80: The Self-Empowered Woman: Eileen Nearne

Dear Followers,

Not all remarkable women receive the standing ovations that they deserve. Today's blog is about a remarkable Self-Empowered Woman who embodied honor, bravery and fortitude, but died penniless and alone.

Eileen Nearne was 89 years old when she died in the English seaside village of Torquay. Because she had lived alone for many years, and had few friends, and there was no one to pay for funeral expenses after her body was found. Council officials, while in the process of looking through her things in an effort to find a relative, discovered that she wasn't just another little old lady who had lived--and died--alone.

The book and movie "Charlotte Gray" (the film starred Cate Blanchett) was rumored to be based on Nearne's life, and the London Times posthumously referred to her as a real-life Eleanor Rigby, the spinster who died alone in the Beatles' song.

In fact, when she was 24 years old Eileen Nearne had had a remarkable career as a young spy during World War II. She was dropped behind enemy lines near Chateauroux in occupied France, and was assigned to transmit wireless radio messages to London from Paris in order to help the Allies keep track of Nazi activities. During her five months in Paris she sent 105 messages--including one that told the British that the Germans had hidden 2,000 rockets in a stone quarry located north of Paris.

Three times during her career as a young spy, Nearne was captured by the Gestapo. Her two other female British contacts were executed, and the Nazis used that era's form of waterboarding--holding Nearne underwater in a bathtub full of near-freezing water--but she never admitted her involvement with the British. She was sent to Ravensbruck and Markleberg prison camps after being arrested by the SS (the Schutzstaffel), but eventually convinced the Nazis that "Mademoiselle du Tort" was simply a shop girl who knew nothing about military matters.

The woman whom the British War Office referred to as "Agent Rose" walked to Leipzig, where a local priest let her hide in the belfry of his church. When she saw white flags being flown on April 15, 1945 she went to greet the liberating Americans.

Nearne returned to the UK, where her mental state remained (understandably) precarious; her older sister took care of her until Jacqueline accepted a job offer at the United Nations. From that time on, Nearne was essentially a woman who retreated into herself.

When the War was over she admitted that what kept her going was "The will to live. Will power. That's the most important. You should not let yourself go. It seemed that the end would never come, but I have always believed in destiny and I had a hope."

In the picture at the top of the page, she is attending a memorial service at Ravensbruck where she had once been a prisoner. The medal on the left is the Croix de Guerre (from the French government) and the one on the right is the MBE (from the British government.

She received a pension from the British government until she travelled to Paris to stay with friends, at which time her stipend was terminated. The British population was justifiably irate that a true war hero had been forced to live in poverty. She was buried three weeks after her body was found, and her funeral expenses were ultimately paid by the Royal British Legion, whose motto is "Lest We Forget."

Looking forward to your comments...

79: The Self-Empowered Woman: Ruth Gruber

Dear Followers,

Today I would like to introduce you to a truly remarkable Self-Empowered Woman named Ruth Gruber who was born in 1911, and still lives in New York City. She grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, and devoted her life to working on behalf of the underdog (7: Magnificent Obsession). Her parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants (3: Belief in the Unbelievable), and they encouraged her to get as much education as possible.

Gruber entered New York University when she was only 15 years old, and three years later she won a post-graduate fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (13:More Than Meets the Eye). Gruber had been so inspired by her German professor that she learned the language and studied the culture thoroughly enough to win another fellowship from the Institute of International Education to study at the University of Cologne.

While in Cologne, she became - at 20 years old - the youngest person in the world to receive a doctorate. Her Ph.D. (believe it or not) was in German Philosophy, Modern English Literature, and Art History. During this time, she became close friends with Virginia Woolf.

While in Germany, Gruber witnessed Nazi rallies, and when she returned to the U.S. she worked to make Americans aware of the dangers of Nazism. Her writing career began in 1932, and in 1935 she wrote a series about women living under Communism and Fascism for the New York Herald Tribune. And while working for that newspaper she became the first foreign correspondent to fly through Siberia into the Soviet Arctic (11: Risk Addiction).

Gruber was appointed Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior (Harold L. Ickes) during World War II, and was asked to conduct a study that would permit G.I.s to homestead in Alaska after the war. In 1944, she undertook a secret mission to bring 1,000 Jewish refugees and wounded American soldiers from Italy to America. Ickes made her "a simulated general" so that if her plane were shot down the Nazis (under the Geneva Convention) would keep her alive. Her book Haven describes this harrowing journey, and a 2001 film of the same name was based on the book: Natasha Richardson portrayed Ruth Gruber. Sadly, it took two years for the government to allow the quarantined refugees to apply for American residency.

