Emma Goldman

118

Emma Goldman : biography

df=y March 6 – 14 May 1940

The family moved to the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, where her father opened one unsuccessful store after another. Their poverty forced the children to work, and Goldman took an assortment of jobs including one in a corset shop.Chalberg, p. 15. As a teenager Goldman begged her father to allow her to return to school, but instead he threw her French book into the fire and shouted: "Girls do not have to learn much! All a Jewish daughter needs to know is how to prepare gefilte fish, cut noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children."Goldman, Living, p. 12.

Goldman pursued an independent education on her own, however, and soon began to study the political turmoil around her, particularly the Nihilists responsible for assassinating Alexander II of Russia. The ensuing turmoil intrigued Goldman, even though she did not fully understand it at the time. When she read Chernyshevsky’s novel, What Is to Be Done? (1863), she found a role model in the protagonist Vera, who adopts a Nihilist philosophy and escapes her repressive family to live freely and organize a sewing cooperative. The book enthralled Goldman and remained a source of inspiration throughout her life.Wexler, Intimate, pp. 23–26.

Her father, meanwhile, continued to insist on a domestic future for her, and he tried to arrange for her to be married at the age of fifteen. They fought about the issue constantly; he complained that she was becoming a "loose" woman, and she insisted that she would marry for love alone.Chalberg, p. 16. At the corset shop, she was forced to fend off unwelcome advances from Russian officers and other men. One persistent suitor took her into a hotel room and committed what Goldman called "violent contact";Goldman, Living, p. 22. two biographers call it rape.Falk, Love, p. 14. She was stunned by the experience, overcome by "shock at the discovery that the contact between man and woman could be so brutal and painful."Goldman, Living, p. 23. Goldman felt that the encounter forever soured her interactions with men.

Rochester, New York

In 1885, Helena made plans to move to New York to join her sister Lena and her husband. Goldman wanted to join her sister, but their father refused to allow it. Despite Helena’s offer to pay for the trip, Abraham turned a deaf ear to their pleas. Desperate, Goldman threatened to throw herself into the Neva River if she could not go. He finally agreed, and on December 29, 1885, Helena and Emma arrived at New York’s Castle Garden.Wexler, Intimate, p. 27. They moved into the Rochester home Lena had made with her husband Samuel. Fleeing the rising antisemitism of Saint Petersburg, their parents and brothers joined them a year later. Goldman began working as a seamstress, sewing overcoats for more than ten hours a day, earning two and a half dollars a week. She asked for a raise and was denied; she quit and took work at a smaller shop nearby.Wexler, Intimate, pp. 30–31.

At her new job, Goldman met a fellow worker named Jacob Kershner, who shared her love for books, dancing, and traveling, as well as her frustration with the monotony of factory work. After four months, they married in February 1887.Falk, Love, pp. 15–16. Once he moved in with Goldman’s family, however, their relationship faltered. On their wedding night she discovered that he was impotent; they became emotionally and physically distant. Before long he became jealous and suspicious. She, meanwhile, was becoming more engaged with the political turmoil around her—particularly the fallout of the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago and the anti-authoritarian political philosophy of anarchism. Less than a year after the wedding, they were divorced; he begged her to return and threatened to poison himself if she did not. They reunited, but after three months she left once again. Her parents considered her behavior "loose" and refused to allow Goldman into their home.Drinnon, Rebel, pp. 15–17. Carrying her sewing machine in one hand and a bag with five dollars in the other, she left Rochester and headed southeast to New York City.Chalberg, p. 27.