Photo of Maria Mitchell
Courtesy of the Maria Mitchell Association
The stars shine on us all
MARIA MITCHELL AND THE SEXING OF SCIENCE:
An Astronomer Among the American Romantics
By Renée Bergland
320 pp. Beacon Press $29.95
Reviewed by Ruth Douillette
When you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are . . . .
Oh, but it does, Jiminy Cricket, it most definitely does matter who you are, and especially what your gender is.
Maria Mitchell would add a fervent “amen” to this if she were alive.
Renée Bergland revives Mitchell—“one of the first professional astronomers in the United States”—in her latest book, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science, sharing observations from Mitchell’s journals.
When Mitchell was young she didn’t need to wish upon a star. Being born in the right place at the right time—and, ironically, being female—helped push her to the forefront of astronomy in the 1800s. That and a serendipitous boost from the heavens: a comet soared through the solar system in 1847, and 29-year-old Maria, dedicated to her “nightly sweep of the sky” through her rooftop telescope, noted it in her journal.
“Miss Mitchell’s Comet” would have been discovered, was, in fact, discovered by two others within days of her sighting, but she was the “first discoverer.” Her name spread to astronomers across the world—somewhat frightening for a shy young Quaker.
Mitchell was born on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts, in 1818. Nineteenth-century Nantucket was progressive in its regard for women, befitting a society where wives kept the home fires burning and doing everything else while their whaler husbands spent months at sea.
From the time she was 11, Maria spent her nights scanning the heavens with her father’s telescope, after assisting him in his own observations and performing astronomical computations.
In the 1800s, men studied the humanities; science and mathematics—less profitable—were considered perfect for women. Astronomy, in particular, was popular, and Maria’s father encouraged his daughter’s interest.
Sadly, Bergland notes, “Women who came of age a hundred years later had fewer opportunities and much less encouragement” in science than Maria had.
Self-educated—during her years as keeper of the Nantucket Athenaeum, Mitchell read avidly from library’s collection—she taught for awhile, earning pennies to the dollar compared to male teachers. She had, after all, a large family to care for her. She assisted her father with his own astronomy, performing complicated mathematical calculations that today’s women are said to have no propensity for. She discovered a comet, was appointed “computer of Venus” performing calculations for the US Navy’s Nautical Almanac, and toured Europe, meeting fellow astronomers and visiting observatories. She wangled special permission to visit the Vatican Observatory, off limits to women, but was hustled out before dark.
Mitchell accepted a professorship in 1860 at the newly opened Vassar College—after the issue of allowing a woman professor had been settled—and again was paid a pittance compared to male professors, although now she was caretaker of her father.
She remained at Vassar until a year before her death in 1889, instructing young women in astronomy and math—women who as the years progressed found they needed to defend their choice of study to fathers who were fearful that science would render their daughters unfeminine. The number of women enrolled in Mitchell’s programs steadily diminished.
“[Mitchell] came to believe,” Bergland writes, “that science needed women precisely because of the unique contributions they could make, and that women scientists needed other women scientists to help them fulfill their potential.”
Bergland’s rich detail of the social structure in the pre- and post- Civil War decades in the US and Europe broadens the book into an immensely interesting social and philosophic commentary.
Women found a greater opportunity during the Civil War years—inevitable with the dearth of men. Proving themselves talented and intelligent didn’t prevent the squelching of feminine talent when the war was over and men fought for their “rightful” place in society. Emerging technology lured men from literary studies into the newly profitable sciences, where women were no longer welcome. Women who were scientists in their own right faded, replaced by “cheap assistants” paid in “kilo-girl-hours.”
The story revolves around Mitchell like a comet around the sun, but is, in a broader sense, a commentary on the changing views of gender roles. Renée Bergland, Associate Professor of English at Simmons College, is masterful in showing not only Mitchell’s developing sense of herself as a woman over her 71 years but also in painting a vivid picture of the society she was part of and tried to shape. Bergland gives us satisfying glimpses of Mitchell’s contemporaries: Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, sharing from their journals.
I closed the book wondering just what it is about society that seems determined to make gender a divisive issue. What it is that makes science perfect for women in one century, and not appropriate for them in another? That we’ve reached a point where woman are perceived as having less ability in math and science than men is disheartening to me. How much more so for Mitchell, who gave her heart and soul to both science and women?
“Maria Mitchell’s hyperbolic comet of 1847 . . . will never come back into our solar system, but because telescopes get better and better that comet has not left our telescopic sights,” Bergland writes. “The comet is [dim] now and will slowly decrease in brightness.” Modern technology is predicted to “catch up with the declining brightness of the comet by the middle of the next century.”
Perhaps, however distant the comet sails, its pinpoint of light will remind us that the heavens are genderless, shining light indiscriminately on all below.
Ruth Douillette retired after 35 years as a middle school teacher, and now freelances as a writer and photographer.
Her essays have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, Cup of Comfort, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and
Under Our Skin, an anthology about breast cancer. Her photography has been featured in flashquake's gallery of art. Ruth
is a member of the Internet Writing Workshop where she’s an administrator for the Practice group. For a sample of her writing
and photography, visit Upstream and Down~.
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