Out of an initial attempt to look at the history of the Settlement House movement of the early twentieth century, a volume of literature that addressed female reformers of this period presented itself, making the Settlement Houses per se’ almost secondary to the women leaders themselves. Having defined the topic of interest in this way, four articles were chosen, from a multitude, for this review paper: one from the Journal of Social History, one from Daedalus, which is an interdisciplinary journal covering “arts, sciences, and the humanities, as well as the full range of professions and public life,” one from the Social Service Review, and finally one from American Quarterly. [1] [2] The selection of these four journals serves to illustrate how the study of the female reformers of this period requires an interdisciplinary approach in order to come near to having the most robust understanding of this history. In other words, it is not enough to provide a verbatim of the life of Jane Addams short of accounting for the complex matrix of social and cultural upheaval that was taking place in the United States during her lifetime as Victorian sensibilities were stressed and gave way under the strain of the Industrial Revolution. But the selection of these articles also reflects a deliberate attention to the early development of social work as a profession during this time frame coupled with a desire to somehow work in that definition of “social justice,” well known to the 21st Century but that was in development in the early 20th century—perhaps in development at Jane Addams’ Hull House, to be more precise. Thus the inclusion of the article Mary Richmond an Jane Addams: From Moral Certainty to Rational Inquiry in Social Work Practice by Donna L. Franklin.
Both Mary Richmond and Jane Addams have some stake in being attributed with having started the profession of social work as we know it today (Franklin, 505). Both women were born into the Victorian era of the 19th Century and both women were, as daughters of their age, deeply committed to the Christian tradition. It would therefore be a mistake to not give some attention to how the Western theological tradition, i.e. Christianity, or rather more specifically Protestantism, shaped the views and behaviors of these early female social reformers— all four articles in this review do precisely that.
It was (and is) the Protestant work ethic that compounded the social problem of poverty that was being exasperated as the United States moved from a primarily rural society to one of urban centers and wage labor (Franklin, 505). At the same time, the overwhelming Calvinist consensus that the condition of being in poverty suggested a person was “morally reprehensible” was being undermined by a pragmatic alternative which taught that “individuals who lived in poverty were not necessarily morally reprehensible but were influenced by a macrosystem [sic] that affected social functioning” (Franklin, 507). These conflicting philosophical positions were the cultural soup from where the profession of social work began to emerge, and it was Jane Addams’ Settlement Houses and Mary Richmond Charity Societies (COS) where social work was first done in a scientific, rational way. Nevertheless, it is well documented that Mary Richmond and Jane Addams did not agree on how work was to be done: the later felt that those who received aid were to blame for their plight and should be encouraged to work toward “self sufficiency” while the former provided aid and studied the social conditions that caused poverty– this debate continues in social work (Franklin, 510).
Additionally, this review might also help to further illuminate possible reasons why it is mainly middle class, or rather bourgeois women, who were the Progressive Era reformers and why, even today, the profession of social work is fielded by around 79% white, middle class women.[3]
Nevertheless, the commonality in wanting to address the problem of suffering among the poor can be understood in terms of how these women accepted the Victorian female role, almost whole cloth.
Jill Conway, in her article entitled Women Reformers and American Culture, 1870-1930 (1971-1972), noted that the stereotype of femininity, as it was expressed in thirties, forties and fifties, differs very little from the image and expectation placed upon Victorian Age women. And so Jane Hunter’s Inscribing the Self in the Heart of the Family: Diaries and Girlhood in Late-Victorian America (1992) is illuminating on this point, which is crucial in understanding how and why female Progressive Era activists worked for social justice in the way that they did. Hunter argues that the roots of early 20th Century activism extends back to the Victorian family. She used diary entries from that era in order to better understand what was going on in the minds and hearts of the Victorian girl (Hunter, 51). The result is a more robust understanding of what was going on in the internal life of girls, or rather their “…discourse of the self,” as Hunter puts it (Hunter, 52).
These diaries reflected the careful presentation of the self that Victorian girls created in the pages of their diaries, which would be read by their parents (Hunter, 54). They also serve to illustrate well the complexities of how the fading moralism of Calvinism was giving way to Romantic secularism, and how that cultural transition experienced by Victorian girls, and subsequently the lives of Reformers like Jane Addams and Mary Richmond (Hunter, 54-55). In an early article entitled Jane Addams: An American Heroine (1064), Jill Conway makes a similar observation about her heroine, namely that “they [women activists] had a total belief that a trained and well stocked mind would fit them for new roles in life” (Conway, 1964, 761). And this was precisely what the diaries were about more than anything: systemizing priorities , even as the diary writing evolved and some girls used their diaries as a kind of rebellion against the ideal of the “good girl,” passive and by her mother’s side (Hunter, 56).
