Unabashed Women

The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

Marlene Wagman-Geller

• Publisher: TMA Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781642505085
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History

#1 New Release in Historical Study Essays

A thrilling journey into the badass women whose non-conventional lives left their DNA on history. Discover words of wisdom from the women who found their voices, inspiring you to do the same.

Amazing women with a story to tell. Join Mae West as she shakes up the entertainment industry with her wit and wisdom or create colorful art pieces with Yayoi Kusama that are larger than life itself. These women in history defied the expectations of conventional society to live the lives they chose, regardless of what others thought.

Words of Wisdom. Society may have labeled these fierce femmes as rebels, bad-ass, wild, or uppity. But, these amazing women still dared to be different. With an out-of-the-box perspective, you'll find inspiration from an array of fabulous females who will give you a lesson in being one-of-a-kind.

Unabashed Women offers you:

• Lessons on how to break the glass ceiling
• Biographies of trailblazing women from all walks of life
• Empowerment through famous females who dared to go against the grain

If you enjoyed badass books like Women in Art, The Book of Gutsy Women, or In the Company of Women, then you'll love Unabashed Women.

Chapter 1

“Quand Même?” (1844)

“Slow down? Rest? With all eternity before me?”

—Sarah Bernhardt

Used a letter holder named Sophie made from a human skull? Check. Accessorized with a stuffed bat? Check. Slept in a coffin? Check. The woman who could answer in the affirmative to these questions was also the possessor of the honorific “Divine.”

The flamboyant nineteenth-century actress’s name is employed by mothers to criticize their melodramatic daughters: “Who do you think you are? Sarah Bernhardt?” However, no matter how histrionic, no matter how eccentric, no one could emulate the famed star in eccentricity, in talent, in hubris.

Sarah Bernhardt’s onstage and offstage lives rivaled one another in showmanship. She was the illegitimate daughter of Youle Bernhard, a Jewish woman from Amsterdam who became a sought-after courtesan when she arrived in Paris, and a father who was most likely an officer from Le Havre. Sarah spent her early years with a foster family in Brittany, and later attended a convent near Versailles. A drama queen when thwarted, on one occasion she threw herself in front of a carriage; on another, out a window. Youle did not involve herself in Sarah’s life other than to make her contribute to the family’s income by working as a teenage courtesan.

The Duc de Morny, the half-brother of Napoleon III, one of Youle’s lovers, perceiving Sarah would be as much a drama queen onstage as off, arranged for the fifteen-year-old to attend the prestigious Paris Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. Two years later, she transferred to the Comédie-Francaise; after watching her first production, she pronounced, “The curtain of my life has risen.” She failed to attract notice, partially because she was considered unfashionably thin. A wit remarked that Sarah was so skinny that, when she got into a bath, the water level went down. As Alexandre Dumas fils, novelist and Sarah’s friend, observed, “You know, she’s such a liar that she may even be fat.” Critics panned her performances, and further salt entered the wound when Youle told her, “See! The whole world calls you stupid, and the whole world knows that you’re my child!”

The performance that captured the public’s interest took place in 1893, at an event that played out behind the theater’s curtain. Régine, Sarah’s younger sister, was with her at an annual ceremony to honor Molière, and accidentally stepped on the train of veteran actress Madame Nathalie. Angered, the older woman shoved Régine against a pillar. Sarah’s knee-jerk reaction was to scream, “You miserable bitch!” and slap Nathalie on both cheeks. Sarah refused to apologize, and in the first publicity coup of her career, she tore up her contract. The incident made her the talk—and toast—of Paris.

Sarah depended on wealthy lovers for support until she joined the Théâtre de l’Odéon, run by a father and son; she slept with them both. Her performances made her a star in the theatrical firmament. When she played the Queen of Spain in Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas, the aged writer knelt down, kissed her hand, and uttered, “Merci, merci.” The tribute was genuine, not merely the result of their earlier affair, in the course of which he had gifted her a human skull. She took a brief hiatus in 1864 for the birth of her son Maurice, whose father may have been a passing Belgian dalliance with Prince de Ligne.

Although a consummate narcissist, Sarah still possessed a soul. During the 1870 siege of Paris, she transformed the Odéon into a field hospital, filling the stage, dressing rooms, and auditorium with cots for the injured and the dying. She persuaded her well-heeled stockholders (the name she gave to her lovers who supported her lifestyle) to supply medicine and food, and convinced one to donate his overcoat. She also thumbed her nose when it came to religion. Sarah had been raised as a Catholic, and as a child, she had entertained an inspiration to be a nun. Indeed, one of her prized possessions was a rosary, a gift from Pope Leo XIII. Nevertheless, in an age of virulent anti-Semitism, she adhered to her Jewish roots. Caricatures circulated of her with a Star of David and bags of money, denoting her as a money-grubbing Jew. The only truly embittered disagreement she had with her beloved son was over the Dreyfus Affair, when she defended the Jewish officer charged with treason.

