Sherwood Bonner

This Saturday morning, I find myself up in my office on campus working on my article on Sherwood Bonner. I've got about 12 days to get it done, and should be just fine, provided I don't waste lots of time doing things like blogging. But going over some notes, I ran across this wonderful quotation from Bonner's 1875 journal, and remembered that I meant to post it long ago:

“‘Regret more than ever that women are denied the privilege of voting. Am becoming more interested in politics. Am called a Radical, but who cares?’” (qtd. in Gowdy xviii).

This couple of lines say so much about Bonner and the bold way she lived her life. I just love the "who cares?" she gives us. She was such a determined woman and so determined to do things her way. It's worth pointing out that Bonner writes these lines as a postbellum Southern woman living in Boston, having more or less run away from a ne'er-do-well husband. She goes to Boston to try to make it as a writer--she wanted a life, a name, an identity of her own. And she wanted a way to support her young daughter, who she had to leave behind in Mississippi. Just imagine the scorn she risked (and indeed, did suffer from many people) by doing these things--leaving a husband, "abandoning" a child, daring to write about both the North and the South in unconventional ways. I could go on, but I need to get back to work...

Source: Gowdy, Anne Razey. Introduction. A Sherwood Bonner Sampler, 1869-1884: What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young Woman Can Say on a Variety of Topics. Ed. Anne Razey Gowdy. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2000. xiii-lxvii.