Tag: high society

The Unfit Heiress

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

What’s the first thing you think when you hear the word heiress? Beautiful? Wild? Adventurous? Scandalous? Spoiled? Troubled? Does it summon images of glamorous women in gowns draped in furs and jewels? In nightclubs looking like weary painted dolls as prize balloons drop from the ceiling? Or in a simple cut suit that cost more than six months of a working girl’s wages as they testify in court to unburden themselves of another spouse? Or have I spent much of my formative years watching too many Preston Sturges movies while reading about Gloria Vanderbilt, Brenda Frazier and their ilk.

Almost forgotten among these Poor Little Rich Girls from 1920-1950 is one Ann Cooper Hewitt. Like her peers she had a sad childhood, too much money, a string of husbands, failed marriages, artistic leanings and headlines aplenty. What makes Ann Cooper Hewitt stand out? The sterilization surgery at only twenty years old, done without her knowledge or consent. Audrey Clare Farley’s The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt brings light to the infamous case and the not widely known history of forced sterilizations that still haunts us today.

Let’s go back almost nine decades. A troubled girl, the daughter of a brilliant inventor and his scandalous second wife, has a fortune but lives in a narrow world controlled by her mother, without a good education or an extended support network. Since she is underaged she doesn’t have a say in anything and her fortune is controlled by a trust with her mother receiving funds from the trust for her care. Very Gloria Vanderbilt, in fact Ann’s mother Maryon used to be involved with Gloria’s father, the doomed Reginald C. Vanderbilt back in the day. And one day, after being stricken with severe stomach pains, twenty year old Ann is whisked into surgery and wakes up to find out she will never be able to have children thanks to her Fallopian tubes being removed. Yes, removed.

Funny thing that. Actually not funny at all. A sobering reality is many young women where (and still are) subjected to sterilization without their consent or knowledge. Like boys? Get caught in a sexual situation? Family doesn’t want the shame of a loose daughter or sister? Maybe not be a Mensa scholar aka feeble-minded or a moron? Have a child out of wedlock? Forced into an institution to cover up a sexual crime against you? (Dead serious. Stop reading this and look up Carrie Buck) Not be lily-white? Be part of a culture or ethnicity seen as having too many children as a whole? You might be “fortunate” enough to have your ability and decision making about your reproductive right snatched away.

Enraging isn’t it.

So Ann Cooper Hewitt was one of this sad sisterhood, rendered sterile by specialists who decided she was over-sexed and a moron (using the actual medical term here-look it up). But was sex crazed Ann the truth or her mother trying to retain control of her and her money after she turned 21. And did her mother collude with the specialists. The case made it to trial but no one ever was convicted or served time. Infuriating.

Now here’s where Audrey Clare Farley’s The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt is more than just rehashing a forgotten trial. Our society has not gotten any better over the years. There where and still are women being subjected to sterilizations based on views and not facts. Women without agency. It’s heart rending and horrific. And really makes me think. Sent back to the 1930s, would I have been one of these women? A lower class, raised Catholic gal with disabilities who really likes the joys of the flesh with very limited opportunities. Chances are excellent I would have been on the operating table in a state institution.

To be frank, The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt is not an easy or light read. It’s not a huge tome, it has a nice heft and slid right into my tote bag of laundromat supplies. But don’t come looking for some gossipy froth of a book. It’s sobering and will make you think of your particular privileges or lack of in choosing what to do with your body and your reproduction decisions.

If you see Audrey Clare Farley’s The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt ? Pick it up and do more than just skim the inside flap. Please.

This Crazy Thing Called Love

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I was trying to rearrange things on my bookcase to make room for my latest treasures after last week’s trip to the Friends of the Ferguson Library book shop (stoked I found an almost pristine copy of the Mitford sisters letters in hardcover but it’s a doorstop and a half!) when I managed to knock over the knee high stack of mass market paperbacks next to my dresser. I really need to buckle down and write those V.C. Andrews reviews I’ve been planning one of these days. But instead of settling down with Clan Dollaganger, I found myself putting aside Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles. But Friday afternoon found me combing the stacks of the Avon Free Public Library and adding This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward to my armload of books.

Now given my fascination with true crime and the life of the very very rich, you would think I would have reviewed  This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward ages ago. This weekend’s reading wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered the book. Back in 1992 when This Crazy Thing Called Love was published I was right on the library reserve list behind all the old ladies who where old enough to remember the case and in one or two cases, ran in the right circles to have met the Woodwards back in the day. The old ladies in my home town? Full of surprises!  What boggles the mind is there are people out there who devoured Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers and Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles and took those embellished stories as the gospel truth. That’s like reading Jackie Collins writing about her late night soap opera diva Sugar Anderson and assuming you now know all there is too know about Joan Collins and Shirley Maclaine. The true story is so much more interesting.

For those of you who have never heard of the Capote or Dunne books or even know who the Woodwards were, here are basics. In 1955, socialite Ann Woodward shot what she thought was an intruder at her family’s country home. Only, instead of an intruder who had been targeting their neighborhood, Ann Woodward had killed her banking heir husband Billy Woodward. The Woodwards had a stormy marriage with affairs on both sides and many people thought Ann Woodward had killed Billy Woodward in cold blood to keep him from divorcing her to marry someone from his own class. Billy Woodward’s family stood by Ann Woodward but she spent the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion and died just before Esquire magazine published part of Truman Capote’s uncompleted novel Answered Prayers that included the story of a scandalous woman who shoots her very rich husband.

Thanks to Susan Braudy, the picture of the Ann and Billy Woodward is treated with fairness and a steady hand. Ann Woodward (born Angeline Luceil Crowell) wasn’t a saint, but she wasn’t the whore that Dominick Dunne and Truman Capote paint her to be in their stories. There wasn’t a secret hick first husband she was hiding from Billy Woodward. Given the changes in Billy Woodward’s will as their marriage crumbled, Ann Woodward would have been better off financially as the former Mrs Billy Woodward vs the Widow Woodward. Believe it or not…there really was a burglar prowling in their exclusive neighborhood the fateful night Billy Woodward died. And you can’t help but feel that if Ann Eden (the stage name Angleine Crowell used before her marriage) had never meet Billy Woodward or at least if their affair had been just a passing thing versus a marriage, both parties might still be alive and thriving in their own worlds.

If you’ve read Answered Prayers and The Two Mrs Grenvilles, make an effort to track down and read This Crazy Thing Called Love. Ann and Billy Woodward and their family deserve that much.