jane addams- spirit in action by louise w. knight

5/19/2018 Jane Addams- Spirit in Action by Louise W. Knight

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University of Richmond

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Rhetoric and Communication Studies FacultyPublications

Rhetoric and Communication Studies

2011

Jane Addams: Spirit in Action By Louise W. KnightMari Boor TonnUniversity of Richmond, [email protected]

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Recommended CitationTonn, Mari Boor. "Jane Addams: Spirit in Acitionby Louis W. Knight." Rhetoric & Public Aairs 14, no. 3 (2011): 552-55. doi:10.1353/rap.2011.0034.
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Jane Addams: Spirit in Action.By Louise W. Knight. New York: W. W. Norton

and Company, ; pp xi + . . cloth.

Progressive Era reormer Jane Addams is recalled best as synonymouswith the U.S. settlement house movement, having coounded the

nations first and largest settlement house, Hull House in Chicago in

. President Barack Obama, himsel a proud ormer community organizer

in the City with Big Shoulders, points to Addams as inspiring the engaged,

immediate grassroots approach to social transormation he heralded as a

chie bona fide in his presidential bid. But Addamss boundless reorming

spirit led to a list o nearly Herculean career accomplishments in controversial

campaigns or ree speech, peace, civil rights or women and racial and ethnicminorities, and on behal o workers, including child laborers. Addams was

the first American woman (and second globally) to receive the Nobel Peace

Prize, and coounded the , the , the first national womens trade

union organization o the twentieth century, and the Womens International

League or Peace and Freedom, which she led as its first President. Vice

President o the premier womans suffrage organization (), she also

served as a board member o myriad inuential socially progressive groups.

Courted or support by Presidents Teodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson,with whom she sometimes openly sparred ideologically, Addams hersel

occasionally was hoisted as a presidential prospect despite being denied, as

a emale, the right to vote. Honors bestowed on her ar-reaching liework


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continue: in , ten prominent historians placed her among the most

inuential figures in U.S. history.

Te common temptation to perceive greatness as imprinted at birth,however, is skillully disabused in Louise Knights meticulous, insightul,

and ofen poignant biography,Jane Addams: Spirit in Action,which traces

the complicated odyssey o a well-heeled idealistinitially conicted by her

material privilege, disappointed by gender-codes confining her ambitions,

and haunted by amilial ghosts and dutiesinto the pantheon o U.S. politi-

cal idols. O particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Knight weaves into

Addamss arresting tale her early baptism into public speaking, writings that

shaped her expression in public orums, rhetorical strategies she employed,and platorm ailures as well as successes. A prolific speaker, Addams penned

ten books despite an exhausting schedule and the pressures o persistent ill

health and complex amilial duties. Knights biography is a tour de orce and

merits space on the shelves o anyone, scholar and citizen alike, interested

in mining national progress and identity through tales o individuals who

devoted their lives to charting a new national course.

Chapter , Te Dreamer, recounts significant early imprints on Addams,

orming the admixture o trepidation and confidence that marked the firstthree decades o her lie. Te daughter o the townships wealthiest industrial-

ist, who also was a state legislator with strong views on moral duty, Addams

lost her mother and sister when she was two and six years old, respectively;

at our, she suffered spinal tuberculosis that lef her sel-conscious o her

crooked back; and at eight, she experienced a seismic amilial shif with

her athers remarriage to a stern and demanding widowed mother whose

constant ury nurtured Janes early tendency to conict avoidance. Forbidden

to attend Smith College, she nonetheless was exposed to texts by and aboutwomen at Rockord Teological Seminary, including work by Margaret Fuller.

Following exposure to Cicero and others, she inaugurated the seminarys

intramural public speaking event and competed as the first woman in the

Illinois intercollegiate oratorical contest, placing fifh behind second-place

winner, William Jennings Bryan.

Chapter , Freedom Seeker, reveals ways material privilege ails to

vaccinate against common human struggles. Following the assassination

o President Garfield by a deranged amily riend and her brother Webersinstitutionalization or paranoid schizophrenia, her ather died during a

vacation he had taken to ameliorate stress. Overwhelmed by pressing amilial

duties, including the care o her hostile, dependent stepmother, Jane suffered


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a nervous collapse that was diagnosed as moral ailurea diagnosis that she

internalized. A European jaunt to heal exposed the ragile Jane to transormative

experiences via the writings o olstoy and Mills and the sights o Londonslums, birthing her plan or a U.S. settlement house.

