Emma Goldman.pdf

305

A feminist search for love

Emma Goldman on the politics of marriage, love,

sexuality and the feminine

Feminist Theory

SAGE Publications

(London,

Thousand Oaks, CA

and New Delhi)

vol. 4(3): 305–320.

[1464-7001

(200312) 4:3;

305–320; 037059]

www.sagepublications.com

Lori Jo Marso Union College, NY, USA

Abstract This article explores the life and work of Emma Goldman to

formulate a radical critique of intimacy. Goldman’s theory of sexual

freedom and revolutionary love offers a feminist vision that challenges

contemporary debates concerning uses of the language of feminine

desire. Goldman appealed to ideals of feminine instinct and feminine

desire in order to challenge the conventional meanings attached to

femininity in her day. Her views on marriage, love, sexuality and the

feminine are analysed alongside her writings on her own personal

experience, in order to illuminate the continuing paradoxes feminists

face in regard to deﬁnitions and experiences of femininity.

keywords anarchism, desire, Goldman, marriage, sexuality

Emma Goldman is far better known for her dramatic life and for her anar-

chism than for any contribution to political and feminist theory. An

anarchist activist who constantly challenged the political and social status

quo , Goldman was a rousing orator and a proliﬁc pamphleteer, as well as

founder and editor of the anarchist journal Mother Earth . She was jailed

many times (once for two years) for her political activity, which included

support for the labour movement and striking workers, opposition to the

World War I draft, advocating free speech and free love, work on the birth

control campaign and opposition to state and government power. In late

1919, Goldman was deported from the USA to the Soviet Union along with

several hundred other immigrant radicals including her long-time

colleague, friend and early lover, Alexander Berkman. 1 Hoping to ﬁnd some

of their ideals enacted in the Soviet Revolution, 2 Goldman and Berkman

were severely disappointed by the concentration of state power and the

suppression of dissidents in their country of birth. 3

Goldman famously chronicled her anarchist activities in her two-volume

autobiography, Living My Life (1970a, 1970b). Her presentation is fascinat-

ing for its historical context as well as for details of the sacriﬁces and

commitments such an intense political life required. I will argue here,

however, that it is not solely Goldman’s political life that makes her import-

ant for us to study today. Rather, it is in the intersection of her life with her

thought, speciﬁcally her intimate and sexual life as studied in conjunction

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Feminist Theory 4(3)

with her essays on marriage, sex, love, women’s emancipation and femi-

ninity, where a study of Goldman contributes important insights to contem-

porary feminist debates. Most importantly, she helps us to think about the

connections and tensions between sexuality, love and feminist politics.

Chronicled in Goldman’s many public speeches and political writings, we

witness her philosophical commitment to an anarchist feminism that

rejects marriage and the conventional nuclear family. In conjunction with

this philosophy, Goldman lived a life of free and open sexual expression,

engaging in direct action on behalf of campaigns for birth control, free

speech and the complete acceptance of unconventional sexual practices.

At the same time, she neither rejects nor condemns romantic love; she

places intimate connections with others as central to her life and her

politics; and she suggests that the basis for women’s emancipation should

spring from the full and complete expression of what she calls the

‘feminine instinct’.

Rather than turn to the ‘state’ to deliver women’s emancipation (as her

sister suffragists were doing), Goldman desired women to free themselves

by unleashing their ‘instincts’. She even called for the freedom of ‘feminine

desire’ to permit the ‘deep emotion of the true woman’ (1969a: 217). This

language sounds suspiciously conservative and even echoed some of the

language of the anti-suffragists. Despite her early and open defense of

homosexuality, 4 for example, some of her rhetoric evoking notions of femi-

ninity and true womanhood could today be suspected of harbouring hetero-

sexist norms and gender essentialism.

