Women's Rights before Suffragettes by Diane Scott Lewis

Celebrate Women's History Month

I once had a critique group where the only male member protested my female character's feminist-like qualities. She was eighteenth-century and women didn't demand their rights until the twentieth-century, so he insisted.

Suffragettes 1914

I had to explain how wrong he was.

Most people don't realize that women have been asking for rights for centuries.
I see it in book reviews all the time: the spunky heroine behaves in too modern a manner.

However, history if full of such women, if you look for them.

Aphra Behn was a writer, playwright and translator who lived in England in the 1600s. She championed the rights for women to speak their minds. She was also one of the first Englishwomen to earn a living by her own writing. She became the inspiration for future female authors. Charles II appreciated her intelligence and used her as a spy in Antwerp.
Her first play, The Forc'd Marriage, in 1670, criticized women being forced into often unhappy or cruel arranged marriages.


Behn

Mary Astell, another Englishwoman, advocated equal education for women. She's been called the first English feminist and insisted that women were just as rational as men. And deserving of a similar education. In 1694, her book Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest put forth plans for an all female college where women could expand their minds. This at a time when most women weren't allowed to attend any college. She also wrote about the dangers of women being pushed into bad marriage choices.



Astell

Mary Wollstonecroft lived in the later eighteenth century, and was the mother of Mary Shelly (who wrote "Frankenstein").
Wollstonecroft advocated for equal education for women, writing two books on the subject. Her 1792 "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" put forth that women weren't naturally inferior to men, they just suffered from inadequate education. Today she's revered as a founding feminist philosopher.

Wollstonecroft

Women could also be as brave as men. Many participated in the American Revolution dressed as males. Deborah Sampson Gannet fought with Washington’s army dressed as a soldier. Sampson enlisted in 1782 with the 4th Massachusetts, as Robert Shurtleff. She achieved the rank of corporal in the battle of White Plains, and sustained injuries twice. Upon discovery of her sex, she was honorably discharged. And received a pension!

My heroine, Rowena, in "Her Vanquished Land" fights as a man during the American Revolution--but on the British side. She decodes messages for a mysterious Welshman. Soon, their relationship evolves even as the war might destroy them.

So my strong women are not anachronistic. History has kept most of them out of the history books.

Purchase Her Vanquished Land and my other novels at BWL
For more info on me and my books, check out my website: Dianescottlewis

Diane Scott Lewis lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and one naughty puppy.

Romance Is My Passion

To find my BWL novels...

What is Romance?  Is it simply a love story?  While all romances contain a love story, not all love stories are romances. Romances are a genre of fiction. As any other genre, it has conventions, just as mysteries, science fiction or westerns do. 

I love reading good romance novels.  Why? How?  With a grateful nod to poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Let me count the ways….

 

1  Romances have no boundaries.

Romance novels can go back centuries, spanning right through the decades to the present, and into the future. Why? Because love hasn’t changed over the years, plots and genres from historical, to young adult, to paranormal, to romantic drama, comedy. adventure, to western to suspense.  All genres live inside romance.

Nowadays we can read much more about the varieties of love thanks to the LGBTQ community and erotic fiction. At the end of the day:  love is love.

2 Romances can teach 

I know a few things about women’s roles in the first and second World Wars, how women got away with posing as male soldiers in the Civil War…Also how to run a b&b and catch a thief.  Would I pick up a non-ficton book or manual on these subjects? Maybe not.  But through my love of romance novels, I am now far better informed on many subjects. If well-written, the product of the author’s research is in a romance fiction. If a book is set in the 1940s, for example,  you’ll find out the news, slang, what type of clothes people were in fashion, what technology people used to travel and communicate. And it’s all delivered painlessly, as part of a great story. I always value a well researched, informative style of writing, in any genre.

3 Romances feature strong women

Do you like to read about shrinking violets?  With women strictly in the background getting coffee? About women with no voice or opinions?  Well, romance is not your cup of tea.  A good romance novel will show the strengths of a woman, even against adversity. Women will never be stereotyped as weak or “arm candy” or insignificant in romance novels. They are HER journey’s story.

4 Oh, there’s….the sex

Yes, except for in the sweet, close-the-curtain variety, there is, as in life, sex in romance novels. And, as in life, when it comes with consent, and in the right moments, it pulses with joy and wonderful variety!

5 Also relationships

What makes a good relationship? That is a complex question with many answers that are right for different people. By reading romance novels we can compare to our life relationships. That’s why it’s always puzzled me why men who keep loudly wondering “what do women want?” don’t read romance novels.  The answer lies within, fellas. 

