“We Females Have to Be Contented with the Tales of Adventures”: Trauma and Gender in Dorothy Day’s Early Reporting

Abstract

This examination into the early writings of radical Catholic activist and newspaper founder Dorothy Day will explore how she fits into a cohort of journalists whose experiences with trauma both drove and shaped their written work. However, unlike many other traumatized journalists or women writers at the time, Day’s reflections on her trauma allowed her to embrace her own experiences of suffering and emotion in her writing that evolved into the deeply personal, yet empowering writing style for which the Catholic Worker is renowned. This finding is revealed through a close reading of Day’s personal papers at Marquette University, as well as her work published in the Call, the New Masses, and the New Orleans Item. These primary documents serve as a supplement to published letters, oral histories, and news articles written about Day’s life.

Notes

1 Stephen Krupa, “Celebrating Dorothy Day,” America, August 27, 2001, http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=1140; David O’Brien, “The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Day,” Commonweal 107 (December 1980): 711–15.

2 Nancy L. Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 180.

3 Gustav Niebuhr, “Sainthood Process Starts for Dorothy Day,” New York Times, March 17, 2000.

4 Laurie Goodstein, “Bishops Support Dorothy Day for Sainthood,” New York Times, November 13, 2012.

5 Kathryn Kish Sklar, “Florence Kelley and Women’s Activism in the Progressive Era” in eds. Linda K. Kerber, Jane Sherron De Hart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 350.

6 Ibid., 351.

7 Ibid., 352.

8 Annelise Orleck, “From the Russian Pale to Labor Organizing in New York City,” in Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, edited by Linda K. Kerber, Jane Sherron De Hart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 364.

9 Ibid., 362.

10 Ibid., 372.

11 Ibid.

12 Carolyn Kitch, “Destructive Women and Little Men: Masculinity, the New Woman, and Power in 1910s Popular Media,” Journal of Magazine & New Media Research 1, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 3–4.

13 Jan Whitt, Women in American Journalism: A New History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), xvi.

14 Linda Lumsden, “‘You’re a Tough Guy, Mary-and a First-Rate Newspaperman’: Gender and Women Journalists in the 1920s and 1930s,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 72, no. 4 (December 1995): 913. doi.org/10.1177/107769909507200414.

15 Ibid., 914, 915.

16 Whitt, Women in American Journalism, 14.

17 Ibid., 15.

18 Elizabeth V. Burt, “Journalism of the Suffrage Movement: 25 Years of Recent Scholarship,” American Journalism 17, no. 1 (January 2000): 74. doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2000.10739223.

19 Ibid. 74, 75.

20 Kish Sklar, “Florence Kelley and Women’s Activism in the Progressive Era,” 359.

21 James Allaire and Rosemary Broughton, “An Introduction to the Life and Spirituality of Dorothy Day,” The Catholic Worker Movement, n.d. http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/life-and-spirituality.html.

22 “John I. Day, Writer and Sports Editor,” New York Times, May 18, 1939.

23 “Thirty Interesting Facts about Dorothy Day’s Life, Many Commonly Known and Others Less So,” The Catholic Worker Movement, http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/dd-interesting-facts.html.

24 Anne Klejment, “Dorothy Day,” Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, Research Starters data base, EBSCOhost, 2016.

25 Anne Klejment, “The Radical Origins of Catholic Pacifism: Dorothy Day and the Lyrical Left During World War I,” in American Catholic Pacifism: The Influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), 15.

26 Ibid.

27 Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother, First Scribner hardcover edition (New York: Scribner, 2017), 5.

28 Ibid., 11.

29 Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, 98.

30 William Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980: ‘All Was Grace’,” America, December 13, 1980.

31 Jim Forest, All Is Grace: A Biography of Dorothy Day (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011); Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty; Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1999); Jim Forest, Love Is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1986); Patrick Jordan, Dorothy Day: Love in Action (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015); Nancy L. Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982); William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (New York: Liveright, 1973); Jim O’Grady, Dorothy Day: With Love for the Poor. Unsung Americans (Staten Island, NY: Ward Hill Press, 1993); and Rosalie G. Riegle, Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006). Dozens of books have examined some portion of Day’s life. For a complete bibliography of books on Day and the Catholic Worker, consult the movement’s website: http://www.catholicworker.org/about/bibliography.html.

