Why Are Women Disappointed & Do We Ever Want to Be?

Sarah Josepha Hale Used Disappointment to Have America Better

A woman who used a true disappointment in behalf of the world, to have people seen with more justice, is the American writer and editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, who lived from 1788-1879.

Mrs. Hale was the editor for over 40 years of Godey's Lady's Book, the largest and most popular women's magazine of its time. She was also the author of one of the first novels in America titled, Northwood, about slavery, and Poems for Our Children, which included "Mary's Lamb" —better known as the song, "Mary Had a Little Lamb"—and many other books including a scholarly work, Woman's Record, or Sketches of Distinguished Women from the Creation to the Present Day, a copy of which Eli Siegel had in his library.

Sarah Josepha Hale was a force in America. She used the true disappointment many women had about how they were seen in the Victorian era—they were largely deprived of education, economic rights, and equal employment opportunities—to work for changes that are still in effect today. Her biographer writes:

She was the early champion of elementary education for girls equal to that of boys and of higher education for women. She was the first to advocate women as teachers in public schools....she helped organize Vassar College.... She began the fight for the retention of property rights for married women. She founded the first society for the advancement of women's wages, better working conditions for women and the reduction of child labor.

As a young girl, Sarah Josepha had a large desire to know the world. Her brother Horatio was attending Dartmouth College, and when he came home would teach Sarah what he was learning. Her biographer tells how she was "generous in her gratitude." Sarah wrote:

To my brother....I owe what knowledge I have of Latin, of the higher branches of mathematics, and of mental philosophy. He often regretted that I could not, like himself, have the privilege of a college education.

At 25, Sarah came to know and marry the young lawyer, David Hale, with whom she had five children. I believe he encouraged her mind and life very much. She describes how, soon after their marriage "We commenced...a system of study and reading." And:

The hours allotted were from eight o'clock until ten...How I enjoyed those hours! In this manner we studied French, Botany...obtained some knowledge of Mineralogy, Geology...In all our mental pursuits, it seemed the aim of my husband to enlighten my reason, strengthen my judgment, and give me confidence in my own powers of mind, which he estimated more highly than I did.

Here we see a woman glad to be grateful for the good affect of a man—not looking to be disappointed.

Early in her marriage, Sarah Hale was diagnosed with what was called quick consumption, for which there was no cure. Ruth Finely describes how Mrs. Hale accepted her fate, but David Hale would have none of it. He had done research on the good effects of grapes on her illness. It was Fall and he took her up to the mountains where the grapes were ripe, and they traveled for six weeks. "It was beautiful weather," Mrs. Hale recalled, and "I ate grapes." Ruth Finley writes how Mrs. Hale said that David:

Also...had a theory that fresh air ought to be good for sick lungs....[When] we stopped at the doctor's house on the way out of town...he vowed David would never bring me home alive. But David did bring me home, cured."

Tragically, after only seven years of marriage Sarah Hale's husband died suddenly, leaving her penniless and with 5 young children to support. But she did not use this to hate the world. She moved her family to Boston so she could work and provide for her children. It was at this time that she began her literary career and important work to have other women's lives better. In a lecture, "Mind and Emptiness" Eli Siegel said:

A tragedy occurs and the self is shocked. For a while nothing has meaning. If there is a largeness of mind in the woman to whom the tragedy occurs, she won't resent other people,...though she'll be sad, she will feel...a sense of kinship between herself and all other people.

When Sarah Hale saw the poverty that wives and families of working sailors endured in Boston, she founded the first Seaman's Aid Society. She wrote passionately:

The lot of the sailor's wife is of extreme hardship. The highest wages, which at the best of times a common seaman can obtain, is eighteen dollars a month—often he is obliged to accept ten or twelve dollars....

This left the sailor's family only enough money to "pay the rent and buy fuel" and forced his wife to support herself and their children at "grinding wages."

Mrs. Hale opened a store where the wives of the sailors could work for good wages and sell the clothing they made from their own hands to the public. She established the first day nurseries where women could leave their children while they worked. The store was a huge success.

During Sarah Hale's over 40 year editorship, Ruth Finley tells how Godey's Ladies Magazine:

Dared to criticize conditions theretofore unquestioned, and then crusaded against them. It suggested reforms, and then organized committees to actuate them. It..."publicized" the inequalities and injustices suffered by women...

Sarah Hale encouraged Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor, and other women to study medicine. She stood up for Dr. William T.G. Morton's discovery of anesthesia when he was attacked vehemently by his rivals and religious leaders, Ruth Finley writes how "she devoted pages of Godey's to his defense."

In an editorial in 1853, Sarah Hale invited inventors to make machines that would make life easier for American women. One result was the first washing machine. She published works by important writers of the day, including Edgar Allen Poe, and wrote articles encouraging better health and sanitation.

Meanwhile, a large matter in Sarah Josepha Hale's life was how she saw the American Civil War, which took place during her editorship of Godey's. Here, I believe, she made a large mistake which hurt her life. Louis Godey, the publisher, had a "no politics" policy, and the magazine at the height of its success was silent during one of the most important times in our nation. Her biographer tells how Mrs. Hale, having been born shortly after the American Revolution, had an enormous fear that her "beloved Union" might be dissolved. Though she was against slavery, she wrote about:

The great error of those who would sever the Union, rather than see a slave within its borders....

One can ask, "Was there something too soft in her against evil—the desire in people to have a war so they could continue to own human beings and use them for profit?" There are hints that she thought the abolitionists were too intense. She said of her novel "Northwood" that it "was written when what is now known as "Abolitionism first began to disturb seriously the harmony between the South and the North." And Ruth Finley describes how she republished the book to counteract "the inflammatory influences of Uncle Tom's Cabin."

How much did she feel that justice was worth fighting for, that there could be a beautiful fight? When she and the magazine chose to be silent, Ms. Finley writes, "it was no longer the arbiter of the nation's parlors," and it "never again...caught up with the times." Was Mrs. Hale deeply and rightly disappointed in herself?

Still, because of her important work, Sarah Hale was cared for by persons of her time who cared for justice, notably Charles Dickens. I'm very grateful that in our time, through the education of Aesthetic Realism, the drive in a woman to be disappointed can at last be criticized and change into an honest desire to know, an honest desire to find the world likeable, deeply satisfying. This is good will, the desire to "have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful." That desire, truly had, will never fail one, never disappoint.

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