"Marie Howland—19th‐Century Leader for Women's Economic Independence

• Date: 01 November 2015
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12128

"Marie Howland—19

th

-Century Leader for

Women’s Economic Independence

By HOLLY JACKLYN BLAKE*

ABSTRACT. Marie Howland (1836–1921) was an important

working-class figure in the early U.S. women’s movement who

mounted an inspired challenge to separate spheres and the

prevailing domestic ideology. Well before Edward Bellamy and

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she called for domestic work to be

respected, paid, and collectively organized. Howland made it her

life’s work to remove barriers to economic independence for

women through the overhaul of social and economic institutions

that posited the home as the center of female existence and

exploited workers. She wanted women to have the economic

freedom to marry for love, not economic necessity, leave a bad

marriage, survive widowhood, or not marry at all.

By delving into Howland’s early years in rural New Hampshire

and the Lowell textile mills, her close association with radical

bohemians in New York City, and her later participation in

experimental communities, the following treatise provides a long

overdue, comprehensive account of her life and work. My

inquiry reveals how Marie Howland promoted women’s freedom

within a class analysis, rejecting Marxism and embracing the

utopian socialist theory of Charles Fourier. It also offers an in-

depth look at her popular utopian novel, Papa’s Own Girl,

where a cooperative community of economically independent

women and enlightened men replace the patriarchy and

individual competitiveness of the emerging, but by no means

entrenched, industrial order.

*Holly Blake is Associate Dean of Westhampton College, director of the WILL* pro-

gram, and teaches courses in women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University

of Richmond, Virginia. Blake earned her Ph.D. in history at Binghamton University.

The WILL* program website is: http://will.richmond.edu/

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 5 (November, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12128

V

C2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

In addition, my treatise focuses on Howland’s efforts to put ideas

into practice. Unwilling to limit her activism to intellectual

discussions, she lived in a Fourierist household in New York City, a

cooperative settlement in western Mexico, and the single-tax

community of Fairhope, Alabama. She pushed the Grange and the

International Workingman’s Association to focus on women’s issues.

She also made sure that her personal relationships with men were

based on free love and mutual respect, not economic necessity and

legal contract.

I also examine how Howland dedicated her life to changing

gender and class relations, but made little effort to improve

conditions for African Americans. Like many white reformers, she

drew on popular scientific theories of biological difference to justify

the unequal treatment of African Americans. Besides shedding light

on important intellectual and social developments, like phrenology,

free love, Fourierism, the Grange, and theosophy, this examination

of Marie Howland reveals the complexities, possibilities, and

limitations of the women’s rights movement before the passage of

the 19

th

Amendment.

Marie Howland: Women’s Economic Independence 879

Chapter 1

Introduction

On the morning of May 12, 1871, Marie Howland walked up to the

podium on the stage atthe Apollo Hall in New York City.It was the final

day of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association conference and she

was the second main speaker, just introduced by Isabella Beecher

Hooker. Elizabeth Cady Stanton would follow after her. As Howland

looked out over the fairlyaffluent audience in the elegant ballroom, she

may have flashed back to her much earlier life growing up on a hard-

scrabble farm in New Hampshire or running eight looms on the floor of

a textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. At 35 years old, she had traveled

a long way to reach this point. But she was hardlyintimidated. With her

tall height and strong features, she exuded confidence. A reporter

described her as “vivacious [and] a good talker. Her figure was enbon-

point (sturdy),and she was dressed in a plain lavender dress.”

Howland* was on a mission—to end the economic dependence of

women. Launching into her speech, she immediately called for

women suffragists to take direct action. In the wake of the 14

th

and

15

th

Amendments, she urged her listeners “to talk no more about

rights which we know we have.” Instead, they should show up at

polling places and demand to vote because “as citizens, their funda-

mental right is the ballot.” What Howland advocated was a significant

departure that would eventually lead to the arrest of Susan B.

Anthony and others. Yet suffrage was not the end goal for Howland.

Inspired by the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier, she believed

that suffrage was part and parcel of a much broader social change

agenda—the overhaul of social and economic institutions that posited

the home as the center of female existence and relegated workers to

lives of deprivation. This was her life’s work. With the Apollo Hall

located just off Broadway Street, the loud clomping of horse hooves

through the opened windows had often drowned out previous

speakers, even the formidable Susan B. Anthony. After a stint in the

theater, however, Howland knew how to project her voice, and the

audience “frequently applauded during her speech.” When she

*The name Howland will be used throughout to indicate Marie Howland. On occa-

sion, Marie will be used to refer to her. See endnote 1.