About the Work
The Limitation of Births and the Individualist Point of View is an autobiographical work by Emma Goldman, written in the first person and drawing extensively on her personal experiences, political development, and relationships. The book chronicles her life from her childhood in Russia and Germany through her arrival in America as a young immigrant, her involvement in the anarchist movement, her imprisonment, and her evolving understanding of love, freedom, and social justice. The narrative is framed by a conversational structure, with passages of reflection and dialogue interspersed throughout, suggesting that Goldman is recounting her life story to a listener or reader with direct intimacy.
The work opens with an editorial preface dated January 1931, written from Saint-Tropez, France, in which Goldman explains the circumstances under which she came to write her memoirs. She describes how she had long resisted suggestions to write her autobiography, believing that one should only undertake such a task at “a good philosophic age,” when life could be viewed “impersonally and detachedly.” Forced inactivity in Europe led her to read numerous biographies and autobiographies, and she discovered that old age often brings “senility, narrowness, and petty rancor” rather than wisdom. This realization prompted her to seriously consider writing her life.
A significant obstacle was her lack of historical data. Materials accumulated over thirty-five years in the United States—books, correspondence, and her personal set of Mother Earth magazine, which she had published for twelve years—had been confiscated by Department of Justice raiders and never returned. Friends assisted her in reconstructing her history: Leonard D. Abbott, Agnes Inglis (founder of the Labadie Library in Detroit, which contained “the richest collection of radical and revolutionary material in America”), and W. S. Van Valkenburgh. For European data she relied on Max Nettlau and Rudolf Rocker. Her “old vice” of writing letters saved her, as mountains of correspondence were returned by friends including Sasha (Alexander Berkman), Ben Reitman, Ben Capes, Jacob Margolis, Agnes Inglis, Harry Weinberger, Van, and Leon Bass. Her niece Stella Ballantine preserved letters from Goldman’s imprisonment in the Missouri penitentiary, and M. Eleanor Fitzgerald preserved Russian correspondence. Over one thousand letters resulted—painful reading but invaluable.
Goldman went to Saint-Tropez, France, with Emily Holmes Coleman (“Demi”) as her secretary—a “wild wood-sprite with a volcanic temper,” poet, natural rebel, and anarchist, though Goldman’s world of ideas was foreign to her. They clashed furiously, but Demi provided encouragement through the first year of struggle. Peggy Guggenheim started a fund for Goldman’s material security. Miriam Lerner replaced Demi; Dorothy Marsh, Betty Markow, and Emmy Eckstein typed the manuscript; Arthur Leonard Ross served as legal adviser. Sasha (Berkman) worked eighteen months revising the manuscript, proving remarkably objective, and suggested the title Living My Life.
The narrative itself begins with Goldman’s arrival in New York City on August 15, 1889, at age twenty, and proceeds through her early years in America, her involvement in the labor movement and anarchist circles, her relationships with key figures such as Johann Most and Alexander Berkman, her imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island, her travels to England and across America, and her encounters with prominent radicals and thinkers of the era. The book is both a personal memoir and a document of the anarchist movement in late nineteenth-century America and Europe.
Context
The book emerges from a specific historical moment in Goldman’s life. Written in the late 1920s and completed in early 1931, it reflects on events spanning roughly four decades, from her childhood in the 1870s through the early years of the twentieth century. The preface situates the work within Goldman’s exile in Europe, where she found herself after years of activism in the United States. The confiscation of her papers by the Department of Justice and her subsequent inability to access her own historical records shaped the process of reconstruction that the memoir represents.
The historical context of the events described includes several major developments. The Haymarket affair of 1886-1887, in which eight anarchists were convicted and five executed following a bombing at a Chicago labor rally, serves as a foundational moment in Goldman’s political awakening. The Homestead steel strike of 1892, during which Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, resulted in Berkman’s long imprisonment and became a central thread in Goldman’s personal and political life. The free-silver campaign of the 1890s, the Spanish-American War, the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the anti-anarchist immigration laws of the early twentieth century all appear in the narrative as backdrop to Goldman’s activities.
The book also reflects the intellectual and social milieu of radical circles in New York, London, and across America. Goldman’s encounters with figures such as Johann Most, the editor of the German anarchist paper Freiheit; Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist theorist; Enrico Malatesta, the Italian anarchist; Louise Michel, the French Communard; and Voltairine de Cleyre, the American anarchist, place her within an international network of revolutionary thinkers and activists. The saloon of Justus Schwab in New York served as a gathering place for French Communards, Spanish and Italian refugees, Russian politicals, and German socialists and anarchists who had escaped Bismarck, as well as Americans including John Swinton, Ambrose Bierce, James Huneker, and Sadakichi Hartmann.
The context of Goldman’s personal life is equally important. Her unhappy childhood in Russia and Germany, marked by her father’s tyranny and her mother’s harshness, shaped her lifelong commitment to freedom and self-expression. Her early marriage, her work in factories in St. Petersburg and Rochester, and her determination to escape the constraints of family and convention all inform the narrative. The book presents her development from a young immigrant girl into a prominent anarchist speaker and organizer, tracing the formation of her political consciousness and her personal philosophy.
Structure of the Book
The book is organized as a continuous first-person narrative, beginning with Goldman’s arrival in New York City and proceeding chronologically through her life. The opening section includes an editorial preface explaining the circumstances of the book’s composition. The narrative then unfolds through a series of chapters that follow both chronological and thematic threads.
The early chapters establish Goldman’s arrival in America and her introduction to radical circles in New York. She describes her first meeting with Alexander Berkman, her encounter with Johann Most, and her growing involvement in the anarchist movement. Flashbacks to her childhood in St. Petersburg, Königsberg, and Popelan provide the personal history that shaped her political commitments. Her unhappy marriage, her father’s opposition to her education, and her determination to leave Russia for America are all recounted in detail.
The middle sections of the book trace Goldman’s development as a speaker and organizer. Her first lecture tour through Rochester, Buffalo, and Cleveland is described, along with her struggles with stage fright and her growing confidence as an orator. Her involvement in the cloakmakers’ strike led by Joseph Barondess, her work recruiting girls for the strike, and her conflicts with comrades over questions of personal freedom and revolutionary discipline are all depicted. Her relationship with Ed, a man who became her lover and companion, is explored in depth, including their disagreements over the role of women and motherhood.
A substantial portion of the book is devoted to Goldman’s imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island. The details of her intake, her refusal to attend church, her work in the sewing-room, her relationships with fellow prisoners, and her reflections on crime and poverty are all described with vivid specificity. Her release and the difficult period of readjustment that followed, including her first public appearance at a welcome meeting and her growing friendship with the young Italian anarchist Maria Rodda, are also covered.
The later sections of the book describe Goldman’s travels and activities in the mid-1890s. Her visit to England, where she observed the British tradition of outdoor meetings and met prominent anarchists including Louise Michel and Enrico Malatesta, is recounted in detail. Her return to America and her involvement in the revival of anarchist activity, including the publication of new journals and the organization of lecture tours, are also described. Her encounters with figures such as John McLuckie, the former Burgess of Homestead, and her refusal to join the free-silver campaign of William Jennings Bryan, demonstrate her political independence and her skepticism toward electoral politics.