32 Extensive scholarship, including dissertations, theses, journal articles, and books has examined a number of topics relating to the Catholic Worker, primarily as it pertains to its political and theological structures and principles. Day herself has also been examined at length, primarily in the biographical and literary contexts.

33 See Paul V. Stock, “The Perennial Nature of the Catholic Worker Farms: A Reconsideration of Failure,” Rural Sociology 79, no. 2 (June 2014): 143–73, doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12029; Paul V. Stock, “Consensus Social Movements and the Catholic Worker,” Politics & Religion 5, no. 1 (April 2012): 83–102, doi.org/10.1017/S1755048311000642; Neil Betten, “The Great Depression and the Activities of the Catholic Worker Movement,” Labor History 12, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 243, doi.org/10.1080/00236567108584163; Ashley Beck, “Making the Encyclicals Click: Catholic Social Teaching and Radical Traditions,” New Blackfriars 93, no. 1044 (March 2012): 213–29. doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-2005.2011.01477.x.

34 See Nancy L. Roberts, “Meridel Le Sueur, Dorothy Day, and the Literary Journalism of Advocacy during the Great Depression,” Literary Journalism Studies 7, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 44–57; Richard Abel, “‘Zip!-Zam!-Zowie!’: A New Take on Institutional American Cinema’s History Before 1915,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 29, no. 4 (December 2009): 421; Nancy L. Roberts, “Journalism and Activism: Dorothy Day’s Response to the Cold War,” Peace & Change 12, no. 1/2 (April 1987), doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.1987.tb00090.x.

35 Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006); Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 2015); and Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997).

36 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 83.

37 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 10.

38 Ibid., 3, 4.

39 Ibid., 12.

40 Ibid., 5, 7.

41 Ibid., 1.

42 Ibid., 2.

43 Ibid., 15, 18.

44 Dorothy Day and Robert Ellsberg, The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2008); Dorothy Day and Robert Ellsberg, All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day (New York: Image Books, 2012); Rosalie Riegle Troester, ed., Voices from the Catholic Worker (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).

45 Klejment, “The Radical Origins of Catholic Pacifism,” 16.

46 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 50.

47 Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 50.

48 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 7.

49 Klejment, “Dorothy Day.”

50 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 201.

51 Dorothy Day, “Girl Reporter With Three Cents In Purse, Braves Night Court Lawyers,” New York Call, November 11, 1916.

52 Dorothy Day, “Reporter Looks into Fads, Facts, and Fancies, and Things at Rand School,” New York Call, November 12, 1916.

53 Dorothy Day, “Reporter of $5 a Week Eats Farina and Cheese, Reads Wordsworth,” New York Call, December 6, 1916.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Dorothy Day, “‘Man Cannot Live By Bread Alone’, and Neither Can a Normal Woman,” New York Call, December 18, 1916.

57 Dorothy Day, “Plucky Girl of Picket Line Braves Knives of Scabs and ‘Guerillas’,” New York Call, February 1, 1917.

58 Dorothy Day, “Mrs. Byrne Too Weak to Eat after Ordeal at Workhouse,” New York Call, February 3, 1917.

59 Ibid.

60 Dorothy Day, “Blackwell’s Island Gray, Dead, Desolate, Declares Mrs. Byrne,” New York Call, February 8, 1917.

61 Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 60.

62 Ibid., 52.

63 Ibid., 57.

64 Klejment, “The Radical Origins of Catholic Pacifism,” 17.

65 Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, “TIMELINE OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN DOROTHY DAY’S LIFE,” n.d., http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/timeline.pdf.

66 William Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980: ‘All Was Grace’,” America, December 13, 1980.

67 Klejment, “The Radical Origins of Catholic Pacifism,” 16.

68 Ibid., 18.

69 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 201.

