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Sam Murphy
Dr. Lezlie Cross
THTR 482
17 April 2016

A Fitting Celebration: Imperialism and Forced Ideals at the Worlds Columbian Exhibition

When talking about examples of popular entertainment that shapes and reflects beliefs,
Worlds Fairs are one that do this to a fantastic extent. They are, arguably, the precursor to the
pervasive American habit of peacocking every chance we get - we always have the biggest, the
shiniest, the newest, the most expensive of anything, which was an attitude started by the Worlds
Fairs to show off the power of empires. But to show off the power of an empire, you have to also
demonstrate - even if its not as obvious - the power you have over the people in an empire,
which Worlds Fairs exemplify. One that stands out above the rest as a strong display of power is
the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. This was the second Worlds Fair in
America that featured a Womens Building, a building within the fair that was devoted to
women, and it was created with the good of women in mind. However, I would challenge that
and ask whether or not it was for the true benefit of women, or if it was to create a vision of
women in society as the (male and white) fair organizers saw fit. I set out to prove that the
Columbian Expositions inclusion of a Womens Building ultimately served the patriarchal need
to keep women in certain roles and positions that could not threaten or uproot power structures in
Victorian society and any future America, to keep society white and devalue women of color

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who were still living through Jim Crow law and feeling the aftershocks of slavery, and
successfully helped those ideas take hold and spread far beyond the attendees of the fair.
The Womens Building at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago was a 77,000 square feet
hall of pavilions and terraces, every inch packed with displays and exhibits. The idea of a
womens building came from a past fair held in Philadelphia, which had come into existence for
a much different reason. Initially, in Philadelphia, women were to be given a portion of the main
hall, but the offer was later pulled and organizers decided that if women were to have a place at
the fair, they needed to be out in their own building - not so much about making sure there was
space, but more closer to keeping the womens things away from men. So, when Chicagos
fair came around, fair organizers actually established a council of women, called the Womens
Executive Committee, who were said to be in charge of the building. In reality, their decision
making capabilities were very limited: the architect for the building was decided by a council of
men, and all other decisions had to go through the main fair organizers, who were all men. Even
then, the Womens Executive Committee was made of elite members of the societies pulled from,
so it was by no means representative of a larger cross section of women. Another shortcoming of
the Womens Building was that it was still the smallest in size in the entire fair, surrounded by
buildings much larger that only made it look even smaller, and the design was widely criticized
in incredibly sexist ways. The architect, a new MIT graduate named Sophia Hayden, had a
nervous breakdown due to the criticisms, in fact - the open arcade surrounding the rotunda was
deemed "delicate and chaste in design". Furthermore, the roof garden was described as " a hen
coop for petticoated hens, old and young.. These attitudes reveal expectations of the
"womanly qualities" should possess. One critic even wrote: "...Its fault is one which makes it
especially suitable for the purposes for which it is to be used-it is chaste and timid." (Burrows)

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Her breakdown and exit from the job before completion only opened the door to more criticisms
of women as a whole, with people claiming things like Haydens difficulties only proved that
women were not suited to jobs like architecture. The Womens Executive Committee and fair
organizers did stick to a goal of only displaying art and literature by women in the building,
which was a great step forward that wasnt necessarily followed in womens buildings at
following fairs. Paintings, sculptures, and exhibits on women's progress from primitive to
modern times in the arts, crafts, sciences, education, and labor, were made up of things created
or invented by women - but even this wasnt perfect. While, yes, everything shown was invented
by women, it was still very carefully crafted to show a particular image and only show the things
that were also considered appropriate for women. One example was the statues featured on the
roof of the building: On the roof are winged groups typical of feminine characteristics and
virtues, all in choices symbolism, one of the central figures representing the spirituality of
woman, and at its feet a pelican, emblem of love and sacrifice. In the same group charity stands
side by side with virtue, and sacrifice is further symbolized by a nun, placing her jewels on the
altar. (Bancroft) Areas devoted to specific states and regions of the country only featured
wealthy white women as important figures of the time, and some even featured men as the
integral players in advancing women to where they are. Otherwise, the building featured scaleddown mock rooms, like kitchens and sewing corners, intended to be highlighting the innovations
by women but instead serving to reinforce that these were the only things women could be
innovators in. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that while, yes, there was a large womancentered presence and practically everything on display was created by women, all exhibits and
work shown still fit into and upheld traditional ideas of a womans place in society - women
were not shown amongst the bankers, the scientists, the doctors, or the lawyers in their respective

