Women’s History Month: Voltairine de Cleyre
In honor of Women’s History Month 2011, I’ve selected one woman to profile every day from March 1st - March 31st, 2011.
Voltairine de Cleyre: In the words of Emma Goldman, “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced.”
Why? Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down the price of prostitution to the level of the wages Of Your starving shirt makers; when robbers sit in State and national Senate and House, when the boasted “bulwark of our liberties,” the elective franchise, has become a U. S. dice-box, wherewith great gamblers play away your liberties; when debauchees of the worst type hold all your public offices and dine off the food of fools who support them, why, then, sits Moses Harman there within his prison cell? If he is so great a criminal, why is he not with the rest of the spawn of crime, dining at Delmonico’s or enjoying a trip to Europe? If he is so bad a man, why in the name of wonder did he ever get in the penitentiary?
Ah, no; it is not because he has done any evil thing; but because he, a pure enthusiast, searching, searching always for the cause of misery of the kind which he loved with that broad love of which only the pure soul is capable, searched for the data of evil. And searching so he found the vestibule of life to be a prison cell; the hohest and purest part of the temple of the body, if indeed one part can be hoher or purer than another, the altar where the most devotional love in truth should be laid, he found this altar ravished, despoiled, trampled upon. He found little babies, helpless, voiceless little things, generated in lust, cursed with impure moral natures, cursed, prenatally, with the germs of disease, forced into the world to struggle and to suffer, to hate themselves, to hate their mothers for bearing them, to hate society and to be hated by it in return, -a bane upon self and race, draining the lees of crime. And he said, this felon with the stripes upon his body, “Let the mothers of the race go free! Let the little children be pure love children, born of the mutual desire for parentage. Let the manacles be broken from the shackled slave, that no more slaves be born, no more tyrants conceived.” — Sex Slavery, Voltairine de Cleyre (courtesy of GonzoTimes.com)
Voltairine de Cleyre was virtually unknown even among libertarians until the recent anthologies were published in 2004 and 2005. She is discussed only briefly in histories of American anarchism and is not even mentioned at all in the more general studies of James Joll, George Woodcock, and Daniel Guerin. Though her writing was both voluminous and powerful, she had appeared in only one modern anarchist anthology until three anthologies of her works were published in 2004 and 2005. Only two modern collections of American radical thought include her classic “Anarchism and American Traditions;” and ironically, neither is primarily anarchist in content.
Voltairine de Cleyre was, in the words of her biographer, Paul Avrich, ” A brief comet in the anarchist firmament, blazing out quickly and soon forgotten by all but a small circle of comrades whose love and devotion persisted long after her death.” But “her memory,” continues Avrich, “possesses the glow of legend.” — Bio page, voltairine.org
If you read one of my earlier Women’s History Month posts, then you know I featured Sharon Presley. Dr. Presley is one of the few people who has brought much-needed attention to de Cleyre’s work. Although I am recycling some information here, it is important to make sure de Cleyre’s gets some attention.
(Side note: Sorry for the late post. I usually try to get the bios together in sets of two or three. I’ll post one the same day, then set the next few bios to future post. It helps me keep on top of everything, but sometimes I still get a little behind; by the time I had a chance to work on this last night, I was pretty spent for the evening. My bad. This is a backdated post because it drives me nuts to see holes in a series like this.)
Links: Wikipedia page
Website (run by Sharon Presley; includes online archives of her writings)
Facebook fan page (run by Sharon Presley)
Wikiquote page
Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre-Feminist, Anarchist, Genius
de Cleyre related posts on Gonzo Times
Voltairine de Cleyre: Penitent Priestess of Anarchism (transcription of the above video)
