Mary K. Trigg. Feminism as Life's Work: Four Modern American Women through Two World Wars. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014. xii + 266 pp. $28.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8135-6522-4. Reviewed by Amy Green Published on H-Socialisms (May, 2015) Commissioned by Gary Roth (Rutgers University - Newark) This compelling and depressing book inter‐ and children remains a vexing challenge to indi‐ weaves the biographies of four less-celebrated viduals rather than a comprehensive national women whose activism helped drive American program to support healthy women and families; feminism between 1910 and 1977. Mary K. Trigg that American women still earn $.75 to a man’s aims to dispel a popular misconception that ratifi‐ $1.00; that women comprise 14 percent of Ameri‐ cation of the Nineeenth Amendment in 1920, the can corporate executives, 12 percent of governors, onset of the Depression, and the distraction of and 19 percent of members of Congress; and that World War II blew the wind out of feminism’s all those fgures are worse for women of color. I sails until the Second Wave of the 1950s and 60s. hate to think how Trigg’s subjects would feel if Feminism as Life’s Work resuscitates that suppos‐ they knew how little has changed since they de‐ edly moribund period in a group portrait with voted their lives to women’s rights. enough urgency, vitality, and internecine skir‐ Prior to this book, Trigg edited Leading the mishes to show that the feminist struggle re‐ Way (2010), which consisted of frst-person ac‐ mained strong during “the doldrums,” if below counts of feminist activism by a wide range of the radar of front-page headlines (p. 5). contemporary young American women. The an‐ To get the depressing part out of the way frst: thology was intended to disprove another myth: it is not Trigg’s fault that women in 2015 struggle that Millennial women had turned their backs on with so many of the same issues that our prede‐ the feminist project. In the current monograph, cessors did ffty, sixty ... ninety years ago. Still, it is Trigg reaches back a full century to chronicle the painful to be reminded on page after page that de‐ lives and commitments of an earlier generation of spite another century of advocacy, the United toilers in the feminist feld. Just as Leading the States has not managed to ratify the Equal Rights Way shone a light on unsung heroines of today’s Amendment; that juggling career, relationships, movement, Feminism as Life’s Work resurrects H-Net Reviews the post-suffrage period through the triumphs Stevens was a charismatic speaker and orga‐ and tribulations of Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958), nizer who led or participated in “virtually all the Inez Hayes Irwin (1873-1970), Doris Stevens radical tactics initiated by the [National Women’s (1888-1963), and Lorinne Pruette (1896-1977). Party] in the fnal years of the suffragist move‐ Trigg distributes chunks of their individual stories ment” (p. 6). Later, she became a leader in inter‐ in chapters that focus on girlhood, woman suf‐ national feminism, although her elitist vision ex‐ frage, work, motherhood, marriage, and interna‐ cluded working-class women and women of color tional dimensions of the women’s movement. because she thought their rough manners would (While this topical method of organization under‐ alienate influential men. Stevens conducted a scores common themes and struggles, I found it complex, often fraught relationship with mentor hard to get attached to or follow the life stories of Alice Paul, the wealthy founder and benefactor of the four main characters.) the NWP. Beard, often credited as the founder of wom‐ Pruette, the youngest of the quartet, earned a en’s history, was a freelance historian whose ma‐ PhD in psychology at Columbia University in 1924 jor work, Woman as Force in History (1946), ar‐ and became a major theorist and speaker. Her un‐ gued that academics minimized the role of wom‐ happy marital experiences confirmed her theoret‐ en in world events, and attempted to fll in the ical suspicion that men have an inherent sense of gaps. She married and collaborated on seven inferiority that breeds a need to control women. books with historian Charles Beard, whose repu‐ Therefore, she believed, it was naïve to expect tation often eclipsed hers. Mary Beard explained: dramatic improvement in the power dynamics be‐ “‘reviewers often imply that the whole product is tween husbands and wives. She remained a prac‐ C. A. B.’s, in spite of the fact that he had never ticing psychotherapist into her sixties. Toward the written on cultural themes before’” (p. 102). To his end of her life, Pruette was “rediscovered” in the credit, Trigg reports, Charles protested when “edi‐ feminist revival. She told an oral historian that tors, critics, and readers overlooked Mary in their