Phillipia, A Woman's Question.
A Self-Published Feminist Abolitionist Novel
Cutler, Mrs. H.M. Tracy, M.D. Phillipia, A Woman’s Question. [Dwight, Ill.; The C.L. Palmer Printing House] / Published by the Author, (1886).
8vo.; floral decorated endpapers; front hinge tender, starting; green cloth, stamped in blind and gilt on front cover.
First edition of this didactic abolitionist-feminist novel, with a quote from John Brown on the title page and a preface which dedicates the book to all of humanity.
Hannah Maria Conant Tracy, M.D., women’s rights leader and physician, was born in Berkshire County, Massachusetts in 1815. An early and prolific reader and writer, she craved education but was barred because of her gender from lower schools and so was home-schooled and self-educated. When she got older she was admitted to the Becket common school and later, when her parents moved to Ohio, she hoped to attend Oberlin College but her father flatly refused this proposition. As a result, Conant left the house via marriage (a common tactic then as now). In 1834, at 18, she became the wife of John Martin Tracy, a theological student and anti-slavery lecturer. Hannah read theology with her husband and, when he decided to become a lawyer, she joined him in his legal studies. It was in law school that Hannah discovered the issue of women and their legal rights (or lack thereof) and she became an overnight feminist. She soon became an overnight widow as well when, in August 1844, her husband was killed by a vigilante pro-slavery mob angry with his actions in aiding the freeing of slaves.
Left with three children to support, the young Mrs. Tracy returned to her father’s home and took up writing as a means of support. She published widely in periodicals, taught school, and finally, in 1846, entered Oberlin on her own initiative. There she met Lucy Stone, who would become a close friend, and was allowed into Stone’s circle of anti-slavery, pro-suffrage men and women.
After Oberlin Mrs. Tracy continued to make her living by combining the careers of teacher and writer. She also plunged more fully into activist women’s rights work. In Rochester she formed a Women’s Temperance Society; and in June 1851 she attended a women’s rights convention in Akron. On her return she joined a peace convention in Columbus and was chosen one of the delegates to the World’s Peace Conference in London of that year.
In 1852 Mrs. Taylor married again, becoming Mrs. Cutler. She downgraded her public activities and attempted to become a more “normal” domestic woman, but these attempts were unsuccessful as she was miserable in this circumscribed life. She was cured of her misery once she again joined the feminist and abolitionist lecture circuit. She worked all over the country, participating significantly in the intensive canvas of New York State for women’s suffrage in 1859, and lobbying various politicians about married women’s rights and about women’s right to economic dependence both within and without marriage.
As early as 1860 Mrs.Cutler had nursed the poor in her neighborhood. In the fall of 1868 she enrolled in the newly founded Women’s Medical College (homeopathic) in Cleveland, from which she earned an M.D. in 1869. (While in Cleveland Mrs. Cutler helped her friend Lucy Stone organize the American Woman Suffrage Association and in 1870-71 served as its President.) Mrs. Cutler’s last years were spent doctoring, lecturing on various medical and suffrage topics, and writing both non-fiction and (to a lesser extent) fiction. Phillipia, A Woman’s Question is one of two novels published by Mrs. Cutler (the other was Woman as She Was, Is, and Should Be, 1846). Cutler died as a result of old age and natural causes in 1892—just a few years after Phillipia was published—at her daughter’s house in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
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