About This Project
By Nicole C. Livengood, March 2026
Encountering Zulma Marache
In 2014, I encountered Zulma Marache through the “Memoir of Zulma Marache,” published in the New York Herald on March 27, 1844. The “Memoir” told the story of a French immigrant woman’s seduction by her fiancé; abuse; abortion; and, finally, her fiancé’s refusal to marry her. The publication of the “Memoir” followed the Herald’s coverage of the abortion trial Marache had testified in the previous week when her fiancé and two others, including New York City abortionist Madame Costello, had been tried for the misdemeanor of procuring an abortion. The Herald’s readers were familiar with Marache’s story, but this version was different because, it claimed, Marache had written the “Memoir” “by herself in the City Prison, New York.”
When I first read the “Memoir,” I was relatively new to studying abortion’s literary and journalistic representations of the United States before the Civil War. I knew, for example, that abortion and contraception had been available to women in the 1800s (and long before), and that their commercialization by Madame Costello and other “female physicians” brought women’s reproductive and sexual autonomy into sharp, startling focus for those who’d been previously unaware. I had learned that the popularity of female physicians’ services threatened the financial stability and professional identities of trained male physicians, who were among the most vocal to oppose female physicians, contraception, and abortion. Throughout the 1840s, the clamor against female physicians and women’s reproductive autonomy increased as various stakeholders demanded that the justice system enforce New York’s neglected abortion laws and called for stricter laws altogether. Those who opposed female physicians and their services argued that they endangered women’s health, American morals, and the nation’s future.1
Recent abortion-related scholarship highlights the multifaceted nature of the antebellum turn against abortion and the vilification of female physicians. See, for example, A. Cherree Carlson, The Crimes of Womanhood, pp. 111-135; Margaret Jay Jessee, Female Physicians in American Literature; Dana Medoro, Certain Concealments; Nicholas L. Syrett, The Trials of Madame Restell; Karen Weingarten, Abortion in the American Imagination, pp. 107-113, and my own “‘Thus Did Restell Seal this Unfortunate Lady's Lips with a Lie.’”
I’d developed my background on abortion by wading through an archive of materials including city-mystery novels, newspaper editorials, trial reports, poems, medical articles, and illustrations. These often drew on the stories of women who had terminated their pregnancies and later shared their experiences in various legal contexts. The texts I was familiar with often filtered and shaped women’s stories to their own ends. They used facts as anchors for ad hominem attacks against female physicians and as slippery slope arguments against abortion, contraception, and women’s abilities to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. Female physicians, one writer warned, told women how to “deceive” the men in their lives (“Keep”). Another wrote that the business of Madame Restell, a well-known female physician of the era, “[struck] at the root of all social order” and prophesied that abortion would “demoralize the whole mass of society and make the institution of marriage a mere farce” (qtd. in Browder 17-18). The texts in the antebellum abortion archive were frequently over the top, generally entertaining, and often—dare I say it?—hysterical.
Is it any wonder that the first lines of the “Memoir”—“It was in the beginning of July, 1842, that I first became acquainted with Napoleon Lareaux”—made my heart quicken, or that I began to hold my breath as Marache’s story unfolded?2 I was immersed in scholarly traditions that valued unmediated texts over the mediated, the written over the oral, and writers over the written about. The “Memoir” struck me as unique, a rarity, possibly the only text of its kind. I was thrilled!
It embarrasses me now to say that I only thought to trace the life of Zulma Marache beyond the events of the “Memoir” because she had a form of autobiography to her name: a claim to subjectivity, authorship, and therefore, the means to posterity. Even as I recognized Marache as the author of the “Memoir,” I did not think about her as a human being. Then, the more I learned through my research into abortion and into autobiography, the more I began to question the “Memoir” itself. Most of the abortion cases I studied in newspapers like the Herald involved women who were poor or working class, and were vulnerable to “legal inequities, sexual double standards, and socioeconomic threats” (Livengood, “Serial,” 49). Many had few resources and little power. For a time, I cast Marache as a victim, believing that legal authorities and the Herald had appropriated her story. Perhaps, I thought, the Herald had published the “Memoir” without her permission. I assumed that she and others with similar stories were without agency, that their social positions prevented them from being subjects in their own rights, with rights, writing themselves into being even as others attempted to seize authority over the meaning of their stories.3 For instance, on the last day of the People v. Catharine Costello, alias Maxwell, et al., the abortion trial Marache testified in, the District Attorney responded to defense attorneys’ portrayal of Marache as an immoral “fallen woman” by casting Marache as the victim of a predator who had preyed upon her sexual innocence and fear (“General,” 24 March). Other opponents of female physicians and abortion drew on seduction novels’ archetypal pregnant, unwed, and dying heroines as cautionary tales for women who dared defy cultural ideals of womanhood.4 My own failure to envision Marache past the “Memoir” into the future consigned her to a different kind of death.
