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Do Everything: The Biography of Frances Willard
Frances Willard (1839-1898) was one of the most prominent American social reformers of the late nineteenth century. As the long-time president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Willard built a national and international movement of women that campaigned for prohibition, women's rights, economic justice, and numerous other social justice issues during the Gilded Age. Emphasizing what she called "Do Everything" reform, Willard became a central figure in international movements in support of prohibition, women's suffrage, and Christian socialism. A devout Methodist, Willard helped to shape predominant religious currents of the late nineteenth century and was an important figure in the rise of the social gospel movement in American Protestantism.
The first biography of Frances Willard to be published in over thirty-five years, Do Everything explores Willard's life, her contributions as a reformer, and her broader legacy as a women's rights activist in the United States. In addition to chronicling Willard's life, historian Christopher H. Evans examines how Willard crafted a distinctive culture of women's leadership, emphasizing the importance of religious faith for understanding Willard's successes as a social reformer. Despite her enormous fame during her lifetime, Evans investigates the reasons why Willard's legacy has been eclipsed by subsequent generations of feminist reformers and assesses her importance for our time.
The first biography of Frances Willard to be published in over thirty-five years, Do Everything explores Willard's life, her contributions as a reformer, and her broader legacy as a women's rights activist in the United States. In addition to chronicling Willard's life, historian Christopher H. Evans examines how Willard crafted a distinctive culture of women's leadership, emphasizing the importance of religious faith for understanding Willard's successes as a social reformer. Despite her enormous fame during her lifetime, Evans investigates the reasons why Willard's legacy has been eclipsed by subsequent generations of feminist reformers and assesses her importance for our time.
408 pages, Hardcover
Published September 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 14, 2025
Not the most exciting book I’ve read, but one thing I like about this biography is that the author does not shy away from telling about Frances’ flaws and mistakes, along with her virtues and accomplishments. I’ve read too many biographies that toe the line between history and hagiography, and I appreciate an honest and well rounded account. It’s also interesting to learn more about Frances because she was so famous in her day, and is largely unknown now. It’s fascinating to consider why: she is impossible to pin modern ideological labels onto, she had a beef with Ida B. Wells (yikes… not her finest moment), and to me it seems she is a bit too conservative for modern liberals/feminists and a little too liberal for modern conservatives.
Glad to learn more about this lady.
Glad to learn more about this lady.
October 20, 2022
“It is to this ‘DO EVERYTHING POLICY’ to which we are forced by merciless conditions of the problem we are forced by merciless conditions of the problem we are trying to solve. Into every nook and corner of the awful darkness light must penetrate…the area blighted by sin must blossom with God’s grace.”
Christopher H. Evans’ Do Everything chronicles women’s activist Frances Willards’ “travel, speeches, public criticism, accolades, broken friendships, and defeats.” “Willard wanted prohibition, but…what she truly desired most, even more than creating a dry nation, was to live in a country that honored the equality of women and men.” “If my dear mother did me one crowing kindness it was in making me believe that next to being an angel, the greatest bestowment of God is to make one a woman.”
After ending an engagement, Willard espoused a “Boston marriage,” a term used “to describe a long-term monogamous relationship between two otherwise unmarried women…These women spent their lives primarily with other women, they gave to other women the bulk of their energy and attention, and they formed powerful emotional ties with other women.”
Christopher H. Evans likens Willard to a 19th century Clinton. “The career of Hillary Clinton underscores many of the same causes that Willard fought, while also demonstrating the limits that are still put on women’s political participation in the twenty-first century.”
“Willard’s concluding epigram manifested her optimism that in many ways summarized much of her life’s work. ‘I hope that the glint of my eye and the beat of my heart may hold on to the victory of all the movements we have undertaken; I count doubt at this time as disloyal; faltering as a sin.’” As a Christian, whose activism was rooted in faith, Willard both cherished and challenged the church. “If Churches really made men and women Christs,” would not “every inmate of every evil house…be personally known, personally loved, and personally labored for by one one of the many who call themselves by the name of the Redeemer?”
