Winnifred Harper Cooley (October 2, 1874 – October 20, 1967) was an American author and lecturer.
Winnifred Harper Cooley | |
|---|---|
 Advertisement for Cooley's 1893 lecture series | |
| Born | October 2, 1874 Terre Haute, Indiana |
| Died | October 20, 1967 |
| Occupation(s) | Author and lecturer |
| Notable work | The New Womanhood |
Early life
editBorn in Terre Haute, Indiana, she was the daughter of Ida Husted Harper.[1]
Cooley graduated in 1896 with an A.B. in Ethics from Stanford University.[2]
Personal life
editIn 1899, she married George Elliot Cooley, a Unitarian minister.[2] The couple lived in Vermont and Michigan before finally settling in New York City.[2] Cooley was widowed in 1926.[2]
Professional life
editCooley was a prolific writer.[1] Her best known work is The New Womanhood (1904). In The New Womanhood, Cooley lists the achievements of the New Woman as 1- education (lower, higher, professional), 2- employment (industrial, commercial), and 3- recognition (legal and civil).[3]
In "The Younger Suffragists" (1913), Cooley distinguishes herself and the "younger feminists" from the "older suffragists" and their idea that gaining the ballot will change the world for women.[4] Although the term would become widespread in the 1960s and 1970s, only a small group of women called themselves feminists in the early 20th century.[5][6] Cooley was among this first generation of self-proclaimed feminists. According to Cooley, "A feminist is always a suffragist, but a suffragist is not always a feminist."[6] Cooley saw the suffragists as more conservative than the broader outlooked feminists.[6] For feminists, suffrage was a path to complete social revolution.[4]
Beginning in 1923, Cooley hosted a biweekly dinner forum facetiously called "The Morons" which drew as many as 300 attendees.[2]
References
edit- ^ a b McCormick, Mike (2005-01-01). Terre Haute: Queen City of the Wabash. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738524061.
- ^ a b c d e Kessler, Carol Farley (1995-01-01). Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before, 1950. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815626558.
- ^ Cassedy, Steven (2014-01-01). Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Stanford University Press. p. 135. ISBN 9780804788410.
Winnifred Harper Cooley.
- ^ a b Keetley, Dawn (2005-02-22). A Documentary History of American Feminism: 1900 To 1960. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742522251.
- ^ Dicker, Rory (2016-01-26). A History of U.S. Feminisms. Seal Press. ISBN 9781580056144.
- ^ a b c Weber, Sandra (2016-03-30). The Woman Suffrage Statue: A History of Adelaide Johnson's Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony at the United States Capitol. McFarland. ISBN 9781476624228.
External links
edit
- Online text of The New Womanhood
- The New Womanhood Online text at Internet Archive