Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Uppity Women #7

Amelia Earhart and her Lockheed 10 Electra, March 1937
Image Credit: USAF

"Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn't be done."


By turns shy and persistent, celebrity and true technician, Amelia Earhart is a feminist icon whose fate remains a true mystery. No solid evidence has ever been found as to the location and cause of her death and that of Fred Noonan, her navigator, after their approach to Howland Island went awry.

Earhart's unusual relationship with her husband, who personally investigated many, many claims following her disappearance, was marked by her belief that "marriage (w)as a "partnership" with "dual control," and that holding a partner to faithfulness was medieval. She never took her husband George Putnam's name, had no children, and she took long flights with male navigators or co-pilots and her husband helped her generate the funds to do so.


Whatever her ultimate fate, she inspired a generation of women to push the envelope. 


Uppity, with class and courage.


You can learn more about Amelia Earhart at the Official Amelia Earhart Website, maintained by her family.


"The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship."




© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

2 comments:

  1. I dunno, I always preferred Beryl Markham..

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  2. Beryl Markham was interesting but there are still so many lingering questions about the authenticity of authorship of West with the Night. None of her subsequent works have any similar style and some believe that her third husband wrote the book. Since Karen Blixen is a forthcoming Uppity Women, you will see Beryl mentioned, since she took up with Denys Finch-Hatton when Blixen and he fell on rocky times. She was reportedly pregnant with his child when he died in 1931 though it could have just as easily been Tom Campbell Black's child if it was true.

    Anyway, I'm putting her into the Karen blixen/Isak Dinesen post. Sometimes uppity women hang out together...

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