Art, Artist Books, Collage, Ladybusiness

The Ways of Man

Shelly

The Ways of Man
The Ways of Man
collage (yearbook photos and pages from old textbook) on Arches cover paper
7 1/2 x 11 inches

I looked through a few old history textbooks in my “stuff for collage” pile and noticed that all the illustrations contained in them were of men. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of history, and not a single woman was depicted. If aliens landed on Earth, they could easily get the impression that women didn’t exist until sometime around the 1950s.

(I mean, I realize women are grievously underrepresented in history books, but I still expected at least one token ladyperson. Nope!)

Ladybusiness

Cholera

Shelly

Two things struck me when I read this entry.

First, submerging someone in water when they’re sick with cholera seems, in retrospect, like a spectacularly bad idea. It’s not going to do them any good, and it may well contaminate your only drinking water, as that’s one of the main ways the disease is spread. With treatments like that, it’s no wonder there was a cholera epidemic on the trail that year.

The other thing that stood out is the number of emigrants who passed by Fort Laramie. Eight thousand teams means an awful lot of westward travelers.

June 29 [1850]

We had the hardest thunder storm last night I have witnessed in some years. Started on this morning & soon came to a very bad road, low marshy land. A little before we stopt at noon there was a woman by the name of Beal died. She was buried on the banks of the Clearwater, a fine stream about 10 miles from where we came on the bottoms. They immersed 3 in this stream for the cholera. Travelled 14 miles & slept on a high spot on the marsh for the night. Met the Salt Lake mail, they said they met 8000 teams when they got to Fort Laramee. Since that they have not kept count. Wether very warm.

Parsons, Lucena Pfuffer, 1821-1905, Diary of Lucena Parsons, June, 1850, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 2: 1850. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, pp. 294.

Ladybusiness

Without Representation

Shelly

I’ve been reading a collection of the articles by Laura Ingalls Wilder for the Missouri Ruralist paper. She wrote on a wide variety of subjects, and while she had some decidedly un-feminist beliefs, some of her writings are thoroughly feminist in nature.

Writing about the creation of a local farmers’ club, she touched on the subject of women’s participation (emphasis mine).

As arrangements were being made for a meeting of the club, some one near the speaker said, “The women must come too,” but it was only after a broad and audible hint from a woman that this remark was made and it was so plainly because of the hint, instead of from a desire for the women’s presence and co-operation, that it made no impression.

At the first meeting of the club, the following week, there were only two women present. Quite likely it was the women’s own fault and if they had taken part as a matter of course, it would have been accepted as such, but it seems rather hard to do this unless we are shown the courtesy of being mentioned. We will get over this feeling in time no doubt and take the place we should, for a farmer may be either a man or a woman and farmers’ clubs are intended for both.

    —Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Without Representation,” Missouri Ruralist, July 5, 1917.

While she’s speaking specifically on the subject of farmers’ clubs, the broader point that it was and is difficult for women to make a place for themselves in male-dominated spaces is also true. And it doesn’t take an openly hostile atmosphere to make things uncomfortable for women. Just the fact that we’re in the minority and that we know we aren’t actively wanted there is intimidating.