Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0393312550
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Average Customer Review: (From 3 total reviews)
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Customer Reviews

Misses the point by
The book is fine, except for her complaints on the attention given to her disappearance. Of course the disappearance is emphasized–she was FAR AND AWAY the most important American to disappear without a trace. The disappearance of an obscure judge (Judge Crater) and Jimmy Hoffa still produce books–why shouldn’t there be even more about a more famous, more worthy American like Earhart.

Whose taking advantage of Earhart’s loss? by James Hoogerwerf
That Amelia Earhart disappeared under mysterious circumstances while on an around the world flight in 1937, insures her a prominent place in mankind’s collective memory. The mystery of what really happened is still unknown sixty-six years later and what actually occurred most likely will never be resolved. Too much time has passed and any evidence likely is lost to the elements. That is not to say that people have given up the search. As recently as 2001 a book by Karen R. Burns, Randall S. Jacobson, Amelia Earhart’s Shoes: Is the Mystery Solved, will likely not be the last.

There is more to her memory than the fact that she disappeared. She was one of the first female pilots in America. She was the first female to cross the Atlantic initially as a passenger and later alone. Amelia Earhart was only the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She emerged as a promoter of aviation in its early years and pursued a career based on her fame as a female aviation pioneer.

The sobriquet “Lady Lindy” underscores the comparison to Charles Lindbergh and his flight from New York to Paris in 1927. In one respect they were very different. “Lindbergh never reconciled himself to the demands of being a public figure, while Earhart accepted her public stature and made it work for her and women in general.”(22) These two precepts, her gender and publicity, point to the core of Susan Ware’s book, Still Missing, Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism. That Earhart was a well-known female spokesperson and roll model in the 1930s contributed to the cause of feminism during a time between “suffrage activism and the revived feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.”(13)

Amelia Earhart was a popular heroine. She served as an example for personal achievement. She was courageous and brave and she was a woman. It was a time when women’s advancement was forged by personal achievement.

The accomplishments of women as disparate as Babe Didrikson, Gertrude Ederle, Katharine Hepburn, Dorothy Thompson, Martha Graham, Georgia O’Keeffe were widely reported as evidence of the ongoing advancement of the modern, post suffrage women. Individual achievements substituted for, and also sustained, the feminist momentum.(25)

There were long periods during which Amelia Earhart was not in the press, but she was active making speeches, writing and engaging in business promotions. Key to her marketability was her marriage to publisher George Palmer Putnam. Feminists view her relationship as a “modern marriage” with freedom for each to pursue their independence. Nonetheless, it appears he controlled many aspect of her life in promoting her to the public as the best female pilot. This was the key to her public image. From this everything followed. However, it brings into question her real independence despite her protestations to the contrary. Was she in fact as free and independent as she and author Ware claim? Ware acknowledges Putnam’s proclivity for control, but doesn’t attribute to him any limits to her freedom. Theirs was an acknowledged marriage of convenience and one wonders if she ever loved him at all. However this is not a problem with modern feminists and Earhart, as a spokeswoman, is more central to Ware’s study.

Making a living in aviation in the late 1920s and 1930s was not easy. Her counterpart, Charles Lindbergh served as a consultant for Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT). It was advertised as the “Lindbergh Line.” Amelia signed on with TAT as well but with the traffic department. In contrast to Lindbergh’s substantive contribution to the corporation, her job was largely ceremonial. Later she worked for the Ludington Line, but this line was sold to Eastern Air Transport in 1933. Her job there was to overcome women’s reticence to flying. Ironically “in order to get women into the air as passengers, she was forced to rely on traditional gender stereotypes that exaggerated the differences between men and women.” (71)

Most women in flying became stewardesses. Women who wanted to be pilots were handicapped by “the two T’s - tradition and training.” (75) Childhood conditioning contributed to discrimination. The case of Helen Richey, a copilot for Central Airways, is instructive. Male pilot complaints encouraged the Aeronautics Bureau of the Department of Commerce to issue an advisory allowing female airline pilots to only fly in fair-weather. Richey resigned. “After Richey’s resignation women were shut out of cockpits of scheduled airlines for the next thirty years.”(78)

Female ability was demonstrated during air races some of which were with men and women and others just for women. Amelia Earhart, with Helen Richey flying with her as copilot, came in fifth in the 1936 Bendix race. In 1937 Louis Thaden and copilot Blanche Noyes won over all the men! Competition among women led to new records. The Ninety-Nines, an organization for women only, served as a support and advocacy group.

