Surviving Reproductive Loss: Stories of Creativity and Positive Transformation in Women’s Lives

By Robert J. Dinkin and Roxane Head Dinkin

Surviving Reproductive Loss: Stories of Creativity and Positive Transformation in Women’s Lives tells the fascinating stories of the lives and creative accomplishments of nearly fifty women who experienced infertility, pregnancy loss or stillbirth. Robert J. Dinkin, PhD, historian, and Roxane Head Dinkin, PhD, clinical psychologist, have teamed up again to write a follow-up to their previous volume, Infertility and the Creative Spirit, published by iUniverse in 2010. The Dinkins tell the stories of women innovators in writing, entertaining, sports, politics, and social reform.

When Julia Child was living in Paris with her husband Paul and unable to become pregnant, she turned to learning the art of French cooking, ultimately producing her famous cookbooks and TV shows. When she showed up with a hot plate and an omelet pan on an educational television program, the first cooking show was born. Read about her and the many other women who made major contributions in their own fields and who also changed the larger society by contributing to the well-being of women and children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663258533

Robert J. Dinkin

Robert J. Dinkin and Roxane Head Dinkin, both PhDs, used their experiences as an infertile couple and their common interests in women's autobiographical writing to create this, their second book. Robert J. Dinkin is a Professor Emeritus in History at California State University-Fresno and the author of six books in American history. Roxane Head Dinkin is a retired clinical psychologist and the author of the LifeLights brochure, "Living with Cancer, One Day at a Time."

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Copyright © 2024 Robert J. Dinkin & Roxane Head Dinkin.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-5867-0 (sc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2023923119

iUniverse rev. date: 02/12/2024

Contents

Introduction

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880)

Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823-1886)

Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924)

Marian Hooper Adams (1843-1885)

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923)

Margaret Deland (1857-1945)

Annie Oakley (1860?-1926)

Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920)

Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939)

Catherine Hershey (1872-1915)

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge (1872-1920)

Bess Houdini (1876-1943)

Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)

Coco Chanel (1883-1971)

Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)

Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968)

Gertrude Ma Rainey (1886?-1939)

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)

Mary Pickford (1892-1979)

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Bessie Smith (1894-1937)

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953)

Helen Woodford Ruth (1896-1929)

Adele Astaire (1896-1981)

Helen Palmer Geisel (1898-1967)

Madame Chiang Kai-shek (1898-2003)

Margret Rey (1906-1996)

Joan Crawford (1906?-1977)

Dora Maar (1907-1997)

Emilie Schindler (1907-2001)

Anne Anastasi (1908-2001)

Dolores Hope (1909-2011)

Carmen Miranda (1909-1955)

Mildred Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

Julia Child (1912-2003)

Doris Duke (1912-1993)

Vivien Leigh (1913-1966)

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)

Eva Perón (1919-1952)

Jane Russell (1921-2011)

Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006)

Barbara Walters (1929-2022)

Jill Ker Conway (1934-2018)

Gilda Radner (1946-1989)

Hilary Mantel (1952-2022)

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Historically, infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and early infant death have not been topics of conversation for polite society, despite their powerful impact on women’s lives. This book, our second on the subject, is a compilation of women’s stories of such losses and how they faced traumatic events in their attempts to create a family. These women in many cases became prominent figures in their time, but this aspect of their private lives, although transformative for them, was not well known.

In the process of researching our previous volume, Infertility and the Creative Spirit (2010), which described seven highly creative women in history, we came across many additional women for whom some relevant material existed but not enough for long chapter treatment. While the details regarding each one’s life may be limited, we realized that their stories often reveal unique elements that broaden our understanding of the effects of reproductive loss. Therefore, building on our extensive files, we decided to produce a second work containing shorter biographical sketches of a much larger group—nearly fifty in all. This volume includes a few women who fall into the realm of secondary infertility, meaning they had a child but for various reasons were unable to have another, as well as a small number who gave birth to a child who lived only briefly. (1)

