Helen Churchill Candee on Women in Oklahoma Territory

Blue Cereal — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 23:02:20 +0000

Candee’s contrast of O.T. home-seekers with “helpless, discouraged women, inefficient and parasitical” certainly cuts more sharply than her later works. At the risk of reading too much into one colorful phrase, perhaps this reflects a bit of her own “strength via defiance” – her own refusal to be a “helpless, discouraged woman”?

Candee was caring for two children in a frontier town. Divorce carried substantial social stigma, whatever her former society or current surroundings. It must have taken some grit and grind in practice, however much grace and style were manifested in the presentation. A little defensiveness or hostility is not inconceivable. It happens.

Helen Churchill Candee – An Introduction

Blue Cereal — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 22:22:47 +0000

Helen started her formal education in one of America’s first kindergartens, then attended several girls’ boarding schools of the sort only available to a certain quality of family – and even then mostly only those in New England. Before she was a teenager she spoke and wrote multiple languages, was schooled in grace and etiquette, and probably knew more history and literature than a majority of adult men in the nation at the time. She was particularly inspired, according to one diary entry, by an event at which Charles Dickens read aloud from one of his works.

How many of you have heard Dickens live? My point exactly.

HCC – Blue Cereal Education

Helen Churchill Candee on Women in Oklahoma Territory

Helen Churchill Candee – An Introduction