The book concludes with Goldman’s preparations for a lecture tour and her determination to study the country and bring the masses a new social ideal. The final chapters describe her travels to Washington, D.C., where she spoke before a German free-thought society and encountered the limitations of those who claimed to be radicals while maintaining elitist or hypocritical attitudes. Her journey to Pittsburgh, where she met Carl Nold and Henry Bauer, who had been imprisoned for their involvement in the Homestead affair, and where she learned of Sasha’s plan to escape from prison, brings the narrative to a close. The book ends with the hotel incident in Pittsburgh, where the wife of an Armer Teufel reader refused to give Goldman a room, calling her “that shameless creature, the free lover of a convict.”
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
In Appreciation
Goldman opens by explaining her long resistance to writing memoirs. She had always believed that autobiography should be attempted only at “a good philosophic age,” when one could view life “impersonally and detachedly.” Despite advancing years, she felt too young for such a task and lacked the leisure for concentrated writing. However, forced inactivity in Europe led her to read numerous biographies and autobiographies, and she discovered that old age often brings “senility, narrowness, and petty rancor” rather than wisdom. This realization prompted her to seriously consider writing her life.
Her primary difficulty was the lack of historical data. Materials accumulated over thirty-five years in the United States—books, correspondence, and her personal set of Mother Earth magazine—had been confiscated by Department of Justice raiders and never returned. Friends assisted her: Leonard D. Abbott, Agnes Inglis of the Labadie Library, and W. S. Van Valkenburgh helped with American data, while Max Nettlau and Rudolf Rocker provided European material. Her “old vice” saved her: mountains of letters she had written. Friends returned them—Sasha, Ben Reitman, Ben Capes, Jacob Margolis, Agnes Inglis, Harry Weinberger, and others. Her niece Stella Ballantine preserved letters from Goldman’s imprisonment, and M. Eleanor Fitzgerald preserved Russian correspondence. Over one thousand letters resulted, painful but invaluable reading.
She went to Saint-Tropez, France, with Emily Holmes Coleman (“Demi”) as secretary—a “wild wood-sprite with a volcanic temper,” a poet and natural rebel, though Goldman’s world of ideas was foreign to her. They clashed furiously, but Demi provided encouragement through the first year of struggle. Peggy Guggenheim started a fund for Goldman’s material security. Miriam Lerner replaced Demi; Dorothy Marsh, Betty Markow, and Emmy Eckstein typed the manuscript; Arthur Leonard Ross served as legal adviser. Sasha worked eighteen months revising the manuscript, proving remarkably objective, and suggested the title Living My Life. The preface is dated January 1931, Saint-Tropez.
Arrival in New York
Goldman arrived in New York City on August 15, 1889, at age twenty, from Rochester via West Shore train to Weehawken, then ferry. She carried three addresses: her married aunt, a medical student met in New Haven, and the Freiheit, the German anarchist paper edited by Johann Most. Her possessions were five dollars, a small hand-bag, and a sewing-machine checked as baggage. Walking from West Forty-second Street to the Bowery took three hours. Her aunt and uncle ran a photographic gallery; they questioned her about her husband, money, and intentions, demanding she find work immediately. She invented a friend on Henry Street to escape, leaving her bag.
She sought A. Solotaroff, a young anarchist she’d heard lecture in New Haven. After searching, she found him on Montgomery Street. He offered his room, fed her tea and Jewish cake, and took her to Sachs’s café on Suffolk Street—headquarters of East Side radicals. There she met Anna and Helen Minkin, Russian Jewish working girls, and agreed to live with them. A man ordered “Extra-large steak! Extra cup of coffee!”—Alexander Berkman, about eighteen, with “neck and chest of a giant.” He invited her to hear Johann Most speak that night. On the way she stumbled; Berkman caught her arm, saying “I have saved your life.” She replied, “I hope I may be able to save yours some day.”
Most’s speech denounced American conditions, the Haymarket tragedy, and the execution of Chicago anarchists. Despite facial disfigurement, he seemed “transformed into some primitive power.”
The Chicago Martyrs and Early Rebellion
Goldman recounts the 1887 events. She and her sister Helena attended German socialist meetings in Rochester’s Germania Hall. A speaker, Johanna Greie, lectured on the Chicago case: the 1886 strikes for the eight-hour workday, the McCormick Harvester Company meeting attacked by police, and the Haymarket Square mass meeting addressed by Albert Parsons, August Spies, and Adolph Fischer. Mayor Carter Harrison attested to its orderliness; Captain Ward ordered dispersal; a bomb exploded, killing police officers. Eight men were convicted in a “frame-up”; five were sentenced to hang—Parsons, Spies, Louis Lingg, Fischer, and George Engel—while Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden received life imprisonment and Neebe fifteen years. Greie told Goldman: “You will know them better as you learn their ideal, and that you will make their cause your own.”
After the executions, at her father’s house, a woman sneered that the men were murderers; Goldman attacked her, threw a pitcher of water, and cried “Out, out, or I will kill you!” She decided to go to New York to Johann Most. She recounts her unhappy ten-month marriage, her 1885 departure from St. Petersburg with Helena—threatening to jump into the Neva to win Father’s consent—steerage passage on the steamer Elbe, arrival at Castle Garden, and Rochester reception by sister Lena and Aunt Rachel. A man at Lena’s felt her arms and suggested she find a husband; she recalled Father throwing her French grammar into the fire, saying girls need only know “gefüllte fish, cut noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children.” She also learned that Father had used money left to Helena and Lena.
Early Life in St. Petersburg
Goldman had worked in factories before, in St. Petersburg. In winter 1882, she, her Mother, and two little brothers came from Königsberg to join Father in the Russian capital. Father had lost his position as manager of his cousin’s dry goods store; the business failed shortly before their arrival. Father had saved nothing; the only bread-winner was Helena. Mother borrowed three hundred rubles from her brothers and invested in a grocery store. The narrator knitted shawls at home, earning twelve rubles a month; her eyes gave way under strain.
Father’s cousin now owned a glove factory and taught her the trade. The factory was far; workers rose at five a.m. to start at seven. Rooms were stuffy, unventilated, and dark; oil lamps provided light; the sun never entered. Six hundred workers of all ages made costly gloves for small pay, allowed time for noon meal and tea twice daily; they could talk and sing and were not driven or harassed.
Garson’s Clothingworks and Tanya
In Rochester’s “Flower City,” Garson’s was a “model factory”—rooms large, bright, airy, with elbowspace and no ill-smelling odors. Yet work was harder; the day seemed endless with only half an hour for lunch. Iron discipline forbade free movement; she could not go to the toilet without permission, and constant surveillance by the foreman weighed on her. Each day left her sapped; she dragged herself to her sister’s home and crawled into bed.
