Gendered Confines: Women's Prison Reform in 1920s & 1930s Arkansas

摘要

This work assesses the various types of activism women in Arkansas engaged in during the 1920s and 1930s. Focusing on the biographies of three women---Laura Conner, the first woman appointed to the honorary penitentiary board; Mary Dewees, the first superintendent of the Arkansas State Farm for Women; and Helen Spence, notorious outlaw who escaped the prison farm multiple times---it argues that women's activism took on different forms yet faced similar obstacles. Conner and Dewees were both educated, middle-class women charged with remodeling the prison system: Conner as an appointed outsider, and Dewees as an agent of the state. Spence, an inmate, performed own type of activism through everyday acts of resistance. While each had their own distinct goals, all three women operated within---and contended with---systems of oppression and carved out the spaces in which they could implement the changes they sought.