It seems obvious, now, that there would be so much more to Zulma Marache’s life than the events the “Memoir” recounts. I blush to say, however, that I was shocked when Sue Miller at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society found the record of Marache’s 1846 marriage. Marache...married?!?! Two years after she appeared in the Herald?! It was then that my mindset shifted and what once might have once been titled Seduction and Abortion: The “Memoir of Zulma Marache” became Beyond Seduction and Abortion: the Life and “Memoir” of Zulma Marache.
Marache’s fiancé was Napoleon Loreaux. The Herald occasionally spelled his name as it appears in this quotation, but more often as “L-a-r-e-u-x.”
See my “‘Her Voice was Heard’” for a more sustained consideration of the ideas in this paragraph.
See my “‘Thus Did Restell’” and Brooke Lansing Mai’s “‘The Helpless French Girl,’” for discussions of abortion and the rhetoric of seduction.
“So What?” Why Recover Zulma Marache and the “Memoir”?
Beyond Seduction and Abortion: the Life and “Memoir” of Zulma Marache is, first and foremost, a project of historical literary recovery. In literary studies, “recovery” means that scholars bring attention to authors and cultural productions that have been unseen, unknown, or neglected. Some of these have once been popular or highly acclaimed but fallen out of critical favor. Often, however, the unfamiliar or neglected subjects of recovery involve those whom history, institutions, and systems of power have marginalized and silenced: women, immigrants, nonwhites, homosexuals, the non-binary, the enslaved, the imprisoned, the poor, the working class, and the disabled, for example. Further, objects of recovery often include cultural productions that scholarly paradigms have dismissed or failed to recognize as worthy of attention, including quilts; baskets; oral stories; diaries; letters; periodical literature; and, yes, the “Memoir,” printed in a newspaper and attributed to an unmarried French immigrant woman who spent time in jail and who had little standing in her own time and none in our own.
Scholars at the forefront of historical literary recovery testify that the work is exciting and invigorating. It is also complicated and difficult. The project of bringing unexplored texts and unknown authors to attention and sustaining that attention, is riddled with obstacles. Some of the barriers are internal. Many are external. They include financial and time constraints, limited access to physical and digital archives, and a lack of support from colleagues, institutions, and publishing companies.5 One of the first obstacles often comes as one simple question: “So what?”
Many scholars have commented on these challenges. See, for example, Michelle Burnham, “Literary Recovery in the Age of Austerity”; Judith Fetterly, “Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Politics of Recovery”: and Brigitte Fielder, “Recovery.”
I imagine that some of Beyond Seduction and Abortion's readers are asking that very question, or versions of it. They are scratching their heads and wrinkling their noses, wondering “so what? Why does the ‘Memoir,’ an abortion narrative which, as I explain in the introduction to the Critical Edition has murky origins and unanswered questions, need to be studied? Why does Zulma Marache, a woman with no name recognition, matter as a person on her own and in larger historical contexts? In a world already full of overloaded eReaders, sagging bookshelves, and crammed reading lists, why take the time to publish a critical edition of the ‘Memoir’? What is the point?”
Paul Lauter and Sandra A. Zagarell, two leaders in the work of literary recovery, assert that the purpose of recovery has never been simply about end results and final products. For over fifty years, they observe, those doing the work of historical literary recovery have desired to advance America’s promises and to reflect its multifaceted history and traditions (236).
