Voltairine de Cleyre

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Voltairine de Cleyre
individualism
ChildrenHarry De Cleyre
Parents
RelativesAdelaide M. Thayer (sister)
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Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American

feminist
because of her views.

Born and raised in small towns in

Catholic convent, de Cleyre began her activist career in the freethought movement. Although she was initially drawn to individualist anarchism, de Cleyre evolved through mutualism to what she called anarchism without adjectives and prioritized a stateless society without the use of aggression or coercion
above all else.

De Cleyre was a contemporary of Emma Goldman but maintained a relationship with her respectfully despite disagreement on many issues. Many of de Cleyre's essays were collected in the Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, which was published posthumously by Goldman's magazine, Mother Earth, in 1914.

Early life

Childhood

Voltairine de Cleyre was born on November 17, 1866, in Leslie, Michigan.[1] She was the third daughter of Hector, a French-American artisan and socialist, and Harriet De Claire, a New Englander whose family was involved in the abolitionist movement.[2] She was named by her freethinking father after the French philosopher Voltaire.[3] Although a delicate child, she inherited a stubbornness and intelligence from her parents that cultivated a rebellious spirit in her from an early age.[4]

After the death of their first child, Marion, the family moved to a small house in St. Johns in May 1867.[5] Voltairine was only one year old when they moved,[6] and grew up in extreme poverty.[7] Adelaide De Claire later attributed her sister's radicalism to their experiences with poverty, which developed within her a sense of sympathy and compassion for the poor and working class.[8] She also recalled that, unable to afford Christmas presents, the two sisters made gifts for their parents out of scraps.[9] Their financial difficulties made Voltairine's father bitter and demanding; he would regularly complain about her writing letters to him in pencil.[10] Meanwhile, Voltairine's mother withdrew her affections from her.[11] Although she would remain a devoted daughter throughout her life, Voltairine never forgave her mother for her cold behavior towards her and was proud to have lived her own life, rather than that which her mother wanted for her.[12]

As Voltairine grew up, she developed a love of nature,[13] as well as a "headstrong and emotional" personality.[14] Her sister Adelaide remembered her as a "wayward" child, who was "often very rude to those who loved her best".[15] At the age of four, she was refused entry to primary school because of her young age. Indignant at the rejection, she taught herself how to read and was admitted the next year, studying their until her graduation at the age of twelve.[16] She and her sister spent much of their time at home reading poetry and novels by British writers, including Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Walter Scott. Adelaide recalled one of their fondest memories of her mother was when she read them poetry by Lord Byron, while putting them to bed. Byron's writing style in particular would be a strong influence on Voltairine's own poetry.[17] Before long, Voltairine herself was writing her own poetry,[18] which she often did while sitting in the branches of the family's maple trees, where she retreated in search of privacy.[19] In her childhood poetry, Voltairine wrote of her wishes to be different and her love of nature.[20] Hippolyte Havel later described her earliest poems as including a "vein of sadness"; after Adelaide rediscovered these poems in the 1930s, they made her cry: "to think that neither Mother, nor Father nor I realized nor recognized Voltai's beautiful spirit nor soul."[21] Adelaide and Voltairine's sadness was compounded in the 1870s, when their father left St. Johns to seek work elsewhere and never returned home.[22]

In early 1879, Voltairine was sent to live with her father in

Port Huron, after Adelaide fell gravely ill and their mother was unable to care for them both.[23] The now-adolescent Voltairine became restless in Port Huron and was homesick for her house, trees and pet birds in St. Johns. She disliked the "nasty hole" of Port Huron and frequently expressed her wish to return home. Each Sunday, her father tried to cheer her up with visits to the local park or taking her on ferry boat rides, but her homesickness only got worse.[24] In September 1880, her father enrolled her to be educated in the convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron,[25] across the river in the Canadian city of Sarnia,[26] hoping the institution would discipline her and rid her of her love of idle reading.[27] Voltairine considered her three years at the convent to have been a prison sentence, one of the darkest periods of her life, from which she was left with a lasting psychological trauma.[28] She never understood nor forgave her father for sending her there, and felt abandoned by him.[29] Within a few weeks of arriving at the convent, she attempted to escape, crossing the river back to Port Huron and immediately setting off to St. Johns. But after seventeen miles of walking, she realised she would never make it home and returned to Port Huron, where he father brought her back to the convent.[30]

Catholic education

At the convent, De Cleyre was made to get up at 5:45 and go to morning prayers. As a

Catholicism imposed on her.[34] Voltairine was a keen student, rising to become head of her class. When she wrote to her mother before her fourteenth birthday, she was clearly happier and was beginning to display her improving literary talents in her letters.[35]

In her time at the convent, De Cleyre improved her grasp on writing and music,[36] became fluent in the French language and learned how to play the piano. She continued to see her father and regularly wrote to her mother, with her letters throughout the period showing her in high spirits; she also cultivated what became a lifelong friendship with her teacher Sister Médard.[37] Her anti-Catholicism was also tempered by her time in the convent, as she developed a sympathy for the Catholic Church's aesthetics and ethics, particularly its charity towards the poor and its ideal of fraternity.[38] She even considered joining the Carmelite order as a nun and wrote poems of her belief in the Christian heaven.[39] But despite her convictions, her skepticism continued to flourish and she began to doubt the existence of the Christian God, even as she was praying to him: "I suffered hell a thousand times while I was wondering where it was located."[40] She later recalled how difficult this process was, as her internal struggle between disbelief and "religious superstition" coincided with the struggle between her own rebellious spirit and the nuns' instructions on the necessity of obeying authority. It was during her time "in the heart of Catholicism" that she became a freethinker, like her father before her, and punishments for her insubordination increased up until the moment she was to begin her final exams.[41]

Weeks before she was due to graduate, she was already exhausted by her frequent punishment, as well as by a bout of

anti-theist and anti-authoritarian.[43] She later recounted that this experience with "Ignorance and Superstition", which left "white scars on her soul", had convinced her that her own will was supreme, and layed the foundations for her later conversion to anarchism.[44]

Freethinker

A flier advertising a memorial event held a few days after De Cleyre's death

During her time in the freethought movement in the mid-to-late 1880s, de Cleyre was especially influenced by

anarchist. "Till then I believed in the essential justice of the American law of trial by jury," she wrote in an autobiographical essay. "After that I never could."[45][non-primary source needed
]

She was known as an excellent speaker and writer. Her biographer Paul Avrich said that she was "a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist."[46] She was also known as a tireless advocate for the anarchist cause whose "religious zeal", according to Emma Goldman, "stamped everything she did."[47][non-primary source needed]

She became pregnant by James B. Elliot, another freethinker, giving birth to their son Harry on June 12, 1890. As de Cleyre and Elliot agreed, their son lived with Elliot, and de Cleyre had no part in his upbringing. She was close to and inspired by Dyer Lum ("her teacher, her confidant, her comrade", according to Goldman).[48] Her relationship with him had ended shortly before he committed suicide in 1893.

De Cleyre based her operations from 1889 to 1910 in

Jewish immigrants, and sympathy for anarchist beliefs was common. There, she taught English and music and learned to speak and write in Yiddish.[49]

Throughout her life, de Cleyre was plagued by illness. Goldman said that she had "some disease of the nervous system which she had developed in early childhood."[50]

She survived an assassination attempt on December 19, 1902. Her assailant was Herman Helcher, a former pupil who had earlier been rendered insane by a fever and was immediately forgiven by her, as she wrote: "It would be an outrage against civilization if he were sent to jail for an act which was the product of a diseased brain."[51]

Later life and death

In her later years, De Cleyre developed a strong sympathy for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which moved her closer to left-wing politics and anti-capitalism. At the same time, she abandoned her long-held pacifism, began advocating for violent social revolution and appealed for her readers to carry out direct action.[52] In the wake of the Los Angeles Times bombing in 1910, she wrote a letter to Saul Yanovsky in which she expressed regret that the bombing hadn't killed Harrison Gray Otis, who she held responsible for the deaths of the strike breakers in the attack; in a subsequent letter to Alexander Berkman, she reported of her new-found "class consciousness" and belief in class conflict.[52] Together with Berkman and Goldman, she publicly defended the McNamaras and accused the labor leaders Samuel Gompers and Morris Hillquit - who had demanded they be punished - of hypocrisy. She asked why they hadn't demanded justice for the many more workers that had died in the Johnstown Flood of 1889, Panic of 1907 and Cherry Mine disaster of 1909, and declared that such events had made violence against the capitalist system a necessity.[53] During the San Diego free speech fight of 1912, she expressed outrage that one hundred members of the IWW "had been made to kneel and kiss the flag", declaring that she would rather have been shot than forced to prostrate herself.[54]

Despite her failing health, she over-worked herself writing letters, giving speeches, organising meetings and demonstrations and editing others' memoirs.

headaches and sensory overload, exacerbated by the extreme temperatures of both the winters and summers in Chicago.[56] She also experienced social isolation and homesickness for Philadelphia, ultimately deciding to return there.[57] Days after she gave a recitation of a revolutionary poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath, at a benefit for the Anarchist Red Cross in Chicago's West Side, she came down with an attack of otitis media on April 17. She was moved to the St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital, where her infection was found to have spread to her brain, for which she received an immediate operation.[58] By the time that her son and her pupil Nathan Navro had arrived from Philadelpha, she had lost the ability to speak or move her body. When a priest came to administer last rites, she expressed her disapproval with a scowl. De Cleyre spent the last nine weeks of her life in pain in her hospital bed,[59] finally dying on June 20, 1912.[60]

Waldheim Cemetery
, Forest Park, Illinois

Three days later, her body was buried at the Waldheim Cemetery, next to the tomb of the Haymarket martyrs.[61] Her funeral was attended by 2,000 people,[62] including representatives of several trade unions, such as the IWW's Bill Haywood, Vincent Saint John and William E. Trautmann. De Cleyre's sister Addie recalled Lucy Parsons arranging red carnations on her casket, while the crowd stood in silence. Simultaneous gatherings were held in Philadelphia and New York's Lower East Side, the latter of which was attended by Alexander Berkman, Harry Kelly and Saul Yanovsky.[63] When Emma Goldman returned to Chicago from a lecture tour, she immediately went to lay flowers - "the only monument she ever wanted" - at her grave, where she expressed her feeling that the Haymarket martyrs had gained another member.[64]

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    De Cleyre changed her political perspective during her life. She eventually became a strong proponent of

    American individualist anarchism. Distinguishing herself from Goldman and expanding on her support for individualist anarchism, de Cleyre wrote:

    Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should.[66][non-primary source needed

    ]

    Despite their early dislike for one another, de Cleyre and Goldman came to respect each other intellectually. In her 1894 essay "In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation", de Cleyre wrote in support of the right of

    expropriation:

    I do not think one little bit of sensitive human flesh is worth all the property rights in N. Y. city. [...] I say it is your business to decide whether you will starve and freeze in sight of food and clothing, outside of jail, or commit some overt act against the institution of property and take your place beside Timmermann and Goldmann.[66][non-primary source needed

    ]

    Eventually, de Cleyre embraced social anarchism over individualism. In 1908, she argued "that the best thing ordinary workingmen or women could do was to organise their industry to get rid of money altogether" and "produce together, co-operatively rather than as employer and employed."[67][non-primary source needed] In 1912, de Cleyre said that the Paris Commune had failed because "respected [private] property". In her essay "The Commune Is Risen", she stated, "In short, though there were other reasons why the Commune fell, the chief one was that in the hour of necessity, the Communards were not Communists. They attempted to break political chains without breaking economic ones."[68][non-primary source needed] She became an advocate of anarchism without adjectives and wrote in The Making of an Anarchist, "I no longer label myself otherwise than as 'Anarchist' simply."[69][non-primary source needed]

    Some observers and scholars dispute whether de Cleyre's rejection of individualism constituted an embrace of

    anarcho-communist, de Cleyre said in 1907, "I am not now, and have never been at any time, a communist."[71] The anarchist scholar Iain McKay argues that de Cleyre's subsequent 1908 advocacy of a moneyless economy was technically a form of communism, even if she rejected the word "communist" to describe it.[72]

    In her 1901 essay, Anarchism, de Cleyre wrote:

    My ideal would be a condition in which all natural resources would be forever free to all, and the worker individually able to produce for himself sufficient for all his vital needs, if he so chose, so that he needs not govern his working or not working by the times and seasons of his fellows. I think that time may come; but it will only be through the development of the

    modes of production and the taste of the people. Meanwhile, we all cry with one voice for the freedom to try.[73][non-primary source needed
    ]

    "Direct Action", her 1912 essay in defense of direct action, is widely cited today. In the essay, de Cleyre points to examples such as the Boston Tea Party and notes that "direct action has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it."[74][non-primary source needed]

    In her 1895 lecture, Sex Slavery, de Cleyre condemns ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies and child socialization practices that create unnatural

    gender roles. The title of the essay refers not to traffic in women for purposes of prostitution although that is also mentioned, but it is rather to marriage laws that allow men to rape their wives without consequences. Such laws make "every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passions."[75][non-primary source needed
    ]

    De Cleyre adamantly opposed the government maintaining a standing army and argued that its existence made wars more likely. In her 1909 essay "Anarchism and American Traditions", she argued that to achieve peace "all peaceful persons should withdraw their support from the army, and require that all who wish to make war do so at their own cost and risk; that neither pay nor pensions are to be provided for those who choose to make man-killing a trade."[76][non-primary source needed]

    Legacy

    De Cleyre, Christmas 1891

    As one of the few women of stature in the anarchist movement, de Cleyre was acclaimed by Goldman as "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced."[70][77] She is not widely known today, which her biographer Sharon Presley attributed to the shortness of her life.[70]

    Since the late 20th century, there has been renewed interest in her.

    YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in New York City.[81] In 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary for her.[82]

    Literature

    • 2005 - Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell (ed). Exquisite rebel. The essays of The Voltairine de Cleyre. Feminist, anarchist, genius. State University of New York Press
    • 2004 - The Voltairine de Cleyre reader. AK Press
    • 1978 - Paul Avrich. An American Anarchist. The life of Voltairine de Cleyre, Princeton
      ISBN 0691046573
    • 1932 - Emma Goldman/ Voltairine de Cleyre, Berkeley Heights, New Jersey
    • 1914 - Selected works of Voltairine de Cleyre

    See also

    References

    1. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 19; Brigati 2004, p. vii; Campbell 2013, p. 65; Palczewski 1995, p. 54; Sartwell 2005a, p. 4.
    2. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 18–19; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66; DeLamotte 2003, p. 154; DeLamotte 2004, p. 4; Filanti 2022, p. 4.
    3. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 19; Brigati 2004, p. vii; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66; DeLamotte 2003, p. 154; DeLamotte 2004, p. 4; Palczewski 1995, p. 54; Sartwell 2005a, p. 4; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    4. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 18.
    5. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 19–20; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    6. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 20; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    7. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 20; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66; DeLamotte 2004, p. 4; Presley 2005a, p. 18; Sartwell 2005a, p. 4; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    8. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 20–21.
    9. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 21; Sartwell 2005a, p. 4.
    10. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 21–22.
    11. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 22.
    12. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 23–24.
    13. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 24; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66; Sartwell 2005a, pp. 4–5.
    14. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 24; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66.
    15. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 24; Sartwell 2005a, pp. 4–5.
    16. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 24–25; Sartwell 2005a, pp. 4–5.
    17. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 25.
    18. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 25–26; Campbell 2013, pp. 65–66.
    19. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 25–26.
    20. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 26–27.
    21. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 27.
    22. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 27–28.
    23. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 28.
    24. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 28–29.
    25. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 29–30; Campbell 2012, p. 13; Campbell 2013, p. 66; Sartwell 2005a, p. 5; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    26. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 29–30; Campbell 2012, p. 13; Campbell 2013, p. 66; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    27. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 29–30; Campbell 2013, p. 66.
    28. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 30.
    29. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 30–31.
    30. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 31; Campbell 2012, p. 13; Campbell 2013, p. 66.
    31. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 31.
    32. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 31–32.
    33. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 32.
    34. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 32–33.
    35. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 33.
    36. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 33–34; Brigati 2004, p. viii; Sartwell 2005a, p. 5.
    37. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 33–34.
    38. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 34.
    39. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 34–35.
    40. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 35.
    41. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 35–36.
    42. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 36.
    43. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 36–37; Brigati 2004, p. viii; Campbell 2012, p. 13; DeLamotte 2003, p. 154; DeLamotte 2004, p. 4; Presley 2005a, pp. 18–19; Sartwell 2005a, p. 5; Shone 2013, p. 38.
    44. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 37; DeLamotte 2004, p. 4.
    45. ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. 106
    46. ^ Presley 2005a, p. 20.
    47. ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 331
    48. ^ Brigati 2004, p. iv.
    49. ^ Bucklin 2019
    50. ^ Goldman 1932, pp. 1–2
    51. ^ Brigati 2004, p. ix.
    52. ^ a b Avrich 1978, p. 232.
    53. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 232–233.
    54. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 233.
    55. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 233–234.
    56. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 234.
    57. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 234–235.
    58. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 235.
    59. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 235–236.
    60. ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 235–236; Brigati 2004, p. x; Palczewski 1995, p. 54; Sartwell 2005a, p. 9.
    61. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 236; Brigati 2004, p. x; DeLamotte 2003, p. 154.
    62. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 236; DeLamotte 2003, p. 154.
    63. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 236.
    64. ^ Avrich 1978, p. 237.
    65. ^ Esenwein 1989, p. 135.
    66. ^ a b De Cleyre 2005, p. 156.
    67. ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 62.
    68. ^ DeLamotte 2004, p. 206.
    69. ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. 108.
    70. ^ a b c Presley 1979.
    71. ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 22.
    72. ^ McKay 2006
    73. ^ De Cleyre 1901
    74. ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. 50.
    75. ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 228.
    76. ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 101.
    77. ^ Falk 2003, p. 195.
    78. ^ De Cleyre 2004.
    79. ^ De Cleyre 2005.
    80. ^ DeLamotte 2004.
    81. ^ YIVO 1992
    82. ^ Dougherty 2018

    Bibliography

    Primary sources

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