6 And always, hope.

Anything  wrong with a little daydreaming of the perfect mate?  How else do we to know what to look for in life?

7 Romances make us laugh, cry…and wait!

That is Charles Dickens’ prescription for good storytelling.  We all like a laugh. There is often humor in romance. The laugh out loud kind, the clever wit, the  sharp one-liners. And who doesn’t like a good cry? Sadness and setbacks get our emotions stirring. And mixing in in a good galloping plot full of conflict, make us wait for ….

8.  Oh, those happy endings

Finally there is that much-derided guaranteed “happy ever after. “  Yes, you’ll find happy endings in romances as sure as the murder will be solved in mysteries and the cattle delivered in westerns. If the romance is good, that happy ending will be well-earned and worth the wait!

Why is the word "Feminism" demonized? By Sandy Semerad

          As a writer I know the power of words, and I’m constantly searching for the right words to make my stories live.

But recently I discovered the word “feminism” has been misunderstood. I had no idea until daughter Andrea received a rude response after she admitted she was a feminist. Made me wonder, why has this word been demonized?

Dictionary.com defines feminism as “advocating social, political, legal and economic rights for women equal to those of men.” Merriam-Webster has a similar definition.

          The term feminism originated in 19 century France, I learned. A second-wave began in the United States during the early 1960s with Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique.

Friedan wrote this book after talking with friends, who had given up their careers to become housewives. These women felt unfulfilled in their domestic roles, Friedan claimed. She blamed women’s magazines, run by men, for encouraging women to become mothers and housewives, rather than career women. A different scenario existed in the 1930s, when women’s magazines featured confident and independent women with careers, according to Friedan.

More recently Harvard MBA and radio host Samantha Ettus wrote The Pie Life to inspire working mothers and help them let go of the guilt. All women should keep their feet in the workplace, according to Ettus.

          

          Regardless of what Ettus and others have written to encourage women, I found a plethora of negative on-line comments, misconstruing the meaning of the word feminism. Many were under the impression that feminists were men haters, and these same folks left vile comments.

I had to stop reading these negative remarks or they would have poisoned me. Words can poison as Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto has proven in his experiments. Our bodies contain mostly water, and with that premise, Emoto filled several bottles with distilled water. Then he taped words to the bottles. When he read the words aloud, the molecules in the bottles reacted.

Emoto photographed these molecules and discovered that positive words like “love” created beautiful formations. Negative words like “I hate you” produced ugly, violent images. Emoto has written about his experiments in his book The Hidden Messages in Water.

Other researchers have confirmed Emoto’s research. Words have the power to change our lives, they say. 

For example, in a Psychology Today article, authors Newburn and Waldman used several examples to prove this theory. They mentioned an experiment by psychologists at Missouri State University who designed an exercise for patients in pain. They asked the patients to identify their deepest values and meditate on them. When the patients did as instructed, they were able to reduce their pain and distress. 

Everyone can do this exercise, the article said, and we can involve our family and friends by asking: “What is your deepest personal value?”

Before we can adequately answer this question, however, we must relax completely, close our eyes for 60 seconds and listen for the word or words that express our sincerest values, according to the Psychology Today article.

Words like “peace” and “love” reduce physical and emotional stress, they discovered.

          I tried this exercise several times. Each time I came up with different words: Love, creativity, family, peace, health/fitness, faith, determination, bliss/happiness, achievement, patience, respect, compassion, growth, optimism, education, sincerity, abundance, inspiration, excellence, strength, trust, justice/equality.

          But getting back to the word feminism, Andrea wanted to know if I considered myself a feminist. I told her I didn’t like labels, but given the meaning, I had to say, “Yes.” I believe in equal rights for everyone, and regret this word has been demonized.

When I asked daughter Rene, “Are you a feminist?” she didn’t hesitate. “Yes, women should have the same social, economic and political rights as men,” she said.

It pleases me to know my daughters understand the true meaning of this word and identify with it, but others don’t apparently and need a clarification, which is why I like what actress Martha Plimpton has said:

“I take a lot of pride in calling myself a feminist, always have,” Plimpton wrote in an e-mail. “We’re going to have to insist on correcting bigotry as it happens in real time. And fear of women’s equality, or the diminishment of it, is a kind of bigotry. I think it’s important to remove the stigma associated with women’s equality, and as such, yes, normalizing the word ‘feminist’ and making sure people know what it means is incredibly important…”

My latest book, A Message in the Roses, is loosely based on a murder trial I covered in Atlanta. You may get a copy here:

                           A MESSAGE IN THE ROSES

To Read more about my work and life, please visit my website:

  sandysemerad.com/