Only her neighbor, frail little Tanya, seemed similarly affected; Tanya was delicate, pale, complained of headaches, and wept when handling heavy ulsters.
The Strike and the Dance
The narrator answered a strike call from Joseph Barondess, a leader of the cloakmakers’ union whom she had met previously. Though less scholarly and eloquent than other young Jewish socialists and anarchists who organized Yiddish unions, his simplicity and practical mind made him ideal for the workers’ daily struggle. The strike drew in nearly all East Side men who could speak publicly, with one notable exception: Annie Netter, a young woman known for her work in anarchist and labor ranks, including strikes of the Knights of Labor. That organization had peaked during the eight-hour fight led by Parsons, Spies, Fielden, and others who died in Chicago, but declined when its Grand Master, Terence V. Powderly, allied with enemies of his comrades, said to have helped “pull the strings” that killed the Chicago men for “thirty pieces of silver.” Militant workers left, and the Knights became a haven for job-hunters. Annie Netter had left early and joined the Pioneers of Liberty, a group of active Jewish anarchists in New York. Her father, a former orthodox believer turned atheist and socialist, was a scholar and warm host. The Netter home, behind their grocery store, was an intellectual oasis; Mrs. Netter kept the samovar and zakusky always available.
The narrator had never known a real home; at the Netters’ she basked in the family’s understanding. Frequenters included David Edelstadt, a poet of revolt; Bovshover (writing as Basil Dahl), an impulsive poet; young Michael Cohn, M. Katz, Girzhdansky, and Louis. Barondess often came and sent for the narrator to help the strike. Her task was to recruit girls; she organized meetings, concerts, socials, and dances, speaking often and successfully, bringing scores of girls into the strike within weeks.
At a dance, a cousin of Sasha rebuked her for dancing with abandon, saying it was undignified for a future anarchist force. She grew furious, insisting anarchism meant freedom and joy, not a cloister. She declared, “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things,” even against her comrades. A crowd gathered; some protested, citing Russian revolutionists’ self-denial. Sasha’s voice was loudest. She saw him near Anna Minkin, noting their growing interest since he had moved out of their flat. She yearned for him, calling him “Dushenka,” but his face was set; she danced no more.
The Compromise
Called to the committee room, she found Barondess and others, including Professor T. H. Garside, a Scotchman, former Knights of Labor lecturer, now heading the strike. Garside, about thirty-five, pale and Christ-like, urged compromise. She objected, some upheld her, but Garside prevailed; the strike was settled his way.
The Pain of Childhood
Afterward, activities lessened. Fedya began working with crayons, enlarging photographs, claiming he couldn’t waste money on paints and would never be a great painter; she suspected he wanted to relieve her of hard work. She had been unwell, especially during periods, with excruciating pain since her mother slapped her face, worsened by a cold caught crossing from Königsberg to St. Petersburg. In late 1881, with her mother, two brothers, and herself smuggled across the border, they waded through a half-frozen brook. The chill caused stinging pain; they reached an inn, given hot tea with maliny and hot bricks. She was feverish to St. Petersburg, laid up for weeks, her spine weak for years.
In America, she consulted Solotaroff, who took her to a specialist urging an operation; without it, she’d never be free of pain or experience full sexual release. Solotaroff asked if she’d ever wanted a baby, explaining the operation would enable childbirth. She had loved children since childhood, longing for dolls she never had. When brother Herman was born (she was four), he replaced dolls; little Leibale’s arrival two years later brought ecstasy. Once, trying to nurse baby Leibale, he choked; her mother laughed, slapped, and scolded her. She wept because her breast had no milk. Her compassion for servant Amalia (who was to have “ein Kindchen”) was due to her love of babies. Now she might have her own child.
But a “cruel hand” clutched her heart: her ghastly childhood. Father lashed her with a strap; brother Herman bit Father’s calf to stop it. Helena bathed her back; Father raged, “I’ll kill her!” Another time in Königsberg, after losing everything in Popelan, the rabbi demanded monthly reports. A low mark led Mother to cry she’d be their ruin. At the bay window, she wished for a consuming disease to soften Father’s heart. He was only jolly on Sukkess, promising gifts. He always said he hadn’t wanted her—he’d wanted a boy, the “pig woman” had cheated him. She recalled punishments: standing in corners, walking with a glass of water (whipped if she spilled). Father was handsome and vital; she loved and feared him. Once, lost in recollections, he smashed her round comb with his fist, pounding her, raging she was his disgrace. Helena wrestled with him; blows fell on her. Father fainted. After that, she hated him; home became a prison. From St. Petersburg to America, from Rochester to her marriage, she tried to escape.
Post-Release and the Welcome Meeting
The days and weeks following her release were a “nightmare.” She craved quiet and privacy but was surrounded by people and meetings. Her thoughts remained in captivity; fellow convicts haunted her, and prison noises—the command “Close!” followed by crashing iron doors and clanking chains—pursued her even before audiences.
At the Thalia Theater, a crowded welcome meeting was held in her honor. Many well-known New Yorkers from various social groups attended. She sat listless, drifting back to Blackwell’s Island; the audience became the pale faces of women prisoners, and speakers’ voices took on the head matron’s harshness. Maria Louise, presiding, pressed her shoulder, having called her several times; she announced the narrator would speak next, saying “You seem as if asleep.” When she tried to speak, no sound came; hideous figures in stripes emerged from the aisles. She whispered to Maria Louise, begging her to explain she felt dizzy and would speak later. Ed led her to a dressing-room. She had never lost control of her voice before. Ed reassured her that every sensitive person carries the prison in his heart long after, urging her to leave the city with him for quiet and peace.
Maria Rodda
A beautiful voice reached the dressing-room. Ed identified the speaker as Maria Rodda, an Italian girl anarchist, only sixteen, newly arrived in America. The narrator saw her: medium height, black curls, pale face, coral-red lips, large black eyes “fired by an inner light.” Few understood Italian, but Maria’s beauty and speech roused the assembly. Maria proved “a veritable ray of sunlight”; the narrator’s “spooks vanished.” She spoke after Maria; the audience rose, but she knew intuitively they were fascinated by Maria’s youth and charm, not her speech. The narrator was only twenty-five but felt old, matured by sorrows, and wondered whether a high ideal tested by fire could stand against youth and beauty.
After the Meeting
Closer comrades gathered at Justus’s place. Pedro Esteve, a Spanish anarchist, interpreted. The narrator learned Maria had been a schoolmate of Santa Caserio, their teacher Ada Negri, “the ardent poetess of revolt.” Through Caserio, Maria (then barely fourteen) joined an anarchist group. When Caserio killed Carnot, President of France, the group was raided; Maria and others were imprisoned. On release she came to America with her younger sister. Maria begged the narrator to be her teacher. The narrator pressed her close, agreeing to be teacher, friend, comrade; the “gnawing voice of envy” fell silent.
