Madame Blanchard postcard
From Chapter 2
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Drawing on feminist and material rhetorics, the authors of Women Making History demonstrate that, by creating postcards, Helaine Victoria Press aimed to do more than provide a convenient writing surface or even affect collective memory; instead, they argue, the press generated feminist memory. The cards, each with the picture of a woman or group of women from history, were multimodal. Pictures were framed in colors and borders appropriate to the era and subject. Lengthy captions offered details about the lives of the women pictured. Unlike other memorials, the cards were mobile; they traveled through the postal system, viewed along the way by the purchasers, mail sorters, mail carriers, and recipients. Upon arriving at their destinations, cards were often posted on office bulletin boards or refrigerators at home, where surroundings shaped their meanings.
Women Making History shows that Helaine Victoria Press’s cards, like the movement from which they emanated, were dynamic and participatory. They were, in short, a multidirectional, open ended, rhetorically evolving process of transforming feminist consciousness. The print edition includes many images from the press’s records, and the digital edition offers additional images plus audio and video clips from press participants.
This is the first book to demonstrate the relationships between the feminist art movement, the women in print movement, and the scholars studying women’s history. Readers will be drawn to both the large quantity of illustrative materials and the theoretical framework of the book, as it provides an expanded understanding of rhetorical multimodality. Scholars of gender and women’s studies, art history, media studies, and the history of rhetoric, as well as members of the public with interests in feminism, Lesbian feminist culture, postcards, fine letterpress printing, and papermaking will be inspired by this richly produced history.
About the authors
Julia M. Allen is professor emerita of English at Sonoma State University.
Jocelyn H. Cohen is an artist, arborist and co-founder of Helaine Victoria Press, Inc.
The complete manuscript of this work was subjected to a fully closed (“double-blind”) review process. For more information, please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines.
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From Chapter 2
Mme. M. Blanchard headed the commercial and military air forces (one balloon) under Bonaparte and Louis XVIII, until she was killed by an accident aloft over Paris in 1819. Her work often included appearances at weddings and festivals, etc., where her ascent was the dramatic feature of the day. She was the widow of J.-P. Blanchard, first balloonist to carry international air mail (France to England).
From Introduction
Amelia Earhart (1898-1937). A strong individual since childhood, Earhart once chose her high school in a new city by interviewing various principals. As a nurse’s aide in Canada in World War I, she developed an interest in medical science, social work, pacifism—and aviation. In California during her twenties, she worked at the phone company to pay for flying lessons. Later, as a social worker in Boston, she was approached by a group of public relations specialists to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic (1928). On that trip, she was a passenger, but she was the first woman to solo the trip in 1932. She twice broke the transcontinental speed record and was first to solo from Honolulu to the mainland (1935). She disappeared in 1937 flying around the equator. Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were presumed dead, but the disappearance has never been explained. Earhart was a scholar, sportswoman, and author. Her publisher and promotional manager was George Putnam, whom she married in 1931, with the option of dissolving the marriage in a year if either wished to and the household expenses to be split.
From Chapter 2
Emily Carr (Canadian, 1871-1945). A powerful painter and writer who devoted her life to expressing what she felt and saw in the British Columbia woods, including the totem poles and villages of the Native American West Coast Indians. She grew up in Victoria when it was under English rule and studied in San Francisco during the Chinatown tong wars. She was a true Canadian who lived in the woods simply with her animals including her many beloved sheep dogs. In the conservative atmosphere of 19th-century Victoria, she was considered eccentric and felt a sense of “otherness,” often remaining isolated. She grew produce, raised hens and rabbits, made pottery and rugs, and took boarders to supplement her art. Overdue recognition and fame arrived in the 1920's and increased with the publication of two of her books, Klee Wyck and The Book of Small. A vivid picture of her life and the places she went and people she met are revealed in these and her other books. All of her work, from painting to writing to rugmaking, remained uninhibited by academic standards.
