by Marlene Cook, IWPA Historian
So We All Can Be Heard
by Marlene Cook, IWPA Historian
If "The pen is mightier than the sword," the use of the mightier weapon by one of IWPA's founders, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, reformer, suffragist and author, surely helped to change the destiny of women.
Born in Crawfordsville, Indiana on April 15, 1843, Lizzy, as she was sometimes known, attended the Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio and graduated from the Terre Haute (Indiana) Female College with honors in 1862. She tried to further her education at the all-male Wabash College and received special permission to attend lectures, but was denied admission. She wrote about that experience in 1865 and earned her first income, $10, as a writer.
At age 22, she published her first novel, The Golden Fleece, and became active in the Woman Suffrage Movement, serving as vice-president of the Indiana chapter. After marrying William Harbert, a former army captain and lawyer, she moved to Des Moines, Iowa where she became the president of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Movement. As such, she convinced the Republican Party of Iowa to include a woman's plank in its party platform.
Her second book, Out of Her Sphere, was written in 1871. In it she distinguished between femininity (a pejorative category) and womanliness (a positive category) claiming a middle ground between conventional femininity and free-love sexual radicals, suggesting that political empowerment would not jeopardize womanliness, but rather allow its fullest expression.
She moved to Evanston, Illinois in 1874 with her husband and three children. From there for the next 12 years she presided over the Suffrage Movement of Illinois. She kept the movement alive during its down time from 1970 to 1890 by starting New Era, a newspaper that published articles about suffrage, class issues, temperance, etc.
As a founding member of IWPA, she said it was an organization of writers, editors, journalists and publicists whose advocacy of suffrage and the advancement of women in the professions brought them together across disciplines.
Harbert was a prolific writer. Her early writing stated that both woman and society were injured by pushing children into stereotypical sex roles that confined females to the "women's sphere." She thought that this practice condemned a woman to a nonproductive lifetime of dependence on others. In her later writings, however, she admits that perhaps women do have some virtues and traits that are typically characteristic of their sex, such as purity, charity and fidelity. She wrote that women were "born to soothe and to solace, to help and to heal the sick world that leans upon her." Therefore, giving women the vote would allow them to fulfill their natural nurturing function. Her writings exemplified the whole movement's shift from an elite intellectual pursuit for justice to a middle-class reform movement that would benefit society.
In 1876, she convinced the publisher of a Chicago daily, Inter-Ocean, of the need for a column devoted to the diverse interests of women. Her new column, Woman's Kingdom, revealed a philosophy of social reform that reflected feminist orientation, a materialistic accent and middle-class consciousness. She stressed the need for social harmony, reciprocity and balance. Granting women suffrage was a way to achieve that.
She went on to found the Illinois Social Science Association and The Evanston Woman's Club. During her eight-year tenure as president the Woman's Club, it assisted in establishing Evanston Hospital, in organizing the first Mother's Clubs in Evanston schools and in establishing Evanston Charities and a chapter of the Visiting Nurse Association.
In acknowledgment of her leadership and advancement of women, Ohio Wesleyan College presented her with an honorary Ph.D. degree. In 1910, the Harberts moved to Pasadena, CA, where she died on January 19, 1925 at age 82.