Terrible Virtue: A Novel
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In the spirit of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, the provocative and compelling story of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—an indomitable woman who, more than any other, and at great personal cost, shaped the sexual landscape we inhabit today.
The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists, and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. It was a battle that would pit her against puritanical, patriarchal lawmakers, send her to prison again and again, force her to flee to England, and ultimately change the lives of women across the country and around the world.
This complex enigmatic revolutionary was at once vain and charismatic, generous and ruthless, sexually impulsive and coolly calculating—a competitive, self-centered woman who championed all women, a conflicted mother who suffered the worst tragedy a parent can experience. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Margaret Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.
With cameos by such legendary figures as Emma Goldman, John Reed, Big Bill Haywood, H. G. Wells, and the love of Margaret’s life, Havelock Ellis, this richly imagined portrait of a larger-than-life woman is at once sympathetic to her suffering and unsparing of her faults. Deeply insightful, Terrible Virtue is Margaret Sanger’s story as she herself might have told it.
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Ellen Feldman. (2016). Terrible Virtue: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Ellen Feldman. 2016. Terrible Virtue: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Ellen Feldman, Terrible Virtue: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Ellen Feldman. Terrible Virtue: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2016.
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Ellen Feldman is the author of five previous novels, including Scottsboro, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and Next to Love. A 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, she lives in New York City.
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In the spirit of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, the provocative and compelling story of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—an indomitable woman who, more than any other, and at great personal cost, shaped the sexual landscape we inhabit today.
The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists, and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. It was a battle that would pit her against puritanical, patriarchal lawmakers, send her to prison again and again, force her to flee to England, and ultimately change the lives of women across the country and around the world.
This complex enigmatic revolutionary was at once vain and charismatic, generous and ruthless, sexually impulsive and coolly calculating—a competitive, self-centered woman who championed all women, a conflicted mother who suffered the worst tragedy a parent can experience. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Margaret Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.
With cameos by such legendary figures as Emma Goldman, John Reed, Big Bill Haywood, H. G. Wells, and the love of Margaret’s life, Havelock Ellis, this richly imagined portrait of a larger-than-life woman is at once sympathetic to her suffering and unsparing of her faults. Deeply insightful, Terrible Virtue is Margaret Sanger’s story as she herself might have told it.
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- source: Stacy Schiff, author of The Witches: Salem, 1692
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"Terrible Virtue is captivating, powerful, headlong and inventive—just like its subject. A beautifully wrought, compulsively readable novel. Ellen Feldman can do anything." — Stacy Schiff, author of The Witches: Salem, 1692
"[A] highly topical novelization of the life of Margaret Sanger.... We need her story now more than ever." — Elle
"Feldman compellingly portrays the difficult choices confronting women living in a man's world.... This immersive, moving, and thought-provoking book is worthy of the intense discussions it's sure to spark." — Booklist, starred review
"How does a minimally educated, working class woman redirect the moral compass of an entire generation? Feldman shows us how in her masterful novel, Terrible Virtue. Passionate, driven, the Margaret Sanger of Feldman's imagination is every bit as complex as the world she was determined to enlighten." — Mary Beth Keane, author of Fever: A Novel of Typhoid Mary
"A fascinating exploration of Margaret Sanger as a visionary tour de force who left a stream of public victories and private casualties in her wake. Birth control, sex, family, work, individual need, free love, the greater good—it's all here, historically grounded but as relevant today as it was then." — Elizabeth Graver, author of The End of the Point
"Compelling.... An excellent choice for book groups." — Library Journal
"Margaret Sanger blazes to life in this riveting, powerful novel. Read Terrible Virtue once to learn about the woman whose work ultimately shaped Western culture, then read it again for Ellen Feldman's masterful storytelling. Fascinating and unforgettable." — Lynn Cullen, author of Twain's End
"Margaret Sanger was passionate about birth control, freedom, a surprising number of men and her daughter. Ellen Feldman lets us see all these sides of one of America's most complicated heroines, a woman who knew too well the hard choice between work and family. An irresistible and utterly timely novel." — Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
"A powerful, haunting, deeply ambitious novel about love and war, impeccably executed, impossible to put down." — Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life, on Next to Love
"A riveting drama...inspired and inspiring.... Ruby is a gem of a character, and belongs with the best of William Faulkner's, or Alice Walker's, women." — San Francisco Chronicle on The Unwitting
"A compelling story...of mystery, political intrigue, and forgiveness. Much of the fun comes from the literary cameos (think: Mary McCarthy, Richard Wright and Robert Lowell), but it's the novel's haunting portrait of a marriage that make this Cold War novel so resonant for readers of any time period." — Oprah's Book of the Week on The Unwitting
"Bold and original....the originality of voice and thought [is] evident on every page... part love story, part mystery and part political thriller I would heartily recommend." — All Things Considered, NPR, on The Unwitting
"A lustrous evocation of a stormy period in our past; highly recommended for lovers of World War II fiction." — Library Journal, starred review, on Next to Love
"An intimate look at how we can be dismantled and rebuilt by changing times." —...