Chapter , Activist, is perhaps Knights richest chapter, recording the

intricacies or Hull Houses design, Addamss depletion o her inheritance to

finance the endeavor, her gradual immersion into labor union politics and

womans suffrage, and her discovery o her own views and voice, including

her philosophical conversion rom ingrained aith in genteel benevolence

as social remedy to embracing gloves-off savvy political activism to secure

her athers abled ineriors their own agency. Conceived in the s whenChicago unemployment rose to a stunning percent, Hull House boldly

offered an unprecedented co-ed experience, a health clinic, kindergarten,

daycare, evening educational programs, and the like. Strongly inuenced

by outspoken political activist and Hull House resident, Florence Kelley,

and the devastating Pullman Strike, Addams joined the Civic Federation,

a conglomerate o industrialists, labor oficials, and community activists.

Her reusal to take a side on the strike disappointed labor unions but gave

her a birds eye exposure to political corruption, prompting her to oregopatronizing charity in avor o securing workers own economic power. Such

experiences likewise triggered her passionate conversion to womens rights,

especially to securing the vote. Although Addams sometimes publicly argued

that women have not abused power because they had little, at other times

she strategically advanced the shop-worn expediency argument: Women

needed the vote to develop as citizens and ulfill their civic duties ().

Chapter , Political Ethicist, details her beginnings as a peace activist,

her orays into penning her evolving moral philosophy, her troublesomeantilynching speech predicated on aulty assumptions o black rapists, her

controversial advocacy o due process or the assassin o President McKinley,

her immersion into child labor reorms, and the origins o her intimate

relationship with Mary Rozert Smith, with whom she shared a devoted

decades-long relationship equivalent to marriage. Knight rightly expends

numerous pages analyzing Addamss wrong-headed stumble in her lone

antilynching speech but perhaps too generously suggests her ailure was

linked to lack o personal experience. Knight is ar stronger when analyzingAddamss book, Newer Ideals, (hated by Roosevelt) critiquing the books

militarism and lack o linear logic even as she judges that it was a cogent,

conceptually bold book and the most intellectually ambitious book she


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would ever write (). Here and elsewhere, Knight points to the prophetic

ethos o a privileged woman who aligned with immigrants, workers, Arican

Americans, and other marginalized groups when demonized othernessthreatened to unravel undamental national principles.

Chapter , Politician, explores urther Addamss immersion into labor

politics and her tempestuous relationship with Roosevelt and a Progressive

Party, which played chess in its platorm with womans suffrage, peace, and

the rights o Arican Americans. She viewed as a colossal moral ailure

() her partys rejection o a civil rights plank and reusal to seat Arican

Americans, but she did not resign as a delegate, which Knight attributes to

her commitment to the womans suffrage plank. Tese pages especially engagethe tensions and complex decisions guiding Addamss navigation o political

pragmatism and her moral belies.

Chapter , Dissenter, chronicles her concomitant rise internationally as

a spokesperson or world peace and diplomacy, and her precipitous all rom

grace in the United States or her principled opposition to World War I. Her

tireless work or social justice eventually rehabilitated her public ethos, but

the rabid criticism o her as unpatriotic lef enduring psychic scars.

Te final chapter, Ambassador, urther treats Addamss ar-reachinginternational work, including her ambivalence about the League o Nations,

her ree speech activities surrounding the inamous Palmer Raids, Eleanor

Roosevelts assuming the mantle o human rights advocate at the United Na-

tions, and Addamss death at ollowing decades o escalating chronic illness,

which prevented her rom receiving her Nobel Prize in person. Particularly

poignant is the treatment o Addamss awareness o growing cultural obses-

sion with sexual relationships and the risk thus posed by her decades-long

bond with Smith, even as the degree o their intimacy remained captive tospeculation. Knight writes, Jane would have said perhaps the important

thing was not where she and Mary loved sexually but that they loved ().

Knights biography is a well-written, well-researched, inspiring, incisive,

and reective book, published on the th anniversary o the birth o a woman

who is remembered as a larger-than-lie figure, but who hersel suffered the

disappointments, insecurities, and travails o the ordinary olks to whom

she dedicated her ortune and lies energy to empowering. Jane Addams:

Spirit in Actionis worth every penny o its sticker price and more.

M B , University of Richmond

jane addams- spirit in action by louise w. knight

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