From Resources only
Emily Carr (Canadian, 1871-1945). A powerful painter and writer who devoted her life to expressing what she felt and saw in the British Columbia woods, including the totem poles and villages of the Native American West Coast Indians. She grew up in Victoria when it was under English rule and studied in San Francisco during the Chinatown tong wars. She was a true Canadian who lived in the woods simply with her animals including her many beloved sheep dogs. In the conservative atmosphere of 19th-century Victoria, she was considered eccentric and felt a sense of “otherness,” often remaining isolated. She grew produce, raised hens and rabbits, made pottery and rugs, and took boarders to supplement her art. Overdue recognition and fame arrived in the 1920's and increased with the publication of two of her books, Klee Wyck and The Book of Small. A vivid picture of her life and the places she went and people she met are revealed in these and her other books. All of her work, from painting to writing to rugmaking, remained uninhibited by academic standards.
From Resources only
Olive Schreiner (1855-1920). South African novelist and social theorist. Largely overlooked today, Schreiner was one of the best-known writers in English from the 1880s to the 1920s. Born to English and German missionary parents, she personified rebellion against Victorianism at the height of the Victorian age. She was a passionate pacifist, feminist, and critic of organized religion (although very religious). Her novel, The Story of an African Farm, about a defiant unwed mother, the first specifically feminist work in English fiction, stunned the reading public in 1881. She was both pro-Boer and a supporter of rights for Black Africans; and was militantly opposed to Cecil Rhodes. While imprisoned by the English during the Boer war, she wrote Woman and Labor, a major nonfiction socio-economic treatise. She married S.C. Cronwright in her late thirties, and they shared the surname of "Cronwright-Schreiner." Hampered by money troubles and asthma all her life, Olive retained a vibrant personality even in her last years. Contemporary accounts use the word "genius" more than any other in describing her. And a poor Lancashire working woman who had read African Farm said: "I think there is hundreds of women what feels like that but can't speak it, but she could speak what we feel."
From Chapter 1
Equal Rights Amendment postcard, front
From Resources only
Amelia Earhart, president of the 99's, women pilots’ organization, posing with 3 members for a benefit roller skating party held in 1933 to raise funds for a plane. Left to right: Earhart (1897-1937) often expressed that women can and must take on challenges. She set an example in her love of flying, as she said, "for the fun of it." Elvy Kalep, the first civilian pilot in Estonia, created aviation books and toys and is an artist and linguist; Frances Marsalis (ca. 1890-1934), racing pilot, set the endurance record of 10 days aloft; Betty Gillies (b. 1908) demonstrated and sold planes and was a commander in the WASPS.
From Introduction
Women of History accordion album of eight postcards, viewed with album open. Helaine Victoria Press’s premier offering, showcasing their creative letterpress style and craft.
From Chapter 2
Women of History accordion album of 8 postcards, front cover. Helaine Victoria Press’s premier offering, showcasing their creative letterpress style and craft.
From Chapter 2
Women of History postcard accordion set, back cover
From Resources only
George Sand (1804-1876). Her fictional heroines always combined passion of spirit, body, and intellect, reflecting Sand's own rebellious, brilliant life. She dressed, spoke, and loved as she pleased, despite public outcry. Her 120 books attest to her genius, though few are available in English. Margaret Fuller, visiting the great Frenchwoman in 1847, wrote: "What fixed my attention was the expression of goodness, nobleness and power that pervaded the whole .… it made me very happy to see such a woman. I loved, shall always love her."
From Resources only
Aphra Behn (ca. 1640-1689). The first woman known to have made her living by her pen in English; a major author and dramatist of the Restoration era. Hired as a British spy, she made valuable findings at Antwerp which were ignored. Her racy life and writing provoked both prim opposition and highest literary praise. Behn's style and spirit, which championed women as artists and as persons, remain powerful and passionate to the modern reader.