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January 25, 2016
Feldman’s latest (after 2014’s The Unwitting) chronicles the life of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger from her point of view, with occasional shifts to the people in her orbit. Raised in a large family headed up by a father who encouraged radical views, Margaret becomes a nurse, reluctantly marries, and has children. She gravitates, with her husband, Bill, toward socialist causes. It soon becomes clear, much to Bill’s chagrin, that monogamy isn’t for her. As Margaret struggles to publish information on preventing pregnancy and open a clinic for women, she blossoms into a media-savvy activist who wittingly hides her dalliances while brandishing a motherly public image. Feldman successfully paints Margaret as someone who is so wrapped up in her causes and fame that she neglects her family. As Margaret’s fight has her fleeing the U.S. to avoid prosecution and hobnobbing with well-heeled contacts abroad, the country’s attitudes toward women’s rights slowly change. While the book focuses on many life events, such as her second marriage to a wealthy man and the role she played in securing funding for research on the Pill, everything whizzes by a bit too quickly. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency.
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March 1, 2016
In her latest novel, the award-winning Feldman (The Unwitting) has created a compelling portrait of Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), the famous champion of birth control. The first-person narrative, with short excerpts in the voices of friends, family, and lovers, portrays Sanger as a complex woman, torn between her family and cause. Married, she was also unfaithful and promiscuous. Her obsessions meant she spent little time with her children; her sons felt neglected, and her daughter died young. Yet the author also depicts in compelling detail the hardship imposed on large, desperately poor families by the lack of contraception. She further captures the excitement of Sanger's involvement in the political and social movements of the times. The only unsettling note is a trite dismissal of Sanger's reputation for being a eugenicist. VERDICT Feldman draws on extensive research to tackle with aplomb the difficult task of writing a novel about a woman whose life is well known and whose story remains controversial decades after her death. Those interested in the history of the women's movement and its impact on today's world will find lots to ponder here. An excellent choice for book groups.--Jan Marry, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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January 15, 2016
Margaret Sanger, the revolutionary fighter for women's contraceptive rights and founder of Planned Parenthood, joins the pantheon of figures whose lives have been turned into historical novels. Born into grinding poverty, Sanger observed, keenly, the toll that pregnancy after pregnancy took on her exhausted mother, who had 13 children. An escape from her childhood home and the opportunity for formal education, both provided by her devoted older sisters, exposed her to the possibilities of a life unfettered by destitution and despair. A devotion to political activism as well as the exploration of all sorts of personal freedoms became the hallmarks of Sanger's tumultuous life, which she narrates in a lively first-person voice, which Feldman occasionally intersperses with sections addressed to Sanger from her nearest and dearest, including children, lovers, and husbands. A spectacular tension between the demands of motherhood and the zeal with which she pursued all of her passions--political as well as sexual--forced Sanger to choose, on more than one occasion, between being present with her children or forging onward in her battle to provide access to birth control, and arguably better lives, for women in dire circumstances similar to those of her childhood. The choices Sanger made to further her crusade were not without cost, and Feldman deftly illuminates the terrible tolls (both inflicted and self-inflicted) they took upon her heroine in a narration that is elegiac as well as triumphant. Cameo appearances by the great names of Sanger's time add notes of gossipy interest for the historically aware reader while placing the events of the novel in a broader social context. Feldman's (The Unwitting, 2014, etc.) well-researched treatment of the often tragic realities of the life of a formative figure in American social history offers much to contemporary readers living through current culture wars.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from March 1, 2016
Margaret Sanger, early twentieth-century pioneer in birth control, women's-rights reformer, and founder of Planned Parenthood, comes to life in Feldman's timely historical novel. The story makes it eminently clear that Sanger was a whirlwind of conflicting emotions and hasty decisions, as well as a maddeningly stubborn crusader for reproductive rights, although her tumultuous sex life and inconstant treatment of her husbands and children often undermined her efforts toward social change. How her terrible virtue affects those around her is reflected in newspaper headlines and poignant letters from family members, which form an important part of the story. In fleshing out such a controversial activist, Feldman compellingly portrays the difficult choices confronting women living in a man's world. Without glossing over Sanger's abrasive personality or hard-to-swallow eugenicist opinions, the author effectively pulls readers into historical New York, where, as a nurse, Sanger found her calling and shared the vivid story that became her clarion call of Sadie Sachs, who died from a self-induced abortion after desperately seeking some method of birth control. This immersive, moving, and thought-provoking book is worthy of the intense discussions it's sure to spark. Another excellent biographical novel with similar themes is Jackson Taylor's The Blue Orchard (2010). Readers in search of further insight on Sanger's life and work should try Jean H. Baker's biography, Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion (2011).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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In the spirit of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, the provocative and compelling story of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—an indomitable woman who, more than any other, and at great personal cost, shaped the sexual landscape we inhabit today.
The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists, and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. It was a battle that would pit her against puritanical, patriarchal lawmakers, send her to prison again and again, force her to flee to England, and ultimately change the lives of women across the country and around the world.
This complex enigmatic...
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