Gruber returned to journalism and continued to work to help displaced Jewish refugees, particularly those who wanted to move to Palestine. She met and photographed many of those who were on the 1947 ship Exodus as well as the prison ship Runnymede.

When she was 40 years old, Gruber married, then had two children, but continued her career as a journalist. Her column for the Hadassah Magazine, "Diary of an American Housewife," was a particularly popular feature.

In 1979, when she was 68 years old, she won the "National Jewish Book Award" for Raquela: A Woman of Israel, which was about an Israeli nurse; Gruber had spent an entire year in Israel researching Raquela Prywes' life.

In 1985, Gruber travelled to Ethiopia, and later wrote a book about Ethiopian Jews called Rescue. Gruber has written over 18 books and received awards from the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance.

This brave, talented woman is now the subject of a documentary film "Ahead of Time," which chronicles her amazing life. Gruber's story reminds us all that age is just a number, compassion can be more than a virtue, and hard work can be the most rewarding rejuvenation tonic ever.

Looking forward to your comments...

78: The Self-Empowered Woman: Elizabeth Gilbert

Dear Followers,

Today's blog is slightly different in nature, however, it continues my perpetual theme of Philogyny (i.e., admiration for women).

As many of you know, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert was made into a movie this summer that starred Julia Roberts. The film may not have been a huge success, but the book has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for close to 200 weeks! Gilbert is a mesmerizing writer who has won a variety of awards for her magazine articles, which is not all that surprising in light of the fact that she grew up on a rural Christmas tree farm in a home that had no record player or television. Reading and writing little books and plays was the primary source of entertainment for Gilbert and her older sister.

Because I loved the book, I could hardly wait to get my hands on Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, her next book. I thought I'd be learning about her relationship with Felipe, which I did. But I didn't expect to be given (as a bonus) a history lesson as well as a mini-memoir.

Gilbert needed to get rid of her gun-shy feelings about marriage in order to build a new life with the man she loved, and her research (which is every bit as valuable and informative as Gail Collins') helped her do just that.

As with so many developments today, being a wife in the 21st Century is a piece of cake compared to what women experienced hundreds of years ago. Gilbert write about the European system of Coverture, which was the belief that a woman's individual civil existence is erased the moment she marries. Gilbert writes that "If there is one word, by the way, that triggers all the inherent terrors I have ever felt about the institution of marriage, it is coverture...It wasn't until the year 1975, for instance, that the married women of Connecticut - including my own mother - were legally allowed to take out loans or open checking accounts without the written permission of their husbands."

Gilbert also writes about the "Marital freedom movement," where people began to marry whom and how they chose, regardless of what society thought. She tells of Lillian Harman (a suffragette) and Edwin Walker (a journalist) who fell in love in Kansas in 1887. They created an "autonomistic marriage" with their own wedding vows, but without a judge or minister or license. As a consequence, they were arrested on their wedding night because "...what they wanted was the liberty to define their own relationship based on their personal interpretation of love."

Gilbert writes touchingly about her remarkably selfless grandmother and the other women in her family: "They cut up the finest and proudest parts of themselves and gave it all away. They repatterned what was theirs and shaped it for others. They went without. They were the last ones to eat at supper, and they were the first ones to get up every morning, warming the cold kitchen for another day spent caring for everyone else. This was the only thing they knew how to do. This was their guiding verb and their defining principle: they gave...And if I were to tell you that this...has not shaped forever my feelings about marriage, or that it has not forged within me a small, quiet sorrow about what the matrimonial institution can take away from good women, I would be lying to you."

Happily, Gilbert and Felipe survived all the "issues" addressed in Committed, and had a real, albeit casual, wedding (including a flower girl). I'm willing to bet that Hollywood won't be interested in turning this book into a movie, but Gilbert has given us a priceless, multilayered look into both the institution of marriage and the evolution of her own heart.

Looking forward to your comments...

77: The Self-Empowered Woman: Sarah Bernhardt

Dear Followers,

As you know, I enjoy sharing the stories of a wide variety of women. To me, the era, country of origin, type of talent, or passion are not what's important. What matters is the struggle to fulfill a dream or survive challenges, and there seem to be an unlimited number of women who capture my attention ( and, hopefully, yours as well).

Today's woman worth knowing is the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was born in 1844 in Paris, and died 1923. She has often been called "the most famous actress the world has ever known."