Christopher H. Evans’ Do Everything biography upholds a forgotten female hero to whom women and men alike can aspire.
Christopher H. Evans’ Do Everything chronicles women’s activist Frances Willards’ “travel, speeches, public criticism, accolades, broken friendships, and defeats.” “Willard wanted prohibition, but…what she truly desired most, even more than creating a dry nation, was to live in a country that honored the equality of women and men.” “If my dear mother did me one crowing kindness it was in making me believe that next to being an angel, the greatest bestowment of God is to make one a woman.”
After ending an engagement, Willard espoused a “Boston marriage,” a term used “to describe a long-term monogamous relationship between two otherwise unmarried women…These women spent their lives primarily with other women, they gave to other women the bulk of their energy and attention, and they formed powerful emotional ties with other women.”
Christopher H. Evans likens Willard to a 19th century Clinton. “The career of Hillary Clinton underscores many of the same causes that Willard fought, while also demonstrating the limits that are still put on women’s political participation in the twenty-first century.”
“Willard’s concluding epigram manifested her optimism that in many ways summarized much of her life’s work. ‘I hope that the glint of my eye and the beat of my heart may hold on to the victory of all the movements we have undertaken; I count doubt at this time as disloyal; faltering as a sin.’” As a Christian, whose activism was rooted in faith, Willard both cherished and challenged the church. “If Churches really made men and women Christs,” would not “every inmate of every evil house…be personally known, personally loved, and personally labored for by one one of the many who call themselves by the name of the Redeemer?”
Christopher H. Evans’ Do Everything biography upholds a forgotten female hero to whom women and men alike can aspire.
November 28, 2023
I somehow neglected to review this awesome book when I finished it earlier this year. Frances Willard is FASCINATING! She has been largely forgotten by modern historians and feminists, but she is such a complex and interesting figure. As the author notes, Willard doesn't fit into our modern definitions of traditional progressive/conservative or feminist neatly - which is what makes it so fascinating to learn more about her. The interaction of her religious beliefs and her politics spoke deeply to me. While having strong convictions herself, I also appreciated her intellectual curiosity and willingness to engage with those who thought/believed differently. Though, she could definitely be stubborn and unforgiving on a personal level.
[Note: both the book and this review are long reads - so if you're not interested in diving deep into a random historical figure, this isn't the book for you!]
Before reading, I knew a bit about Willard (mainly her work on women's suffrage and temperance), but the scope of her interests and achievements is vast and varied. Her colleagues called her "the Octopus" because of her ability to be involved in so many campaigns. Willard and her colleagues at the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were instrumental in developing kindergartens for working women, advocating for police matrons so that female prisoners weren't abused by male guards, pushing dress reform (including her friendship with a radical campaigner who urged women to burn their corsets!), campaigning for age of consent laws (in some states the age of consent was as young as 10 years old!), working for married women's rights, fighting animal cruelty, and supporting the labor movement.
It was disappointing, but sadly not surprising to read about Willard's failure to fully engage and understand the struggles of Black Americans. While the WCTU did allow Black members, Willard was not on the right side of history with respect to many of the racial issues of her time.
All in all, this was a good read about an intriguing historical figure - Willard was a radical, yet institutionalist; a religious believer with a skepticism about dogma; a canny politician who wasn't able to vote during her lifetime; a believer in women's role in the home who campaigned unabashedly outside the home; and overall a riveting personality who was instrumental in so many issues of her day.
Some of my favorite quotes by Frances Willard:
"So dear friend, 'be not simply good, be good for something;' not a barnacle on the old ship Zion, but a gleaming, sun-bright sail,; not a drone in the great hive of humanity, but a happy, humming, honey-gathering bee; not a croaker, but a persuasive voice."
"Happiness is a thing to practice, like a violin..."
(On writing:) "Make the letter brief, strong and kind."
"Surely the work we have been chosen of God...is so varied and so wide that we can move along our different lines still with our faces toward this central figure of all our plans, Christ."