Our original pursuit of this topic arose from our experiences as an infertile couple and our common interests in women’s autobiographical writing. We asked ourselves what we could create together, and we decided to integrate our respective fields of women’s history and the psychology of obstetrics and gynecology. In order to understand how involuntarily childless women in previous generations had dealt with infertility and pregnancy loss, we set about searching for childless women from the past, reading their memoirs and biographies, and gathering other materials. We realized that to do the type of in-depth research necessary to carry out this project we needed to put our regular careers on hold and arrange for a joint sabbatical from our respective professional responsibilities. Fortunately we were invited to spend a year as Visiting Scholars in the Department of Women’s Studies at Duke University, where we had access to their extensive library resources as well as those of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As we engaged in research and talked with colleagues, our original study evolved from the general to the specific, from analyzing various coping patterns of infertile women to concentrating specifically on a limited number of creative individuals. We narrowed our focus to those women who had left an extensive record of their feelings about wanting children and experiencing the loss of not having a child, either through lack of conception or being unable to carry a pregnancy to term. We chose not to study women who were childless by circumstance or childless by choice.

Ultimately Infertility and the Creative Spirit consisted of focused biographies of seven highly creative women: Juliette Low, who struggled with an unhappy marriage and childlessness but went on to become founder of the Girl Scouts of America; Josephine Baker, who overcame poverty as a world famous entertainer and then adopted a dozen children of different backgrounds; Joy Adamson, who couldn’t have children but attached herself in motherly ways to wild animals in Africa and served as an advocate for wildlife and habitat conservation; Frida Kahlo, who after a serious injury was unable to have children but created new subject matter for Western art by producing jarring images of birthing and miscarriage; Ruth Benedict, who trained as a teacher in college but upon finding herself unable to have a child, began devoting her life vigorously to the study of anthropology and was eventually a standout in the field; Emma Goldman, an anarchist who condemned capitalism and conventional marriage and then emerged as a leading advocate of birth control to free women from the burdens of continuous childbearing; and Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood film star and sexual icon who attained fame and fortune but found it difficult to achieve much happiness in her abbreviated life, partly due to her inability to become a mother. Following reproductive loss and not able to give birth to the children they wanted, these women came to see the world differently and had the strength and courage to put their new ideas into action.

Posttraumatic Growth and

Positive Transformation

Since the publication of Infertility and the Creative Spirit, the field of psychology has documented the presence of posttraumatic growth in present-day women following infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth. Posttraumatic growth, briefly discussed in our first book, is a term referring to a process of positive transformation that can occur over time following trauma. Introduced by psychology researchers Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s, the concept has been followed by an explosion of research over the past decade. (2) Tedeschi and Calhoun define trauma as a "highly stressful and challenging life-altering event," and they describe five major dimensions of posttraumatic growth: personal strength, relating to others, new possibilities, appreciation of life, and spiritual change. (3)

Several themes emerging from the study of posttraumatic psychology are relevant to the women whose lives are described here. Openness to new ideas and new possibilities occurs as they unexpectedly find themselves outside of the norm. Unable to start a family as anticipated, these women may begin to modify their core beliefs and long-held assumptions. A second theme involves both interpersonal relationships and spirituality, as survivors of challenging events report feeling more compassionate, more connected with people, and more called to be of service. Spiritually, individuals report a greater sense of interconnection with others. Overall, studies observe a more collective versus individualistic orientation in post-trauma survivors who show positive personality change after trauma. Although not one of the five major dimensions, creativity facilitates openness to new ideas and posttraumatic growth.

Numerous research studies have now documented posttraumatic growth in women following infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth, and a review of multiple works found that study participants showed moderate levels of posttraumatic growth after perinatal loss. (4) Interestingly, researchers have found that changes in core beliefs and inward reflection predict posttraumatic growth in women experiencing pregnancy loss. (5) Positive transformation subsequent to life-altering events occurs after the initial period of suffering and involves a kind of problem solving called deliberate rumination, referring to an inward turning in order to understand the trauma and its meaning. This inward contemplation contributes to the development of a new worldview, as previously held assumptions about the world and one’s future are challenged.

