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Scudder,
Vida Dutton (15 Dec. 1861-9 Oct. 1954), social reformer,
writer, and educator, was born Julia Vida Dutton Scudder in Madura,
India, the daughter of David Coit Scudder, a Congregationalist missionary,
and Harriet Louisa Dutton. Scudder moved to the United States as
an infant, following the tragic drowning of her father. For the
first few years of her life she lived with her mother and other
relatives at the Dutton family home in Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Scudder came from two well-established New England families - she
was the niece of Horace Scudder, editor of the Atlantic Monthly,
and Edward P. Dutton, a publisher. Growing up, Scudder spent several
years traveling in Europe with her mother and aunt. Upon her return,
she began attending Miss Sanger's school in Boston. She entered
Boston's newly established Girls' Latin School in 1878 and earned
her B.A. from Smith College in 1884.
Following
her graduation from Smith, Scudder traveled to England to become
one of the first women to study at Oxford University. At Oxford
Scudder attended the last series of lectures by social critic
John Ruskin. The lectures by Ruskin inspired Scudder to think
critically about social stratification based on class. She realized
her own privileged background and felt angered by the social divisions
that she saw crystallizing within an increasingly industrialized
society. Scudder's growing contempt for such divisions prompted
her to begin participating in organized efforts to ameliorate
social conditions, and she joined the Salvation Army while in
England.
Scudder returned
to Boston in 1885 and occupied herself with the activities of
several newly organized women's organizations, including the Association
of Collegiate Alumnae and the Saturday Morning Club in Boston.
While these organizations helped Scudder create a network of professional
contacts, they did not speak directly to the questions of social
and moral responsibility that interested her. She turned to writing,
and after completing a thesis on modern English poets she earned
an M.A. from Smith College. In 1887 she accepted a position at
Wellesley College to teach English literature.
During the
fall of her first year at Wellesley, Scudder met with a small
group of Smith alumnae to discuss the establishment of an American
settlement house. The settlement idea, which had originated in
England as a predominately male venture, appealed to Scudder's
desire to work toward tempering class divisions. Settlement workers,
mostly white and formally educated, moved into immigrant/working-class
neighborhoods to offer cultural and social programs to members
of the community. In an article for the Andover Review, "The
Place of College Settlements" (Oct. 1892), Scudder wrote,
"The amateur settlement expresses that pure and voluntary
socialism which many of us feel holds our best and most permanent
hope." Scudder believed that college-educated women, trained
as both caretakers and intellectuals, had a primary role to play
in the development of settlement houses.
By early 1889
Scudder and settlement-house organizers from Smith had expanded
their informal association to include women from other colleges.
The group opened the first successful American settlement house,
located on Rivington Street in New York City, on 1 September 1889--Jane
Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull-House in Chicago two
weeks later. Founders of the Rivington Street settlement depended
in large part on the financial support of other college-educated
women. Such support enabled founders to organize formally into
the College Settlements Association (CSA) in 1890. Membership
in the CSA grew rapidly, and the organization opened two more
settlement houses, Denison House in Boston and the College Settlement
in Philadelphia, in 1892. By 1898 the CSA had more than 2,000
members nationwide.
During her
tenure with the CSA, Scudder served on the CSA's electoral board
and participated actively in the creation of programs at Denison
House. She pushed members of the house to become involved with
labor issues and in 1903 helped found the Women's Trade Union
League. Although she never resided permanently at any of the CSA's
houses--teaching duties at Wellesley and a commitment to living
with her mother prevented her from doing so--Scudder served as
one of the CSA's main spokespersons, publishing numerous articles
on social reform and the role of the settlement house in American
life.
By 1912 Scudder
worried that her affiliation with socialism and other radical
forms of politics would harm the CSA's reputation, and she resigned
from the organization. Around that time Scudder had come under
attack from members of the Wellesley community after having spoken
out at a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Since the
late 1880s Scudder's politics had grown increasingly Leftist.
She participated in such organizations as the Society of Christian
Socialists, the Christian Social Union, the Episcopal Church Socialist
League, and, later, the Intercollegiate Socialist League. In 1911
she joined the Socialist party.
Scudder
grounded her socialist beliefs in a foundation of Christian doctrine
and Christian faith. She joined the Society of the Companions
of the Holy Cross (SCHC), a women's Episcopal organization practicing
intercessory prayer, in 1889 and remained active until her death.
She also published numerous books on the Catholic tradition. In
Socialism and Character (1912) she argues for a spiritual and
political union between Marxism and Catholicism.
Retiring
from Wellesley in 1928, Scudder spent much of her later life writing.
She continued to involve herself with church-related activities,
and in the early 1930s she served as the first dean of the School
of Christian Ethics, a three-week summer program run by the Church
League for Industrial Democracy. In 1937 Scudder published the
first volume of her autobiography, On Journey. She published the
second volume, My Quest for Reality, in 1952.
Through
her writing and organizational work, Scudder encouraged a new
generation of middle-class women, college educated and professionally
motivated, to bring about social change through settlement-house
work and other forms of collective action. The effects of this
work were long-lasting, and by the early twentieth century, women
made up the majority of settlement workers in the United States.
Privately, Scudder lived for thirty-five years with Florence Converse,
whom she called her "Comrade and Companion." Scudder
died at her home in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Bibliography
Collections
of Scudder's papers are housed in the Wellesley College Archives;
the archives of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross
in South Byfield, Mass.; and the Sophia Smith Collection of the
Smith College Library. Other archival sources include the Denison
House Papers of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe College, and the College Settlements Association Papers
of the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Library. Some of
Scudder's books not cited above include The Witness of Denial
(1895); The Life of the Spirit in Modern English Poets (1895);
Social Ideals in English Letters (1898); Introduction to the Study
of English Literature (1901); A Listener in Babel: Being a Series
of Imaginary Conversations (1903); Saint Catherine of Siena as
Seen in Her Letters (1905); The Disciple of a Saint (1907); Le
Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory and Its Sources (1917); The
Church and the Hour: Reflections of a Socialist Churchwoman (1917);
The Social Teachings of the Christian Year (1921); Brother John:
A Tale of the First Franciscans (1927); The Franciscan Adventure
(1931); The Privilege of Age: Essays Secular and Spiritual (1939);
and Father Huntington (1940). Some helpful secondary materials
on Scudder are Theresa Corcoran, S.C., Vida Dutton Scudder (1982);
Elizabeth Palmer Hutcheson Carrell, "Reflections in a Mirror:
The Progressive Woman and the Settlement Experience" (Ph.D.
diss., Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1981); and Arthur Mann, Yankee
Reformers in an Urban Age (1954). For a discussion of Scudder
at Wellesley, see Patricia Ann Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The
Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (1995). An obituary is
in the New York Times, 11 Oct. 1954.
Michelle
A. Spinelli
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