Highlights from the Presentation
Family Papers
The Blackwell Family Papers can be found at the Schlesinger. View collection.
Elizabeth Blackwell as a Character
“Well, she's such an amazing character and I myself do a lot of reading about feminist characters, and when [Lynn] came to us with this character, I had really not known about her; I knew a lot about women's suffrage movement and I've written things about that, but to understand Elizabeth Blackwell… she's really quite an exciting character and her trajectory as a person, I mean she's very inspiring to me. I think this idea that every struggle, she seemed to just stand up again and do even better work,” said Christine Farrell.
Why This Story
“I thought the story needed to be told. I was really surprised that when you spoke to women physicians they knew who she was and they had probably read one of those you know—I call them cleansed biographies—but most male physicians did not know who she was, and so I thought this story needs to be told and a good way to tell it would be through a play. So, I just started writing. I joined a writing group and the writing group was very helpful. I brought an actress in to read the play the first time. It was before I had met Kevin and Christine, then I decided, I was going to get serious about this. I was lucky that people like me liked her character,” said Lynn Eckhert.
The Sources
The source material was her letters and her own writing. She wrote several books and I was able to get her some letters which were in the Library of Congress. The majority of the letters are at the Schlesinger Library. There's also a woman at Old Stourbridge Village who was an interpreter who had won an award. It had been given to her and Lucy Stone. Lucy Stone was her sister-in-law and she introduced me to John Blackwell who was Elizabeth’s grand-nephew and he invited me to the Boston Athenaeum for tea. He was in his 90s, and we had tea together and then he made some suggestions — particularly about the primary sources. I was able to handle them and people can't do that anymore, but when you're a woman physician and you're dealing with the works of another, of the first woman physician, it's really quite thrilling,” said Lynn Eckhert.
Doing a Play on a Real Life Person
“When you're working on a play with a real-life person, the history is accessible and available to everyone, but not the point of view, and I think that's [something] that Christine got really well. Yeah, we find out that there's an incredible passion and fire and it burns, and particularly with her comments about the licentiousness of men and the men doing this and the men doing that and the men being the cause of this. I think that's a great thing to add to a play, that again takes it beyond just being a history play; it makes it a real character, someone we’re really compelled and intrigued by,” said Kevin Confoy.
