Questions for The Devil in the White City
1. What does The Devil in the White City reveal about women’s lives in the 1890s? About attitudes toward women?
2. Why does the book begin (and end) aboard The Olympic?
3. Why is it appropriate to tell the tale of Holmes alongside that of Daniel Burnham and the Fair?
4. Larson writes that Holmes “fit the prevailing ideal of the self-made man who through hard work and invention pulled himself rung by rung into the upper strata of society” (64). By this definition, are there other self-made men in the book? Explain.
5. What is the Black City? How is it related to the White City? Historically, do you think they were binaries (direct opposites)? Why or why not?
6. Do you agree with Larson that “the exposition was Chicago’s conscience, the city it wanted to become” (210)?
7. What are we to make of the architectural themes in the book?
8. Where in the book do we see fraud and façade?
9. What role does the Panic of 1893 (an economic depression) play in the book?
10. Control, systems, efficiency: discuss.
11. What is the relationship of urban despair to civic optimism?
12. Late-nineteenth century ideas of masculinity? Their intersections with class? And race?
13. How did the Fair change the way Americans looked at their cities?
14. Disneyland and the White City: compare, contrast. Is the White City a magic kingdom of sorts? Why or why not? (See page 373.)
2. Why does the book begin (and end) aboard The Olympic?
3. Why is it appropriate to tell the tale of Holmes alongside that of Daniel Burnham and the Fair?
4. Larson writes that Holmes “fit the prevailing ideal of the self-made man who through hard work and invention pulled himself rung by rung into the upper strata of society” (64). By this definition, are there other self-made men in the book? Explain.
5. What is the Black City? How is it related to the White City? Historically, do you think they were binaries (direct opposites)? Why or why not?
6. Do you agree with Larson that “the exposition was Chicago’s conscience, the city it wanted to become” (210)?
7. What are we to make of the architectural themes in the book?
8. Where in the book do we see fraud and façade?
9. What role does the Panic of 1893 (an economic depression) play in the book?
10. Control, systems, efficiency: discuss.
11. What is the relationship of urban despair to civic optimism?
12. Late-nineteenth century ideas of masculinity? Their intersections with class? And race?
13. How did the Fair change the way Americans looked at their cities?
14. Disneyland and the White City: compare, contrast. Is the White City a magic kingdom of sorts? Why or why not? (See page 373.)
posted by Leslie Madsen-Brooks at 1:25 PM
1 Comments:
Although no direct connection to the book you may be interested to read another womans view of the times:
"Science and the Woman’s Question"
The claim of equal rights for woman has been attacked from various points of vantage. We have had the aesthetic argument, the religious argument, the philosophical argument, and the political argument. Yet all these are merely beatings about the bush – they do not touch the kernel of the subject. They are, moreover, as unworthy of reply as were the opponents whom Fredrick the Great meant when he uttered the apothegm in military tactics: “never haggle with the enemy’s light infantry”
If there be any real enemy of woman’s rights, as it is called, that enemy is certainly not aesthetics. Not religion, not philosophy, not politics, but science; It is the scientific field alone from which the claim can be attacked, if at all. Is science, then, our enemy, and are we women to meet it forever with the cry of Ecrasez l’infame? I deny that we are in any such danger I propose even to show that, instead of being hostile to the claim which women make of equality with man, science is in its favor and has already placed it, for those who look deeply enough, upon an impregnable basis. I approach the subject, moreover, not in the timid belief that our modern women have overstated their case, but in the conviction that they have not yet fully realized its overwhelming strength.
It will be admitted, I think, that there is no inferiority in sex per se, and that least of all can such inferiority be laid at the door of the maternal functions on which the perpetuation of the kind in the higher organisms has come to depend, It is not that to the masculine sex superior tasks have been assigned, and to the feminine inferior, but it is that there has been a division of functions simultaneously with structural differentiation for the performance of those functions. So that if nature has withdrawn from woman those ruder capacities for active life that have been conferred upon man, she has en revanche given to the more delicate sex that function which is not exceeded in its importance by any capacity exercised by men, namely, the work of bearing and rearing the new generation.
If, then, sex means simply division of labor, and not subordination of man to woman, or of woman to man, whence came the disabilities under which woman have suffered in the past, and how, if they are still to be the mothers, the child-rearers, the home-keepers of the race, do they look forward to the complete removal of these disabilities? We shall prepare ourselves for the reply to this question if we bear in mind that the so-called inequality of women in the past has been no real inferiority, but merely a temporary subordination due to the maternal function, and to the relation of that function to social conditions. We shall find, moreover, at the very threshold of our inquiry, that the extent to which the function of motherhood absorbs the energies of woman has varied with the social state; that improvement of such state has set free for non-material activities an ever increasing amount of such energies, and that woman reaches the true expression of her equality with man just as fast as the race becomes civilized.
Sociologists are agreed that the position of woman, even as a mother, has been largely determined by the stage of development reached by society. Generally speaking, the militant condition goes hand in hand with the subjection of women; in other words, where the tribal group or nation is constantly engaged in the activities of war, there the mothers must occupy an inferior position, and must undergo all the disabilities of that position. It is not that in the fighting stage women are oppressed by man, but it is that both men and women have their status determined by the character of the prevailing civilization. On the other hand, progress from militant to industrial type of society is, generally speaking, accompanied by the gradual emancipation of women from such subjection and gradual recognition of her equality with man.
