Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist

Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist by Angelica Shirley Carpenter

Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the three most prominent suffragists of the 19th Century, along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Early leaders of the movement to get equal rights for women, these three started the seminal work on the movement History of Woman Suffrage. Too Radical for her time, her research on the history of female oppression fueled the Second Wave Feminist Movement. Yet today Matilda Joslyn Gage is the least known of the three. Angelica Shirley Carpenter's biography does a lot to bring Gage's accomplishments to a modern audience. Of the three, Gage was the most radical, tracing women's oppresion to a coordinated effort of organized religion and civil governments. She was also the most scholarly, looking into the hostory of women's oppression. Her writings on this appeared in the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage, and in much greater detail in her later work Woman, Church and State
This book relies a lot on papers preserved by Gage's children who settled in the Dakota Territory in the 1880s. This may explain why the book was published by the South Dakota Historical Society. The title is based on Gage's assertion that, lacking the basic right to vote, women were treated similar to criminals by society.

The Kitchen Madonna

The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden

The Kitchen Madonna is a 1960s children's book about Marta, a middle aged female Ukrainian refugee, who has taken a job as a nanny/housekeeper for a London married cople who are professional architects. They have two children, Gregory (9) and Janet (7), and have had a series of one-year contract foreign nannies that have left Gregory introverted and shy. When Marta arrives seeking a home rather than an address in London, she becomes the secure center that Gregory has been missing. However, when Gregory finds out that Marta is not happy because their new modern home doesn't have a "good place" in the kitchen, a small shrine with an icon, candle, and flower vase, he sets out to find her a Ukrainian icon in busy, modern London. See how it all turns out in The Kitchen Madonna.
Given the current war in Ukraine and the vast number of Ukrainian refugees, this book has a special value today for understanding the good hearted nature of the Ukrainian people and their simple faith and values.