Quarrel with Ed
Walking home, the narrator spoke of Maria to Ed. He admitted she was ravishing but thought her beauty and enthusiasm would not endure: “Latin women mature young; they grow old with their first child.” The narrator remarked Maria should guard against having children to devote herself to the movement. Ed replied emphatically: “No woman should do that. Nature has made her for motherhood. All else is nonsense, artificial and unreal.” The narrator had never heard such sentiments from him; his conservatism roused her anger. She demanded to know if he thought her nonsensical for preferring an ideal to children, expressing contempt for German comrades’ reactionary attitudes. She accused him of loving only the woman in her, wanting her as wife and bearer of children. She declared she would never be that—never. She freed herself from his arm and hastened off alone.
Reflection and Context
Her life with Ed had been glorious without rift; now her dream of love and comradeship suffered “a rude awakening.” She realized his protest against her joining the unemployed movement was not concern for her health but “the interest of the male,” the instinct of possession. She wondered if she could live without Ed.
Her thoughts turned to Santa Caserio and recent French revolutionary events: Attentats by Émile Henri and Auguste Vaillant against political corruption, frenzied speculation with Panama Canal funds, bank failures causing widespread misery. Both were executed. Vaillant’s act had no fatal result, yet he was condemned; many leading men—Franqois Coppée, Émile Zola, others—pleaded with President Carnot to commute the sentence. Carnot refused, ignoring the pathetic letter of Vaillant’s nine-year-old daughter. Vaillant was guillotined. Later Carnot was stabbed to death by a young Italian whose dagger bore the inscription “Revenge for Vaillant”—Santa Caserio, who had tramped on foot from Italy.
She had read of these in anarchist papers Ed smuggled into prison. Her personal grief seemed a “mere speck” against this horizon of pain. She recalled heroic names: her own Sasha and others, driven by social forces to destroy human life, which they abhorred. She rebelled against such tragic waste but knew there was no escape; organized violence inevitably begets more violence.
Sasha’s Letter and Gefängniss-Blüthen
Sasha’s welcome letter was the most beautiful she had received. Ed kept copies of Gefängniss-Blüthen, the underground magazine Sasha, Nold, and Bauer edited in prison. Sasha’s will to life and determination to fight on were apparent; his spirit shamed her faint heart. Yet she knew the personal would always dominate her life; she was “woven of many skeins,” torn between yearning for personal life and giving all to her ideal.
Trip to Manhattan Beach
Ed came early the next day, outwardly calm.
Outdoor Meetings in England vs. America
The passage opens with a contrast between American and English outdoor meetings. In America, such gatherings are rare and always charged with potential clashes between audience and police. In England, the right to assemble openly is an institution, “a British habit, like bacon for breakfast.” Parks and squares host the most opposing ideas without armed force; the lone bobby stands as a matter of form, not to disperse meetings.
The park meeting is the social center of the masses, comparable to music-halls on weekdays—free and entertaining. Crowds drift between platforms like at a country fair, seeking amusement rather than instruction. Hecklers are the main performers, bombarding speakers with questions. A speaker who cannot handle them becomes “the helpless butt for boisterous ridicule.”
First Hyde Park Meeting
The narrator nearly comes to grief at her first Hyde Park meeting. The crowd is initially placid, making speaking feel like climbing a steep mountain. Her throat hurts, but she continues. Suddenly questions fly at her “like bullets.” A man calls out: “Don’t mind it, old girl, go right on. Heckling is a good old British custom.” She retorts that interrupting is “rotten” but tells them to “fire away.”
She had been speaking on “the futility of politics and its corrupting influence.” Hecklers challenge her about honest politicians; she responds that politicians “promise you heaven before election and give you hell after.” The crowd screams “‘Ear! ‘Ear!” in approval. Further exchanges cover heaven’s existence, the poor’s reward, and her claim that even if heaven existed, the masses “would not be tolerated there”
Philadelphia: Charles Shilling
Goldman began her lecture tour with a dozen prepared lectures and a sample of “the invention”—the album she hoped to sell. Her percentage on sales would cover travel expenses, relieving comrades of the burden of supporting her tours. In Philadelphia, Charles Shilling, an anarchist she had met on previous visits, arranged her lectures and hosted her with his family. Both Shillings proved charming hosts, and Charles was an effective organizer. Goldman delivered six lectures on the New Woman, the Absurdity of Non-Resistance to Evil, the Basis of Morality, Freedom, Charity, and Patriotism. Lecturing in English was difficult, but she thrived during question periods, becoming more caustic with opponents as the exchanges grew heated.
Pittsburgh and the Western Penitentiary
Carl, Henry, Harry Gordon, and Emma Lee arranged fourteen lectures in Pittsburgh and adjoining towns—though not in Homestead, where no hall was available. Goldman’s first pilgrimage was to the Western Penitentiary with Emma Lee. She ran her hand along the wall, wishing her thoughts could penetrate to Sasha, imprisoned for nearly five years. The warden and keepers had failed to break his spirit. Friends supporting him included Harry Kelly, the Gordons, Nold, and Bauer, who worked on a pardon appeal begun in November 1897. The United Labor League of Western Pennsylvania passed resolutions favoring his release, and the American Federation of Labor at its Cincinnati convention, the Bakers’ International Union, the Boston Central Union, and other labor bodies acted favorably. Two Pittsburgh lawyers were engaged. Goldman remained skeptical but hoped against hope.
Newspaper Reports
The Pittsburgh Leader published a full-page story saying Goldman “does not look at all the vicious being she is pictured,” suggesting she resembled a school-teacher. Goldman’s vanity was hurt by this “compliment.” In Cleveland, one paper called her “crazy” and her doctrines “demoniacal ravings”; another praised her “fine manners, more like a lady than a bomb-thrower.”
Cleveland and Detroit
In Detroit, Goldman visited Robert Reitzel, whose health had worsened. He told humorous stories, including one about preaching in Baltimore as a German Reformed pastor; he was found riding a beer-barrel naked, serenading the daughter of a prominent congregation member, so no sermon was delivered that day.
Ed’s Complaint and St. Louis
A letter from Ed complained of her long absence. Goldman replied affirming her love but refusing to be caged; she prized freedom above love. In St. Louis, police broke up her meeting; the newspaper quotations reached a wider audience, and the authorities’ action gained her friends.
Chicago: Max Baginski
Goldman recalled meeting Max Baginski in Philadelphia in August 1893 while police hunted her. He was a young German rebel, medium height, spiritual-looking, frail, with blond hair, thick glasses, and a scar on his neck. He now edited the Arbeiter Zeitung, formerly edited by August Spies. At the Clark Street office, he greeted her warmly and took her to the Blue Ribbon Restaurant, where they talked from noon until five. Baginski admired Most but explained Most’s turn against propaganda by deed as stemming from his helplessness in America. Goldman could not accept this explanation but admired Max’s objectivity. Max shared her admiration for Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Hauptmann. He had accompanied Hauptmann through Silesian weaver districts, where they found appalling misery—an old weaver’s hut with a sick baby, and a widow’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter who inspired Hannele. Hauptmann knew poverty personally from his student days in Zürich.