I will argue, however, that Goldman’s assumptions about women’s

‘difference’ as well as her vision of sexual freedom and revolutionary love

offer a radical critique of intimacy that can contribute to contemporary

feminist debates. Since Goldman had to constantly butt up against

conventional norms, she was unable to express feminine desire fully in the

way that she thought would be most freeing. In short, for a variety of

reasons, Goldman was not always able to live out her beliefs and commit-

ments in the ways she had hoped. Feminists have expressed disappoint-

ment over this apparent ‘failure’ to live up to her ideals, but I will take a

different approach. An appreciation of Goldman’s thought, as well as the

interactions of her thought with the social and political climate in which

she lived, engender multiple historical insights into our own concerns. 5

Understanding the complexities of Goldman’s theory of love and sexu-

ality in conjunction with the dilemmas of desire she experienced in her

own life helps us to appreciate both Goldman’s life and work, and the

context in which it developed. What may we learn from Goldman’s experi-

ence about the relationships between theory and practice, one’s life and

one’s beliefs, and one’s desires as they conﬂict with prevailing norms, and

how to carry on in the face of disillusionment and despair? I am particu-

larly interested in thinking through Goldman’s life and work, as she experi-

enced and understood it, as an example of how even the most radical and

forward thinking women can get trapped by the contemporary patriarchal

norms under which they live, often even unconsciously internalizing these

norms.

Marso: A feminist search for love

307

Although Emma Goldman consistently and fundamentally challenged

the political status quo , gender roles and normative sexuality, she remained

ambivalent about the meanings attached to femininity. At the same time,

Goldman’s vision of intimacy and eroticism has plenty to teach us about

shortcomings in our contemporary understandings of intimacy, both in

what is possible and what is hoped for. I explore Goldman’s views on these

matters, as well as her writings on her personal experiences, in order to

illuminate the continuing paradoxes feminists face in regard to deﬁnitions

and experiences of femininity.

Goldman’s writings on marriage, love, sexuality

Goldman deﬁnes anarchism in the following way:

[Anarchism] stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of

religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liber-

ation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social

order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real

social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the

earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires,

tastes, and inclinations. (1969b: 62)

Goldman’s ‘beautiful vision’ necessitated the emancipation of women.

Although many anarchist writers acknowledged the importance of women

in the movement, none of the principal (male) theoreticians gave sustained

attention to questions of feminism (Ackelsberg, 1991: 17). Like socialist

feminist Alexandra Kollantai (1972), Goldman had to ﬁght her political

colleagues on the question of which issues were to be labeled ‘digressions’

and which were central to the revolutionary movement. Goldman recalls a

conversation with Peter Kropotkin, for example, in which he complains

that the anarchist paper, Free Society , would do better were it not to ‘waste

so much space discussing sex’ (1970a: 253). And even when there was

agreement on the political importance of sexuality, there was, as Ackels-

berg puts it, ‘more than one way to apply an anti-authoritarian analysis to

sexual and familial relations’ (1991: 26).

Could free sexual expression exist between equals and how would

woman’s reproductive role inﬂuence her social and political contributions?

Goldman was certain about at least one thing. Her life experience had made

it clear that no true freedom for women could exist without a fundamental

revolution at the intimate level between human beings in their relation-

ships of love and sexuality. She insisted on bringing to light the inequality

that is manifested in our most intimate relationships, such as marriage and

the nuclear family. Debating the role of women in the 1935 Spanish anar-

chist movement, Goldman berates a colleague for claiming that it is the

‘innermost wish’ of Spanish women to have ‘broods of children’. Goldman

retorts:

All your assurance not withstanding, I wish to say that I have yet to meet the

woman who wants to have many children. That doesn’t mean that I ever for a

moment denied the fact that most women want to have a child , though that, too,

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Feminist Theory 4(3)

has been exaggerated by the male. I have seen too many tragedies in the relations

between the sexes; I have seen too many broken bodies and maimed spirits from

the sex slavery of woman not to feel the matter deeply or to express my indigna-

tion against the attitude of most of you gentlemen. (1975: 186)

Goldman recognized sexual and reproductive freedoms as the cornerstone

to basic human rights, seeing the curtailment of these freedoms in the most

common and accepted practices mandated and promulgated by and

through the state. Marriage, for example, condemns women to ‘life-long

dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as

social’ (1969c: 228). It compounds the degrading effects of capitalism, anni-

hilating woman’s ‘social consciousness, paralyz[ing] her imagination, and

then impos[ing] its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a

travesty on human character’ (1969c: 235). The home, ‘though not so large

a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars’ (1969c: 233).

