Suffragist, author, and reformer, Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912) held classes in literature and morals for adults, spoke on women’s rights, and published many lectures, books, biographies, and reviews. As a young woman she was invited to Margaret Fuller’s weekly “Conversations” where she was profoundly affected by Transcendentalist philosophy. Here a page from her reading notes on the multi-volume fictional travel narrative of Anacharsis the Younger, which served as an encyclopedic introduction to ancient Greece for readers of the French original (first published in 1787 by Jean-Jacques Barthélémy) and its English translation.
Here she expresses doubts about Plato's advice for sharing wives and children: "I think no man educated as Plato would educate his warriors could be animated in battle by the cries of children whom he could not believe his own and by the sight of a wife whom he shared in common with other men.” Dall notes that she recorded these feelings not as an impartial assessment of Plato's thought, but because "years hence they might be of use to my little sister." Dall kept notes of different kinds on the same page--her personal observations are entered in a top register while in the bottom part of the page she records major events of Greek history with their dates in chronological order (BCE, Before the Common Era).
Comments
Developing An Opinion
In the early 19th century Caroline Wells Healy Dall had already begun her work in women's suffrage at the young age of fifteen by deciding to write down her opinions of Greek literature. By characterizing literature from a heartened woman's perspective in the form of descriptive notes, Caroline Wells Healy Dall was documenting herself as a literary who was different because she was not a man.
Brendan Ryan
The Brendan Ryan Company
Houston, Texas