The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull

This biography is actually quite good - and overdue. Underhill seems to be not much 'captured' by her amorous and dominant beta female subject. (That's a common problem in biography). There are certain problems about V. Woodhull however, as there are about all prominent persons. She was, as was her sister, a courtesan, a New Age Spiritualist (inspired by the Fox 'knuckle cracker' sisters). Amazingly, a NY female Wall Street stockbroker!, a female candidate for president! Not much came of either, but she remained amazing anyway. That she married some rich English baron or other and moved to England, thereafter supporting her neer do well relatives (including her mother) for decades (as she had in the States), seems beside the point, except that it's clear that she finally gave up the fight. As she saw it - or are we merely imagining how she saw it? Perhaps we expect too much from Victoria, and given her times, she pretty much gets a pass. She caused not such harm as Ellen White, Madam Blavatsky or Mary Baker Eddy. Give thanks. Part of this biography delves into the internal feuds in the early 1st wave feminist movement, which tells us a bit about 'power seeking' (even in females), as does the life of Woodhull herself. At each stage of her (and her relatives) life, there are powerful males, her father, the drunken doctor she marries young, Cornelias Vanderbilt, her literary second husband, General Ben Butler, whoever is male and useful. Excepting her father, they all get sexed, and they all are useful. Not that such maneuvering towards the top by women is all that uncommon in the last 4,000 years of human history. That it's a woman's way, does not one thinks, make it a life to emulate in the modern feminist movement. I'll take Abigail Adams anytime.

This is an amazing biography of Victoria C. Woodhull a little known suffragist and spirtualist of the late 19th Century. Growing up poor in a dysfunctional Ohio family she pulled herself up from poverty to become a leading sufferagist as well as opening with her sister the first female owned wallstreet brokerage company. This is just the tip of the iceberg as she ran for president in the 1870's, exposed a huge scandal concerning a leading New York minister, and eventually married into one of the richest families in England. Her ideas and opinions on sexuality, divorce, and women's rights were a hundred years before her time. She was no saint; her unconventional and adventurous lifestyle recieved much criticism and was her eventual undoing in society. Her life is more fantasic and entertaining than fiction. Victoria Woodhull has been hidden in the closet like a skeleton for too long; if you read any non-fiction this year, read this book!