Moses Harman
Goldman visited Moses Harman at the Lucifer office with Max. Harman, a Civil War veteran with a lame leg, white hair and beard, and youthful eyes, championed free motherhood and woman’s emancipation. He had been imprisoned by “moral eunuchs” led by Anthony Comstock. Harman expressed faith in America and predicted revolution in woman’s economic and sexual status, citing England’s recent suppression of Havelock Ellis’s work.
Labor Convention and Eugene V. Debs
At a Labor convention, Goldman met Lucy Parsons, widow of Albert Parsons. Eugene V. Debs, very tall and lean, seemed unaware of intrigues; Social Democratic politicians prevented Goldman from speaking. Debs apologized and invited her to lunch. She concluded Debs was decent and high-minded. When she called him an anarchist, he replied, “Not Mister, but Comrade,” declaring anarchism the ultimate goal and socialism merely a stepping-stone. He admired Kropotkin and revered the Waldheim martyrs. Goldman argued political action was the “death-nell” of economic struggle; Debs thought politics a practical means to reach the masses.
Michael Schwab and Waldheim Cemetery
Goldman visited Michael Schwab, pardoned by Governor Altgeld, in the hospital with tuberculosis after six years in Joliet Penitentiary. He made no complaints. With Max, Goldman placed a wreath at the Waldheim Cemetery monument. She had once opposed its erection but now understood the power of art; the monument bore an engraving from Governor Altgeld’s pardon statement.
Reitzel’s Death
News arrived of Robert Reitzel’s death. His ashes were strewn over the lake. Goldman mourned her “knight,” who had wanted beautiful words to become living realities.
Denver: The Holmeses
Lizzie and William Holmes, coworkers and close friends of Albert Parsons, lived in Denver in poor quarters. They had participated in the eight-hour struggle and contributed to the Alarm.
War with Spain Declared
War with Spain was declared. The news was not unexpected; press and pulpit had called for arms against Spanish atrocities in Cuba. Goldman sympathized with Cuban and Philippine rebels seeking independence and had worked with Junta members engaged in underground activities for Philippine freedom. She distrusted America’s “disinterested and noble” claims, seeing the war as a matter of sugar, not humanitarianism. She refused to join credulous believers, arguing that no one enslaving and exploiting at home could free people abroad. Her lecture “Patriotism and War” became her most important and best-attended.
San Francisco and Smaller California Towns
In San Francisco the lecture passed without interference; in smaller towns police encouraged patriotic disturbers. In San Jose, Goldman dispensed with a chairman, faced bedlam, and challenged troublemakers to run the meeting themselves, invoking “good American sports.” An elderly man banged his cane and demanded silence; she spoke an hour to near-ovation.
The Strunsky Sisters
Anna, the elder Strunsky sister, had attended Goldman’s lecture on Political Action, indignant at her “unfairness to the socialists.” She visited, stayed all afternoon, and invited Goldman home, where she met students including Jack London and the younger sister Rose, who was ill. Anna had been suspended from Leland Stanford University for receiving a male visitor in her room. Goldman told of Vienna student life; Anna argued American women would gain liberty through the vote. Goldman disagreed, citing Russian women’s social and moral independence without the vote.
Los Angeles and Mr. V.
Justus Schwab’s Illness and Ed’s Visit
Goldman found Justus Schwab bedridden, a mere shadow of his former self, and begged Mrs. Schwab to let her nurse him. Mrs. Schwab promised she would, but insisted that no one but herself would attend the sick man. The tender relationship between Justus and his family was evident, though his illness, worry, and overwork had caused his wife to lose her bloom and look wan. Ed arrived while Goldman spoke with Mrs. Schwab, and both became embarrassed and confused. Mrs. Schwab excused herself to attend her patient, leaving them alone in a painful moment.
Goldman had not been in touch with Ed during her stay abroad but knew through common friends about the birth of his child. She asked how it felt to be a father, and Ed became animated, launching into a poem about his little daughter’s charm and remarkable intelligence. Goldman was amused to see this “baby-hater” waxing enthusiastic, remembering he had always refused to move into a house with children. Ed insisted his excitement wasn’t because he was the father but because his little girl was “really an exceptional child”—amazing from a man who used to say “most human beings are foolish, but parents are both foolish and blind.” Goldman asked to see the child; Ed asked if she really wanted him to bring her. She replied she had always been fond of children. Ed said, “Our love has not been much of a success, has it?” Goldman responded, “Is love ever? ours lasted seven years.” Ed called her wise; she said only older. They parted promising to meet again.
At the Russian New Year’s vetcherinka, Ed appeared with a woman Goldman was sure was his wife—large, talking in a loud voice, a trait Ed had always abhorred. Friends and East Side comrades questioned Goldman about the movement in England and France.
Employment Difficulties
Goldman needed work, but weeks passed without calls from medical friends. Hippolyte tried the Czech anarchist weekly, but there was no payment—it was considered unethical to accept money for writing for an anarchist paper. All foreign-language publications except the Freiheit and Freie Arbeiter Stimme relied on voluntary labor. Hippolyte, without a profession, was even more helpless in New York than in London; boarding houses rarely employed men.
Mrs. Spenser Case
On Christmas Eve, Dr. Hoffmann sent for Goldman. The patient was a morphine addict, “very difficult and trying”; the night nurse needed a week off. Goldman substituted for a week. At almost midnight, she arrived at a large second-floor room where a woman lay half-dressed in a stupor, white-faced, breathing heavily, framed in black hair. On the wall was a portrait of a heavy man with small, hard eyes—familiar but unrecognizable. Dr. Hoffmann said the patient was Mrs. Spenser, making good progress until a relapse. Goldman watched her pulse, kept her warm; the picture haunted her.
On the sixth night, Mrs. Spenser was conscious, asked Goldman’s name, and was pleased to have “Emma Goldman, the anarchist” as her nurse. She asked Goldman to take full charge; Goldman demurred about discharging other nurses and the strain of twenty-four-hour duty. Mrs. Spenser promised afternoons off and night rest. Mrs. Spenser asked if Goldman knew the portrait’s original; Goldman said he looked familiar but she couldn’t place him. The house, furniture, and library bespoke intelligence and good taste. A coarse-looking, gaudily attired woman visited daily; Mrs. Spenser sent Goldman on errands during these visits. Goldman suspected drugs but dismissed it.
At the end of three weeks, Mrs. Spenser could go downstairs. Goldman found slips of paper marked “Jeanette, 20 times; Marion, 16; Henriette, 12” with about forty more women’s names checked off by numbers. Overhearing the visitor say “MacIntyre was at the house again last night, but none of the girls wanted him. Jeanette said she preferred twenty others to that filthy creature,” Goldman entered, dropped her tea tray, and recognized the portrait’s original as the detective-sergeant instrumental in sending her to the penitentiary in 1893.