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buildings unless they were the wives of such men. No, women only had a spot to show cooking,
cleaning, sewing, and other domestic and maternal duties, as shown by the Womens Building.
But while looking at what kinds of things were in the Womens Building, its also
important to note what kind of women, exactly, were attending the fair and making these
decisions, and there were three distinct categories one could find themselves in: the young and
the elite bourgeois, the New Women and older generations of suffragettes and politically active
women, or a sort of others category largely made up of immigrant women and women of color.
The Womens Executive Committee, as mentioned before, was comprised entirely of the wealthy
elite. These were women that believed in the importance of domesticity: the purpose of life is to
find a husband, give him children, and make them a happy home; women dont belong in the
work field and should not be trying to self-sustain; being a patron to the arts or a philanthropist
was much better than being the actual painter or the politician. Therefore, their views are the
ones mostly reflected in the Womens Building - in the sculptures and paintings that decorated
the area, in the types of exhibits displayed, even down to the carefully-chosen flowers around
banisters. These ideals are likely what led to things like the mock kitchens and laying a particular
stress on domestic-type work, as well as what led to an exotification of anything contributed by
women of color - while affluent and influential white women were give plaques with their
names, photos, and plenty of information, anything coming from women of color was often
subjected to a blanketed erasure of the actual innovator herself (very much like the exotification
by Orientalist imperialism), fueled by a devaluing of contributions made by women unlike them.
However, there was a distinct push from the New Women in another direction. Despite being
shut out of most major decisions, there were still plenty of suffragettes and abolitionists that were
invited to speak at the Womens Building, giving hundreds of speeches, like Susan B. Anthonys

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state of the movement-esque lecture about how far women have come, Sue Bradys talk about
a specific shift in womens gender roles in the American south (known for a particularly rural
and rigid system), or lectures like M. A. Lipscombs Woman as a Financier and Louise A.
Starkweathers Woman as an Investor. These were all speeches and talks that actively
challenged the ideals put forth by the Committee - who certainly had their own showing on the
speakers stage, like the ending of Cara Reeses We, The Women, which read: Courage,
women of America. You have fought great battles, you have won great victories. Now look to the
homes and firesides. The disparity in what was being shows was wild, from encouraging
women to literally return to their hearths to giving what was essentially a workshop in
investments and finance. However, this battle was still not including everyone - there was the
category of others, a category made up almost entirely of black women that were not invited to
show any work, to speak, to display any of their literature, discuss any of their cultures, or to
dialogue about any of the issues they faced. These things were talked about at the Exhibition plenty of speeches were given about women of color, like The Faith of Islam, Mexico,
Samoa; Its People and Their Customs, and The Japanese - but all were presented by white
women, with information that was clearly misguided by a lack of actual perspective from the
race being spoken about. In The Japanese by Romyn Hitchcock, she discusses Japanese
history, then follows that by saying, Japan was not discovered by the Portuguese, the pioneers in
navigation in the Eastern seas, until America had been known for half a century, purporting that
Japan really came into existence once it was discovered, and goes on to describe the Japanese
as a most charming and interesting people to live among. They are small in stature, with black
eyes and hair. The types of features of the higher and lower classes are distinctly marked. The
fine oval face with prominent, well chiseled features, oblique eyes and high, narrow forehead,

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distinguish the upper class; while the round face and less oblique eyes pertain to the lower. The
paper is littered with these kinds of statements, often followed by a reminder that she lived in
Japan for two years, so she knows what shes talking about - an older example of the colloquial
but I have a minority friend! One of the only things still remaining in its entirety that discusses
the treatment of women of color is a pamphlet by Ida B. Wells entitled The Reason Why The
Colored American is Not in the Worlds Colombian Exposition: The Afro-Americans
Contribution to Columbian Literature. It features essays written by Wells, as well as individual
pieces by Frederick Douglass, I. Garland Penn, and F. L. Barnett in which they detail their
perspective on the exhibition, but also make sure to include essays about other issues like Lynch
Law, Jim Crow, voter suppression, and prison inequality. Barnett writes in the titular essay, In
the very first steps of the Exposition work, the colored people were given to understand that they
were persona non grata, so far as any participation in the directive energy of the Exposition was
concerned. By and large, black people were not actually allowed in the fair - instead, they could
only find maintenance jobs, like ticket taking and janitorial services, or could attend on the one
allotted Negro Day. Wells was not invited to speak, despite being an incredibly influential
activist at the time, but still found a way into the fair with Frederick Douglass and sat at his
exhibiting table elsewhere in the fair, handing out printed copies of the pamphlet. This was one
of the largest shortcomings of the Womens Building, and one that we still see the effects of
today - suffragettes, abolitionists, and others that we could safely consider to be feminists were
not only actively ignoring women of color, but also giving a very racist display of speaking for
and about communities and people they did not understand.
Overall, the Womens Building did more harm than good, in many different ways. Firstly,
it worked to establish gender-specific jobs, products, and markets, distinctly feminizing the

