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At Allegheny College, where women and men were required to take the same
courses, Ida was exposed to the life of the mind without consideration of
gender. There she met and became friends with young men her own age, and
perhaps even fell in love. Yet her ambition to work and earn her own way in
life was not swayed. A staunch Methodist, her faith was challenged by the
study of evolution at the College, and she decided to become a biologist to
learn the mysteries of man. But this was not to be. There were few jobs for
women biologists in 1880. And upon graduation she became a school teacher--
like her mother and countless other women before her-- at the Poland Union
Seminary in Poland, Ohio. Teaching was traditionally a woman's profession,
thought a natural extension of her "maternal instinct." But Tarbell's two
years in Poland, Ohio, were so discouraging--both professionally and
financially--that she returned, defeated, to the refuge of her family in
Titusville.
The chance to annotate articles for the Meadville-based Methodist
magazine The Chautauquan, and the
Chautauqua Assembly's Daily Herald
newspaper, revived her hopes. And in this opportunity the career of an
important investigative reporter was born. As she developed her skills, her
job expanded to editing and writing articles for both the magazine and
newspaper. Finally able to support herself, she lived the life of a single,
professional woman.
While working in Meadville, Ida experimented with writing fiction.
Interestingly, many of her stories featured young, professional women as
heroines. Yet all of the stories are curiously incomplete; they dwindle to a
close without resolving their heroines' lives. It is possible that she wrote
these tales to try and sort out the knots in her own life. But her unfinished
stories reveal a young woman uncertain of her future, unable to determine her
fate.
Ida had few female role models. She knew no single women to guide her,
professionally or personally, in planning her life. Like many "New Women" of
her day, she categorically rejected as role models the women reformers of her
mother's generation who visited in the family parlour. She thought them too
strident, too harsh, not "feminine" enough to her liking. In many ways, Ida
was a rather conventional young woman. A romantic, who believed that while
women should be able to receive educations and develop careers of their own,
they should always act like "ladies." They must modulate their voices,
exhibit polite manners, and dress in fashionable attire. Heaven forbid that
they express themselves forcefully or argumentatively in any way--something
she would late do with a vengeance in her later "muckraking" days!
Seeking female role-models, Ida searched history for "noteworthy" women
who made a mark on their world. Her profiles of Madame de Stael, Marie
Antoinette, and Madame Roland--prominent women of the French Revolution--were
published in The Chautauquan, but it was Madame Roland who epitomized
Tarbell's ideal. A woman, she believed, who "had it all"--as a wife, a mother,
a leading figure in the revolutionary era. An 18th century "Superwoman". Ida
dreamed of travelling to France and writing her heroine's biography, but her
duties at The Chautauquan kept her in Meadville. In 1890, however, events
transpired that sent her on her way.
In 1889, The Rev. Theodore L. Flood, editor of The Chautauquan, placed
his 19 year old son, Ned, in charge of the Institution's summer newspaper, the
Daily Herald. A year later, Ned was promoted to Associate Editor, supervisor
of 33 year old Assistant Editor Ida. Angered by this nepotism, stung by the
assumption that an inexperienced young man would be her "boss", Ida stood her
ground. It is possible that she gave her boss an ultimatum--promote me or
I'll leave. By her account, Ida was fired. But when she left, two other
women on the newspaper staff left with her.
What could a 33 year old unemployed single woman do in 1890? Ida's
friends reminded her "Remember you are past thirty. Women don't make new
places for themselves after thirty." Believing herself too old to marry yet
unwilling to resign herself to a life of spinsterhood at her parent's home in
Titusville, Ida transformed defeat into opportunity. She would "seize the
moment", follow her dream, and go to France. There she would write the
biography of Madame Roland who, she hoped, would teach her "what sort of
contribution might be expected from a woman in public life." To support
herself, she would freelance for the prominent news magazines of her time--
Scribners', The Nation, The Century.
A bold proposal for a woman in nineteenth century America--to travel alone to a foreign land whose language she barely knew, far from her home and family, and support herself with her
pen.
The Rev. Flood was shocked by her plans. "You're not a writer," he
cried. "You'll starve!" Wounded by his remark, she recalled:
He...touched the weakest point in my venture: I was not a
writer, and I knew it. I knew I never should be one in the high sense
which I then and still more now give to that word...But if I was not a
writer I had certain qualifications for the practice of the modest kind of
journalism on which I had decided...Then there was my habit of
steady, painstaking work--that ought to count for something. And perhaps
I could learn to write.
An older and wiser Ida described her actions as "desperate, foolhardy, and
impulsive," but her decision to go to France took tremendous courageous. "It
took all the grit I had to go ahead." And in the end, Ida--that mistress of
understatement--conceded that everything "turned out all right."
In Paris, surrounded by a supportive group of younger American students,
Ida found the freedom of her Meadville dreams. Researching Madame Roland, she
explored a woman's life in ways she was unable to scrutinize her own. But
close study of her subject brought disillusionment. Having idealized and
romanticized her subject Ida could not help but be disappointed. She had
thought to find a "moral nobility" in her heroine. Wasn't this fundamental to
women's nature? Instead,
"Mme Roland made a reactionist of me I think I was pretty hard on her
sometimes but it was not on her really. It was rather on myself and my sex.
You see I started out thinking I had an impeccable heroine and I found
qu'une pauvre femme [only a poor woman] and I fear I took it out on her
rather stiffly," she said.
Ida blamed her heroine's weakness on love and personal ambition. Believing
that women were ruled by their hearts rather than by their heads, she
concluded that women's capacity to love made them liable to error:
"A woman in love," she argued, "is never a good politician...The
sentiments, the opinions, the course of action of her lover, become personal
matters with her. She is incapable of judging them objectively. She defends
them with the instinctive passion of the animal, because they are hers.
Intelligence has little or nothing to do with this defense. Even if she be
a cool-headed woman with a large sense of humor and sees that her
championship is illogical, she cannot give up."
Like most 19th century Americans, Ida believed that a woman must choose
between marriage and a career. But her study of Madame Roland led her a step
further--that a woman must choose between love and a career. Is this an
explanation of why she never permitted herself ever to love anyone completely?
During Ida's years in Paris, she grew close to many men but it was a
closeness of friendship rather than romance. Her biographer Kathleen Brady
said that Ida, a romantic, preferred the "idea of men" to the reality of them;
she loved men in the abstract rather than in the specific. Careful to limit
her emotional commitments--they might distract her from her work--Ida only
cultivated friendships with married men much older than herself, or fostered
mentor relationships with men too young to tempt her or challenge her
authority. She avoided socializing with single men her own age, doubtless
fearing emotional entanglement. She had made her choice. She once said: "I
never met a man I would want always at my side night and day and I am sure I
will not."
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While Ida recalled her childhood in Rouseville, Pennsylvania, as
adventurous and exciting, Esther Tarbell hated the years she spent in the
dirty, noisy, rough oil boom town. Esther claimed she "endured enough there
for all the rest of [her] life." There, Ida's brother William was born and a
sister--Sarah--and a second brother, Franklin Jr.--followed. "Frankie",
however, died at three in a scarlet fever epidemic that swept through the
town.
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