Goldman understood: Spenser was a keeper of a “house,” the detective her paramour. She fled upstairs, then downstairs with her suitcase, but saw Mrs. Spenser hardly able to stand, gripping the banister. Goldman couldn’t leave her; she was responsible to Dr. Hoffman. She led Mrs. Spenser to bed. Mrs. Spenser sobbed hysterically, begged Goldman not to go, promised the man would never appear again, even offered to remove his portrait. She admitted being a keeper of a house, saying she dreaded Goldman finding out but thought “Emma Goldman, the anarchist would not condemn me for being a cog in a machine I did not create.” Prostitution wasn’t of her making; if not she, someone else would be “in charge.” Keeping girls wasn’t worse than underpaying them in factories; she’d always been kind to them. Goldman remained.
Goldman noted Mrs. Spenser’s “reasons” didn’t influence her—everyone offers the same excuses for vile deeds, “the policeman as well as the judge, the soldier as well as the highest war-lord.” But as a nurse she couldn’t concern herself with patients’ trades; she had to minister to physical needs. As an anarchist knowing “the social factors behind human action,” she couldn’t refuse her services.
Visit to Sasha
The narrator was interrupted writing by a visit from Harry Gordon, the first comrade she had seen in nine years. Gordon had prevailed upon the new Inspector (now Acting Warden due to Captain Wright’s illness) to issue a permit. She hoped to see her sister and asked the correspondent to communicate with her. Helena exclaimed “At last, at last the miracle!” and wept, having shared the narrator’s grief. The narrator returned to the Western Penitentiary, recalling that nine years had passed since November 1892 when she had briefly seen Sasha. Sasha appeared changed, thin, wan, in a gray suit, sitting mute, fumbling with her watch-chain fob, staring with startled, tortured eyes. Both were mute. When “Time’s up!” was called, she left for Allegheny City, then St. Louis.
St. Louis and McKinley’s Shooting
In St. Louis she met Carl Nold, whom she hadn’t seen for three years. He was elated about Sasha’s changed status. She described the ghastly visit; Nold explained Sasha’s silence was due to a year in solitary confinement, which makes one “numb and incapable of giving expression to your longing for human contact.” On September 6, she canvassed stationery stores for Ed’s firm, failing to get orders except one promise. At a street corner, she heard a newsboy cry “Extra! Extra! President McKinley shot!” Carl had read that the President was shot at the Exposition grounds in Buffalo by a young man named Leon Czolgosz. Carl warned the papers would connect her with the act; she called it “Nonsense!”
The Russian Revolution of 1905 and Orleneff’s Troupe
The electrifying news of the October 1905 Russian Revolution reached America, igniting the radical East Side of New York into a state of delirium. The massacre before the Winter Palace in January had been answered by retaliatory assassinations from the Fighting Organization of the Social Revolutionary Party, with Kalayev and Balmashov killing Grand Duke Sergius and Shipiaghin. A general strike swept the fatherland, joined by every social stratum, and the cafés and monster meetings of New York became united shrines to the events unfolding abroad.
It was amid this fervor that Orleneff and his troupe first appeared at a small, ugly theater on Third Street. Despite the bad acoustics, small stage, and poor scenery, audiences were transported, and the theater became an oasis in New York dramatic art. Hundreds of Americans attended despite the language barrier, and Sunday evenings became professional nights, drawing luminaries like Ethel and John Barrymore, Grace George, Minnie Maddern Fiske, and Margaret Anglin. Goldman, under the pseudonym “Miss Smith,” served as Orleneff’s manager, receiving guests and interpreting compliments, though she did not always render his replies faithfully.
At an after-theater party hosted by a prominent theater-manager, the host asked peculiar questions about Orleneff’s head position in Oswald and his cutting of dialogue in Crime and Punishment. Orleneff angrily called the man a fool, suggested he become a chimney-sweep, and told him to go to hell with Russian oaths. Nazimova pretended not to hear, watching anxiously, while Goldman’s interpretation was “diplomatic.”
The Revolution was crushed in blood, and Cossack terror, torture, and gallows followed. Renewed massacres of Jews in Russia brought sorrow to American Jewish homes, and even advanced Russians turned against everything Russian. The audience dwindled as rumors spread that Orleneff had Black Hundred members in his troupe. A boycott followed; no Jewish store would accept posters, and the radical press protested the unfounded rumors without effect. Orleneff was heartbroken, having put his soul into Nachman in The Chosen People.
The Testimonial and the Unmasking of Miss Smith
Recalling a testimonial Beerbohm Tree had arranged for Orleneff in London, Goldman proposed a similar plan in New York. She accompanied Orleneff to Arthur Hornblow, editor of the Theater Magazine, who suggested calling on Harrison Gray Fiske, lessee of the Manhattan Theater. Fiske was interested and would induce his wife to participate, but could not offer the theater—it had been condemned. After the interview, Fiske confronted Goldman: “Emma Goldman, aren’t you ashamed of yourself to come to me under an assumed name?” He declared he and Mrs. Fiske had been denounced as rebels for introducing modern plays and refusing the theater trust. “Miss Smith, indeed! Who the hell is Miss Smith? Emma Goldman—that’s the girl!”
Four matinées at the Criterion Theater and engagements in Boston and Chicago followed, made possible by American women admirers, the most active being Ethel Barrymore and two society women who were cousins of President Roosevelt. In Boston, the Twentieth Century Club aided, and Goldman met Professor Leo Wiener, Mrs. Ole Bull, Nathan Haskell Dole, and Dr. Konikov. Chicago was more satisfactory, with the Studebaker Theater filled nightly. Goldman led a “double life,” shedding Miss Smith’s skin, though sometimes the process failed.
The first failure came when Orleneff and his leading lady were invited to Baron von Schlippenbach’s home, the Russian consul. Goldman refused to attend, saying Emma Goldman could not be comfortable under the roof of one representing the Russian imperial butcher. The second came when she had met Jane Addams as E. G. Smith at the Studebaker Theater. Goldman called Addams to say Miss Smith could not attend the Orleneff party, but Emma Goldman would if welcome. Addams’s catch in breath showed the disclosure was sudden. Orleneff was angry, noting Addams had made a fuss over Kropotkin, but Goldman explained Peter hated display.
Other receptions followed, including one at Mrs. L. C. Counley-Ward’s palatial lake-front home, where the hostess’s eighty-year-old mother, a distinguished abolitionist and pioneer for woman’s emancipation, won Goldman’s heart. Goldman wrote both women confessing her pseudonym; they replied they had understood it was Emma Goldman all along, and they kept in touch for years.
The End of the Troupe and the Dream of a Magazine
Upon returning to New York, Orleneff wanted to remain in America if a guarantee fund could be raised. Sixteen thousand dollars was raised, but when someone suggested Charles Frohman as manager, Orleneff was outraged, declaring he would recognize only “Miss Emma” as manager. Nazimova’s decision to remain in America for the English stage depressed Orleneff, and he abandoned the testimonial.