she was “‘delighted to fnd that I am now a clas‐ collaborative ventures.” Beard’s activism centered sic’” of feminist theory (p. 187). on the “socioeconomic inequalities” of capitalism An important thread running through the and fought to improve conditions for working book is the tension between two strains of early to women through social and legal reform (p. 5). mid-twentieth-century feminism. Social protec‐ Irwin lived to be ninety-seven and published tions feminists, including Beard and Pruette, forty-two books of history, fction, and children’s viewed female citizenship as “rooted in mother‐ literature, as well as journalism and essays, all of hood and family life” and advocated for policies which illuminated women’s lives and championed that recognized women’s particular needs and women’s equality. She enjoyed a new-style mar‐ vulnerabilities (p. 97). The Women’s Joint Congres‐ riage to William Henry Irwin, her “angel hus‐ sional Committee, for example, pursued a “mater‐ band,” who “provided her an emotionally sustain‐ nalist program” of protective legislation to regu‐ ing marriage with autonomy to pursue her own late wages, hours, working conditions, and social creative work” (p. 109). Irwin served as the frst welfare benefits for female breadwinners work‐ fiction editor of The Masses, the frst female presi‐ ing the “second shift” at home (pp. 96, 129). Equal dent of the Author’s League of America, a leader rights advocates like Irwin and Stevens, however, in the National Women’s Party (NWP), and a wanted to erase legal distinctions between men fierce proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment. and women to end male privilege in public and private domains. This group, allied with the Na‐ 2 H-Net Reviews tional Women’s Party, proposed and fought for the scribes the sad fact that these have often been Equal Rights Amendment that was fnally ap‐ separate, parallel struggles. The National Colored proved by the US Congress in 1972 but never rati‐ Women’s Party delegations brought up the rear at fied by the requisite thirty-eight states. Trigg sug‐ protest marches. At least one black women’s gests that had this movement not insisted on “full rights leader should have been included as more equality with men” rather than “equality in differ‐ than a supporting character. Similarly, Trigg’s pre‐ ence,” “it is possible that the ERA might now be sentation of intimate relationships is completely law” (p. 190). hetero-normative. Same-sex attractions and les‐ “Being a modern feminist was not easy,” Trigg bians are barely mentioned until the fnal chap‐ announces on the frst page (p. 1). Her detailed ter. In this way, the narrative foreshadows the and well-documented narrative supports the as‐ Third Wave backlash against the white, middle- sertion. She mines private papers, letters, and di‐ class feminist agenda of the Second Wave. aries to supplement published works by and Feminism as Life’s Work reminds us--in about her four main characters to provide de‐ minute detail--what it took to keep the midcentu‐ tailed accounts of their often difficult personal ry struggle for women’s rights alive through two and public lives. The women featured in her book World Wars, the Great Depression, and the post‐ “suffered in the process” of securing the vote, im‐ war period. If we have forgotten some of the indi‐ proving working and living conditions, moving to‐ vidual women who turned their lives into sites of ward companionate marriage, and disrupting oth‐ experiment, risk, and resistance; who agreed and er forms of gender oppression (pp. 175). For their disagreed; won some and lost some; and resilient‐ efforts, they withstood personal disappointments ly bounced back from disappointments, dismissal, and sacrifices, internal divisions, criticism, divorce, and depression to keep the movement ridicule, and police harassment. Conservative iso‐ alive, perhaps it is because of their success. Lorine lationist groups published the “notorious ‘Spider Pruette understood as early as 1927 that younger Web Chart’ showing connecting threads among women who had not known the “‘tedious world U.S. women’s groups, Russian communist groups, against which the old-line feminists rebelled’” and international pacifist organizations” (p. 99). would be “‘frankly amazed at all the feminist Doris Stevens included a light-hearted example in pother and likely bored when the subject comes Jailed for Freedom, her account of serving time up.... Nothing is so dead as the won causes of yes‐ for picketing the White House to rouse President terday’” (p. 93). Here, Trigg brings the cause and Wilson’s support for the Nineteenth Amendment. its champions back to vivid life and reminds us of One of the arresting officers who herded suffrag‐ our debt to unsung feminist pioneers. ists into paddy wagons denounced them as “can‐ nibals and Bolsheviks” (p.