The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age

Victoria Woodhull Story By Myra MacPherson

Posted sponsored by America’s Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull

(MediaQuire) Available on Amazon: A fresh look at the life and times of Victoria Woodhull and Tennie Claflin, two sisters whose radical views on sex, love, politics, and business threatened the white male power structure of the nineteenth century and shocked the world. Here award-winning author Myra MacPherson deconstructs and lays bare the manners and mores of Victorian America, remarkably illuminating the struggle for equality that women are still fighting today.

Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee “Tennie” Claflin-the most fascinating and scandalous sisters in American history-were unequaled for their vastly avant-garde crusade for women’s fiscal, political, and sexual independence. They escaped a tawdry childhood to become rich and famous, achieving a stunning list of firsts. In 1870 they became the first women to open a brokerage firm, not to be repeated for nearly a century. As beautiful as they were audacious, the sisters drew a crowd of more than two thousand Wall Street bankers on opening day. A half century before women could vote, Victoria used her Wall Street fame to become the first woman to run for president, choosing former slave Frederick Douglass as her running mate. She was also the first woman to address a United States congressional committee.

America’s Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull – Order this PBS Featured documentary on Amazon.

Review

If you spliced the genes of Hillary Clinton, Madonna, Heidi Fleiss and Margaret Thatcher, you might have someone like Victoria Woodhull. – –Atlanta Journal & ConstitutionVictoria Woodhull burst onto the stage with America’s most radical reformers, reoriented their movements, and was gone. People listened to her. A congressional committee reported on her interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. She was the first woman to run for president of the United States and the first presidential candidate to spend election day in jail. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catharine Beecher used their cultural leverage to label her a tramp. Anthony Comstock declared war on her for distributing obscene materials. She almost brought an end to Henry Ward Beecher’s career. America’s Victoria is a biography of this enigmatic figure in American history, the daughter of a swindling father and a spiritualist mother, who remade herself several times to become a Wall Street broker, a radical reformer, and, with her third husband, a British lady of the manor. The story is told by a narrator, several commentators, and readings from Woodhull’s speeches and contemporary documents. — The Journal of American History –The Journal of American HistoryVictoria Woodhull was a fascinating woman, way ahead of her time, an advocate not only of women’s suffrage but of legalized prostitution, equality in marriage, and free love, by which she meant a commitment untrammeled by governmental regulations. She ran for president four times and generally lived a life unimagined by most women (and men) of her day. She is described as electrifying, larger than life, and flamboyant. Interviews with Gloria Steinem, Ellen Dubois (a UCLA historian), and others are filled with enthusiasm and admiration”. Recommended for Women’s Studies collections. – –Library Journal

AMERICA’S VICTORIA is a wonderful chronicle of the life of one of the most important and unrecognized women in US history. Although she was a radical suffragist, she refused to restrict her Presidential campaign to the issue of women’s suffrage.

Instead, she advocated a single sexual standard for men and women, legalization of prostitution and reform of marriage. AMERICA’S VICTORIA combines rare archival images, Woodhull’s own words (ready by KATE CAPSHAW), and illuminating interviews with contemporary feminist, GLORIA STEINEM to present a fascinating portrait of this remarkably brave woman.AMERICA’S VICTORIA, REMEMBERING VICTORIA WOODHULL was featured at the annual Montreal/Quebec International Film Festival 2010 – honoring 90th year women got the vote!