The Scarlet Sisters, by Myra MacPherson, is subtitled Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age. It is the story of “two improper Victorians” who were famous in their day for championing women’s rights and infamous for scandals. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin “rose from poverty, a trashy family, and a childhood of scam fortune-telling,” (including murderously sham cancer ‘treatments,’) “to become rich, powerful, and infamous.” MacPherson notes that the sisters as well as their rivals and supporters wrote various lies and inconsistencies which make a biography difficult to assemble.
While I had not heard of the sisters before reading this book, they gained supporters and enemies whose names I recognize: the tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and radical socialist Karl Marx. This is only a sample of their associates; the “Cast of Characters” lists fifty-two people.
Spiritualism was their usual entry into famous social circles, and the rags-to-riches backgrounds of many Gilded Age tycoons offered an accepting attitude towards their origins. These connections supported them when they opened the first woman-owned brokerage house on Wall Street, where they made and lost a fortune.
MacPherson reports that, to the ends of their lives, the sisters “fought for astounding changes in society that did not happen for decades: Laboratories should analyze food and drink for impurities. Doctors should examine children in schools. The poor should be provided government services. Birth control was a necessity.” Indeed, one of the few positions they took that strikes sour notes today involved eugenics. Quoting the younger sister, “We want to bring forth pure and healthy children, and then we shall not have to make war to kill off the mob of the unfit.”
The sisters were full of contradictions. They sometimes disavowed their own published writings. They endured an abusive father and various combative relatives, yet brought their dysfunctional family (even an abusive ex-husband) along with them as their fortunes rose and fell.
One theme that remained constant for the sisters was a hatred of hypocrisy, especially over sexual matters. Women prostitutes were treated harshly as criminals while their male clients were ignored and affairs within the suffrage movement were covered up while those involved preached the sanctity of marriage.
They fell out with most of their supporters, often by insisting that reforms go beyond the comfort zones of others. Marx pushed unionism for white men only, suffragettes opposed divorce reform (which was part of the “free love” movement), and Vanderbilt may have begun to doubt their Spiritualist abilities.
The detailed tracking of various scandals, law suits, criminal charges, and tit-for-tat battles strained my patience. Perhaps I tried to read the book too quickly, because there were interesting bits of information, as when the sisters defended against a charge of writing obscenity (brought by Anthony Comstock, the infamous anti-vice Crusader) by quoting similar sounding passages from the Bible.
By the time the sisters left American for England, my interest was flagging, even though they continued their fight for women’s rights, endured heart-wrenching illnesses, and became wealthy widows and friends of royalty.
MacPherson is sympathetic towards the sisters so the book generally supports liberal causes. Her epilogue makes clear that MacPherson herself is also a liberal, noting that “if the sisters were alive today, they would find many of the same problems they railed against” and discussing the “Tea Party extremist War on Women.”
The best part of the book for me was its illustration of America’s tumultuous society between the Civil War and World War I. If you would like a better feel for the Gilded Age, try this book; at least the first half.