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I will finish this book someday, but I just had a baby and it's too graphic for me right now.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death
Restell was a businesswoman, a scofflaw, an immigrant, and an abortionist. She made men really, really mad. She deserves a place in the pantheon of women with no fucks left to give. ~ Jennifer Wright
Five stars purely for the level of research that went into the writing of this book. I had never heard of Madame Restell before and am surely glad to have learned about her reign and legacy as one of the most successful abortionists of the 19th century.
TW: discussions of abortions, rape, sexual harassment/coercion in the workplace, alcoholism, homelessness, starvation, abandonment of children, death of children, drug overdose (including in children), sex work, death of husband, incest, child kidnapping, incarceration, racism, lynching, the Civil War, torture, death of family members, suicide.
“Restell was a businesswoman, a scofflaw, an immigrant, and an abortionist. She made men really, really mad. She deserves a place in the pantheon of women with no fucks left to give.”
Ann Trow, aka Madame Restell, was a well known 19th century abortionist who spent her life helping women. Madame Restell is a woman who should be a name that you would think would be pretty well known to women, especially with the current fight to protect abortion rights, but sadly, she has mostly been forgotten, probably because she was really hated for what she did.
Restell’s story was a fascinating one of an immigrant coming to America with a husband and child hoping for a better life and quickly finding that it was just as hard to survive here as it was in Britain. After her husband died, things got worse for Ann but she was an extremely hard worker and eventually started working as an abortionist, which eventually became successful. So successful that she became one of the wealthiest women in the city and had a beautiful horse drawn carriage, lavish dresses, and the best education for her daughter.
While Restell did help many women by providing access to abortions, we also see that she was a flawed person. She wasn’t doing this to help women because it was the right thing to do but because it would make her money. We also see her do some very not nice things, like kidnap an unwed woman's newborn baby because she thought the woman would be better off without the child. Restell was arrested several times for providing abortions and was jailed for over a year for doing the right thing for these women, even if she was doing it for the profit.
When I started this book, I knew nothing about Ann Trow, 19th century abortion history, Anthony Comstock and the Comstock laws, and everything else women had to deal with during this time period. Ann Trow Sommers (Madame Restell) was a fascinating woman who lived her life on her terms and said fuck you to anyone who got in her way. She fought for everything she had and she died on her own terms instead of letting her haters destroy her. While I don’t like some of the things she did, I really enjoyed learning about this remarkable woman and how important she was for so many women in New York during the 1800’s. Also, it was remarkable that she reportedly never had any deaths from her abortions.
“American’s are entering a new age of Comstockery, where if women do not want to be mothers, they will be made to be.”
I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning about remarkable women performing illegal abortions successfully when surgery was still extremely dangerous and abortions were illegal, and now are again. Also, the epilogue is really poignant right now and discusses our current situation with the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Incest, Misogyny, Racism, Suicide, Kidnapping, Abortion, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Alcoholism, Child death, Drug use, Torture, Abandonment, War
Madame Restell was a fascinating woman. I listened to the audiobook, which was beautifully narrated by Mara Wilson. This is a timely read given the current state of reproductive freedom in the U.S., and it displays how deep-rooted and longstanding the patriarchal ideas behind the anti-choice movement are. That said, the tone with which Jennifer Wright writes about it made me actually laugh out loud at some points.
I think this book does 2 things wrong:
1. Weirdly speculating about things that could never be verified and creating AUs about Restell
2. Examining Restell’s actions and business practices through a lens of 2020 morality and political context….which makes absolutely no sense
1. Weirdly speculating about things that could never be verified and creating AUs about Restell
2. Examining Restell’s actions and business practices through a lens of 2020 morality and political context….which makes absolutely no sense
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion
Moderate: Abortion
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book is very timely as we are currently witnessing this history repeating itself.
3.5 stars for me.
Madame Restell is compelling nonfiction about an ambitious feminist in pre-Gilded Age New York and her profession as a surgeon offering birth control and abortions--as well as the societal backlash to her career and her unapologetic, unwavering manner.
The subtitle of Jennifer Wright's nonfiction book is The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist, and in Madame Restell, Wright traces the humble beginnings, self-taught skills, carefully crafted aura, rise, fall--and rise and fall again--of the titular immigrant in pre-Gilded Age New York.
Restell is an intriguing, controversial, strong-willed, entrepreneurial figure.
But Restell's story also swirls with weighty issues still relevant today--women's rights and autonomy; the fight for fair wages; power abuses; class divides; societal pressures; wealth, privilege, and power abuses; race and racism; gender issues; and more.
Wright positions Restell's career and wealth within the volatile events of the time--particularly society's changing reactions to birth control, abortion, and women's rights--in order to set a framework for the many ups and downs that occurred in her life.
Madame Restell is a feminist account of an audacious, contentious figure. I listened to this as an audiobook.
To see my full review on The Bossy Bookworm, or to find out about Bossy reviews and Greedy Reading Lists as soon as they're posted, please see Madame Restell.
Find hundreds of reviews and lots of roundups of my favorite books on the blog: Bossy Bookworm
Follow me on Instagram! @bossybookwormblog
Or Facebook! The Bossy Bookworm
Madame Restell is compelling nonfiction about an ambitious feminist in pre-Gilded Age New York and her profession as a surgeon offering birth control and abortions--as well as the societal backlash to her career and her unapologetic, unwavering manner.
The subtitle of Jennifer Wright's nonfiction book is The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist, and in Madame Restell, Wright traces the humble beginnings, self-taught skills, carefully crafted aura, rise, fall--and rise and fall again--of the titular immigrant in pre-Gilded Age New York.
Restell is an intriguing, controversial, strong-willed, entrepreneurial figure.
But Restell's story also swirls with weighty issues still relevant today--women's rights and autonomy; the fight for fair wages; power abuses; class divides; societal pressures; wealth, privilege, and power abuses; race and racism; gender issues; and more.
Wright positions Restell's career and wealth within the volatile events of the time--particularly society's changing reactions to birth control, abortion, and women's rights--in order to set a framework for the many ups and downs that occurred in her life.
Madame Restell is a feminist account of an audacious, contentious figure. I listened to this as an audiobook.
To see my full review on The Bossy Bookworm, or to find out about Bossy reviews and Greedy Reading Lists as soon as they're posted, please see Madame Restell.
Find hundreds of reviews and lots of roundups of my favorite books on the blog: Bossy Bookworm
Follow me on Instagram! @bossybookwormblog
Or Facebook! The Bossy Bookworm