Victoria Claflin Woodhull was a lobbyist, businesswoman, writer, and investor who advocated womens equality in status, work, home, and politics. She worked against the 19th century notions that daughters, mothers, and wives should be silent and submissive. She called for a vote and a voice in all matters of life and citizenship. She was a modern woman ahead of her time. She spoke frankly in the need for women to take control of their lives including their health and family planning. Victoria spoke with bold honesty of her controversial principles and did not mince words.
She savagely criticized hypocrisies in society and government. Victoria Claflin was the seventh born of Reuben Buck Claflin and Roxanna Hummel Claflins ten children, in Homer, Ohio on September 23, 1838. According to The Terrible Siren by Emanie Sachs Arling, Roxanne instilled in her children a deep sense of loyalty to family and a sense that they were special and different from other people. Roxanne was also deeply devoted to religion, reliant on the tent revivalism that was popular at the time. The fervor of those revivals must have been the only match in the intensity of the Claflin household (Arling 3-35).
Spiritual healing and communication with spirits, Victoria claimed to be directed by the spirit of Demosthenes.
She married Calvin Woodhull at the age of fifteen. He was trained as a Doctor but was a troubled alcoholic. Woodhull traveled the country as she supported her first husband and her two children. She came to St. Louis as a Spiritualist magnetic healer and there she met the man who was to become her second husband, Col. James Harvey Blood, a Civil War Veteran (Horowitz 87).
The Term Paper on Critical analysis of safeguarding children
A. Critical analysis of safeguarding children including legislation, policy and professional practice (4000 word – 100%): United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child (UNCR 1989), Article 1 defines a ‘child’ as a person below the age of 18. Law is used in order to legitimise society; children are deeply and permanently affected by the laws that are made and enforced by ...
The free love Doctrine that Victoria preached was introduced to her by her second husband Col.
Blood and enforced by her association with Stephen Pearl Andrews when the family moved to New York. Andrews was a radical intellectual and had been involved with Modern Times, a free love community experiment (Horowitz 88).
Because of her reputation as a Spiritual healer she and her sister Tennie gained the audience of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose efforts to contact his deceased mother and son advertised his belief in Spiritualism. The brokerage firm owned by Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin was supported with advice and initial funding by Vanderbilt (Horowitz 92).
Victoria announced, in 1870, her intention to run for president in 1872 as the candidate for the Peoples Party. Already notorious as an outspoken business woman, with her brokerage house in the Wall Street District of New York, her platform was, as the woman herself, controversial.
Her beliefs in Spiritualism, Free Love, Political Equality, Childcare, and legalized prostitution were made public through her tours of speaking engagements and published in the newspaper she owned with her sister. Woodhull and Claflins Weeklys first issue ran just six weeks after Victoria announced her candidacy for President. The Weekly was one of the earliest examples of muckraking journalism. Victoria was known for her candor and in October of 1871 she published an article titled The Boston Exclusives Again beginning her piece like this: People who do not stand upon principles and guide all their actions by them are always found contradiction and stultifying themselves (Print Archives 1).
Toward the end of that same article Victoria pens a line, She contracted the disease of respectability and can abuse as vilely as the most pious of former times. Victoria was a hound for publicity but thought little of propriety in her reputation. She acted far beyond the acceptance of her time and she aimed to make herself known through newspaper copy (Fowler 634).
The Term Paper on Free Love Millay Speaker Bohemian
In the 1920 s, Edna St. Vincent Millay was America's most read, most beloved poet. Critical biographer Elizabeth Atkins gives some indication of Millay's nationally "intoxicating effect on people" in describing the reception of her second collection, A Few Figs from Thistles: To say it became popular conveys but a faint idea of the truth. Edna St. Vincent Millay became, in effect, the unrivaled ...
Along with publication of Victorias platform issues, she published articles on skirt lengths, diet, and other articles of interest to women.
She also exposed numerous examples of Wall Street Fraud and her paper was the first in the United States to publish Karl Marxs Communist Manifesto. The publication boasted of 20,000 subscribers and ran for six years (Puz 16).
Victorias official affiliation with the Spiritualist movement did not happen until September 1871 and when she attended the national meeting of the American Association of Spiritualists she was made their president. The support of the estimated four million member group was welcomed since the brokerage firm was incurring losses and Victoria was supporting herself and her extended family. With the backing of the estimated four million organized Spiritualists, Victoria may have been a real threat in the presidential race (Horowitz 89).
During the convention she addressed her commitment to Free Love. I have never known any other love than free loveI am asked, do you believe in promiscuous intercourse for the sexes, I reply I dont believe anything about itI believe promiscuity to be anarchy and the very antithesis of that for which I aspire (Print Archives 2).
To support her dependents, which included; her two children, Col.
Blood, her first husband who was an ailing alcoholic, her sister Tennie, and her aging parents, Victoria headed out on the lecture circuit in 1871. Her lectures were filled with the rhetoric and beliefs that she picked up through her associations with the radicals she surrounded herself with, mainly Col Blood and Mr. Andrews. It is a common belief that her speeches and many of the papers published under her name were actually penned by either Blood or Andrews (Horowitz 95).
Victorias attachment to the Free Love doctrine was presented in her speech titled The Principles of Social Freedom (Speech Archives 1), delivered in New York on November 20, 1971. She equated the laws regarding marriage as bonds of slavery and the hold of men over their sisters, wives, and daughters, as equal to the oppression of King George over the American colonies and that Marriage and divorce laws were counter productive to the relations of men and women because the system was not designed with the equal happiness of both in mind. Yes I am a Free Lover.
The Essay on Freedom of Speech 3
In the United States we have many freedoms that we as citizens possess. Freedom of speech is one of the freedoms we enjoy. But what is the meaning of the word “freedom”, and how free is our speech? The word free, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary means: having the legal and political rights of a citizen. With this in mind, it does not mean that we have the right to do and say as we please. ...
I have inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither your nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. And I have the further right to demand a free and unre ….
