tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2886420990152360772007-03-12T09:51:19.675-07:00Hull-House Response BoardBlogger11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-288642099015236077.post-34883701911595809802007-02-23T13:28:00.000-08:002007-02-26T07:28:09.679-08:00<span class="style17"><span class="style4">Was Mary Rozet Smith Jane Addams's companion, lesbian lover, or life-long partner? Why should we care? What is at stake in how we describe their relationship? Who gets to decide?</span></span> <span class="style4"><br /> </span> <p class="style18">Please take a few minutes to participate in our civic engagement and reflection project. Choose one of three labels that you think best describes the portrait of Mary Rozet Smith. </p> <p class="style4">A). Mary Rozet Smith was Jane Addams's companion for decades and one of the top financial supporters of Hull-House. Alice Kellogg Tyler's relationship with the Hull-House began in 1890. She taught, lectured and exhibited here until her early death in 1900. A teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Kellogg Tyler received many honors for her work. This painting was commissioned at the same time as the portrait of Jane Addams that hangs in the next room. </p> <p class="style16"><br />B). Mary Rozet Smith was Jane Addams's life partner and one of the top financial supporters of Hull-House. Given the emotional intimacy that is expressed in their letters to one another, it is hypothesized that they were lesbians. It is, however, difficult to determine this for sure, particularly considering the differences in sexual attitudes of the Victorian era in which she lived and Jane Addams's own complex reflections on the ideals of platonic love.</p> <p class="style16"><br />C). Mary Rozet Smith was Jane Addams's partner and one of the top financial supporters of Hull-House. They shared a deep emotional attachment and affection for one another. Only about one half of the first generation of college women ever married men. Many formed emotional, romantic and practical attachments to other women. In letters, Addams refers to herself and Rozet Smith as 'married' to each other. Hull-House women redefined domesticity in a variety of ways. Addams writes in another letter to Rozet Smith, "Dearest you have been so heavenly good to me all these weeks. I feel as if we had come into a healing domesticity which we never had before, as if it were the first affection had offered us." Jane Addams burned many of her letters from Mary Rozet Smith.<br /></p> <p class="style16"><span style="font-weight: bold;">TO POST A COMMENT, CLICK ON THE '__comments' LINK BELOW.</span><br /></p>Hull-House Response Board