Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism By Joanna Scutts (Seal Press)

Among the stories left untold from the women’s rights movement is the history of Heterodoxy, a secret club that helped shape first-wave feminism. Marie Jenney Howe, a Unitarian minister, formed Heterodoxy in 1912 when she came to Greenwich Village, in N.Y.C., as part of her suffrage activism. Most of the club’s members were involved in the suffrage movement but believed that achieving the right to vote would not be enough liberation for women. Rather, they hoped it could be a springboard toward greater gender equality. Among the club’s members were the writers Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Susan Glaspell. While the group initially consisted solely of privileged white women, it eventually became more diverse. Grace Nail Johnson, the group’s only Black member, pushed Heterodoxy members to gain a deeper understanding of race and how it factored into their fight. Meanwhile, working-class feminists focused on labor issues. The women of Heterodoxy pursued freedom for women on many fronts, including birth control, maternity leave, and maintaining independence in marriage. Scutts has created a narrative in which the subjects come alive as fully developed beings. This is an important work for understanding the history of feminism as well as contextualizing the current state of modern-day feminism and its potential future. –ADRIENNE URBANSKI

Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation By Maud Newton (Random House) 

Ever wondered about the story of your family’s roots beyond the DNA test results from 23AndMe? Award-winning writer Maud Newton did, and her debut book is an engaging memoir about the quest for truth and the unanswered questions buried deep within her own ancestry. In a story that is part genealogical scavenger hunt, part cultural critique, and part American history, Newton’s highly researched memoir grapples with the complexities of her family tree and how it informs her life. Since childhood, Newton, who is white, has been obsessed with—and upset by—stories of her Southern ancestors: from her grandfather who came of age during the Great Depression, to her attorney father who eulogized the virtues of slavery, to the religious fanaticism of her family’s maternal line that caused an ancestor to be accused of being a witch. The story is told in a nonlinear fashion that interweaves texts and stories from our nation’s history with those of Newton’s own ancestors, and some readers may find themselves backtracking throughout the story to connect the dots. Readers will also be transfixed by the stories Newton uncovers about her family members and moved by witnessing the transformative power that reckoning with one own’s past can have. –CHIARA ATOYEBI

Bitch: On the Female of the SpeciesBy Lucy Cooke (Basic Books)

I devoured zoologist Lucy Cooke’s latest book the way a female golden orb weaver spider devours the male: voraciously. Cooke strikes down the notion that scientists make for poor communicators—her prose is cinematic, energetic, and hilarious. The book explores female aggression and dominance, maternity, genitalia, reproduction, and sexual selection (including lesbian albatrosses!). We accompany Cooke on various adventures, from scooping whale poop (to study menopause in orcas, naturally) to climbing snowy mountains to watch the mating dance of the sage grouse. Estimably, Bitch calls for “a sex-neutral approach when forecasting animal behavior. One that [is] shaped by the environment, developmental and life history along with random events.” It embraces the idea that to be female is to be on a spectrum of sex that’s definable only by its plasticity. The takeaway is that, like with other animals, human sexual expression is akin to breathing—an involuntary process and a conscious choice. When Bitch wasn’t radicalizing my views on sex, it had me cooing over observations like that of chubby seal pups rolling unstoppably as their little flippers can’t reach the ground. This book is highly recommended to anyone who enjoy animals, humor, queer theory, feminism, or all of the above. –ROBYN SMITH

This article originally appeared in BUST's Summer 2022 print edition. Subscribe today!

Pugs feature in many of our favorite Regency novels and, in most of them, the cheerful little dog, which currently ranks 32nd most popular breed in the United States, is not portrayed in a very flattering light.  Instead of the “happy, even-tempered companion” that the United Kennel Club refers to in their breed standard, the Pugs of literature are generally depicted as spoiled, temperamental little brutes.  As illustrated in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, their presence in a novel tends to symbolize the very worst in upper-class indolence.  Austen describes the character of Lady Bertram thusly:

“She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children.”  (Mansfield Park, Jane Austen, 1814.)

The phrase “of little use and no beauty” might just as easily be applied to the character of Pug herself.  Content to while away her life sitting on the sofa with her mistress, her only exercise the occasional bout of mischief making in the flower beds, Pug is nothing like the noble hounds and energetic spaniels we have grown accustomed to seeing in period literature.

Princess Ekaterina Dmitrievna Golitsyna, 1759. by Louis-Michel van Loo (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

In the novels of Georgette Heyer, the portrayal of Pugs is not much better than that in Austen.  In fact, it is uniformly negative. The much-maligned little canine is usually associated with elderly dowagers and, more often than not, the bane of every young person who crosses their threshold.

“[My grandmother has] a pug-dog,” says Gil Ringwood to Hero, Lady Sheringham, in Friday’s Child.  “Nasty, smelly little brute.  Took a piece out of my leg once.  You could take it for walks. Wants exercising.  At least, it did when last I saw it. Of course, it may be dead by now.  Good thing if it is.” (Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer, 1944.)

As luck would have it, the Pug in question has not yet been “gathered to its fathers,” but is indeed very much alive. Upon catching sight of the snuffling, snorting creature, Lord Sheringham informs his wife:

“I’ll be hanged if I’ll have an overfed little brute like that in my house! If you want a dog, I’ll give you one, but I warn you, it won’t be a pug!”

Young Lady in a Boat by James Tissot, 1870.

In contrast to those featured in Austen and Heyer, the Pugs of history are much beloved little fellows.  The most famous of their ranks is undoubtedly Pompey, the Pug belonging to William the Silent, Prince of Orange.  Sir Roger Williams recounts the following anecdote about Pompey in his book Actions in the Low Countries (1618):

"The Prince of Orange being retired into the camp, Julian Romero, with earnest persuasions, procured licence of the Duke D’Alva to hazard a camisado, or night attack, upon the Prince.  At midnight, Julian sallied out of the trenches with a thousand armed men, mostly pikes, who forced all the guards that they found in their way into the place of arms before the Prince’s tent, and killed two of his secretaries; the Prince himself escaping very narrowly, for I have often heard him say, that he thought, but for a dog, he had been taken or slain.  The attack was made with such resolution, that the guards took no alarm until their fellows were running to the place of arms, with their enemies at their heels; when this dog, hearing a great noise, fell to scratching and crying, and awakened him before any of his men…The Prince, to shew his gratitude until his dying day, kept one of that dog’s race, and so did many of his friends and followers.”

William I, Prince of Orange, 1579. by Adriaen Thomasz Key (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum)

The Pug went on to become the favored dog of European royalty, including monarchs William and Mary whose Pugs, wearing orange ribbons to signify the House of Orange, travelled with them from Holland when they came to ascend the English throne in 1688. The Empress Josephine was also a Pug fancier. Her Pug, Fortune, is famous for having carried messages for her while she was imprisoned during the revolution. Marie Antoinette had a beloved Pug named Mops. And Queen Victoria, a noted lover of dogs, had a veritable herd of Pugs.

Royal Group at Balmoral, 1887. (Royal Trust Collection)

With their protruding eyes and corkscrew tail, the Pug may not be precisely the sort of dog you would like to see in your next historical romance – either as a writer or as a reader – but I would urge you to reconsider.  Despite their unfortunate characterization in many Regency novels of the past, Pugs continue to be in actual fact little dogs of great courage, possessed of boundless affection, and an unending reservoir of good cheer.

Blonde and Brunette by Charles Burton Barber, 1879.

Top image credit: Portrait of Elena Mastiani Brunacci by Pietro Benvenuti, 1809. (Palazzo Pitti)

This article originally appeared on MimiMatthews.com and is reprinted here with permission.

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