Women in Literature
The Arizona Territory was a beautiful and impressive area that deserved to have exquisite writings to represent the land. It was particularly the men who were allowed to publish their thoughts. Women’s writings were not looked upon as scholarly and not published for public enjoyment. In the late 1800's and early 1900's women's literature was underrepresented. The ideas of women and their creativity was discouraged. In Southern Arizona, this discouragement existed for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons attributed to this was that there were more limiting resources, an overabundance of women who were illiterate, and geography. Despite these and other stumbling blocks, two women overcame the odds and are seen as great women authors and literary achievers. Sharlot Hall and Frances Gillmor proved that women had a great deal to convey and exhibited the talent of literary expertise to accomplish their goals. Not only do they write about beauty and harmony, they write about the conflicts with the Indians and the hardships that other cultures had to endure in Arizona.
One reason that few women published literature was because they came to Arizona primarily with their husbands who were in the Army and needed to relocate. These women, who came from populated and larger cities, were exposed to a different way of life in Arizona. There were few educational facilities in the west to teach young ladies about literary traditions. A lot of these women had to take care of themselves, their children, growing food and teaching. They were rooted to the same spot, sometimes for months at a time. This deprived them of a lot of mental stimuli that may have gotten in more populated areas.(1 pg. 48) Therefore sheltered women in Arizona were not encouraged to write stories or poems. Not that they didn’t know how, they told stories all the time. Children loved to hear the stories of their mothers lives and backgrounds. Women just never knew there was a medium to get their work out, so that more than just their children were partial to stories and poems of landscapes and journeys across many different lands.
There is a wealth of information about Ms. Sharlot Hall. Her life was very complex and together it all ties together to tell the story of her fame. She can fairly justify that in a time when women were not encouraged to follow their dreams, she successfully did. Sharlot Hall definitely did a fair share of journeying to incorporate into her stories. She was born in 1870 in Lincoln County, Kansas at Prosser Creek. She claims to have been the first white child born there. Her father's side of the family came from Scotland. He was a trapper and buffalo hunter. Her mother was an easterner of Bohemian extraction. As a child, Sharlot was surrounded by male figures. She was shown many gruesome sights and taught a more violent way of life as a child.(2 pg. 539)
During the time when it was not common not usual for girls to go to school and study, her mother taught her to read at an early age and she eventually started to attend school. For her, this meant many long miles on horseback to a little room where a man of little education himself, attempted to teach a room full of children, most of them his own. Weather and natural conditions drove the Hall family from Lincoln County. They settled for about 2 years on a ranch in Barbour County, but living conditions still did not improve. Although times were rough, Sharlot and her brother still continued to attend school.(2 pg. 541)
Confounded by letters they received from relative who had settled in the Arizona Territory, they began a westward journey along the Santa Fe Trail. They traveled through harsh weather conditions with 2 covered wagons, led by four horses, and also had a herd of around 20 horses. There was one day where Sharlot, who rode side saddle, was thrown off her horse and injured herself. This injury plagued her for her entire life and at some points in time, actually had her bedridden.
After a hard journey of three months, the Hall family arrived in Arizona. They established a cattle ranch near the present town of Dewey. Pursuing their efforts to learn, Sharlot and her brother walked or rode the 4 miles each way to a small country school. After bad snows had killed off their cattle, the Hall’s got up and moved again about 5 miles up the road and reestablished an old placer gold mine. This took them about 5 years. Four years later, the mine was sold and the Hall’s went back to the Cattle ranch, but this time they concentrated on growing fruit.(2 pg. 543)
Women did not have the opportunity to study the works of other women. By not having much time to study or write was a disappointment for Hall. Knowing the role of physical labor women were supposed to play in the household, it was frustrating for Sharlot. She knew she had the writing talent to exceed those small expectations. At this time, Sharlot's health started to deteriorate from her spinal injury when she fell of the horse, nearly 10 years prior. She had become completely bed-ridden. She could not walk or even sit in a chair. So she began to write. Encouraged by the fact that she had had 2 poems published previously in the last few years, she knew it was something she could do as an invalid. Since her first piece of work, her writing was being accepted by many editors at a small price. These were mainly articles and poems. Despite negative prognoses about her condition, her health returned and stabilized. As the rest of her family got sicker, the hard labor of the orchard was left up to her and her mother. Although times were tough for a while, Sharlot found the time to keep on writing.