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things shown in the building. It would be laughable at the time for a man to show interest in
anything shown in the Womens Building because of the association with femininity, just as
women were strongly discouraged to take an interest in anything outside of the building, with
other things being out of their scope of ability (like the criticisms of Hayden for breaking down
at the pressure she was put under, which probably would have made any man in her position
crack). These feminizing of certain things also reinforced stereotypes and ideals of womanhood,
as if saying that there was no way any woman was one of value if she didnt conform to and
adhere to the things displayed - from the statues of virtues on the roof to the very specific
activities she was allowed inside. This attempt at reinforcement did yield a somewhat positive
change - the push of early feminists to challenge these ideas to the organizers faces, but even
this only highlighted a larger underlying problem. The Womens Building was a grand display of
racism and exclusion, imperialism and exotification, and only used women of color and their
contributions to further America as an empire, not to actually celebrate and honor them as
valuable. These are things we still see today: the bourgeois elite and New Women struggle is
easily paralleled in young feminists and women against feminism, both pushing against one
another to prove is feminism is helpful or unnecessary and oppressive, or even in younger
feminists pushing against the older generations of the Second Wave; the newly coined White
Feminism that is racially (or any other intersection of oppression) exclusive and others, often
the excluded women who would have been in the same boat as Ida B. Wells, pointing out how it
harms women outside of a cisgender, heterosexual, white, upper middle class; and the enormous,
deeply-ingrained standard of marketing and product development that is rooted in gender
essentialism and relies on feminizing and masculinizing products - even if its just a change in
packaging, from razors and pens and bandaids to whole lines of cars and furniture, everything

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has a gender. Since the Columbian Exhibition was one of the first and largest displays of
America as an empire, showing off for both the world at large and for the American people, what
was put forth over its run was influential and people were happy to follow, even if it was just in
the name of being on trend. But trends have power, and something thats simply hip or
something everyone is doing one day can easily turn into a cultural norm that people are afraid to
challenge and can actually experience negative repercussions for doing so.

Works Cited

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. "The Book of the Fair : Chapter the Eleventh: Woman's Department
(Text)." The Book of the Fair : Chapter the Eleventh: Woman's Department (Text).
Paul

V. Galvin Library Digital History Collection, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016. <http://
columbus.gl.iit.edu/bookfair/ch11.html>.

"The Columbian Exposition and the Woman's Building, 1893." The Columbian Exposition and
the Woman's Building, 1893. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Mar. 2016.

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<http://www.radford.edu/

rbarris/Women%20and

%20art/amerwom05/columbianexpostion.html>.

"THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN HELD IN THE WOMAN'S BUILDING, WORLD'S

COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, U. S. A., 1893." A Celebration of
Women

Writers. Ed. Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle. University of Pennsylvania,

n.d. Web. 05

Mar. 2016.

<http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/eagle/congress/congress.html>.

Cott, Nancy F. "AN EXPERIMENT OF WOMEN, 1893." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 18 July 1981. Web. 05 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/19/books/

an-experiment-of-women-

1893.html>.

Wells, Ida B., Frederick Douglass, I. Garland Penn, and F. L. Barnett. The Reason Why The
Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition: The AfroAmerican's

Contribution to Columbian Literature. Champaign: U of Illinois, 1999.

Web. 5 Mar. 2016.

<http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/wells/exposition/exposition.html>.

"Women's Architectural Arts." 1893 Exposition. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Mar. 2016. <http://
arcadiasystems.org/academia/cassatt5.html#rideout>.

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