Let us now consider in detail the various way in which advancing civilization brings about this important change in the status of women. There is first the decrease in the birth rate. It is a biological law from operation of which even self-conscious man is not expected, that the rate of reproduction is adjusted so as to maintain the species. Where a tribe or nation is constantly at war, there will be little or no check upon multiplication, and the burdens of motherhood will be many and severe. Where, on the contrary, the peaceful state of society has been ushered in, the demand for new individuals to maintain the kind will fall to its minimum, the natural checks upon multiplication will come into play, and woman will be relieved of some of these exhausting labors of child bearing and child-rearing, The various development, moreover, which civilization brings in its train – such as sanitary improvements, discoveries in the medical and surgical arts, inventions of all kinds, and all perfecting of the methods of living – tend powerfully to make life more lasting and secure; to increase the chances of the survival of all the children born, and thus help on the emancipation of women. All social progress, in fact, furnishes illustrations of the Spencerian formula that “advancing evolution is accompanied by declining fertility, “that”genesis decreases as individuation increases”
The passing away of international warfare not only relaxes the subordination of woman in the way indicated, bet sets free some of the energies of the mother for activities other then those which are maternal and domestic. Simultaneously with the advent of the industrial state and the diversion of minds from the acts of war to those of peace, there come numerous occupations in which women find it possible to engage. The new social condition, in fact, works a complete change in the attitude of women towards extra-domestic employments. In a fighting state they are compelled to regard marriage as their only means of livelihood, and this is still true of the great majority of women in the militant societies of Europe; but in the industrial state the cease to be thus limited. The is the further result that non-militant , industrial life gives woman those opportunities of mental development which ages of exclusive subjection to the duties of the household have denied her. In the industrial field, under the freer conditions of the non-militant state, she has already – in the United States, for example – utilized these opportunities in the development, not only of great industrial expertness, but also of remarkable intellectual power.
But there are some who, While generally favorable to the cause of women, will be inclined to doubt whether the biological truths justify them in entering into occupations once reserved exclusively for the men entitle the gentler sex to equality also in political privileges – whether, in a word, the claim of woman to suffrage is the equally natural and inevitable outcome of the evolutionary process.
Mr. Herbert Spencer( http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Spencer0236/Justice/0626_Bk.pdf “Justice” p.166) denies the voting privilege to women on the ground that they cannot fight. “Unless, therefore” says he, “women furnish contingents to the army and navy such as men furnish, it is manifest that, ethically considered, the question of equal political rights, so called, of women cannot be entertained until there is reached a state of permanent peace”. Now Mr. Spencer, by implying that men will continue to vote even in a state of permanent peace, shows that the price which they pay for voting privilege is to be demanded only during the continuance of international antagonisms. It is to be noted, moreover, that even in the case of men, and during the continuance of militant conditions, the duty is not either an absolute or an inevitable one. Just as certain persons exempted by law from serving on juries, etc., while retaining the privilege of voting, so men may be exempt from military duty in time of war without losing their right to the suffrage. If it be claimed that allow men could not find substitutes, the fact that some men can is sufficient to deprive Mr. Spencer’s rule of that universal validity on which its argumentative value so obviously depends. Yet this aspect of the question may be altogether waived in view of the circumstances that women even now perform a service of much more importance to the race than the service of bearing arms. They bear children. And if it is to be urged that, because women do not imperil their lives as soldiers they are not entitled to equal political privileges, it may with like justice be argued that, because men do not pass through the perils of child-birth, they ought to be denied the privilege of voting.
In reality, women do “furnish contingents” to the army and navy, and furnish them at the peril of their lives. At the same church service in time of war you may hear the prayer for women in travail and for the army on the field. So that, in his haste to discover some things which men do of which women are incapable, Mr. Spencer has overlooked one function, of pre-eminent importance for the race, in discharge of which women naturally excel, but for which men have hitherto not shown the slightest capacity. If, then, woman have no right to vote, it is certainly not because they cannot become soldiers, for this logic would deprive men of the suffrage on the ground that they cannot bear children.
But Mr. Spencer, half conscious of the weakness of his position, urges that women cannot be intrusted with a vote on the additional ground that she is emotional, a worshiper of power, and not judicially minded. This is on a par with the argument made by the anti-abolitionists that the slave could not be safely intrusted with his freedom; for just as the very qualities which had been produced by slavery were invoked to prove the incapacity of the colored race for freedom, so the feminine qualities that have been wrought by centuries of the subjection of women are today used as an argument why that subjection should continue.
I have thus sought to show – more by the suggestion of an argument than by any detailed elaboration of it – that the subjection of the women in the past has been due , not to any natural inferiority of women, but primarily to the absorption of their energies by the maternal function, and secondarily to the social condition determining the degree of the exercise of that function. But I have also claimed that, with the improvement of the social state, setting free more and more of the energies of woman for other than purely domestic activities, and making possible her mental and physical adaptation to such activities, there has come, by a perfectly natural and necessary process, that change in the position of women which even in its incomplete stage we are accustomed to call her emancipation
I would finely urge that the claim made in these days of woman’s equality with man is simply the expression and outcome of that revised meaning which modern life is giving to the function of maternity, and I hold that the movement thus begun, and so manifestly sanctioned by the evolutionary process, will be carried on to a sure and complete triumph, not by the generosity of men, and not by the advocacy of women, but by the whole of the influences that tend to improve the social state – in a word, by ever-advancing civilization. It is not that the woman of the future will cease to be a mother, but that motherhood will grow less and less arduous, and that its past disabilities will diminish until they finely disappear. The great problem of the age – how to emancipate woman and preserve motherhood – is already more than half solved. The world has no longer need of the enormous sacrifices through which our sex has replenished the race in the past; the black eras of strife and cruelty are gone, and in the perfect social order which is coming, woman is to do something more than to suffer and toil – something more than to furnish her contingents to the industrial armies and navies of the world. She is to live.
Lydia Lvovna Pimenoff ~ published January 1893
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