Grieving and Adaptation

Following Reproductive Loss

As in our first book, the narrative used for each of the women here takes the form of a focused biography. This means that while providing the main facts about the person’s life in a chronological fashion, we pay as much attention as possible to fertility questions, attitudes toward children, and adaptation to being involuntarily childless. The women in this volume, similar to those in the prior one, vary in the degree to which they were affected by their lack of natural offspring. Many were deeply disturbed by the loss and grieved for long periods, some for an entire lifetime. Meanwhile, others saw their sadness diminish after shorter spells, and a few, like the psychologist Anne Anastasi, even more quickly accepted their childlessness without much distress. Some individuals found fulfilling child-related alternatives to giving birth either through formal or informal adoption or by devoting considerable time and attention to nephews and nieces or grandchildren. (6) Many became teachers or mentors to young people or engaged in philanthropic work on behalf of children. Singer Ella Fitzgerald, for example, contributed to the creation of orphanages and childcare centers that helped improve the lives of disabled children and victims of child abuse.

Finding themselves out of the mainstream, a few of our subjects became astute observers of social realities, such as the Civil War diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut. A member of the next generation, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge rose to be a leader in the national women’s suffrage movement as well as an advocate of reform in the lives of women and children. In the twentieth century, the notable author, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, wrote books about the kind of youngster she longed to parent. Similarly, the creative couple Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and his wife Helen Palmer Geisel made up childlike characters for their artistic works that appealed both to children as readers and helped to fill a void in their own lives. The Geisels also created a fantasy child they called Chrysanthemum-Pearl, who appeared on family Christmas cards. Children’s book authors Margret Rey and Hans Rey created the fictional character Curious George, who often felt like a real child to them. Eleanor H. Porter, who wrote the Pollyanna series, and Kate Douglas Wiggin, author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, both left legacies of memorable child characters as well.

The Women Chosen

Our choice of women for inclusion in this second volume was restricted at times not only by the absence of enough information but by the limits of our own historical expertise and knowledge of foreign languages. Virtually all those selected lived in the Western world and during the past two centuries. While the majority of them are of American origin, mostly white and English speaking, still, the overall group offers a large degree of diversity in religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. The women included also achieved their importance and professional fame in a variety of fields, including Babe Didrikson Zaharias in sports, Coco Chanel in fashion design, Anne Anastasi in psychology, and Bessie Smith in entertainment. Many, like Dorothy Parker, Susan Glaspell, and Isak Dinesen, were successful writers. A few emigrated to the U.S. from far-off countries, such as Australian-born educator Jill Ker Conway, whereas major figures in the political sphere, like the charismatic Eva Perón of Argentina and Nadya Krupskaya of Russia (Vladimir Lenin’s wife and chief collaborator), remained primarily attached to their countries of origin.

These biographical essays vary in length but usually comprise no more than a handful of pages. They also vary in their range and complexity, with some based on rather revealing sources and others lacking in that regard. As a result, certain essays offer a less than complete picture of a woman’s life and her response to infertility. Nevertheless, we are thankful that we found as much material as appears here, given the past silence of most people on such a sensitive matter. Particularly before the mid-nineteenth century, it is almost impossible to learn about anyone’s reproductive lives other than notable members of royal families. (7) Even in subsequent periods most individuals were reluctant to reveal much of anything on the subject. After all, infertility was commonly, and inaccurately, viewed as a woman’s failure—being unable to fulfill a family duty—thus not a topic to be widely shared. One of the main reasons we have focused on prominent figures is that their personal lives have more likely been scrutinized by researchers compared to the average woman.

Although the number of persons discussed in this volume is sizable, the material on the reproductive lives of several additional women we inquired about yielded so little information that we chose not to include them. Among those left out for this reason are Rosa Parks, the iconic civil rights advocate, and Jamie Lee Curtis, well known film and TV actress and then children’s book author, as well as Myrna Loy, who played the mother in many movies like Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and who developed infertility following an abortion prior to her first marriage. Another childless woman we know little about is LaVerne Andrews, eldest of the once popular singing group, the Andrews Sisters. (9) Of course, there are obviously numerous other noteworthy figures unable to bear children whose stories somehow escaped our attention and are thus omitted as well. In addition, we attempted to contact several well known living persons, including Ann-Margret, Dolly Parton, and Liza Minnelli, about their childlessness. However, either they did not respond or told us the subject matter was just too private or might cause hurt feelings in their families.

