Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers

4. Lavinia Goodell: “A Sweeping Revolution of Social Order”

44 ◊4÷ Lavinia Goodell “A Sweeping Revolution of Social Order” If nature has built up barriers to keep Woman out of the legal profession, be assured she will stay out; but if nature has built no such barriers, in vain shall man build them, for they will certainly be overthrown. —Lavinia Goodell, 1876 LAVINIA GOODELL , BORN IN 1839, learned about the power of law at an early age. Slavery and temperance were everyday topics of conversation at her parents’ dinner table. By the age of nineteen Lavinia imagined law as a profession through which she could do good and not lose her moral bearings. From the same age, she also imagined herself happily, forever, unmarried. Moral bearings were everything in the world of Rhoda Lavinia Goodell. The second surviving daughter of William and Clarissa Goodell, Lavinia, or Vinnie as she was called, began life in Utica, New York. The area was a stronghold of religious revival, and earnest social and moral reform. Earlier, while earning a living as a merchant trader, William found himself “tugged at” by the slavery question and “the Drink Demon.”1 He put commercial life behind him and began working for the cause of abolition, and for temperance. By the year of Lavinia’s birth, William had been writing and publishing reform newspapers for more than a decade. He was on his way to building a national reputation as an abolition and temperance activist. Lavinia Goodell 45 Along with her father, her more conservative and conventional mother, and a much-loved sister, Maria, twelve years her senior, Lavinia shared in a daily routine of prayer, dinnertime debate, and adherence to the vegetarian diet prescribed by wellness reformer Sylvester Graham. Maria said that the household lived by “regularity,” yet on any given day guests might include well-known anti-slavery agitators as well as the “poor and defenseless . . . without distinction of color or sex.”2 William and his colleagues set a high moral bar for the members of their community. Clarissa Goodell struggled, once telling a neighbor, Rhoda Lavinia Goodell (1839-1880). (Reprinted by permission from the William Goodell Papers, Historical Collections, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky.) 46 Lavinia Goodell “[M]y selfishness is every day rebuked by his [William’s] higher life.”3 Lavinia, a quick study from an early age, knew her own mind. She developed predictably strong feelings in support of the abolition of slavery , but by the time she was eight or nine, according to her sister, had adopted “entirely independent views from her family” with respect to organized religion and making public professions.4 Later, she would not join a church just to help her business. Maria married and moved away when Lavinia was eleven and the family had established a residence in Brooklyn, New York. The separation , one that lasted virtually all of Lavinia’s life, encouraged the two to exchange letters containing everyday news as well as deeply felt meditations about how to live a decent and principled life. In March 1858, Lavinia sent Maria a letter full of pain and pleading, one seeking an ally for an audacious plan. Lavinia was nearly nineteen and ready to graduate from Brooklyn Heights Seminary. Dear Sister, You know I expect to graduate . . . and I must have some life plan. I don’t believe in living to get married, if that comes along in the natural course of events—very well, but to make it virtually my end and aim, to square all my plans to it, and study and learn for no other purpose, does not suit my ideas. . . . This would be different if women would learn to depend more on themselves, instead of thinking it devolves on the other sex to support them. We want self-reliance. . . . I would not counsel neglect of such accomplishments as are necessary in a wife and mother, but they are not reliable capital to un-engaged, unlikely to be engaged girls, who want to be true to themselves. I think the study of law would be pleasant, but the practice attended with many embarrassments. Indeed I fear it would be utterly unpracticable [sic]. Our folks would not hear to my going to college. I should not mention it. Momma is being much afraid I shall become identified with the women’s rights movement. . . . In all probability I must teach, that is about all a woman can do, and now the profession is over crowded...