From Chapter 2
Amelia Earhart, president of the 99’s, women pilots’ organization, posing with 3 members for a benefit roller skating party held in 1933 to raise funds for a plane. Left to right: Earhart (1897-1937) often expressed that women can and must take on challenges. She set an example in her love of flying, as she said, “for the fun of it.” Elvy Kalep, the first civilian pilot in Estonia, created aviation books and toys and is an artist and linguist; Frances Marsalis (ca. 1890-1934), racing pilot, set the endurance record of 10 days aloft; Betty Gillies (b. 1908) demonstrated and sold planes and was a commander in the WASPS.
From Chapter 2
Isadora Duncan (1878-1927). “She lifted from their seats people who had never left theater seats before except to get up and go home,” said Janet Flanner. Barefoot, in flowing fabrics, Isadora was the antithesis of ballet. She unified all the arts and celebrated liberty of the human spirit. Her own children drowned, and she legally adopted more than 30 others. She danced for the common and the crowned, in parts of the world never reached by other celebrities except on film.
From Chapter 2
Mother (Mary Harris) Jones (1830-1930). For 60 years, she trod up mountains in a black dress organizing the miners into the union. She dramatized to the nation the appalling plight of laborers, with the same special quality that won her the love and support of the workers. Like many of them, she was an old timer and with strength and stories she gave the mill and mining families courage. She distrusted organizations and doctrines. She was imprisoned in tents, jails, and sewers by the militia, police, and gunmen and put on and off trains, but she always came back. Her sense of justice and compassion is remembered and kept alive by people in the regions where she worked.
From Chapter 2
Page 131 →Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). American woman of letters, social critic and Transcendentalist. She was a leader in founding and defining a true American literature and culture. Her perfect understanding of woman’s place in society is seen in her Woman in the 19th Century. She edited the Dial, the brilliant voice of Transcendentalist expression. Her life was passionately devoted to human dignity and liberty, and she was directly involved with the Italian Resurgence. Garden heliotrope (front of card) was her personal symbol.
From Chapter 2
Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) is best known as the first woman to run for the American Presidency (1872) and, with her sister Tennie C., the first woman stockbroker on Wall St. Her ever-changing causes included spiritualism, free love, eugenics, and communism, but she remained committed to women’s rights. Top rank suffragists both wooed her for publicity value and rejected her as too racy. Her critics were many and harsh and good reputation became her obsession. Hurt and forgotten in the U.S. she turned to English philanthropies in old age.
From Chapter 2
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931). As a young editor, she investigated lynchings and published the first news campaigns to expose their true nature and extent in the U.S. She was a lecturer, women’s rights leader, and organizer of civic clubs for Black women. She criticized do-nothings, Black and white, and defied mobs even though a price was on her head. At the 1893 Chicago Fair she circulated a booklet, “Why the Colored American is not in the World Columbian Exposition.” Her honors and leadership positions were many, and her hallmark was refusal to compromise.
From Resources only
Equal Rights Amendment Cheer. Liberty Series D-1.
From Chapter 2
Alice Paul (1885-July 9, 1977). American woman suffrage leader and author of the first Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. She apprenticed as an activist in England with the Pankhurst suffragettes (1907-1910) and brought their militant tactics back to the lagging U.S., where no state had granted the vote since 1896. She founded the National Woman’s Party, and endured beatings, imprisonment, hunger strikes and forcible feeding with her colleagues in both countries. Dr. Paul was a Quaker social worker who devoted much of her youth to grueling slum work and earned six degrees, most in law. She died in a nursing home awaiting ratification by three more states of the ERA, which she saw as the true completion of the franchise, granting women the full rights of the Federal Page 157 →Constitution. Her famous parades and demonstrations renewed interest in “the cause,” and with her courage, made her a symbol in the current women’s rights movement. On July 9, 1978, 100,000 people marched in Washington in her memory to support the ERA. Most wore the old suffrage colors, purple and white.