Unlike our work on the earlier volume, few if any personal papers or other manuscript materials have been consulted. However, many printed works have been examined and endnotes for these sources are provided here. In some cases, a short list of the main biographical sources is also supplied, offering the reader suggestions for further exploration.

Causes of Infertility

What is infertility? Infertility can be defined as lack of conception after one year of unprotected sexual intercourse. It differs from being childless by choice in the importance of wanting a child and attempting to conceive. Involuntary childlessness is a broader term, meaning the inability to bring a pregnancy to term and produce a live child. Being infertile was and still is for many women a life-altering condition, one profoundly affecting their future lives. Particularly in former times, when a woman’s place centered almost entirely on the home, the inability to bear children was viewed quite negatively since it meant fewer hands to deal with family chores or serve as the next generation. For most women, before the recent expansion of women’s options, there was a loss of one’s anticipated role in life and the source of meaning in life. Some women may have felt a loss of investment in the status quo, opening the possibility of thinking more broadly about social issues. As we will see, the women included here frequently transformed their lives after reproductive trauma and found ways to pursue new creative and meaningful activities. (10)

As discussed more fully in the first volume, infertile women cannot always be easily identified as their situations present certain ambiguities. Lou Gehrig’s wife Eleanor, for example, told close friends that she and her baseball-playing husband were unable to have children, yet informed outsiders that the two had not really gotten around to trying. (11) In attempts to avoid criticism, some women claimed their lack of offspring was due to unfortunate circumstances, perhaps the result of an accident, not from their own incapacity. Marilyn Monroe, whose infertility probably stemmed from enduring multiple abortions, attempted to hide her reproductive failure by telling acquaintances she had had a child during adolescence but gave it up for adoption. (12) Beyond these matters is the question of whether to use the word infertile to describe a woman who initially seeks to have a child only after the normal child-bearing age but does not succeed.

As was true of the seven women featured in our first book, many appearing in this collection came of age in the late nineteenth or early-to-mid twentieth century, when a growing number of women began to be formally educated and had the opportunity to seek promising careers. Most of them faced infertility before the more recent medical breakthroughs made it possible for greater numbers of those with reproductive difficulties to have children. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), only available since 1978, is a method of bypassing the Fallopian tubes, fertilizing eggs in a Petri dish, and returning the embryos to the uterus in the hope of implantation. Developments such as IVF have increased the odds of success for women and couples who want a family, but some coming from more recent generations unfortunately found little benefit from advances in reproductive technology. Nevertheless, one should note that in the long era preceding major medical advances, a woman might keep hoping for a child indefinitely. Unfortunately, beyond having intercourse at the most favorable times each month and limiting strenuous activity, little could be done to improve the chances of conception.

The two most common medical problems hindering the reproductive lives of the women described in this book are damaged Fallopian tubes and recurrent miscarriage. Conceiving a child, carrying a pregnancy to term, and giving birth to a live child depend on a series of complex biological processes, any one of which can be disrupted and lead to a negative outcome. Blocked Fallopian tubes, meaning that an egg cannot pass through the tube and be fertilized, often result from infection or scarring. Among the causes of tubal scarring are tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, post-abortion infection, and endometriosis. Not so well known today, the illness that not infrequently led to infertility in our group of women was tuberculosis. The bacterium causing this contagious disease was first identified in the late 1800s, but the illness only began to be treated with antibiotics in the 1940s. Tuberculosis can infect the Fallopian tubes and the lining of the uterus in women, and it can damage the male reproductive tract as well. The women in our study who had tuberculosis include Madeline Breckinridge, Eleanor Porter, Vivien Leigh, and Katherine Anne Porter.

Sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea can also result in damage to the reproductive tract. The writer Isak Dinesen, for example, developed syphilis after sexual contact with her unfaithful husband and was subsequently infertile. Abortions carried out under unsafe and non-sterile conditions, quite common in the past, not infrequently brought on tubal scarring as well. The actress Jane Russell, who went on to adopt children and to help others adopt, was probably infertile due to an early abortion. The disease of endometriosis, in which the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, is another cause of tubal damage. Educator Jill Ker Conway and writer Hilary Mantel both suffered from severe endometriosis and later wrote about their difficult experiences with symptoms, inadequate medical care, and subsequent infertility. In recent years, writer/director Lena Dunham has written openly and eloquently about her long-term struggle with endometriosis and infertility. (13)

Today, roughly fifteen to twenty-five percent of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. At present, about one to two percent of women have repeated miscarriages (three or more). As will be seen, many of the women discussed in this volume had miscarriages, some recurrent, most of them taking place before modern obstetrical practice and technology were available. Nowadays, obstetricians are often successful in helping women who have experienced five, six, or seven miscarriages to ultimately deliver a healthy baby at term. These obstetricians work collaboratively with psychologists in helping women with high-risk pregnancies cope with the challenges of bed rest while managing high levels of grief and anxiety.

Several less common causes of infertility include genetic conditions such as Turner’s syndrome, where ovulation does not occur because of primary ovarian insufficiency. Hormonal diseases such as Grave’s disease can reduce fertility by impairing ovulation or elevating the risk of miscarriage, and this was likely the case for Nadya Krupskaya, the wife of Lenin. Some women in our group were described as suffering from rheumatitis, an older term for rheumatoid arthritis, which can also impair fertility. About ten percent of the time infertility in couples attempting to conceive is unexplained, meaning no specific cause can be found.

The Stories

Posttraumatic growth offers a way of looking at the possibilities for positive transformation after challenging and life-altering events. Psychological growth after trauma is an active and self-directed process that over time involves creativity, a search for meaning, and the courage to disengage from previously held beliefs. Hopefully these stories convey a positive message to present-day women after reproductive loss, encouraging creativity, finding meaning, and placing new ideas and compassion into action.

Notes

1. Roxane Head Dinkin and Robert J. Dinkin, Infertility and the Creative Spirit (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, Inc., 2010).

2. Richard G. Tedeschi, Crystal L. Park, and Lawrence G. Calhoun, Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998).

3. Richard G. Tedeschi, Jane Shakespeare-Finch, Kanako Taku, and Lawrence G. Calhoun, Posttraumatic Growth: Theory, Research, and Applications (New York: Routledge, 2018), 4.

4. Daniel Jay Krosch and Jane Shakespeare-Finch, Grief, Traumatic Stress, and Posttraumatic Growth in Women Who Have Experienced Pregnancy Loss, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, (2016), 9: 425-433. Also see Yongju Yu, et al., Resilience and Social Support Promote Posttraumatic Growth of Women with Infertility: The Meditating Role of Positive Coping, Psychiatric Research (2014), 215: 401-405, and María Alvarez-Calle and Covadonga Chaves, Posttraumatic Growth after Perinatal Loss: A Systematic Review, Midwifery (2023).

5. Agata Freedle and Susan Kashubeck-West, Core Belief Challenge, Rumination, and Posttraumatic Growth in Women Following Pregnancy Loss, Psychological Trauma (2021), 13: 157-164.

6. An interesting recent memoir is that written by the nephew of the late screenwriter Harriet Frank, Jr., an infertile woman, focused on her extensive efforts to make him a substitute son. See Michael Frank, The Mighty Franks: A Memoir (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017).

7. An exception that we are aware of is the second wife of American founder Samuel Adams, Elizabeth Wells, who couldn’t have children, but little else is known about her other than her being a caring spouse, a good housekeeper, and devoted to her stepchildren. On Mrs. Adams, see Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2022), 74-78.

8. Noel Riley Fitch, Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 169.

9. On Rosa Parks, see Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013). For the Andrews Sisters, see H. Arlo Nimmo, The Andrews Sisters: A Biography and Career Record (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2004). See also Myrna Loy and James Kotsilibos-Davis, Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987).

10. Dinkin and Dinkin, Infertility, chap. 1.

11. Jonathan Eig, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 241.

12. Lena Pepitone, Marilyn Monroe Confidential: An Intimate Personal Account (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 85-87.

