Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:31:56.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“My ‘Partner’ in Law and Life”: Marriage in the Lives of Women Lawyers in Late 19th and Early 20th-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Virginia G. Drachman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay examines the ways in which women lawyers of two generation–the pioneer generation of the 1880s and the “new woman” generation of the 1910s–confronted the dilemma of marriage and career. Members of the Equity Club in the 1880s revealed three distinct sets of attitudes toward balancing marriage and career: the separatist approach that a professional woman must remain single; the Victorian attitude that a married woman must sacrifice her career; and the integrated approach that a woman could have both marriage and career. Women lawyers surveyed by the Bureau of Vocational Information in 1920 revealed that the “new woman” generation of women lawyers lived in an era of transition. While they shared the same separatist, Victorian, and integrated views toward marriage and law practice as did women lawyers in the 1880s, they also embraced the new values of the early 20th century which shaped both the contours of the legal profession and the parameters of women's lives. Set within the context of the new values of the era, the separatist, Victorian, and integrated approaches to resolving the dilemma of marriage and career, which were originally formulated by women lawyers in the late 19th century, assumed new meanings for women lawyers in the early 20th century.

Type
Article Commentary
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Spring 1989 , pp. 221 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1989 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lelia J. Robinson to the Equity Club, May 22, 1889, Boston, Box 17, folder 406, Lelia Robinson Papers, Dillon Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. (hereinafter referred to as “Schlesinger Library”).Google Scholar

2 Bureau of Vocational Information questionnaire on women lawyers, in Beatrice Doerschuk, Women in the Law: An Analysis of Training, Practice and Salaried Positions, Bureau of Vocational Information, Bull. No. Three, at 134 (New York, 1920).Google Scholar

3 Ronald Chester, Unequal Access: Women Lawyers in a Changing America 8 (South Hadley, Mass., 1985).Google Scholar

4 Jerold S. Auerbach, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (New York, 1976) (“Auerbach, Unequal Justice”).Google Scholar

5 On the new legal history, see Botein, Stephen, “Professional History Reconsidered,” 21 Am. J. Legal Hist. 125–56 (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The other leading study of the history of the legal profession in modern America also essentially omits women. Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law (2d ed. New York, 1986) (“Friedman, History”). There is a brief discussion of women's access to legal education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Robert Stevens, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850's to the 1980's at 82–84 (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1983) (“Stevens, Law School”).Google Scholar

7 Women made up less than 3% of the lawyers in the legal profession through the first half of the 20th century. In contrast, they were 4.7% in 1970, 9.2% in 1976, and 12.0% in 1980. See Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law 4 (New York, 1981) (“Epstein, Women in Law”).Google Scholar

8 Inez Milholland sought entry into the Harvard Law School after her graduation from Vassar College in 1909. See her letter to the Dean and Faculty of the Harvard School of Law, n. d., Inez Milholland Papers, Schlesinger Library. Several years later the Cambridge Law School for Women opened, providing legal courses to women by faculty of the Harvard Law School. See, e. g., Joseph H. Beale to Professor L. B. R. Briggs, June 3, 1915, Papers of LeBaron Russell Briggs, Radcliffe College Archives, Schlesinger Library; “Law School for Women,”N. Y. Times, Sept. 27, 1915, at 5 col. 5, and “First Women's Law School Opens This Fall,”N. Y. Times Mag., Oct. 3, 1915, at 14.Google Scholar

9 In the past decade historians have generated a considerable body of literature on the history of women doctors in America including Mary Roth Walsh, “Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply”: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835–1969 (New Haven, Conn., 1977) (“Walsh, ‘Doctors Wanted’”); Virginia G. Drachman, Hospital with a Heart: Women Doctors and the Paradox of Separatism at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, 1862–1969 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1984) (“Drachman, Hospital with a Heart”); Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York, 1985) (“Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science”); and Gloria Melnik Moldow, Women Doctors in Gilded-Age Washington: Race, Gender and Professionalization (Champaign, III., 1987) (“Moldow, Women Doctors”).Google Scholar

10 On women in the social sciences, see Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Feminism (New Haven, Conn., 1982) (“Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres”). On women in the sciences, see Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore, 1982).Google Scholar

