The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age

by Myra MacPherson

Book Overview

A fresh look at the life and times of Victoria Woodhull and Tennie Claflin, two sisters whose radical views on sex, love, politics, and business threatened the white male power structure of the nineteenth century and shocked the world. Here award-winning author Myra MacPherson deconstructs and lays bare the manners and mores of Victorian America, remarkably illuminating the struggle for equality that women are still fighting today.

Victoria...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446570230
• ISBN13: 9780446570237
• Release Date: March 2014
• Publisher: Twelve
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Meandering hearsay

The book falls flat for me because of the author. Much of the first parts of the book is explained as questionable events based on conflicting accounts. So what really happened ? The sisters lied, contradicted themselves when convenient , manipulated freely especially men & together with their inherent beauty became powerful. And human perceptions as we’ve come to know are full of distortions & bias. The book is full of dates, events, names of people , interviews, speeches, etc. but there’s little information regarding the inner life & relationships, tbe true nature of the sister’s character or personalities. The continuous abuse & neglect they experienced as children from both parents carried well into their adult years by the men they wed or aligned themselves with, yet this area is ignored. I suspect a lot of their radical thinking & strange behaviors were rooted in the extreme dysfunction & mental illness within their family.Their mother sounds like she suffered from either schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. The siblings acted out as a way of surviving their crazy family! So for me it’s difficult to really appreciate & understand this story because it feels distorted & based on external interpretations . But I did get a sense of the times & marvel at the trajectory of their lives because it was remarkable given their origins.