In my field of nineteenth-century literature, for example, recovery efforts have changed understandings of well-known authors including Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman. They’ve dismantled long-held arguments that nineteenth-century female literary luminaries such as Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in styles unworthy of study. They have called attention to the poems of Ojibwe author Bamewawagezhikaquay/Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and the novels of Cherokee author John Rollin Ridge. They have rectified gaps in literary history by fleshing out the literary dexterity of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, whose literary and cultural contributions far exceed the slave narratives for which they remain most known.
Recovery efforts have moved ignored and overlooked authors and texts from the margins to the center for readers, allowing for a more accurate reflection of America’s cultural past that is vital for America’s future. As Lauter and Zagarell phrase it, contributes to the “great democratic effort to enable all people to be heard and respected, and to promote equality in social, economic and political realms” (236). They conclude that to “be unheard is to be ignored and to be ignored is to have your humanity revoked” (236).
Quite simply, Zulma Marache and the “Memoir” matter because Marache was human. The Life of Zulma Marache Basney calls attention to her humanity, placing her within her cultural, material, and social worlds. She crisscrossed Manhattan’s streets in search of lace, dealt with nosy neighbors, and kept secrets from her mother. She stole kisses. She survived intimate partner violence and an abortion which, she wrote in the “Memoir,” she did not want. She was empowered and at times imperiled by the justice system. She married, had children, and was widowed.
Paul Lauter and Sandra A. Zagarell, two leaders in the work of literary recovery, assert that the purpose of recovery has never been simply about end results and final products. For over fifty years, they observe, those doing the work of historical literary recovery have desired to advance America’s promises and to reflect its multifaceted history and traditions (236).
In my field of nineteenth-century literature, for example, recovery efforts have changed understandings of well-known authors including Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman. They’ve dismantled long-held arguments that nineteenth-century female literary luminaries such as Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in styles unworthy of study. They have called attention to the poems of Ojibwe author Bamewawagezhikaquay/Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and the novels of Cherokee author John Rollin Ridge. They have rectified gaps in literary history by fleshing out the literary dexterity of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, whose literary and cultural contributions far exceed the slave narratives for which they remain most known.
Recovery efforts have moved ignored and overlooked authors and texts from the margins to the center for readers, allowing for a more accurate reflection of America’s cultural past that is vital for America’s future. As Lauter and Zagarell phrase it, contributes to the “great democratic effort to enable all people to be heard and respected, and to promote equality in social, economic and political realms” (236). They conclude that to “be unheard is to be ignored and to be ignored is to have your humanity revoked” (236).
Quite simply, Zulma Marache and the “Memoir” matter because Marache was human. The Life of Zulma Marache Basney calls attention to her humanity, placing her within her cultural, material, and social worlds. She crisscrossed Manhattan’s streets in search of lace, dealt with nosy neighbors, and kept secrets from her mother. She stole kisses. She survived intimate partner violence and an abortion which, she wrote in the “Memoir,” she did not want. She was empowered and at times imperiled by the justice system. She married, had children, and was widowed.
Zulma Marache was an embodied, three-dimensional subject and so were (for example) 17-year-old Catharine Costello and Eliza Munson, two among the more than dozen women whose own abortion stories bookend Marache’s in the 1840s.6 Such stories are everywhere in New York City newspapers and popular literature, yet recent scholarship on abortion gives them little credence. A recent spate of antebellum abortion-related works geared toward general and popular audiences similarly neglects female physicians’ clients. Like scholars, they focus on the flashier, more scandalous female physicians, with a clear preference for Madame Restell.7
The 17-year-old Costello, who is no relation to the Catharine Costello associated with Marache’s abortion, testified against her employer and seducer in a February 1844 abortion trial (“General,” February 23). Eliza Munson died of abortion-related complications at female physician Mrs. Bird’s but identified Restell as her abortionist. An inquest was held in April 1844 (“City,” April 16; “City,” April 17).
I can think of only three examples of scholarship that more holistically consider the lives of women like Marache, or consider female physicians other than Madame Restell: Syrett’s Trials, Mai’s “‘The Helpless French Girl,’” and Jeanette Schollaert’s “Grow Abortion Power.” Recent examples of popular texts or productions geared toward more general audiences include Kate Manning’s historical fiction, My Notorious Life: A Novel; Jennifer Wright’s biography, Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist; Nandini Subramaniam’s science history article, “How Notorious Abortionist Madame Restell Built a Drug Empire”; and the Bowery Boys podcast, “The Notorious Madame Restell.”