11 Epstein, Women in Law (cited in note 7); Chester, Unequal Access (cited in note 3); Patricia M. Hummer, The Decade of Elusive Promise: Professional Women in the United States, 1920–1930 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1976); and Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar: Women Lawyers in a Changing Society (South Hadley, Mass., 1985). Other studies on the history of women lawyers include Kelly Weisberg, D., “Barred from the Bar: Women and Legal Educatoin in the United States, 1870–1890,” 28 J. Legal Educ., 485–507 (1977); Judy Jolley Mohraz, “The Equity Club: Community building among Professional Women” (unpublished paper of the Schlesinger Library);Chester, Ronald, “Women Lawyers in the Urban Bar: An Oral History,” 18 New Eng. L. Rev. 521–76 (1983); Dorothy M. Brown, Mabel Walker Willebrandt: A Study of Power, Loyalty, and Law (Knoxville, Tenn., 1984) (‘Brown, Mabel Walker Willebrandt”); and Jeanette E. Tuve, First Lady of Law: Florence Ellinwood Allen (New York, 1984). A sociological approach is provided byMoss Kanter, Rosabeth, “Reflections on Women and the Legal Profession: A Sociological Perspective,” 1 Harv. Women's L. Rev. 1–17 (1978).Google Scholar

12 On the impact of the doctrine of separate spheres on the lives of women in 19th century America see, for example, Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, Conn., 1977), (“Cott, Bonds”), and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1–30 (1975).Google Scholar

13 On the singular definition of womanhood see Nancy F. Cott, “Introduction,”The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn., 1987) (“Cott, Grounding”).Google Scholar

14 On slave culture, see Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (New York, 1976), and Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

15 There have been several important studies of women in the late 19th-century woman's movement, including Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (New York, 1980); Ruth Bordin, Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1920 (Philadelphia, 1981), and Mari Jo Buhle, Woman and American Socialism, 1870–1920 (Urbana, 1981).Google Scholar

16 On nursing see Barbara Melosh, “The Physician's Hand”: Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia, 1982), and Susan Reverby, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–1945 (New York, 1988). On women in medicine see Drachman, Hospital with a Heart; Moldow, Women Doctors; Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science; and Walsh, “Doctors Wanted: No Woman Need Apply” (all cited in note 9).Google Scholar

17 Walsh, “Doctors Wanted” 180, 186 (cited in note 9).Google Scholar

18 While the Washington College of Law accepted men as well as women, its co-founders, Emma Gillett and Ellen Spencer Mussey, opened the school specifically to provide legal training to women in Washington, D. C.Google Scholar

19 On women doctors see Walsh, “Doctors Wanted” at 186. On women lawyers see Chester, Unequal Access 8 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar

20 This discussion is drawn from the following sources: Friedman, History 525–66 (cited in note 6); Auerbach, Unequal Justice 7–101 (cited in note 4); Robert Stevens, “Two Cheers for 1870: The American Law School,”in Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn, eds., 5 Perspectives in American History 405–550 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Doerschuk, Women in the Law 11–35 (cited in note 2); Alfred Zantzinger Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law, Carnegie Foundation Bull. No. 15, passim (New York, 1921); and Daniel H. Calhoun, Professional Lives in America: Structure and Aspiration, 1750–1850 at 59–87 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).Google Scholar

21 Reed, Training (cited in note 20). Auerbach, Unequal Justice 40–48 (cited in note 4).Google Scholar

22 For a general overview of the Equity Club, see Mohraz, “The Equity Club” (cited in note 11).Google Scholar

23 On women's institutions building see Freedman, Esrelle., “Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870–1930,” 5 Feminist Studies 512–29 (1975).Google Scholar

24 Of the 30 women who wrote letters to the Equity Club from 1887 through 1890, 16 (53%) were married.Google Scholar

25 Robinson, Lelia J. LL. B., “Women Lawyers in the United States,” 2 Green Bag 10 (1890). Robinson uncovered a total of 120 women in law. She determined the marital status of 117 of them. Of the 117, 60 (51%) were married. By way of comparison, only 17% of women doctors in 1881 were married. This percentage was calculated by the author from Emily F. Pope, Emma L. Call, & C. Augusta Pope, The Practice of Medicine by Women in the United States (Boston, 1881). Morantz-Sanchez calculates the proportion of married women doctors in 19th-century America to be between 20 and 35% (Sympathy and Science, 135–36 (cited in note 9)). The percentage of married women lawyers is still remarkably high.Google Scholar

26 Mrs. Marion Todd to the Equity Club, April 4, 1888, Albion, Mich., Equity Club Annual, 1889, at 47, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

27 Emma Gillett to the Equity Club, April 27, 1889, Washington, D. C., Equity Club Annual, 1889, at 47, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

28 Mary Greene to the Equity Club, May 14, 1890, Boston, Equity Club Annual, 1890, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Rebecca May to the Equity Club, May 1, 1887, Ann Arbor, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