Goldman had refused salary from Orleneff. Nazimova, with only her Russian maid Alla, created costumes for the whole troupe, including the court dresses for Czar Feodor. Orleneff once asked Goldman what she would do with money; she replied that she wanted to publish a magazine combining social ideas with the young strivings in art and literature. It was a dream she would carry forward, even as the troupe’s moment in America faded and the revolutionary fervor that had greeted them gave way to the sober realities of exile, loss, and the long work of building a new world from the ashes of the old.
Main Arguments
The book advances several interconnected arguments about politics, society, and personal life. Central to Goldman’s account is the claim that the existing social order is fundamentally unjust and that revolutionary change is necessary. She presents the poverty, squalor, and want experienced by workers and prisoners as direct consequences of capitalism and the wage system. Her reflections on crime, developed during her imprisonment, argue that crime results from poverty and that prisoners are victims of social conditions rather than moral failures. She observes that among the seventy inmates in the penitentiary, no more than half a dozen show intelligence, while the rest are outcasts without social consciousness, unable to understand themselves as victims, links in an endless chain of injustice and inequality.
A related argument concerns the inadequacy of reformist and electoral politics. Goldman’s refusal to support William Jennings Bryan and the free-silver campaign stems from her belief that the political machine cannot bring about fundamental changes. She senses something weak and superficial about Bryan, feeling that his main aim is the White House and that he would use workers as a stepping-stone to power. Similarly, her account of the eight-hour workday struggle, which she was assigned to lecture on by Johann Most, argues that even successful campaigns for reforms distract from the real struggle against capitalism and the wage system. The “iron law of wages,” “supply and demand,” and “poverty as the only leaven of revolt” are presented as cold and confusing doctrines that fail to address the root causes of exploitation.
The book also argues for the necessity of individual acts of resistance and the legitimacy of revolutionary violence in certain circumstances. Goldman’s admiration for the Chicago martyrs, her defense of Berkman’s attempt on Frick’s life, and her sympathetic account of the French anarchists Émile Henri, Auguste Vaillant, and Santa Caserio all reflect this position. She describes how organized violence inevitably begets more violence, but she also insists that “no sacrifice is lost for a great ideal.” Her account of Vaillant’s execution, despite the pleas of leading cultural figures and the pathetic letter of his nine-year-old daughter, and of Caserio’s subsequent assassination of President Carnot, presents these acts as tragic but comprehensible responses to state violence.
A further argument concerns the importance of personal freedom and self-expression, even within revolutionary movements. Goldman’s conflict with comrades who criticized her for dancing with abandon at a strike social is a key moment. She insists that anarchism means freedom and joy, not a cloister, and declares, “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things,” even against her comrades. Her quarrel with Ed over whether women should have children or devote themselves to the movement reveals her commitment to women’s autonomy and her rejection of the view that motherhood is women’s natural destiny. She accuses Ed of loving only the woman in her, wanting her as wife and bearer of children, and declares she will never be that.
The book also argues for the compatibility of personal love and revolutionary commitment. Goldman’s relationships with Berkman, Most, Ed, and Fedya are presented as integral to her political development rather than distractions from it. Her reflection that she is “woven of many skeins,” torn between yearning for personal life and giving all to her ideal, acknowledges the tension but does not resolve it in favor of one side. The “beautiful comradery” with Ed, in which she “learned for the first time the meaning of the great life-giving force,” is presented as a positive achievement, even as their differences over the woman question ultimately drive them apart.
Key Concepts
Several specific ideas and motifs recur throughout the book and structure Goldman’s account of her life and politics.
The concept of the “Cause” is central to the early chapters. Berkman’s statement that as an anarchist he cannot consider his own job, that only the Cause matters, establishes a standard of total commitment that Goldman initially embraces. The Russian revolutionary catechism, which demands that revolutionists give up home, parents, sweetheart, children—everything—is presented as an ideal that Berkman accepts absolutely and that Goldman feels she must measure up to. Yet the book also complicates this ideal, showing the human costs of such total devotion and the ways in which personal needs and desires persist despite revolutionary discipline.
The figure of the Nihilist serves as an early model of revolutionary heroism. Goldman’s childhood understanding of Nihilists as “cold-blooded murderers” is transformed through her reading of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and Chernishevsky’s What’s to be Done?, as well as through the story of Vera Zassulich, who shot the tyrannical Governor General Trepov. The Nihilists become “heroes and martyrs, her guiding stars,” and their example shapes her understanding of what revolutionary commitment requires.
The “Attentat,” or act of political violence, is a recurring motif. Goldman’s account of Berkman’s attempt on Frick’s life, the French anarchists’ bombings and assassinations, and Caserio’s killing of Carnot all explore the meaning and consequences of such acts. The book presents these acts as responses to state violence and social injustice, while also acknowledging their tragic costs. Goldman’s reflection that “organized violence inevitably begets more violence” suggests a critical awareness of the cycle of violence, even as she refuses to condemn the individual actors.
The prison is both a literal place and a symbolic concept in the book. Goldman’s detailed account of her imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island—the intake process, the daily routine, the sewing-room, the lock-step march carrying buckets of excrement, the crashing of seventy doors at night—establishes the prison as a microcosm of social injustice. Her observation that prisoners are “links in an endless chain of injustice and inequality” extends the meaning of imprisonment beyond the literal institution. The prison also becomes a test of revolutionary commitment, as Goldman calculates Sasha’s nights of imprisonment and wonders whether his sacrifice was in vain.
The concept of “free love” appears in several contexts. Goldman is known as the “great champion of free love,” and the book explores both the ideal and its distortions. The brewer from Cincinnati who approaches her because he has heard she believes in free love, and who reveals himself as “a married man, with grown children” seeking a clandestine affair, represents the corruption of the ideal. Goldman’s own relationships, particularly with Ed, are presented as attempts to realize a genuine freedom in love that is compatible with revolutionary commitment.
The “woman question” is a persistent theme. Goldman’s conflict with Ed over whether women should have children or devote themselves to the movement, her refusal to accept the view that “Nature has made her for motherhood,” and her insistence on her right to self-expression all engage with this question. Her account of her own body—the pain she suffered since her mother slapped her face, the cold caught crossing from Königsberg to St. Petersburg, the specialist who urged an operation that would enable childbirth—connects personal physical experience to broader questions of women’s freedom.
The “Bohemian Republic” and the saloon of Justus Schwab represent the social world of radical New York. Schwab, “the most famous radical center in New York,” is described as over six feet tall, broad-chested, straight as a tree, with curly red hair and beard, fiery eyes, and a deep, tender voice that would have made him famous in opera—but he was “too much the rebel and the dreamer.” His saloon serves as a gathering place for the international radical community, and his teasing comment that “Emmachen, your head is not made for a hat; it is made for the rope” captures both the affection and the danger of the revolutionary life.
Themes
The book explores several deeper recurring meanings that emerge from Goldman’s account of her life.