Zulma Marache matters on her own and because her story of abortion “gesture[s] toward other stories that haven’t been told” and to “hidden histories” that are hidden only because our focus has been elsewhere (Ronda, et al). It is not surprising that her story—and those of Catharine Costello, Eliza Munson, and several other women—have been hidden, and I do not make these observations with a spirit of condemnation. (How could I, considering what I’ve said above?) They are less colorful, and had less staying power, than the female physicians who garnered so much attention in the 1840s and who continue to fascinate twenty-first century readers. Moreover, if the women represented in the antebellum abortion archive produced anything scholars or readers generally consider “literary,” it is likely that their productions have gone unpreserved in the same way that most documentation of their lives have. Census records and other means of accessing the past can be unkind to subjects and to those who seek to restore them to memory.
Beyond Seduction and Abortion is as much a project that exemplifies what it means to be “in recovery” as it is one of literary recovery itself. The phrase “in recovery,” in this context, comes from Brigitte Fielder. She notes that the subjects that are referred to as “recovered” have not been hidden, buried, sick, or in need of a miracle cure (20). They have always existed. She advocates for reframing the concept of “recovery” to one that applies to those who do the work of recovery rather than the materials or people they seek to recover. Those involved in recovery work are active and have agency, she notes. The papers, photos, and ephemera scholars of literature and history work with are not. To be “in recovery” means that scholars and those who work with historic materials need to question their assumptions, undo ways of knowing and doing, and adapt new and more useful habits of mind (20).
The self-reflection Fielder encourages applies as well to how we respond to the reality that some available materials are clearly biased and derogatory. It also applies to the reality that sometimes that what scholars seek has been lost, decayed, or discarded. Sometimes what we seek has never existed at all. As Barbara McCaskill observes, those are situations in which the question should not be “what can’t we know” but, instead, “what can we do with what we already have?” (McCaskill 14).
What can we do with what already have? A lot, as a range of innovative recovery projects demonstrate. Digital Humanities projects particularly shine in this regard. These include The Winnifred Eaton Archive, directed by Mary Chapman and Jean Lee Cole; The Colored Conventions Project, co-directed by P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey; This Beautiful Sisterhood of Books,co-directed by Kate Adams and Jacquelyne Thoni Howard; Just Teach One, co-directed by Duncan Faherty and Ed White; and Early African American Print: Just Teach One, convened by Denise G. Burgher, Tara Bynum, Jean Lutes, Britt Rusert, Brigitte Fielder, Cassander Smith, Derrick Spires, and many others. They have inspired and provided crucial methodology for Beyond Seduction and Abortion, as have the methods and arguments of Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments and Gregg Hecimovich’s The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts.
What we already have, when it comes to Marache and several others, are smatterings scattered in scraps, archival boxes, bound books, and elsewhere: addresses, trial testimonies, news stories, census records, vital records, legal records, receipts, advertisements, and even a chess manual. All of these items have contributed to Beyond Seduction and Abortion, allowing me not only to follow Marache but to consider the texture of her life. Each of these has, as well, contributed to my own evolving paradigms and exemplify the idea of recovery as a process. No text, author, or scholar is “recovered," full stop. All are instead “in recovery," with ellipses…
To put it another way, Beyond Seduction and Abortion: The Life and “Memoir" of Zulma Marache is not the definitive text on Marache’s life or “Memoir.”
Throughout this project, I’ve had to make choices about how much to say about what I think may have happened. I’ve kept some suppositions to myself and shared some if I felt I had a pattern of evidence to support it. Some of my speculations may prove accurate. Many will probably be reassessed, revised, and rethought by those who read this project and pursue its subjects on their own. I’ve certainly reconsidered some of my arguments as they’ve appeared in previous publications. I’ve also changed my mind on some matters and made choices that differ from those I made in earlier work. For example, in previous articles I spelled the name of Marache’s fiancé as it appeared in the press; in this project, I have maintained that spelling only in the “Memoir,” and have otherwise spelled it L-o-r-e-a-u-x. I explain that decision in the Editor's Note that appears just before the “Memoir.”