13. Lena Dunham, In Her Own Words: Lena Dunham on Her Decision to Have a Hysterectomy at 31, Vogue, March 2018.

Lydia Maria Child

(1802-1880)

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One of the most influential reformers and among the first women of American letters in the nineteenth century was the childless Lydia Maria Child. Although her best remembered work remains the popular and sentimental poem A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day, containing the memorable line Over the River and Through the Wood, Child was a pathbreaking author. In her fiction, she explored such controversial subjects as interracial personal relationships between whites and Native Americans and subsequently among white and Black Americans. As a writer of prose, she started out by creating self-help books and periodicals to aid mothers and children. But gradually rejecting a number of societal norms, she then underwent an enormous shift of direction and became a leading voice for social change, unleashing some of the strongest criticisms of slavery and converting many people to adopt the abolitionist cause. Later in her life, she would take up the theme of male dominance and point out that a great many white women, like most Blacks, often found themselves living a subordinate existence with little opportunity to bring about major improvements to their situations. Few American writers then or now have ranged so widely and offered so much insight on the pressing matters of their time.

Child turned out to be a prolific author but might not have been so productive had she spent her early-to-middle adult years raising children. Nor would she ever have been able to take on the important and time-consuming position as editor of a leading anti-slavery newspaper or research and write a lengthy history of women through the ages. Regarding the variety of her output, it is perhaps ironic that Child, a woman without children of her own, created the first American periodical designed for children, Juvenile Miscellany, which was issued bimonthly for eight years beginning in 1826. It provided stories, games, exercises, and helpful information both for young readers and their parents. Along with this magazine, Child, though not a mother herself, also published The Mother’s Book (1831), the first work of its kind in this country, furnishing abundant advice on child rearing from infancy through adolescence, in which, among other things, she urged women to instruct children on certain delicate subjects. The author was particularly concerned about the education of young girls and the fact that "in this land of precarious fortunes, every girl should know how to be useful and potentially self-supporting. In introducing the revised edition, Child wrote: It has been jestingly said that, ‘they who have no children, always know how to manage them well’. Yet despite her somewhat limited experience in this realm, she defended having authored a volume on mothers and child care, saying: Childless myself, I only plead my strong love for children, and my habitual observation of all that concerns them." (1)

Child was actually no stranger to children starting in her earliest years. Born in 1802 in the town of Medford, Massachusetts, Lydia Maria Francis, whose father worked as a baker and whose mother supervised a large household, grew up alongside five siblings. Maria, as she was familiarly known, felt especially close to her older brother Convers, who attended Harvard College and rose to be a prominent Unitarian minister. It was he who at some point introduced her to the field of classical literature—particularly Homer, Milton, and Walter Scott. She herself went to a local school for a time and spent a year at a women’s seminary, but was mainly self-educated, reading widely on her own, and preparing to be a teacher. For some years between ages twelve and eighteen, after her mother had died, Maria lived with her married sister and presumably assisted in the upbringing of her young nieces and nephews. This experience, while satisfying in some respects, also influenced Maria to stick with her plan of becoming an educator. In fact, she did teach school for a while. But then, seeing the possibilities of succeeding as a full-time writer, Maria began devoting herself fully to this pursuit, one she found more fitting to her level of intelligence and talents. Working at a fast pace, she, at age twenty-two, published her first novel Hobomok (1824), which dealt in part with the then taboo theme of marriage between a white woman and a male Native American. This groundbreaking volume foreshadowed the road she would follow during much of her later career, exploring controversial subjects and then advocating for major social change. Although the book was condemned by some traditionalists as terribly scandalous, its positive qualities impressed many readers. The impact of Hobomok enabled Maria Francis to gain entry into the Boston/Cambridge literary establishment, which at the time contained only a small number of women like the feminist-leaning author Margaret Fuller.

While teaching for a few more years as well as working in her spare time on other writings, Maria met and married David Child, a Harvard graduate and an aspiring politician and reformer. Like virtually all wedded women of that era, she took her husband’s last name. For Maria, the marriage over time was somewhat less than fulfilling, as David in spite of his ambitions turned out to be a poor provider; nor, she claimed, did he make her feel truly loved. The relationship would produce no children, and though Maria wrote books and essays on many original themes, she never put forth any book or essay covering the general topic of childlessness or her own situation. Perhaps this was too personal and painful a subject for her to deal with in print. In private, she indicated that she definitely wanted offspring, telling her mother-in-law early on of her desire for a baby, even more for my husband’s sake than for my own. Once, on the way home from a family visit, she described having observed a toddler shaking all its little curls, which made her heart ache. (2) In the absence of children to care for, Maria Child would at times display certain alternate kinds of maternal feelings during subsequent decades, as will be noted.