Due to her surging popularity, the Comédie-Francaise arranged her return, and she transformed into its shining star. The newspaper Le Figaro declared that everyone was coming to Paris to gaze upon its two main attractions: the newly erected Eiffel Tower, and Sarah Bernhardt. Sigmund Freud wrote of her performance, “my head is reeling,” and he hung her photo in his office. D. H. Lawrence compared her to “a gazelle with a beautiful panther’s fascination and fury.” Mark Twain observed, “There are five kinds of actresses. Bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses—and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.” The Divine (her honorific) leading lady also served as muse: Oscar Wilde wrote Salomé for her; Marcel Proust portrayed her in his novel In Search of Lost Time; Aubrey Beardsley drew her portrait as Salomé holding John the Baptist’s severed head. One naysayer was the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who later admitted his acrimony was because she had reminded him of his Aunt Georgina.

From 1880 onwards, Sarah toured Europe and America, and she took along her menagerie of pets—dogs, a snake, and an alligator called Ali-Gaga, who passed away after consuming too much champagne. Adoring fans lavished tributes: Australians danced to “The Bernhardt Waltz”; Argentina presented Sarah with thirteen thousand acres of land; in London, Oscar Wilde laid lilies at her feet. In America, reporters bombarded the famed thespian: What was her waist size? Did she feed live birds to her lion cub? In New York, Sarah made her way to a theater through a crowd of worshippers who demanded she sign their shirt cuffs. At one point, to avoid the throng, her younger sister Jeanne, camouflaged in Sarah’s outlandish clothes, hoodwinked the public so the prima donna could make her getaway. She took the opportunity to visit Thomas Edison, likewise smitten, who gave her a tour of his laboratory. In return, he persuaded her to make a recording on his new invention: the phonograph.

However, not everyone was in Camp Bernhardt. Fundamentalist preachers pronounced her sinful. Ever resourceful, when a Texas theater owner refused to rent his place for her performance, she set up her own tent in a field. Ladies in the audience returned home with the hems of their dresses frayed by the cornstalks.

The woman who had grown up in a foster home, with money from her roles as an actress and a courtesan, purchased her own home located in the Parc Monceau area of Paris, as over-decorated as her stage sets. She shared the space with Maurice, her menagerie of pets, and a constant stream of visitors. Guests who came through her door were the stuff of legend: Theodore Roosevelt, Oscar Wilde, Louis Pasteur, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola. The hostess also served as a muse; Alexander Dumas fils declared after a visit, “but when I get home, how I can write! How I can write!”

The most-utilized piece of furniture in her home was the Bernhardt bed—lovers were legion. Some of the famous were Victor Hugo, Charles Haas (Proust’s model for his character Swann), Albert Edward, a.k.a. the Prince of Wales, and Gustave Doré. An equal opportunity lover, Sarah also slept with a variety of female paramours.

Along with own her own property, Sarah, who always desired to be at the helm of her ship, commandeered her own playhouse that she unsurprisingly christened the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. In a signature exit at the close of a Bernhardt production, in a male role such as Hamlet, she would expertly expire on stage. A critic was so inspired he wrote, “dying as angels would die were they allowed to.” In the same show, the audience rose to its feet; their enthusiasm was not diminished by the fact that the star was fifty-six and had played the role of a twenty-year-old.

Despite looking after her exotic animals, grueling schedule, and erotic liaisons, Sarah also took the conventional step of marriage. She fell for a dissolute Greek shipping heir, Aristides Damalas, twelve years her junior, who she described as “pleased with himself as Narcissus.” They married in England in 1882, between her engagements in Naples and Nice. He worked as a representative of a Greek delegation stationed in Paris, and due to diplomatic indiscretion, his country reassigned him to a post in St. Petersburg. Acting the part of the devoted wife, Sarah changed her tour engagements and followed him to Russia. Alas, Aristides slipped back into his morphine habit, and one day abruptly deserted to join the French Foreign Legion. When he died from his drug addiction at age forty-two, Sarah referred to herself as “the widow Damalas.” Irish writer Bram Stoker said he had partly based his character Dracula on Sarah’s husband.

Alongside van Gogh’s ear, Bernhardt’s leg is the most famous appendage in history. She had suffered an injury when she leapt from a parapet while performing La Tosca that resulted in years of chronic pain. According to legend, while enduring an amputation under anesthetic, she h...

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• About the Author