The tension between personal life and revolutionary commitment is perhaps the most pervasive theme. Goldman repeatedly describes herself as torn between her yearning for love, intimacy, and personal fulfillment and her dedication to the Cause. Her relationship with Ed embodies this tension most fully. Their “beautiful comradery” and her discovery of “the great life-giving force” in his arms are presented as genuine achievements, yet their differences over the woman question and her commitment to the movement ultimately drive them apart. Her reflection that she is “woven of many skeins” acknowledges the irreducibility of this conflict. The book can be read as an extended meditation on whether personal happiness and revolutionary dedication can coexist, and at what cost.
The theme of exile and homelessness runs throughout the narrative. Goldman describes herself as never having known a real home until she basked in the understanding of the Netter family. Her childhood was marked by displacement—from Popelan to Königsberg, from Königsberg to St. Petersburg, from Russia to America. Her father’s tyranny made home a prison, and her attempts to escape—through marriage, through emigration, through revolutionary activity—are recurring motifs. The book presents the revolutionary as a kind of permanent exile, cut off from family, country, and conventional forms of belonging. Yet this exile is also a form of freedom, enabling Goldman to create new forms of community and solidarity.
The relationship between mothers and daughters, and more broadly between generations, is a significant theme. Goldman’s account of her mother’s violence—slapping her face, crying that she would be their ruin, calling her a disgrace—is balanced by her mother’s remarkable story of traveling to St. Petersburg to save her brother Yegor from Siberia, kneeling before Governor General Trepov and weeping until he promised to bring the boy back. The complexity of this portrait suggests that Goldman sees her mother as both a product of patriarchal oppression and a figure of strength and resourcefulness. The theme extends to Goldman’s own longing for children, her love of babies since childhood, and her decision to forgo motherhood for the movement.
The theme of education and self-cultivation is woven throughout the book. Goldman’s account of her schooling in Königsberg, her dream of studying medicine, her reading of Turgenev, Chernishevsky, and Gontcharov, and her determination to become more proficient in English all reflect her commitment to intellectual development as a form of liberation. The two terrible teachers of her childhood—the religious instructor who beat students’ palms and the geography teacher who molested girls—represent the ways in which education can be a tool of oppression. The geography teacher’s abuse, and Goldman’s successful resistance through screaming and pulling his beard, is presented as an early act of defiance against authority.
The theme of performance and public speaking is central to the book. Goldman’s account of her stage fright—trembling knees, heart throbbing, a sinking sensation, a voice that seemed far away—and her gradual development as an orator traces her emergence as a public figure. Her description of the Hyde Park meeting, where heckling is “a good old British custom” and speakers must be able to handle a barrage of questions, presents public speaking as a form of combat. Her refusal to turn her work into “a circus for the amusement of the British public” reflects her commitment to serious political education over mere entertainment.
The theme of violence and its consequences is explored from multiple angles. The book presents state violence—the execution of the Chicago anarchists, the imprisonment of Berkman, the guillotining of Vaillant—as the backdrop against which revolutionary violence occurs. Goldman’s account of her childhood reaction to the hanging of the Nihilists who killed the Czar, when she felt no bitterness but only compassion and wept over their fate, suggests an early recognition of the tragedy of political violence. Her later reflection that “organized violence inevitably begets more violence” acknowledges the cycle without offering an easy resolution.
The theme of America as both promise and disappointment is present throughout. Goldman’s arrival in New York with five dollars and a sewing machine, her experience of the “model factory” with its iron discipline and constant surveillance, and her encounters with the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed radicals all contribute to a complex portrait of American society. The book presents America as a place of opportunity and freedom compared to Russia, yet also as a place where economic exploitation and social injustice are deeply entrenched. The contrast between the political freedom of England and the economic misery of its masses, which Goldman observes during her visit, suggests a similar ambivalence about Western democracies.
The Author’s Conclusions
The book concludes with Goldman in Pittsburgh, having traveled from Washington, D.C., to meet Carl Nold and Henry Bauer, who had been liberated from the Western Penitentiary in May 1897. The purpose of her visit is a new move for Sasha’s release—an appeal to the Board of Pardons backed exclusively by labor elements. Goldman has no faith in such steps but hides her pessimism. At dinner, they drink first to Sasha, and Carl and Henry recount their prison experiences and deliver a message: Sasha is planning an escape. His scheme is “masterly,” but Goldman reflects on the difficulties: in America he would be a hunted man, while in Russia escapes had succeeded and revolutionaries received sympathy. In the United States, nine-tenths of workers would join the hunt. Nold and Bauer agree but ask her not to communicate her fears to Sasha, whose eyes are failing, health breaking, and who has brooded on suicide. The escape hope energizes him, and they hope to induce him to wait until legal means are exhausted.
The final scene is the hotel incident. Past midnight, they go to a hotel kept by an Armer Teufel reader. The man is friendly, but his wife screams: “A room for Emma Goldman!… This is a respectable family hotel, no place for that shameless creature, the free lover of a convict!” The husband bangs his fist, demanding to know who is boss. The book ends on this moment of conflict, with Goldman facing the hostility and moral condemnation of those who claim to be radicals but maintain conventional prejudices.
The conclusion suggests several of Goldman’s central convictions. First, her commitment to Sasha and to the struggle for his release remains unwavering, even when she doubts the efficacy of legal appeals. Second, her analysis of the differences between American and Russian conditions reflects her political realism—she understands that an escaped prisoner in America would face overwhelming opposition, while in Russia revolutionaries received sympathy. Third, the hotel incident demonstrates her willingness to face hostility and condemnation without compromising her principles. The wife’s characterization of her as “the free lover of a convict” links Goldman’s personal life to her political commitments, suggesting that her defense of free love and her solidarity with Berkman are inseparable aspects of her revolutionary identity.
The book does not offer a tidy resolution or a triumphant conclusion. Instead, it ends in the midst of struggle, with Goldman facing both the external hostility of respectable society and the internal challenges of maintaining hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Her final position is one of continued commitment to the Cause, to her comrades, and to her own understanding of freedom, even in the face of disappointment, exile, and condemnation.
Significance
The book is significant as a first-hand account of the anarchist movement in late nineteenth-century America and Europe, written by one of its most prominent figures. Goldman’s detailed descriptions of the radical circles in New York—the Freiheit office, Justus Schwab’s saloon, the Netter home, the various anarchist publications and groups—provide an invaluable record of a social world that is often invisible in mainstream histories. Her accounts of meetings with figures such as Johann Most, Louise Michel, Enrico Malatesta, and Voltairine de Cleyre offer intimate portraits of key figures in the international anarchist movement.
The book is also significant for its exploration of the personal dimensions of revolutionary commitment. Goldman’s candid account of her relationships with Berkman, Most, Ed, and Fedya, her struggles with stage fright and public speaking, her imprisonment and its psychological aftermath, and her conflicts with comrades over questions of personal freedom and revolutionary discipline, provides a rare inside view of the emotional and psychological costs of political activism. Her insistence on the importance of personal freedom and self-expression, even within revolutionary movements, anticipates later feminist and libertarian critiques of authoritarian tendencies on the left.
The book’s treatment of the “woman question” gives it particular significance for the history of feminism.
