Some things never change

Early voting has started this week, but I forgot due to a mixup about my days off at work. I'll have to go on Monday I guess and try to remember my voter guide about the various propositions on the ballot. I hope the weather won't be bad.

Meanwhile I've finished reading a book called Harriet and Isabella, historical fiction about two of the Beecher sisters. They had a falling out due to their brother Henry Ward Beecher's adultery scandal, and they mourn the loss of their relationship as Henry dies in 1887. The book explores their long estrangement and the adultery scandal, which also involved famous feminists like Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Antony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Due to Harriet's fame as the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Isabella's commitment to suffrage, the book also touches on topics like slavery, fame, Gilded Age capitalism, feminism, free love, and spiritualism. Other Beecher siblings, as well as their father Lyman Beecher, are mentioned in the book, but the focus is mostly on Harriet and Isabella.

Maybe it's clearer in print than in the ebook, but sometimes it got confusing when the point of view switched back and forth between the sisters. Other than that, it was an engrossing read. I felt that Harriet was close minded and blind in her insistence on blind loyalty to Henry. I feel that Henry was guilty, but a hypocrite. He was also still a spoiled boy coddled by his older sisters, and used to getting his way. Too many people were fiercely invested in the idea that if he was guilty, then his brand of compassionate religion would be tainted and destroyed with him. So they just couldn't let that happen, and the apologists would make scapegoats and pariahs out of people like Isabella, who dared to suggest that Henry wasn't morally perfect and innocent. The alleged affair with Elizabeth Tilton was supposedly consensual, but Henry Beecher was still an authority figure in her life, and the story of how he was left alone with her while she was vulnerable to pressure her into retracting the adultery charge is fishy as hell.

After #metoo, it does remind me of many men like Les Moonves or fucking Brett Kavanaugh who act like they did nothing wrong even in the face of multiple accusations. Acting like they're being destroyed when they're still sitting there all wealthy and untouched and unjailed. So damn brazen about their victimhood, like Harvey Weinstein trying to "find solace" after "his life turned upside down." Fuck him.

Anyway, it was a good book about an iconic American family.