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Progressive Foote? Gender Politics In An 1887 Letter From Mary Hallock Foote, Tara Penry

Western Writers Online

Mary Hallock Foote is not known for progressive gender politics. Quite the opposite. As her biographer Darlis Miller observes, Foote and her longtime friend Helena DeKay Gilder agreed that woman’s most important work lay in the home, and suffrage would distract her from her primary duties. But Foote did not always practice her belief in the separate spheres of men and women perfectly. Not only did necessity compel her for a time to support her family, but an 1887 letter also shows that in her professional life, Foote did not always think of her work as feminine or separate from …