Her birthname was Sara-Marie-Henriette Rosine Bernard; she was born in Paris as the illegitimate daughter of a Dutch courtesan - she never knew who her father was (1: No Paternal Safety Net). Much of her early life was spent in a convent (3: Belief In The Unbelievable).

When she was thirteen years old she entered the Conservatoire, the government sponsered French school of acting (2: An Early Sense Of Direction). In 1862, she entered the Nationaal Theater Company, the Comedie - Francaise, but the next year her contract was cancelled because she slapped a fellow actress (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest).

She left Paris and moved to Belgium where she had an affair with Henri, Prince de Ligne and had his son, Maurice, in 1864. Because his family disapproved of their relationship they ended their love affair. In later years she married a Greek-born actor (Jacques Damala) who became addicted to morphine, and had affairs with a number of men including Victor Hugo and the Prince of Wales (15: Forget About Prince Charming).

By 1866 she was back in Paris, and was soon popular not only in Europe but in New York, as well. She was known as " the Divine Sarah". In 1905, she was performing in Rio de Janeiro when she injured her knee during a performance. It never healed properly, gangrene set in, and her right leg had to be amputated. In spite of her loss, she continued to act even though she couldn't really move around the stage (12: Hard Times).

If you would like to know more about the amazing woman who was known around the world long before jet travel and the internet were available, I recommened Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt by Robert Gottlieb (Yale, $25.00).

Looking forward to your comments...

76: The Self-Empowered Woman: Bibi Aisha

Dear Followers,

There were a lot of celebrations last month because 90 years ago, women in America were (finally) given the right to vote. And even though I was one of the women "publicizing" this important anniversary, it's important to remember just how lucky we are to live in America, rather than in a country where women really are (and probably always have been) undervalued.

Bibi Aisha is a perfect example of what can happen to a woman who refuses to "obey" the cultural norms of a repressive society. Today, Aisha is a teenager from Afghanistan who is living in Calabasas, California at the Grossman Burn Foundation. Aisha is there to undergo surgery needed to repair her nose and both ears. She lost them because she refused to stay with the man her father had chosen--when she was only twelve years old--to be her husband. It is expected that it will take about six months to complete her reconstructive surgeries.

Aisha and her younger sister were given to the family of a Taliban member as part of a "Baad," which is a customary form of settling tribal disputes in remote areas of Afghanistan. Aisha's uncle had killed a relative of the "groom" so her father gave his two daughters to the victim's family as compensation.

When she reached puberty, Aisha was married to the Taliban fighter, but actually spent most of her time living with her in-laws because he was in hiding or in combat. Aisha and her sister were essentially slaves, and were beaten repeatedly in retaliation for her uncle's crime.

When Aisha fled, her husband and his brother (some say it was his uncle) tracked her down in Kandahar and took her back to Oruzgan, the province where his family lived. In the Pashtun culture, a man who has been "shamed" by his wife is considered to have "lost his nose." So, in retaliation, they took her to the mountains, where one held her down and the other cut off both ears and her nose. They then left her on a mountain side to bleed to death.

Somehow, she made her way to safety, and American aid workers took her to the Women for Afghan Women shelter in Kabul. Aisha cannot read or write, but the group helped her learn to do handicrafts. I've written before about my admiration for Greg Mortensen and his work to establish schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But with the Taliban's increasing strength, some of the girl schools are being forced to close.

As one member of Parlament, Haji Farid said recently " Why our people focusing on education and sending girls to school? Boys walk three, four, five kilometers to their school. How can a girl walk two, three, four kilometers? During a war you cannot send a girl beyond her door. No one can guarantee her honor. So it is hard to send her daughter to school. "

The United Nations estimates that nearly ninety percent of women in Afghanistan face some sort of domestic abuse, and in an entire country there are fewer than a dozen women shelters. And a popular Kabul TV channel accuses those shelters of being sites for prostitution!

Aisha's damaged face appeared on the cover of Time magazine this summer, and her story prompted Christiane Amanpour of ABC to ask Nancy Pelosi if America was "going to abandon the women of Afghanistan?"

Looking forward to your comments...

75: The Self-Empowered Woman: Carrie Chapman Catt

Dear Followers,

Today I'd like to introduce you to Carrie Chapman Catt, a woman who worked tirelessly to make life better for women, but has sadly slipped into the dusty pages of history books instead of becoming a household name.

It is worth getting to know about her because later this month (on August 26) we will celebrate Women's Suffrage Day. That is when - 90 years ago -the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920, officially became part of the U.S. Constitution.

