twenty years at hull house

of the traditional womens rights clamor." If the HulhHouse women

had the vote, they would refrain from using it in mens affairs and confine themselves to womens concerns: "None of these busy women

wished to take the place of men nor to influence them in the direction

of mens affairs, hut they did seek an opportunity to cooperate directly

in civic life through the use of the ballot in regard to their own ah

fairs." The position of Jane Addams within turn-of-the-century feminism is quite complex. On the one hand, she was a highly visible example of a strong, independent woman carrying out the complicated

task of administering Hull-House and taking an active role in national

public debate. But on the other hand, the promise that she held out,

both by precept and example, that "liberated women" would remain

within their traditional roles of sacrificial caretakers of others must

have provided considerable comfort to traditionalists and contributed

to her public idealization as "Saint Jane."

The permanent value of Twenty Years at Hull-House does not lie in

the persuasiveness of Addamss ideas but in its discursiveness, the opportunity it provides to listen to the voice of an extraordinary person

engaged in a daring and provocative experiment, weighing and considering its meaning. At the heart of Twenty Years at Hull-House is not

an idea but a gesture, the act of moving into a slum neighborhood resolved to be a "good neighbor." This ambiguous act can be seen as a

conservative move to preserve the system by softening its harsher

effects from within or as a way of validating and reinforcing narrow and limiting conceptions of female service. But it also can be seen as

an act of genuine goodness, an attempt to rescue women from positions of genteel passivity, and a courageous call for America to address

the condition of the urban poor, so egregious a reproach to American

democracy. None of these possibilities is lost on Jane Addams, and as

long as they remain live issues—as they are even after a hundred years

at Hull-House—Twenty Years at Hull-House will continue to find fascinated readers.

This edition reproduces some of the beautiful line drawings contributed to the first edition by Norah Hamilton, drawings that exemplify

the handcraftsmanship Jane Addams celebrates in the text. Norah

Hamilton (1873-1945) was a resident of Hull-House. Her older sister

Edith Hamilton was headmistress of Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore

in 1910; she later won fame for her popular treatments of classical cul