Women’s Suffrage Parade, Chicago, 12 May 1914, courtesy of the Library of Congress, American Memory.
In response to this humorous article that we posted a few weeks back, we received a wonderful explanation from our friends at the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project for what might have been going on:
“These are definitely made up letters representing different stereotyped husbands, wives, and ‘spinsters’, rather in the spirit of Punch Magazine of the same period. In fact the mention of Caudle and Mrs Caudle is a reference to a humorous series of diatribes given by ‘Mrs Caudle’ in Punch magazine as part of Mrs Caudle’s Curtain lectures...the complaints of the wife just before her husband falls asleep. Alas, none of the letters are real and all are…’outrageous’. The real reaction of women in this area at the time are shown very differently in the letters of Caroline Dall in the Mass Historical Society (and of course by Margaret Fuller herself).”
**A special thanks to Joy Harvey of the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project and Sarah Burks at the Cambridge Historical Commission for pointing out this article.**
