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Dorothea Dix – One of the Great Women of the 1800s
Once in a while a truly exceptional person has made a mark on the growth of mankind. Dorothea Dix was an exceptional woman. She wrote children’s books, she was a school teacher, and she helped reform in prisons. Some of her most notable work was in the field of making mental health institutions a better place for the patients that lived in them. Dorothea Dix gave a great deal to humanity and her achievements are still being felt today, especially in the treatment of those with mental disabilities. Dix started out though with very humble beginnings.
Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine in 1802. Her mother was not very mentally stable and her dad was an abusive alcoholic. The Dix moved from Maine to Vermont just before the British War of 1812. Then, after the war they moved to Worcester, MA. While in Worcester, the Dix had two more children, both boys. The family would eventually break apart because of the mother’s mental state and the father’s drinking.1
Dorothea Dix and her two brothers ended up moving to Boston to live with their grandmother on their father’s side Dorothea Lynde, who was the wife of Dr Elijah Dix.2 Dix helped with the rearing of her brothers as she had done in her parents’ home. The grandmother tried to instill her Puritan ways of Boston’s wealthy into Dix’s mind. Grandmother Dix tried to turn young Dorothea into a nice proper girl from Boston, but that wasn’t in the cards for young Dix. The grandmother had given her dancing lessons and even her own private seamstress. Dix was not into this style of life and she would give some of her clothes away, and food to the poor; which had infuriated her grandmother. This angered the grandmother enough to send youn...
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... Patterson Smith, 1967
Gollaher, David. Voice for the Mad: The Life of Dorothea Dix, New York. Free Press. 1995
Marshall, H.E. . Dorothea Dix, forgotten Samaritan. Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press. 1937
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/dorotheadix.html. This site gives another overview of Dorothea Dix’s early life and career highlights, but does so with an emphasis on her finding her religious home among ...
On April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine, Dorothea Lynde Dix was born to Joseph and Mary Dix. Due to her mother's poor health, Dix assumed the household duties of tending to the house and caring for her two younger brothers from a very young age. Meanwhile, her father traveled as a preacher who sold religious books that Dix and her family stitched together. Her only escape from her responsibilities, were in the occasional visits she paid to her grandparents on her father's side, during which she became very close to her doting grandfather; therefore, his death in 1809 left her aching. Eventually, Dix became frustrated with her pressing responsibilities and home life, so she fled to her grandmother's home in Boston, where her grandmother attempted to instill proper manners and etiquette, however Dix did not take well to her instruction, so she was shipped off to her cousins in Worchester. Finally, surrounded by other children her age who possessed good manners, Dix developed the poise and skills that defined and followed her throughout the rest of her life (Morin).
One day she saw an unemployed man outside her studio window and stated she felt compelled to follow and take photos. She started to walk around town with her big, heavy Graflex Super D camera, and took photographs of the hardships she saw. She is well known for giving a clear image of just what the average working person was going through during that time. Her images ranged from the dockworkers striking to men standing in line at a soup kitchen. The latter leading to her photograph White Angel Breadline, which became her first nationally recognized photograph, and lead to her being commissioned by FDR’s Farm Security Administration. While working with FSA in 1935 Lange traveled throughout the country photographing the conditions migrant workers were being forced to live in. It was during this project that Dorothea met Paul Taylor, an economist that was also commissioned by FSA to write down what he sees while Lange documents with photos. It’s said there was an instant connection between Paul and Dorothea who worked closely for many months, and lead to both of them divorcing their spouses and starting a relationship between themselves; the two were married by the years end. They traveled together for four years documenting the troubles of the central and lower United States. Dorothea felt it was important to make sure that word was
Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor: The Years Alone. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1972.
8) Sterling, Dorothy. (1984). We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Norton.
She was born on April 4, 1802, and she was also the oldest of three children. When she was younger her father was not home very often and her mother was not very involved with them. This forced Dorothea Dix to pretty much be the person to raise her and her siblings. When Dix was twelve, she left home to live with her grandmother in Boston. Dix later moved in with her aunt who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Born in Maine, of April, 1802, Dorothea Dix was brought up in a filthy, and poverty-ridden household (Thinkquest, 2). Her father came from a well-to-do Massachusetts family and was sent to Harvard. While there, he dropped out of school, and married a woman twenty years his senior (Thinkquest, 1). Living with two younger brothers, Dix dreamed of being sent off to live with her grandparents in Massachusetts. Her dream came true. After receiving a letter from her grandmother, requesting that she come and live with her, she was sent away at the age of twelve (Thinkquest, 4). She lived with her grandmother and grandfather for two years, until her grandmother realized that she wasn’t physically and mentally able to handle a girl at such a young age. She then moved to Worcester, Massachusetts to live with her aunt and her cousin (Thinkquest, 5).
Ingram, Heather, ed. Women’s Fiction Between the Wars. "Virginia Woolf: Retrieving the Mother." St. Martin's Press. New York, 1998.
Dorthea Dix, a well-known name in the psychology field, was a major contributor to improving the quality of life for those that were in institutions. She was a volunteer at a hospital during the civil war and realized the horrendous treatment to the patients.
Dorothy Dix was also known as Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, who was born on November 18, 1861 in Tennessee. She was a great woman who was known for various accomplishments that reformed and helped the society at the time. She expounded on the prior and afterward challenges in marriages. One of the essays that she wrote was called “Dorothy Dix” while she was working for the Major Burband. This essay talked about about the female’s society, recipes, and fashion. Due to its immediate success, she changed the essay’s name to “Dorothy Dix Talks” highlighted that the essay was her talk show where she would presented all of her information about wives and women. When Major Burbank felt, she joined the New York Journal, where she had to write essays
This site was very vital to my paper. It gave me a lot of information on Dorothea Dix.
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)
Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Works of Susan B. Anthony. Vol. 3. Indianapolis: The Hollenbeck Press, 1908.
Gilbert, S., Gubar, S. (2000) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination Yale University Press
After their parents die, Celia and Dorothea Brooke go to live with their uncle Mr. Brooke at Tipton Grange in Middlemarch, a small town in the English countryside. Dorothea, the beautiful, clever sister, immediately attracts the attention of Sir James Chettam, but with her always present desire to be useful, Dorothea has eyes only for the older, scholarly Mr. Casaubon. Against the desires of many in the Middlemarch community, Dorothea and Casaubon are married.