he treated her “politely and respectfully-and (Woodhull) departed not displeased with her call.”

The friendship and enemies that the Sisters make becomes a Who’s Who of the Gilded Age and explored their relationship with the world around them. McPherson isn’t afraid to put the dark sides of the sisters and their friends and enemies, reflecting how people lived and strove to change the world around them.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was the sister’s worst enemy. The pastor who was also the brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author, Harriet Beecher Stowe and anti-suffrage advocate, Catherine Beecher spoke out against the sisters on his pulpit. He frequently spoke against women’s suffrage and Free Love holding the Sisters as examples of the decadence and debauchery in the 19^th century.

However Beecher’s private life was hardly that of the saint that he projected to his parishioners. He had an affair with Elizabeth “Lib” Tilton, the wife of his parishioner Theodore Tilton. Beecher and Tilton maintained a secret love affair for years that was eventually exposed by Woodhull and Claflin in their paper. Woodhull and Claflin also exposed “The Masked French Ball” a gathering attended by financier, L.C. Challis in which men paraded and forced themselves onto young women. (While Woodhull and Claflin attended the Ball and saw the encounters themselves, they covered up their involvement by telling the story from an imaginary insiders’ perspective.) They also spoke about legalizing prostitution and defended women who had been forced into such a life and instead felt that the men not the prostitutes should be held accountable for their actions.

In exposing men, like Challis and Beecher, who criticized and attacked others for their private lives, but lived sordid lives themselves, the two revealed their attack on hypocrisy. They also showed that they were more than capable of defending themselves against powerful men by proving themselves to be just as cunning as they are, but more open about themselves. They wrote in their paper: “(Beecher) helped to maintain for these many years that very social slavery under which he was chafing, and which he was secretly revolting both in thought and practice….he has, in a word, consented and still consented to being a hypocrite.”

 Challis and Beecher later sued the Sisters for libel leading to a lengthy trial in which Woodhull and Claflin were held up as “whores” but also as symbols of Freedom of Speech and the Press. They were vilified by Beecher and his powerful allies. The scandal plus dwindling finances (partly caused by the Financial Bank Panic of 1873 and also because they lost their allies) cased the Sisters to suffer economic strain.

The most disappointing aspects to the book take place after the two renounced their earlier stances and settled into marriages into English aristocracy. They insisted that they were never advocates for Free Love and their words were taken out of context. While their actions betrayed their earlier philosophies about living their lives independently and free from conventions, these later actions showed their chameleon-like nature to suit their lives as they saw fit.

Despite their conventional marriages, the two still maintained their support for women’s suffrage and supported the more dramatic protests from the English suffragists like Emmeline Pankhurst such as hunger strikes, riots, and publicity stunts. Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull died in 1920 and 1927 respectively outliving most of their enemies and contemporaries and were one of the few early suffragists to see women get the vote in Great Britain and United States.

McPherson wrote” (Woodhull and Claflin) belonged to the ages, which must now puzzle over and debate their worth, which continues to change with passing generations and shifting attitudes about women.” Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were outrageous, scandalous, and free spirited, but they were always memorable and always colorful. Surely they were not well-behaved but surely, in their own fashion, they made history.