Abstract
This is not a fun read! It is, however, a treasure trove of everything a research historian would ever possibly want to know about Jane Addams, her family, friends, and travels between the time she graduated Rockford Seminary in 1881 and when she visited Toynbee Hall in 1888. This was the inspiration that led to her establishing Hull House. Unfortunately, this volume ends prior to any correspondence related to Hull House, but I suspect that correspondence will be covered in the third volume. This book is 808 pages, including 50 pages of bibliography, 65 pages of index, and voluminous footnotes after each introductory chapter and each letter. Some of the footnotes are fascinating, such as those about Charlotte Gilman Perkins and Harriet and Samuel Barnett, founders of Toynbee Hall, but many give unnecessary details about the lives of virtually everyone mentioned in any of the letters. The book does trace the evolution of Addams from a shy, sick, compliant young woman intent on being “good” and pleasing her family to her later evolution as the independent woman-identified pioneer in social work, progressive politics, and advocacy for peace.
The book is organized into four sections, arranged chronologically. Each section begins with a long, detailed account of what was happening in Addams's life, both internal and external. In the first section, we meet a young woman suffering the sturm and drang of late adolescence, who has just left her happy years with women she admired and loved at Rockford Seminary. Soon after she returned home, her father died, and she became ill. Her struggle between the societal obligations to family and her wish for her own life highlight this section, and this thread continues throughout the book. We experience the context of middle-class Victorian America and its rigid role expectations of unmarried daughters. Another theme was Addams's desire to live a useful life, influenced by her father and her religion. Without it being named, we see the influence of the Social Gospel Movement in her development.
Most of the letters, which are included, are to and from family members. Addams also maintained correspondence with friends and former women faculty from Rockford Seminary. She did not ever seem to have had any interest in men but did maintain correspondence with her brothers and brothers-in-law. Ellen Starr Gates was, at first, one of many friends, but by the last section, there was a frequent and increasingly intimate correspondence between them. One letter may reinforce the speculation that they were lovers. On March 17, 1888, Ellen wrote to Jane from Pompeii (Jane remained in Rome to recover from a sciatica attack): “The double bed is even wider than ours. I wonder if I am wicked to wish that you were on one edge of it, & [sic] I in the middle, comme toujours” (p. 582).
It is not until the last two letters, in June and July 1888, that we learn of Addams's visit to Toynbee Hall. Addams's decision to start Hull House appears to have been how she finally overcame her feeling of uselessness and actualized her desire to give meaning to her life. We learn more about Toynbee Hall from the introductory chapter of this last section of the book. The activities were threefold: education, civic involvement and participation, and social life and entertainment. The goal was to make “an educated and politically conscious working class and a socially conscious upper class” (p. 494). This section will resonate with social workers who have advocated a developmental, nonpathologizing, politically conscious approach to the profession.