But diary writing was just one aspect of the lives of bourgeois girls which was part of a number of activities intended to fill up the idle time that their family’s wealth created for them. Some other activities included piano lessons and a formal education (Hunter, 52). Curious then it is that Mary Richmond was uneducated and Jane Addam’s family was not wealthy enough to send her to the best schools in the East. Nevertheless, both Jane Addams and Mary Richmond shared what Conway argues as “total belief that a trained and well-stocked mind would fit them for new roles in life” (Conway, 1964, 761). These new roles in life were part and parcel of their sense of mission, perhaps also of guilt, that because of the blessings of their lives of leisure, they should be giving something back to the world. As women, the world of business and politics (as least as a direct path) was cut off to them, and so they chose “careers” that were both available to them and also in keeping with the fact that they believed that women were the “custodians of race morality, were exempt from humans passion, and, because of their maternal instincts, were less prone to violence than men” (Conway, 1964, 762). Franklin echoes this point, adding that “women did not reject the Victorian notion that women should exude self-sacrifice, purity, and spiritual superiority; rather they moved these qualities our of the home and into the public world of professional work” (Franklin, 511).
First and foremost, the women accepted the ideal that women were more pure and able to do good in greater measure than men. As mentioned before in part, Franklin noted that the Victorian women was considered to be more pure than the Victorian man and thus more able to nurture and take care of the needs of the poor (Franklin, 510). Additionally, Conway (1971-1972) pointed out that there was a “specialized feminine perception of social justice” that female reformers made their claim was worker under. This claim represented a mix of Calvinism, Liberalism, and Pragmatism.
Protestantism, or more precisely Calvinism, dominated the religious life of the bourgeoisie in the United States in the mid to late nineteenth century. Calvinism taught that hard work, an orderly life, and prosperity were signs that one was one of the elect and destined for an eternal reward; conversly, Calvinism taught lack of such things as money and property, revealed that a person was not of the elect and was destined for eternal punishment (Franklin, 506). Liberalism is the political philosophy that teaches that individual freedom is the most important of all political goals while Pragmatism is that philosophical position teaches that practical experiences are a vital component of truth.[5] The “specialized feminine” mix of these elements into the female reformer of the turn of the century is perhaps personified best in the person of Jane Addams. Her success at Hull House is a testament to how she was able to order her life along these philosophical lines without upsetting the social order with respect to the role of women. But unlike Mary Richmond, Addams was able to look beyond the Calvinist answer about the cause of poverty a gave a first look at how macro systems, alongside individual problems, contribute.
Today women chose the profession of Social Work in the context of many other career choices and opportunities, not with respect so much to their gender but as a privilege of living in a Liberal society– the same privileged Mary Richmond and Jane Addams enjoyed within the context of “happily” owning the Victorian definition of “women.”
In terms of poverty, far more women of every ethic background find themselves in poverty (with their children) than do men.[6] So in a sense, women continue to work for the improvement of their own lives as a gender, just as they did at the turn of the century.
Works Cited
Conway, Jill (1971).Women Reformers adn American Culture, 1870-1930. Journal of Social History. 5, 164-177.
Conway, Jill (1964).Jane Addams: An American Heroine. Daedalus. 93, 761-780.
Frankin, Donna (1986).Mary Richmon and Jane Addams: From Moral Certainty to Rational Inquiry in Social Work Practice. The Social Service Review. 60, 504-525.
Hunter, Jane H. (1992).Inscribing the Self in the Heart of Family: Diaries and Girlhood in Late- Victorian America. American Quarterly. 44, 51-81.
[1] http://www.amacad.org/publications/daedalus.aspx
[2] Since two of the articles I used were written by the same author I chose to include a fourth for the review paper.
[3] http://www.socialworkers.org/naswprn/surveyTwo/Datagram2.pdf
[4] Working at Townbe Hall in London and her remarkable conversation with Tolstoy. From the fotenotes in Franklin.
[5] Elizabeth Anderson. Dewey’s Moral Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[6] Starrels, M. E., & And Others. (1994). The Feminization of Poverty in the United States: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Family Factors. Journal of Family Issues, 15(4), 590-607.
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