In sum, I offer Beyond Seduction and Abortion not as the final word on Marache’s life or the “Memoir,” but, instead, as the first word, an opening salvo, the beginning of a conversation about Zulma Marache, and, ideally, her sisters in print.
Throughout this project, I’ve had to make choices about how much to say about what I think may have happened. I’ve kept some suppositions to myself and shared some if I felt I had a pattern of evidence to support it. Some of my speculations may prove accurate. Many will probably be reassessed, revised, and rethought by those who read this project and pursue its subjects on their own. I’ve certainly reconsidered some of my arguments as they’ve appeared in previous publications. I’ve also changed my mind on some matters and made choices that differ from those I made in earlier work. For example, in previous articles I spelled the name of Marache’s fiancé as it appeared in the press; in this project, I have maintained that spelling only in the “Memoir,” and have otherwise spelled it L-o-r-e-a-u-x. I explain that decision in the Editor's Note that appears just before the “Memoir.”
In sum, I offer Beyond Seduction and Abortion not as the final word on Marache’s life or the “Memoir,” but, instead, as the first word, an opening salvo, the beginning of a conversation about Zulma Marache, and, ideally, her sisters in print.
Project Philosophy
As an educator, independent scholar, and lifelong learner it is important to me that readers of Beyond Seduction and Abortion can easily access this project, and that educators and students do not face barriers such as textbook costs and paywalls. The inability to secure learning resources conflicts with the democratic aims that unite education and literary recovery. For this reason, I’ve chosen to publish this project in a digital form that costs readers nothing.
It is also important to me that readers of all backgrounds and interest make sense of Marache’s life and the “Memoir” for themselves and without real or perceived pressure to interpret them through a specific lens or to draw a certain conclusion about what her life and story mean. There are certainly parallels between Marache's experiences and those of women today, just as there are parallels between nineteenth-century and twenty-first century political, social, and medical contexts. There are also crucial divergences. It is not that the similarities and differences are not relevant or worth exploring. It is, instead, that this project has different aims.
I’ve chosen not to explicitly position Zulma Marache and the “Memoir” within current political, social, and medical contexts for three reasons.
The first reason is that I want readers to focus on Zulma Marache as a whole person and not as a woman defined by the events recounted in the “Memoir.”
It is also important to me that readers of all backgrounds and interest make sense of Marache’s life and the “Memoir” for themselves and without real or perceived pressure to interpret them through a specific lens or to draw a certain conclusion about what her life and story mean. There are certainly parallels between Marache's experiences and those of women today, just as there are parallels between nineteenth-century and twenty-first century political, social, and medical contexts. There are also crucial divergences. It is not that the similarities and differences are not relevant or worth exploring. It is, instead, that this project has different aims.
I’ve chosen not to explicitly position Zulma Marache and the “Memoir” within current political, social, and medical contexts for three reasons.
The first reason is that I want readers to focus on Zulma Marache as a whole person and not as a woman defined by the events recounted in the “Memoir.”
The first three sections of Beyond Seduction and Abortion speak to that goal.
- The Life of Zulma Marache Basney follows Marache from her birth in France in 1818 to her death in Brooklyn in 1869. It places her within the interpersonal, legal, and cultural contexts of the events that brought her to public attention, and, as much as possible, documents her life as a married mother living in rural New England in the years that followed.
- The Timeline centers focuses on the events between Marache's seduction (fall 1842) and the sentencing of the three parties accused of procuring her abortion (spring 1844).
- The Critical Edition includes an introduction, which contextualizes the “Memoir” and considers key questions such as genre, authorship, origins and authenticity, including whether it is truly a memoir at all. The Editor’s Note foregrounds decisions I made as I prepared the “Memoir” for readers. The Text of the “Memoir” is a close reproduction of the text as it appeared in theHerald on March 27, 1844; additionally, it has footnotes that clarify and provide background on people, terms, and other items that may need explaining.