Because my mother was a teenager at that time, I've always been attuned to the fact that the right to vote didn't happen automatically. Anglophile that I am, the story of the British Suffragette who threw herself in front of one of the King's racehorses (and died) in the struggle spearheaded by Emily Pankhurst to give women the vote.

Here in America the two names most often associated with women's right to vote are Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but Carrie Catt (who was born in 1859) was the only one of the three who actually lived long enough to cast a ballot in a nation election.

Those of you who've heard me speak about how The Self-Empowered Woman began will remember that as a little girl I was baffled by the fact that boys had more life choices than girls. When Carri Catt was thirteen she asked why her mother wasn't getting dressed to go into town to vote with her father and the hired hand who worked on their farm. Her question was met with laughter and she was told that voting was too important a civic duty to leave to women. From that day forward her life had purpose (2: An Early Sense of Direction and 7: Magnificent Obsession).

When Carrie graduated from high school in 1877, her father refused to pay for more education so she taught school and saved enough money to enter Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), where she supported herself by working in the college kitchen and the state library(17: Dreaming Your Own Dream). When she graduated, Carrie was valedictorian and the only woman of her class (13: More Than Meets the Eye).

In 1885 Carrie married the editor of the Mason City Republican. She had been forced to stop teaching because married women were not allowed to teach (!), so she began writing a "Woman's World" column for the newspaper. When he lost the paper she moved to San Francisco to find work, but caught Typhoid fever. Carrie left by train, but he died before she arrived; she was 27 years old and had lost her home, her income and her husband (12: Hard Times).

She stayed in California and worked as a freelance writer. She soon met a former college friend, George Catt, who became her husband in 1890. By that time she had begun lecturing and working tirelessly for women's rights . In 1900, Susan B. Anthony at 80 years old retired as the head of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and Carrie Catt became the new president.

In her long life (she died in 1947 at the age of 88) Carrie also worked hard on behalf of the United Nations and she established the Protest Committee of Non-Jewish Women Against the Persecution of Jews in Germany; she is the first woman to win the American Hebrew Medal. By the time of her death, women in most developed countries around the world had equal voting rights (8: Turning No Into Yes).

Looking forward to your comments...

74: The Self-Empowered Woman: Elena Kagan

Dear Followers,

Regardless of your political persuasion, the fact that Elena Kagan has been sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice this week is a noteworthy event. She is only the fourth female Justice in the Court's history, and for the first time ever there are now three female Justices. Kagan is the eighth Jewish Justice to be appointed to the highest court in the land.

Elena Kagan began displaying traits of a Self-Empowered Woman from an early age. She was the middle of three children (the only daughter), and her mother taught fifth and sixth grade at Hunter College Elementary School and her father was an attorney.

Independent and strong-willed as a girl, Kagan went toe-to-toe with her family's Orthodox rabbi over the details of her bat mitzvah because she felt that it was no less important than the ritual bar mitzvah (5: Life is Not a Popularity Contest).

Kagan also had a clear idea of how she wanted her life to unfold. In the 1977 Hunter College High School yearbook, she is pictured wearing a judge's robe and holding a gavel, and one of her classmates remembered that her goal was to become a Supreme Court Justice (2: An Early Sense of Direction).

She attended Princeton University, where she majored in history, and in 1981 she graduated summa cum laude (10: The Critic Within). Her perfectionism continued when she attended Worcester College, Oxford University where she earned a Masters of Philosophy and when she graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. Her father, who had earned his law degree at Yale was deeply disappointed that she chose Harvard over his alma mater (17: Dreaming Your Own Dream).

When Kagan joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1991, she immediately became popular with her students. Several faculty members felt that she had not published enough to gain tenure, but it was awarded in 1995 (8: Turning No Into Yes).

Soon Kagan was lured to Washington to work in the Clinton White House, even though she would risk losing her teaching position and tenure if she stayed more than two years - which she did (11: Risk Addiction).

After leaving Washington, Kagan became a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and in 2001 she was named full professor. Two years later she was named the first-ever female Dean of the law school.

In January, 2009 President Obama nominated Kagan to be Solicitor General even though she had never argued a case at trial or appeared before the Supreme Court. Again, she was the first woman to hold this post and some critics questioned her experience. Fifteen months later she was nominated to fill the seat of Justice John Paul Stevens, and last week her nomination was confirmed by a vote of 63 - 37. Kagan is the first Justice in almost 40 years with no prior experience as a judge - William Rehnquist in 1972 was the other (13: More Than Meets the Eye)..

Looking forward to your comments...