Winnifred Harper Cooley

Winnifred Harper Cooley (October 2, 1874 – October 20, 1967) was an American author and lecturer.

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Early life

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, she was the daughter of Ida Husted Harper.[1]

Cooley graduated in 1896 with an A.B. in Ethics from Stanford University.[2]

Personal life

In 1899, she married George Elliot Cooley, a Unitarian minister.[2] The couple lived in Vermont and Michigan before finally settling in New York City.[2] Cooley was widowed in 1926.[2]

Professional life

Cooley was a prolific writer.[1] Her best known work is The New Womanhood (1904). In The New Womanhood, Cooley lists the achievements of the New Woman as 1- education (lower, higher, professional), 2- employment (industrial, commercial), and 3- recognition (legal and civil).[3]

In "The Younger Suffragists" (1913), Cooley distinguishes herself and the "younger feminists" from the "older suffragists" and their idea that gaining the ballot will change the world for women.[4] Although the term would become widespread in the 1960s and 1970s, only a small group of women called themselves feminists in the early 20th century.[5][6] Cooley was among this first generation of self-proclaimed feminists. According to Cooley, "A feminist is always a suffragist, but a suffragist is not always a feminist."[6] Cooley saw the suffragists as more conservative than the broader outlooked feminists.[6] For feminists, suffrage was a path to complete social revolution.[4]

Beginning in 1923, Cooley hosted a biweekly dinner forum facetiously called "The Morons" which drew as many as 300 attendees.[2]

References
  1. McCormick, Mike (2005-01-01). Terre Haute: Queen City of the Wabash. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738524061.
  2. Kessler, Carol Farley (1995-01-01). Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before, 1950. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815626558.
  3. Cassedy, Steven (2014-01-01). Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Stanford University Press. p. 135. ISBN 9780804788410. Winnifred Harper Cooley.
  4. Keetley, Dawn (2005-02-22). A Documentary History of American Feminism: 1900 To 1960. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742522251.
  5. Dicker, Rory (2016-01-26). A History of U.S. Feminisms. Seal Press. ISBN 9781580056144.
  6. Weber, Sandra (2016-03-30). The Woman Suffrage Statue: A History of Adelaide Johnson's Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony at the United States Capitol. McFarland. ISBN 9781476624228.
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