Her story was, in many ways, the story of many intelligent, educated women whose own aspirations were marginalized in favor of their spouses.
This statement, an unfortunate reality, is an abiding theme in many of my books. Because of the historical preconceptions about women and their abilities—as well as the historical reality that marriage was a necessary component of most women’s existence—women often had no ability to utilize their skills or express their interests except through their marriages. And even then, those skills and interests had to take a back seat to their husbands’ work and ambitions, if they were allowed to pursue them at all. So if you are peering into the past and you want to uncover smart, ambitious women—whether or not they had the opportunity to fully effectuate their aspirations—you often need to look at the lives of successful men and noteworthy husbands. I hope my books invite people to look at our past differently, to see the women where they’ve been hiding in plain sight all along.
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MARTY GODDARD’S FIRST FLASH OF INSIGHT CAME IN 1972.
It all started when she marched into a shabby townhouse on Halsted Street in Chicago to volunteer at a c…