Ironically and tragically, these prison bars of marriage rarely fail to tanta-

lize young women. The bars appear ‘golden’, their shininess ‘blind[ing]

woman to the price she would have to pay as wife, mother, and house-

keeper’ (1969a: 224). In spite of her oppression, ‘woman clings tenaciously

to the home, to the power that holds her in bondage’ (1969d: 197). Goldman

seizes on the heart of the problem: what women are taught to desire is that

which also denies them their freedom. The very substance of what makes

a woman feminine is what holds her in bondage. Being a mother, a wife, a

lover, as deﬁned by Goldman’s historical moment, was to be ﬁnancially,

emotionally, socially and politically dependent. Studying sexuality in

19th-century feminist thought, feminist historians Ellen Du Bois and Linda

Gordon note the contradictions women lived: ‘what was conceived as

women’s greatest virtue, their passionate and self-sacriﬁcing commitment

to their children, their capacity for love itself, was a leading factor in their

victimization’ (1983: 12).

But the options for women were very limited. A woman may even be

aware of her potential slavery within marriage and walk into it open-eyed

having surveyed other, even less desirable, alternatives. ‘We ﬁnd many

emancipated women who prefer marriage, with all its deﬁciencies, to the

narrowness of an unmarried life, narrow and unendurable because of the

chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature’

(Goldman, 1969a: 221).

What were the alternatives beyond marriage? If a woman were to remain

unmarried, she might have been labeled a spinster, a ‘loose’ woman, or a

whore. Partially in response to these limited alternatives, the late 19th

century witnessed the rise of the feminist movement. Women activists of

many political persuasions advanced new visions of gender relations,

women’s social role and even, of course, women’s potential role in politics.

Some feminist historians have called the late 19th century a ‘golden age for

single women’ noting opportunities for gainful employment and even new

fashions – conﬁning corsets and hoop skirts were replaced by dark skirts

and simple blouses (Ware, 2002: 3).

Yet, even the more progressive options had their drawbacks. Emma

Goldman claimed at the time, that taking on the role of the ‘new woman’

Marso: A feminist search for love

309

was to accept the notion that women must make themselves professional

(even male) in order to be taken seriously. She found that the American

suffragists, for example, bought into the idea that if woman was to be

emancipated, she must give up on her femininity, her sexuality, everything

that makes her a woman. Echoing conservative anti-suffragists, but from a

profoundly different political perspective, Goldman argued that the

suffrage model taught women that they needed to relinquish any claims to

femininity in order to be free.

Susan B. Anthony, as the most famous example, seemed to embody this

sacriﬁce of femininity for the cause by being openly critical of the time and

effort that ‘baby-making’ stole from the women’s rights movement

(Wheeler, 1995: 49). Goldman argued that the suffrage model made it

appear that gaining freedom as a woman could only be purchased at the

price of losing one’s femininity.

And as suffrage became married to the Progressive Movement, the

emphasis on female morality repulsed Goldman.

Yet, while she ridiculed the claim that women were morally superior to

men and especially the suffrage claim that ‘women’s nature suited them to

the new social responsibilities of the state’ (Evans, 1997: 154), she also

emphasized that women should be allowed and encouraged to express

freely their ‘true’ femininity. What Goldman calls partial or external

emancipation makes modern woman an ‘artiﬁcial being’, a woman who

must be confronted ‘with the necessity of emancipating herself from

emancipation’ (Goldman, 1969a: 214, 215). This woman is a ‘compulsory

vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep,

entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul’ (1969a:

217). This woman is not ‘brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of

love is calling, wildly beating against [her] breast, demanding to be heard,

to be satisﬁed’ (Goldman, 1969a: 222). ‘Emancipation, as understood by the

majority of its adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit

the boundless love and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true

woman, sweetheart, mother in freedom’ (Goldman, 1969a: 217).

In short, Goldman disagreed with her suffragist sisters on almost every-

thing. Goldman argued that the ﬁght for and even the winning of, the vote

was bound to ensnare woman in new chains. 6 The kind of freedom gained

through the law would constitute only a partial freedom, an empty

promise. Goldman repeatedly insisted that the vote would never and could

never fundamentally transform women’s lives: a woman may think herself

free, but in reality, only be trapped within new conﬁnes (Goldman, 1969a:

224).

The alternatives, then, as Goldman assessed them, were severely limited.

Why would any woman willingly choose to live an unconventional life?

Were there even any models a woman could choose to follow if she desired

something more than a conventional life or partial emancipation? Seeking

to articulate a vision of ‘true freedom’, Goldman offered her own life as

an example to others. It is in her life as example that she attempts to

most clearly distinguish her politics from the suffragists as well as the

moralists inside and outside the suffrage movement. In her two-volume

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