What was the nature of Amelia Earhart’s career? Fundamentally it was self-promotion from which endorsements flowed. Her agent was also her husband George Putnam. She was a speaker, a college councilor, magazine writer, and, as one commentator said, she became “caught up in the hero racket.” (201). Probably a close comparison to her aviation career was that of Roscoe Turner’s. Turner bowed out of speed racing and managed to live a full life. Similarly, when the qualities of individualism and daring which contributed to Earhart’s early fame were no longer helping her image, she planned her flight around the world. She anticipated it would be her last, but not, of course, in the manner in which it was culminated. She would settle down to more routine flying when she returned, so she thought.

Some critics debunked the flight as nothing more than a publicity stunt. “She said the main object of her flight was to establish the feasibility of circling the globe by commercial transport.” (215) The only real significance to the flight was that it meandered along a route near the equator, which was longer than any others that had been flown. And, of course, she was a woman. Otherwise it was not unique. “Between 1924 and 1933 six expeditions had circle the globe, including two by Wiley post in his Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae.” (214)

The expedition started out badly. On take off from Hawaii she ground looped the Electra and had to return it to the Lockheed factory in California for repairs. It was decided to reverse the route, and for weather reasons, the new departure date had to occur before the end of May. There were many details to take care of and with all the preparations, Amelia began her flight fatigued. As she progressed around the world she and Noonan flew by day. Stops included San Juan, Venezuela, Dutch Guiana, Brazil, across Africa, India and Australia. From Lae, New Guinea they were to fly to the Howland Island and then on to Hawaii. Howland Island was selected because it was within flying range of New Guinea and Hawaii. Facilities had been prepared for them, but a radio beacon was not installed because it would delay the flight.

The leg to Howland Island was 2,556 miles and Earhart and Noonan planned to use islands for navigation during the day and celestial and dead reckoning at night. The coast guard cutter Itasca made radio contact with the flight but they were unable to get a bearing. Radio communication was never established but messages indicated a worsening situation over the course of the next six hours. Earhart and Noonan were confused about there position and fuel was getting low. When they were presumed lost a weeklong search was commenced without ever finding a trace of them. The loss made front-page news for ten days but “public interest lagged in the immediate aftermath of her disappearance and presumed death.”(225) Since then various theories have persisted to explain her disappearance and new ones crop up. She is in fact, as Ware’s title proclaims, Still Missing.

Ware, in the final pages of her book, speculates on what Amelia Earhart may have done with the rest of her life. Undoubtedly she would have continued promoting aviation and speaking out on the role of women as she had been doing all along. Ware, in writing her book, seeks “to rescue Amelia from the clutches of the cult of her disappearance and to refocus attention on her life itself.”

Ware does focus attention to Earhart’s accomplishments in fostering women’s equality with men, but there seems to be a contradiction that underlies her story. On the one hand Amelia Earhart is portrayed as an independent women in a new field who performs as an equal to men. Indeed she is very brave and becomes the most famous and remembered female aviator. But in reading the book, the reader finds her husband, Putnam, choreographs her actions. She seemed to allow herself to be manipulated by him. Ware quotes Florence “Pancho” Barnes, “She was a goddamned robot. Putnam would wind her up and she would go and do what he said.” (93)

One wonders if, in her book on feminism, Ware isn’t using Earhart to make her own point and not to refocus attention from her disappearance at all. In the final analysis, after reading Ware’s account, I am left with a sense of admiration for Amelia Earhart’s bravery, but not much else. Ware, rather than rescuing her from the cult of the disappeared, uses her disappearance to announce that feminist equality is still missing. Isn’t that taking advantage of her loss, just like the cult of the disappeared?

Fabulous by
Susan Ware’s biography of Amelia Earhart is engagingly written, never dull, and full of insights about how Earhart’s life reflects the development of feminism in the United States. Anyone interested in women’s biographies will find this book fascinating.

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