The second reason I’ve not positioned Beyond Seduction and Abortion more explicitly in contemporary contexts is because it is not an activist project that argues for or against any policy, agenda, belief, or action. If it is “activist,” it is activist only in that amplifies the voice of a woman whose story deserves to be heard and whose life is worthy of recognition. I hope, then, in a gentle activist way, to generate interest in the lives and stories of those like Eliza Munson and Catharine Costello, mentioned above, and others with similar experiences whose stories appeared before, alongside, and after Zulma Marache’s in the New York Herald and other newspapers. Their voices have been, and continue to be, muffled, muted, and distorted. As we begin to pay attention to them, to listen attentively, we will gain a more nuanced and holistic view of the past...and, perhaps, a more nuanced and holistic view of the present.
The third reason I’ve not positioned Zulma Marache and the “Memoir” within contemporary American political, social, and medical contexts is because doing so distracts us from seeing the “Memoir” as an approachable text that welcomes interdisciplinary and field-specific exploration. Reading the “Memoir” and the New York Herald’s coverage of Marache’s story presents new opportunities to consider memoir as a genre and to explore the “Memoir” and related texts’ use of rhetorical strategies, tropes, plots, and other literary devices. As a professor of nineteenth-century American literature, I get especially excited about reading the “Memoir” alongside and in conversation with more familiar nineteenth-century literary staples. For example, how does the “Memoir” read differently when read alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson’s praise of individualism in “Self-Reliance” (1841)? Or Margaret Fuller's protofeminist manifesto, “The Great Lawsuit? (1843)? Or Harriet Jacobs’ testimony to the sexual and reproductive precarity she experienced as an enslaved woman in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1865)? More crucially, how does the “Memoir” engage those texts and their ideas. How do they read differently as a result?
Additionally, the “Memoir” and the digital antebellum abortion archive offer a rich learning lab, a sandbox, for those interested in trying their own hand at primary source research. At the same time, educators, students, and the generally inquisitive can use the “Memoir” and research databases to investigate the opportunities and limitations of digitized sources and search engines, or can take the long view in comparing media sources' coverage of abortion cases to develop media and information literacy skills pertaining to “facts,” “bias,” and what separates data or “information” from knowledge.
My desire, overall, is for readers to approach this project with a spirit of inquiry and discovery. Or, to put it another way, I stand with Walt Whitman. I want readers to not “take things at second or third hand…nor feed on the spectres in books.” I do not want readers to “look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,” but instead to “listen to all sides and filter them for your self” (lines 35-37).
To that end, the final two sections of this project are designed to inspire curiosity and first-hand engagement with materials.
The third reason I’ve not positioned Zulma Marache and the “Memoir” within contemporary American political, social, and medical contexts is because doing so distracts us from seeing the “Memoir” as an approachable text that welcomes interdisciplinary and field-specific exploration. Reading the “Memoir” and the New York Herald’s coverage of Marache’s story presents new opportunities to consider memoir as a genre and to explore the “Memoir” and related texts’ use of rhetorical strategies, tropes, plots, and other literary devices. As a professor of nineteenth-century American literature, I get especially excited about reading the “Memoir” alongside and in conversation with more familiar nineteenth-century literary staples. For example, how does the “Memoir” read differently when read alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson’s praise of individualism in “Self-Reliance” (1841)? Or Margaret Fuller's protofeminist manifesto, “The Great Lawsuit? (1843)? Or Harriet Jacobs’ testimony to the sexual and reproductive precarity she experienced as an enslaved woman in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1865)? More crucially, how does the “Memoir” engage those texts and their ideas. How do they read differently as a result?
Additionally, the “Memoir” and the digital antebellum abortion archive offer a rich learning lab, a sandbox, for those interested in trying their own hand at primary source research. At the same time, educators, students, and the generally inquisitive can use the “Memoir” and research databases to investigate the opportunities and limitations of digitized sources and search engines, or can take the long view in comparing media sources' coverage of abortion cases to develop media and information literacy skills pertaining to “facts,” “bias,” and what separates data or “information” from knowledge.
My desire, overall, is for readers to approach this project with a spirit of inquiry and discovery. Or, to put it another way, I stand with Walt Whitman. I want readers to not “take things at second or third hand…nor feed on the spectres in books.” I do not want readers to “look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,” but instead to “listen to all sides and filter them for your self” (lines 35-37).