30 Corinne Williams Douglas to Friends of the Equity Club, May 7, 1887, Ann Arbor, Box 17, folder 405, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

31 Robinson, 2 Green Bag at 19 (cited in note 25).Google Scholar

32 Leoni R. Lonnsbury to the Equity Club, April 27, 1887, Omaha, Box 17, folder 405, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

33 Martha K. Pearce, Report of the Corresponding Secretary, Equity Club Annual, 1888, 11, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

34 Dorothy Thomas, “Emma Millinda Gillett,”in Edward T. James, ed., 2 Notable American Women, 1607–1950, at 36–37 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).Google Scholar

35 Linda Gordon elaborates on 19th-century feminists' assertions of women's right to sexual control in marriage in Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York, 1976) (“Gordon, Woman's Body”).Google Scholar

36 All quotes by Emma Gillett in this paragraph are from her letter to the Equity Club, April 27, 1889, Washington, D. C., Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

37 Id.Google Scholar

38 Information on women lawyers was drawn from Robinson, 2 Green Bag (cited in note 25); Weisberg, 28 J. Legal Educ. (cited in note 11); and Equity Club letters, Robinson Papers. See Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres, and Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science, for discussions of marriage in the lives of women social scientists and women doctors respectively. For a fuller analysis of the place of marriage in one professional woman's life, see Joyce Antler, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman (New Haven, Conn., 1986). For a discussion of marriage in the life of a woman lawyer see Brown, Mabel Walker Willbrandt (cited in note 11).Google Scholar

39 Lelia Robinson to the Equity Club, April 7, 1888, Boston, Equity Club Annual, 1888, 37–38, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

40 Lelia Robinson Sawtelle to Equity Club, Sept. 18, 1890, Boston, Equity Club Annual, 1890, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

41 Lelia Robinson Sawtelle to “my dear little Kitty Waugh,” Sept. 5, 1890, Boston, Box 2, folder 36, Grace H. Harte Papers of Dillon Collection, Schlesinger Library.Google Scholar

42 Catharine Waugh McCulloch to Equity Club, Nov. 8, 1890, Chicago, Equity Club Annual, 1890, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

43 Robinson Sawtelle to “Kitty Waugh,” Sept. 5, 1890.Google Scholar

44 Emma Haddock to the Equity Club, May 12, 1888, Iowa City, in Equity Club Annual, 1888, 20 Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

45 Laura A. W. LeValley to the Equity Club, April 20, 1888, East Saginaw, Mich., Equity Club Annual, 1888, pp. 30–31, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

46 Haddock to the Equity Club, May 12, 1888, in Equity Club Annual, 1888, 25.Google Scholar

47 Ada H. Kepley to the Equity Club, July 3, 1888, Effingham, Ill., in Equity Club Annual, 1888, 29, Robinson Papers, Box 17, folder 406. On Ada H. Kepley see Mrs. Peggy Pulliam, “Effingham's Fighting Female,” in Hilde Engbring Feldhake, ed., Effingham County Illinois–Past and Present 299–310 (Effingham, Ill., 1968), and Ada H. Kepley, A Farm Philosophy: A Love Story (Teutopolis, Ill., 1912), especially at 18–22.Google Scholar

48 Robinson, 2 Green Bag 26 (cited in note 25).Google Scholar

49 McCulloch to the Equity Club, Nov. 8, 1890.Google Scholar

50 Robinson Sawtelle to the Equity Club, Sept. 18, 1890.Google Scholar

51 Robinson Sawtelle to “Kitty Waugh,” Sept. 5, 1890.Google Scholar

52 Catharine Waugh McCulloch, “Commends Pledge Not to Wed Anti-Suffragists,” letter to the editor, Chicago Record Herald [1909] in Box 4, folder 121, Dillon Collection.Google Scholar

53 Ada M. Bittenbender to the Equity Club, May 10, 1889, Washington, D. C., Equity Club Annual, 1889, Box 17, folder 406, Robinson Papers.Google Scholar

54 On women and birth control in 19th-century America, see Gordon, Woman's Body (cited in note 35), and James W. Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

55 McCulloch, Chicago Record Herald (cited in note 52).Google Scholar

56 Catharine G. Waugh, “Women as Law Clerks,” handwritten reminiscence, 1888, Rockford, Box 4, Dillon Collection (“Waugh, ‘Women as Law Clerks’”). For a biographical sketch of McCulloch see Paul S. Boyer, “Carharine Gougher Waugh McCulloch,” in 2 Notable American Women 459–460.Google Scholar