In the years immediately after her marriage, Child emerged as a widely popular author, most notably through her self-help books such as The Frugal Housewife (1829), the earliest advice manual ever produced in this country. Its contents particularly aimed at helping less than affluent women manage their household in a thrifty manner. This volume was followed by the aforementioned work, The Mother’s Book, which brought her even greater praise. The most influential literary journal of the time, The North American Review, in its July 1833 issue said of her: few female writers, if any, have done more or better things for our literature than Mrs. Child. She seemed just the woman we need for the mothers and daughters of the present generation. (3) Yet Child, unlike many commercially successful writers of this and later periods, who felt the need to protect their flow of income by sticking to safe, unoffending subject matter, chose not to follow such a practical course.

Instead, Maria Child, urged on by her husband and the fiery abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, started focusing on the most controversial and politically sensitive topic of the day, the existence of slavery and what needed to be done to eradicate it. As a strong opponent of its continuance, she would in fact spend much of the next three decades writing essays and stories advocating immediate emancipation of all slaves and an end to all forms of racial discrimination (including miscegenation laws). This meant creating material that, for better or worse, reached only a limited number of dedicated readers. In taking what was then viewed as a radical stance, Child wound up losing most of her mainstream audience for her family self-help books and forfeited any chance of achieving long-term financial security. On the other hand, she would rise to the forefront of the abolitionist movement and, despite being a woman, emerge as a fairly well-known public figure, deeply admired by her reform-minded peers. Her most powerful anti-slavery tract was titled An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), which vividly exposed the evils of slavery where it existed and rejected calls for gradualism or colonization as viable solutions to the widespread problem. While sales were not too abundant, this work had a major impact upon its readers including several men who rose to be influential figures in the abolitionist cause such as Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. On the other hand, Child was ostracized by many in the local political establishment and elsewhere further south, labeled a dangerous extremist for what she now wrote. As a result, her once substantial income rapidly fell away. She did continue to publish a few short stories on other themes but this hardly made up for the loss. To try to make ends meet, Child and her husband, who had earned little as a reformer, engaged in farming for a time on land in western Massachusetts, with the idea of raising beets to make beet sugar as an alternative to slave-grown sugarcane. But the project quickly ended in failure as the couple drifted into poverty and needed to move back east. For Maria this stood as perhaps the most depressing point in her life.

Sometime soon afterward, though, Maria Child’s existence dramatically changed again. Chosen by the abolition movement’s leaders to serve on the executive board of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, she was in the following year named editor of the organization’s weekly newspaper, The National Anti-Slavery Standard. To take up this prestigious position meant residing in New York City without her husband, an unusual step for a woman, as he had commitments to remain in Massachusetts. Although not officially separated, Child would live on her own, supporting herself over the next several years through her writing. She was able to do this by supplementing her modest salary as newspaper editor through the publication of several additional works, including a novel, short stories, and a collection of her weekly commentaries entitled Letters from New York.

During the time she spent in New York without her husband, Maria Child, now in her forties, developed fairly close friendships with a couple of men, although with both the relationships remained platonic. One was a Norwegian-born violinist Ole Bull, whom she met with from time to time. The other was with a young lawyer, John Hopper, the son of a Quaker minister in whose home she had chosen to live. Thirteen years her junior, Hopper not only became very supportive of Child’s ongoing work but frequently socialized with her; they often read poetry, took walks, and picnicked together. While to Child the relationship between them may have contained certain romantic elements, she tended to act more like a mentor or mother to him. In fact, she on occasion publicly referred to young Hopper as her adopted son. At some point, when Hopper began courting an attractive and musically talented young woman named Rosa De Wolf, Child appears to have fantasized about the possibility of creating a household with them and their future offspring. As she once wrote to a friend: "It would be right pleasant for me to live in the same nest with Rosa