"Alone we can do so little. Separated, we are units of weakness, but aggregated we become batteries of power. Agitate, educate, organize, these are the deathless watchwords of success. The fingers of the hands can do little alone, but correlated into a fist they become formidable."
"The Bible is the most political of books. It recognizes more clearly than any other that God must rule in politics, else the devil surely will."
Men "...seem comparatively willing that women should enter any profession except their own."
"Christians must not sit by and let the fires of intemperance burn on; we must not permit poverty to shiver and squalor to send forth its stench and disease to fester in the heart of great populations. All this must be stopped, and we are the Christ-men and Christ-women to stop it, or else we are pitiable dreamers and deluded professors of what we don't believe."
"I have sincerely meant in life...to stand by the great cause of the poor, oppressed humanity. There must be explorers along all pathways; scouts in all armies. This has been my 'call' from the beginning, by nature and by nurture; let me be true to its inspiring and cheery mandate even 'unto this last.'"
Honorary quote by Willard's friend Mary Allen West: "...the three prime qualifications for Christian workers are Grace, Grit, and Gumption, these three; but the greatest of these is Gumption."
[Note: both the book and this review are long reads - so if you're not interested in diving deep into a random historical figure, this isn't the book for you!]
Before reading, I knew a bit about Willard (mainly her work on women's suffrage and temperance), but the scope of her interests and achievements is vast and varied. Her colleagues called her "the Octopus" because of her ability to be involved in so many campaigns. Willard and her colleagues at the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were instrumental in developing kindergartens for working women, advocating for police matrons so that female prisoners weren't abused by male guards, pushing dress reform (including her friendship with a radical campaigner who urged women to burn their corsets!), campaigning for age of consent laws (in some states the age of consent was as young as 10 years old!), working for married women's rights, fighting animal cruelty, and supporting the labor movement.
It was disappointing, but sadly not surprising to read about Willard's failure to fully engage and understand the struggles of Black Americans. While the WCTU did allow Black members, Willard was not on the right side of history with respect to many of the racial issues of her time.
All in all, this was a good read about an intriguing historical figure - Willard was a radical, yet institutionalist; a religious believer with a skepticism about dogma; a canny politician who wasn't able to vote during her lifetime; a believer in women's role in the home who campaigned unabashedly outside the home; and overall a riveting personality who was instrumental in so many issues of her day.
Some of my favorite quotes by Frances Willard:
"So dear friend, 'be not simply good, be good for something;' not a barnacle on the old ship Zion, but a gleaming, sun-bright sail,; not a drone in the great hive of humanity, but a happy, humming, honey-gathering bee; not a croaker, but a persuasive voice."
"Happiness is a thing to practice, like a violin..."
(On writing:) "Make the letter brief, strong and kind."
"Surely the work we have been chosen of God...is so varied and so wide that we can move along our different lines still with our faces toward this central figure of all our plans, Christ."
"Alone we can do so little. Separated, we are units of weakness, but aggregated we become batteries of power. Agitate, educate, organize, these are the deathless watchwords of success. The fingers of the hands can do little alone, but correlated into a fist they become formidable."
"The Bible is the most political of books. It recognizes more clearly than any other that God must rule in politics, else the devil surely will."
Men "...seem comparatively willing that women should enter any profession except their own."
"Christians must not sit by and let the fires of intemperance burn on; we must not permit poverty to shiver and squalor to send forth its stench and disease to fester in the heart of great populations. All this must be stopped, and we are the Christ-men and Christ-women to stop it, or else we are pitiable dreamers and deluded professors of what we don't believe."
"I have sincerely meant in life...to stand by the great cause of the poor, oppressed humanity. There must be explorers along all pathways; scouts in all armies. This has been my 'call' from the beginning, by nature and by nurture; let me be true to its inspiring and cheery mandate even 'unto this last.'"
Honorary quote by Willard's friend Mary Allen West: "...the three prime qualifications for Christian workers are Grace, Grit, and Gumption, these three; but the greatest of these is Gumption."
March 7, 2024
Review to come...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews