Date of Award

Fall 12-1-1995

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Richard Schneirov

Second Advisor

Richard Clokey

Third Advisor

Keith Byerman

Abstract

Emma Goldman has been portrayed by historians as a champion of freedom for the individual and a challenger of Victorian sexual ideology. While there is much truth to this, historians have nevertheless failed to recognize how Goldman, in attempting to free sex from the shackles of Victorianism, created new categories of regulation and promoted the socialization and politicization of sexuality. This is certainly not to undermine her many achievements and accomplishments. One of the most respected members of the American anarchist movement, Goldman succeeded in bringing issues of sexual freedom and women's emancipation to the fore of not only anarchism, but the social concerns of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Americans. With passionate dedication and faith in the nobility of her cause, she endlessly fought what she saw as the obstructions to personal freedom and happiness and social justice. Nevertheless, this thesis contends that Goldman's positions on the relations of the sexes, reproduction, and the development of the child were inimical to her claim that sex should be beyond the "meddling" of any individual or the laws of any institution. What she indeed contributed to was a social ordering of life at the level of sexual relations. This thesis demonstrates how this ordering was characteristic of the society to which Goldman belonged, how she contributed to the regulation of sexuality, and, finally, how she applied these laws and strictures to her own life.

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