By proving to publishers and editors that women's writings were equally as talented and enjoyable to read as men's, she entered into a new realm to get acceptance for her work. She was still published from time to time. With the acceptance of an historical article, "The Camels in Arizona," her life hit a major turning point. This marked the beginning of her interesting writing career. From then on, her work as a writer influenced her portrayal as an historian also. The article, "Camels in Arizona", although making a name for herself, got her in touch with Charles Lummis, editor of Land of Sunshine, a California magazine.(2 pg. 542) Being new to the staff, and on the lookout for fresh talent, he asked Sharlot to send in more pieces or her work. Within the next few years of meeting Mr. Lummis, she produced 2 long articles, a short story, and 2 poems which published in the magazine.
By the turn of the century, Land of Sunshine, had improved to a large circulation and was regarded with more scholarly appeal. This meant more people took notice to Sharlot’s work. She even got to be published in the New York Evening Post, Atlantic, Current Literature, and even Ladies Home Journal.(2 pg. 543) By 1901, she was hired on Mr. Lummis’ staff. When the name of the magazine changed to Out West, Lummis chose Sharlot to write the dedicatory poem. This was a big accomplishment for her. Other magazines even reprinted the 7 stanza poem. Her other poem of fame, came when President Theodore Roosevelt announced that Arizona and New Mexico be admitted into the Union as a state. She sat down and wrote a long and sarcastic poem called, "Arizona", in which she vented her anger at how she thought Arizona should remain a territory. The poem was reprinted and sent to every United States Congressman. It was even read on the floor in both houses of Congress in Washington, D.C. "Arizona" was the first of her poems to be included in her anthology.(2 pg. 544)
At a time when men ran most businesses and women worked under men, she was now showing an effort to change that. She was demonstrating to the country that and educated and intelligent women could hold a high powered literary position and run an entire magazine. As Mr. Lummis’ time was now dedicated to the Los Angeles Public Library, Sharlot was forced into the dominant editorial role of the magazine. She still wrote though, and focused a lot of her writing to Arizona’s past and their present, associating with mining, the Indians, the desert, the forests, and the Grand Canyon. Some of her poems got to be so long, that they displayed epic qualities. By 1909, Sharlot thought her career needed to go further. So far in fact, that she ended up in politics! She took the position of Territorial Historian for the Women’s Club of Arizona.
During a time period when women were typically not travelers, they were more homebodies, she was privileged to be able to travel. This gave her the opportunity to travel all around Arizona, even to the most remote location, to take data. Arizona acquired full statehood in February of 1912. Along with this, the position of Territorial Historian was terminated because Arizona was no longer a territory. Although she could have gone on to be a State Historian, she decided to go back to the ranch and take care of it, and of her aging parents.(2 pg. 546)
Being a woman and being far from the presses and printing equipment, it was harder for women in the southwest to publish their own material. By not being in the hub of where most literary works were born, it was unexpected of her to come out with her own publication. She compiled all of her published poetry into a volume of verse called Cactus and Pine. It was an instant success. Even today, a later edition is still in print. In 1912, she was also inducted into the list of WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA. After this, her career came to a halt. It did not pick up again for about 12 years. This was due to her mothers death, and her second bout with invalidism, which kept her mobility restricted for some time. Her mother, who Sharlot revered as being her main source of inspiration left a big void in her life. Without writing, it left her in very difficult legal situations. She was also sued by a publishing house whom she promised a written History of Arizona, which she said she could not complete. (2 pg. 547)
Sharlot was a very persistent woman and never went unnoticed. In 1921, the University of Arizona, awarded her with an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1923, when she was 53 years old, her second literary life began. She started to write about a group of business and professional men, called the "Smoki", who developed a yearly pageant of ceremonials and dances drawn from Indian themes.
She was back into the limelight of Arizona, and published an enlarged volume of Cactus and Pine. She had traveled with the Women’s Club one time to Los Angeles, where she re-contacted her old friend Charles Lummis to confer what she should do with all the Arizonan artifacts she had collected over the past 35 years. It was all just sitting in boxes on her ranch. While in Los Angeles, she was the only other women to be accepted into the Gamut Club, a group of men who were writers and artists, other than Mary Garden, an opera singer.
