This is one of a large series devoted to Chicago writers. These articles are expansions of ones written as introductions to two anthologies of Chicago writing I did: first, with David Starkey, Smokestacks and Skyscrapers, and second, my Black Writing from Chicago. See links at end to go to complete lists of the writers covered, and to the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, a leading literary organization I am currently on the board of. Most of this article was written by David Starkey.
Today she may be better known as the mother of naturalist Donald Culross Peattie, but in her day Elia Wilkinson Peattie was a crusading reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune and the author of more than 30 books. Born in 1862 to a proud, financially unsuccessful father, Elia Peattie was forced to quit school in seventh grade, her early poverty giving her a work eteic that never abated. She married a fellow writer, Robert, who was remarkably supportive of her career. In fact, she sometimes dictated stories to him in the evening as she sewed. Influential as a critic as well as a social reformer, Peattie was an outspoken advocate of women’s suffrage and women’s rights. She died in 1935.
In our book Smokestacks and Skyscrapers: An Anthology of Chicago Writing, we included a passage from her 1914 novel The Precipice, a novel of ideas. It chronicles Kate Barrington’s escape from downstate Silvertree to Chicago, where she becomes involved in social welfare. Working for a time with Jane Addams (with whom Elia Peattie herself was friends) Kate, by the end of the novel, is offered the directorship of the Bureau of Children by the President of the United States. After deflecting a number of lesser proposals, she also manages to find a husband willing to honor her sense of independence.
Chapter 5 shows Kate balancing the demands of her own strong will and conscience with the constraints of early 20th Century society. She is carrying a neglected infant in her arms when she runs into two acquaintances, one of whom, Mrs. Barsaloux, is appalled that Kate would actually touch a poor child. After listening to Kate recount some of her troubles as a social worker to her friends David and Honora Fulham, we admire (or perhaps wince at) the way she is able to gracefully handle Dr. von Shierbrand, who “expected women to be amusing.” One of Chicago literature’s early feminist protagonists, Kate has the courage to wonder “what sort of world it would be if there were no men in it at all.”
In the second paragraph of the excerpt from The Precipice, we read: “It was her business to adjust the lives of children—which meant that she adjusted their parents’ lives also. She arranged the disarranged; played the providential part, exercising the powers of intervention which in past times belonged to the priest, but which, in the days of commercial feudalism, devolve upon the social worker.” Here a self-righteous paternalism—or maternalism—shines through but also the precision of Elia Peattie’s style. And with the phrase “commercial feudalism” we see Peattie place her feminism within an economic context perhaps more pertinent today than it was in the early 20th Century.
♦ Go HERE for a list of Chicago writers, many from Smokestacks and Skyscrapers, and HERE for a list of Black writers, many from Black Writing from Chicago. Read my article on the founding of The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, where I currently serve on the board of directors.