70 Klejment, “Dorothy Day”; John Sayer, “Art and Politics, Dissent and Repression: The Masses Magazine versus the Government, 1917–1918,” The American Journal of Legal History 32, no. 1 (January 1988): 42, 43.

71 Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980,” 382.

72 Rosalie Riegle Troester, ed. Voices from the Catholic Worker (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 3.

73 Kitch, “Destructive Women and Little Men”; Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980.”

74 John Sayer, “Art and Politics, Dissent and Repression: The Masses Magazine versus the Government, 1917–1918,” The American Journal of Legal History 32, no. 1 (January 1988): 47.

75 Ibid., 55.

76 Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, 22.

77 Anne Klejment, “Dorothy Day,” Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, Research Starters data base, EBSCOhost, 2016; Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, “Timeline of Significant Events in Dorothy Day’s Life,” n.d. http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/timeline.pdf.

78 Ibid.

79 “Suffrage Pickets Freed From Prison,” New York Times, November 28, 1917.

80 Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980.”

81 Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 7.

82 Day, The Long Loneliness, 78.

83 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 12.

84 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 15.

85 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 33.

86 Forest, All Is Grace.

87 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 201.

88 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 23.

89 Ibid., 24.

90 Virginia Cannon, “Day by Day: A Saint for the Occupy Era?” New Yorker, November 30, 2012.

91 Day and Ellsberg, All the Way to Heaven, 2.

92 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 28.

93 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma. 50.

94 Stephen Krupa, “Celebrating Dorothy Day,” America, August 27, 2001.

95 Krupa, “Celebrating Dorothy Day.”

96 Day and Ellsberg, All the Way to Heaven, 2.

97 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 29.

98 Troester, Voices from the Catholic Worker, 95–96.

99 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 32.

100 Day and Ellsberg, All the Way to Heaven, 2.

101 Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980.”

102 Day and Ellsberg, All the Way to Heaven, 397.

103 Hinson-Hasty, “Timeline of Significant Events in Dorothy Day’s Life”; Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980.”

104 Kathryn Kemp, “Jean and Kate Gordon: New Orleans Social Reformers, 1898–1933,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 24, no. 4 (Autumn 1983): 389.

105 Brian David Collins, The New Orleans Press-Radio War and Huey P. Long, 1922–1936 (Louisiana State University, 2002).

106 Patricia Brady, “Literary Ladies of New Orleans in the Gilded Age,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 33, no. 2 (Spring 1992), 149, 156.

107 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 170.

108 Dorothy Day, “To Llewellyn Jones,” June 19, 1924, box 11, folder 5, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Collection (DDCWC), Marquette University.

109 Day, “To Llewellyn Jones.”

110 Dorothy Day, “Thrills of 1924,” New Orleans Item, February 26, 1924, box 11, folder 5, DDCWC.

111 Hinson-Hasty, “Timeline of Significant Events in Dorothy Day’s Life.”

112 Miller, “Dorothy Day, 1897–1980.”

113 Ibid.

114 Hinson-Hasty, “Timeline of Significant Events in Dorothy Day’s Life”; Klejment, “Dorothy Day.”

115 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 56; Allaire and Broughton, “An Introduction to the Life and Spirituality of Dorothy Day.”

116 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 58.

117 Dorothy Day, “Having a Baby – A Christmas Story,” The New Masses, June 1928. https://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/articles/583.pdf.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid.

120 Ibid.

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid.

123 Ibid.

124 Underwood, Chronicling Trauma, 15.

125 Ibid., 201.

126 Ibid., 18.

127 Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, 17.

128 Ibid., 85.

129 Ibid.

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Bailey Dick

Bailey Dick is a Ph.D. candidate at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. She completed her masters in journalism at Ohio University as well, and received undergraduate degrees from Loyola University Chicago. Prior to returning to school, she worked as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and was a political communications consultant based out of Washington, D.C. Her research is historically-based and is focused on women reporters, trauma, and religion.