Women in politics is a separate matter all together, but the general principle still stood, women were not involved. Sharlot was not done showing to the country her power as a woman. Shortly after her trip to Los Angeles, she was elected as Republican presidential elector. She was selected as the first woman to go to Washington D.C. to present Arizona’s vote to the electoral college. It was while she was there and visited all the museums, that she was dedicated to bring that idealism of what the museums meant to the community back to Arizona. After she returned, her father passed away. Without being able to get a fair price on the ranch, she took out a butchers license and butchered all the animals and sold the meat. She then moved to Prescott. She obtained a lease on one of the most historic mansions in the entire state.(2 pg. 549)
Today, this is known as the Sharlot Hall Museum. She lived on the grounds and donated all her artifacts from Early Arizoniana. Sharlot Hall died on April 9, 1943. She spent the last years of her life extremely devoted to her museum, while still in demand as a public speaker. Although her works are not read much any more, as long as the thousands of tourists keep visiting the Sharlot Hall museum, her spirit is still alive in the Southwest.
The only other female author/writer in the southwest during this time period was a woman by the name of Frances Gillmor. There is not much information about her in print, and she lived a bit later than Sharlot Hall. Her works though, are widely recognized. She was born in Buffalo, New York. Her father was a prosperous business man, and her mother a housewife. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Arts in 1928. After college, she went on to teach at many universities, including the University of Arizona. She was also a member of the Arizona Pioneer and Historical Society.(3)
With her degree from college, and a relatively easier life; she came from money, did not have to do a lot of physical labor, never took a vigorous cross country trip, like that of Sharlot Hall, she was not fought against when she wanted to write. Although times had changed since in the few years that Sharlot Hall had wanted to publish, Frances Gillmor did not meet many obstacles in her literary fame. Her first novel, "Thumbcap Weir," became an alternate selection in the Book of the Month Club. She wrote many novels, poems, short stories and biographies. Not only did she write about the history of Arizona, she also wrote book length publications of Spanish texts of dance dramas of Mexican villages. Through my personal research, I did not find a decease date, therefore I must assume that she is still alive. Today, that would make her 96 years old.
Sharlot Hall and Frances Gillmor were the only 2 known female writers to attribute their lives to the southwest in Arizona, but a few other women wrote about the frontier and pioneering towns and lands. These women include Ruth Murray Underhill, Erna Fergusson and Martha Summerhayes. Although not from Arizona, and generally putting more focus on the Southwestern United States, they did a lot to help women in the literary world. They got published and overcame hurdles of their own to make a name for women by demonstrating their writing talents.
Ruth Murray Underhill started as a social worker in New York City. She then began to study anthropology. This brought her to Arizona to study the Papago Indians. The rest of her research was centered around the Papagos. The majority of her work are biographical works about the Papagos. (4)
There is also Erna Fergusson, who resided in New Mexico, but studied the Indians immensely also. Her most famed book is called, "Dancing Gods: Indian Ceremonials of New Mexico and Arizona." She operated a tourist bureau before she began writing mainly about her own travels.(5)
A book still in circulation today is a novel called, "Vanishing Arizona," by Martha Summerhayes. She came to Arizona as a young bride. When Mrs. Summerhayes found out that her marriage was going to take her to Arizona, she wrote about it, "that dreaded and then unknown land, and the uncertain future was before me" (6). Martha didn’t last long in Arizona, and it wasn’t until after moving back to her home of Nantucket, when she began to write about Arizona. Her book, Vanishing Arizona, first appeared in a small printing at Philadelphia in 1908. It was well received, especially by army people. Interest in the book has grown and so the book keeps getting republished throughout the years, adding on letters that she had received in reaction to the books opening. Martha Summerhayes died in 1911, as the book has just published over 1,000 copies.(6)
Women writers today are just as common and usual
as men writers. Bookstores are filled with the many literary talents of
women from all over the world. A female writer would not shock a person
today. Very different from a short 100 years ago. Back in the late 1800’s
and early 1900’s, women’s literature was almost non-existent, and what
was around, was extremely underrepresented. Female viewpoints and female
poetry was not being published and given a fair chance. The public who
had only heard about the horrendous nature of Arizona through male eyes,
now had another option to consider. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of
women like Sharlot Hall and Frances Gillmor, women writers in Arizona now
had a name, and it continues to live on even in today’s literature.
Bibliography
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