To that end, the final two sections of this project are designed to inspire curiosity and first-hand engagement with materials.
- The Educators’ Resource Guide offers educators a collection of prompts that invite students to consider the “Memoir” and texts related to Zulma Marache’s story through the lenses of literature, newspaper and periodical studies, information and media literacy, and the delights and drawbacks of research in the digital age. I’ve designed the prompts for undergraduate students, but many are adaptable to high school and graduate students. Several prompts include an “Amp It Up” section with suggestions for incorporating additional research and/or making the assignment more rigorous.
- The Bibliography includes primary and secondary sources pertaining to Zulma Marache and seduction and abortion in the nineteenth century. It is not comprehensive, but is, instead, a starting place for further research.
Readers will, I believe, be most rewarded if they read these pages in order, starting with the Life of Zulma Marache Basney and working their way through the end. However, the beauty of digital books is that a person can read in whatever order they want. Readers who choose to read in order may find some information redundant, as I’ve tried to provide critical contextual information on each page so that someone entering into the middle will not be lost. If anyone gets lost in this project, I hope it is because they find its subjects and possibilities as rich and captivating as I have.
Works Cited
- Adams, Katherine, and Jacquelyne Thoni Howard. 2017. This Beautiful Sisterhood of Books Project.
- Browder, Clifford. The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, the Abortionist. Archon, 1988.
- Burgher, Denise G. et al., conveners. Just Teach One: Early African American Print. American Antiquarian Society.
- Burnham, Michelle. “Literary Recovery in an Age of Austerity: A Review of Early American Reprints and Just Teach One.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 32, no. 1, 2015, pp. 122-132.
- Carlson, A. Cherree. The Crimes of Womanhood: Defining Femininity in a Court of Law. U of Illinois P, 2009.
- “City Intelligence.” New York Herald, April 16, 1844. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.
- “City Intelligence.” New York Herald, April 17, 1844. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.
- Chapman, Mary and Jean Lee Cole. The Winnifred Eaton Archive, edited by Mary Chapman and Jean Lee Cole, v. 2.0, February 3, 2024.
- Faherty, Duncan and Ed White, compilers. Just Teach One. American Antiquarian Society.
- Fetterly, Judith. “Plenary Remarks.” Legacy: A Journal for American Women Writers, vol. 19, no. 2, 2002, pp. 5-9.
- Fielder, Brigitte. “Recovery.” American Periodicals, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 18-21.
- “General Sessions.” New York Herald, March 24, 1844. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.
- Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. W.W. Norton, 2019.
- Hecimovich, Gregg. The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative. HarperCollins, 2023.
- Jessee, Margaret Jay. Female Physicians in American Literature: Abortion in American Literature and Culture. Taylor and Francis, 2022.
- “Keep it Before the People." New York Polyanthos, February 16, 1841. NYPL Digital Collections.
- Livengood, Nicole C. “‘Thus Did Restell Seal That Unfortunate Lady’s Lips with a Lie’: George Washington Dixon’s Polyanthos and the Seductive Abortion Narrative.” American Journalism, vol. 33, no. 3, 2016, pp. 289–316.
- ---. “‘Her Voice was Heard’: The Antebellum Abortion Archive and the ‘Memoir of Zulma Marache,’” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 40, nos. 1-2, 2023, pp. 29-47.
- ---. “Serial Intersections in the New York Herald and Mysteries of Paris.” American Periodicals, vol. 34, no. 1, 2024, pp. 45-64.
- Mai, Brooke Lansing. “‘The Helpless French Girl’: Seduction Narratives in a Nineteenth-Century Abortion Trial.” Gender and History, vol. 26, no. 3, 2024, pp. 313-326.
- Manning, Kate. My Notorious Life: A Novel. Scribner, 2014.
- Marache, Zulma. “The Memoir of Zulma Marache.” New York Herald, March 27, 1844. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.
- Medoro, Dana. Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion. U of Massachusetts P, 2022.
- “The Notorious Madame Restell: The Abortionist of Fifth Avenue.” The Bowery Boys Podcast, June 24, 2022.
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