Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [43]
Popular literature and newspaper advertisements caricatured women as the victims of a host of female complaints, and the rise in sales of vegetable compounds such as Lydia Pinkham’s marked the era.18 Exerting a woman’s intellect was even suspect. The popular health writer and prestigious doctor, Weir Mitchell, argued that a young woman’s “future womanly usefulness was endangered by the steady use of her brain.”19 “New women” challenged these common stereotypes, especially at women’s colleges that instituted rigorous physical education programs and active sports, like basketball. For some middle class and wealthy women, horseback riding, cycling, and golf became attractive activities. By wearing the reform costumes, Helga and Clara became identified in the public eye as examples of these new women.
Many doctors, however, perceived that an almost epidemic level of nervous afflictions were caused by these new women seeking greater involvement in public life. One leading male physician in the 1890s warned: “Women’s efforts, acted out rashly and foolishly, make her ultimately unfit for active life because of the perilous injury brought on by the deleterious irritations of the outside world.”20 This cultural attitude affected the first group of college-educated women, including Jane Addams, the eventual founder of Hull House in Chicago. Because most professional careers remained closed to educated women, many unemployed postcollege graduates with money took extended trips to Europe on “grand tours” to gain a greater sense of culture. Addams, who took two such tours in her twenties, lamented over this substitute for meaningful work. “I have been idle for two years—I have constantly lost confidence in myself and have gained nothing and improved in nothing.”21
Theological assumptions that God created women to function in separate spheres from men reinforced these beliefs. Senator George Vest, speaking about women’s roles in 1887, expressed the contemporary view: “I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for which God intended them.… Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they are so.”22
Some society women succumbed to a semi-invalid status, almost a fashionable disease, or endured bed rest strongly recommended by doctors. But women settling the West rarely lived genteel lives. Like Helga’s reality on the prairie, their daily survival often demanded physical strength, whether clearing the land with their husbands, tending to several children, farm animals, and a home, or planting and harvesting acres of farmland. When Helga’s fall on Riverside Avenue in Spokane led to her earlier bedridden status, she saw no glamour in the confinement. Instead, she risked experimental gynecological surgery to restore her robust health.
Helga’s and Clara’s actions showed assertiveness, required maximum effort and sweat, aggressiveness, intrepid independence, courage, and sustained physical activity. This journey also immersed them in nature, and the act of walking made them stronger. Traveling through the lonesome land of east Colorado, with the placid South Platte River meandering alongside, the women now contended with temperatures in the 90s. Whistling winds blew prairie dust deep into their clothes. With little human habitation, their companions became white-tail jackrabbits, antelope, prairie