57 Waugh, “Women as Law Clerks.”Google Scholar

58 “Author of Suffrage Bill,”Boston Globe, Aug. 11, 1913, Box 13, folder 70, Dillon Collection.Google Scholar

59 McCulloch to the Equity Club, November 8, 1890.Google Scholar

60 Over the course of the 55 years of their married life, both Frank and Catharine McCulloch led productive working lives. Much of what Catharine accomplished was independent of her husband, though she was always supported by his ardent encouragement. And yet, their legal partnership thrived as well. In 1929 they co-authored A Manual of the Law of Will Contests in Illinois, and in 1940 the Illinois Bar Association designated them “senior counsellors” in recognition of their many years of legal practice. See Boyer, 2 Notable American Women (cited in note 56).Google Scholar

61 For the number of women lawyers, see Epstein, Women in Law 4 (cited in note 7). On changes in the legal profession see Auerbach, Unequal Justice (cited in note 4), and Stevens, Law School (cited in Note 6).Google Scholar

62 On the changing perception of womanhood in the early 20th century, see Cott, Grounding (cited in note 13).Google Scholar

63 On the rise of a science of society and its impact on American culture, see, e. g., Edward A. Purcell, Jt., The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value (Lexington, Ky., 1978). On medicine, see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of American's Hospital System (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

64 See Cott, Grounding (cited in note 13), and Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres (cited in note 10).Google Scholar

65 Chester, Unequal Access, p. 8 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar

66 Doerschuk, Women in Law at vii (cited in note 2).Google Scholar

67 Cott defines this period as an era of crisis and transition for women in The Grounding of Modern Feminism (cited in note 13).Google Scholar

68 Bureau of Vocational Information, questionnaire #26, n. d., folder 133a, Bureau of Vocational Information Collection, Schlesinger Library (hereinafter referred to as “Bureau”).Google Scholar

69 Bureau, questionnaire #190, April 19, 1920, folder 134a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Bureau, questionnaire #150, March 1, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

71 Bureau, questionnaire #254, August 10, 1920, folder 133a.Google Scholar

72 Bureau, questionnaire #142, March 5, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

73 Bureau, questionnaire #148, March 2, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

74 Bureau, questionnaire #144, March 3, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

75 Bureau, questionnaire #134, n. d., folder 134.Google Scholar

76 Bureau, questionnaire #144, March 31, 1920, folder 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 Bureau, questionnaire #152, March 20, 1920, folder 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Bureau, questionnaire #189, n. d., folder 134a.Google Scholar

79 Bureau, questionnaire #131, March 27, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

80 Bureau, questionnaire #136, March 12, 1920, folder 133a.Google Scholar

81 Bureau, questionnaire #147, March 2, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

82 Bureau, questionnaire #29, April 6, 1920, folder 133a.Google Scholar

83 Bureau, questionnaire #109, April 3, 1920, folder 133.Google Scholar

84 Bureau, questionnaire #123, April 5, 1920, folder 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

85 Bureau, questionnaire #136.Google Scholar

86 Bureau, questionnaire #161, March 2, 1920, folder 134a.Google Scholar

87 Bureau, questionnaire #172, March 5, 1920, folder 134a.Google Scholar

88 Memo on Madeleine Zabriski Doty by Roger N. Baldwin, Oct. 1978, box 1, folder 4, Madeleine Zabriski Doty Papers, Schlesinger Library.Google Scholar

89 Gordon, Woman's Body (cited in note 35).Google Scholar

90 Inez Milholland to Eugen Jan Boissevain, October 18, 1913, box 1, folder 2, Milholland Papers. On Inez Milholland, see Paul S. Boyer, “Inez Milholland Boissevain,” in 1 Notable American Women 188–90. On changing sexual mores in the early 20th century, see McGovern, James R., “The American Woman's Pre-World War I Freedom in Manners and Morals,” 55 J. Am. Hist. 315–33 (1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91 Bureau, questionnaire #122, n. d., folder 134.Google Scholar

92 Bureau, questionnaire #304, July 20, 1920, folder 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

93 Bureau, questionnaire #156, March 8, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

94 Bureau, questionnaire #145, March 1, 1920, folder 134.Google Scholar

95 Bureau, questionnaire #146.Google Scholar

96 The tension between marriage and career persists in the late 20th century. See Chambers, David L., “Accommodation and Satisfaction: Women and Men Lawyers and the Balance of Work and Family,” 14 Law & Soc. Inquiry 251 (1989), andFuchs Epstein, Cynthia., “Law Practice and Marital Partners: Strains and Solutions in the Dual-Career Family Enterprise,” 24 Human Relations 549–64 (1971).Google Scholar