Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener

FAIN: FZ-256626-17

Kimberly A. Hamlin
Miami University (Oxford, OH 45056-1846)

A biography of Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853-1925), woman suffragist, lead negotiator to Congress and President Wilson on behalf of the movement for suffrage, and the first woman to occupy a high-ranking federal civil service position in the United States in the 1920s.

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in 2020, Woman Citizen increases popular understanding of and appreciation for women's rights history by telling it through the eyes of Helen Hamilton Gardener. Gardener was the suffragists’ lead negotiator to Congress and President Woodrow Wilson, as well as the highest-ranking woman in federal government. However, she was purged from suffrage history as a result of her "freethinking" (atheist) beliefs and her campaign to raise the age of sexual consent for girls. Gardener’s dramatic life experiences together with her vital contributions to the women’s movement tell us much about both how the vote was won and why women worked so hard for it, making the project a good fit for the NEH Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square initiative. Woman Citizen provides historical context for ongoing debates about women in politics, and it encourages us to rethink the place of women in our collective national narrative.

Associated Products

Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (Book)
Title: Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener
Author: Kimberly A. Hamlin
Editor: Alane Mason
Abstract: FREE THINKER: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener, forthcoming from W.W. Norton in March 2020, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Free Thinker reveals the remarkable story of Helen Hamilton Gardener, the woman who served as the National American Woman Suffrage Association's (NAWSA) lead negotiator in Washington, D.C. and who became a national symbol of female citizenship when she was appointed to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, making her the highest-ranking woman in government. For her efforts to get the 19th Amendment through Congress and to convert President Woodrow Wilson into an ally, her colleagues listed her as "the most potent factor" in suffrage victory. But even more fascinating than Gardener's suffrage activism is the story of how a freethinking woman with a fake name and a scandalous past came to be a Washington-insider and presidential confidante. Born when most women dared not speak in public and were legally the property of their husbands, Gardener charted an independent life for herself, against the odds. After being outed in Ohio papers for having an affair with a married man, she moved to New York City changed her name and joined the freethought movement as a popular speaker. Next, she turned to fiction and focused on raising public awareness about the unspoken ravages of sexual assault and the sexual double standard. For her bold novels, she was known as "the Harriet Beecher Stowe of Fallen Women." Free Thinker restores Gardener, once one of the most well-known women in America, to the historical record; foregrounds the influences of science, sex, and race in the suffrage movement; and enhances public appreciation of women's history.
Year: 2020
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Type: Single author monograph

---