Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights: Sarah Jane Walker
With the old Snowy Creek Railway Station behind her, Chava observed that the cars could no longer keep pace with a train free of constraints. Wanting to do well in the examination, she removed from her bag a slim folder containing study notes on the nineteenth-century feminist, Sarah Jane Walker.
Sarah had not been Chava’s first study choice. Of the three women’s rights activists whom they could choose to study, Chava had initially picked Florence Stillwell, a woman who had campaigned tirelessly for social housing reform (most notably, the provision of safe and appropriate housing for single mothers and the elderly). However, Chava changed her mind following a lecture by Doctor Fisher on the equal rights activist Sarah Jane Walker, who she discovered had not only spent time at Phoca Bay but who had also been at the sanatorium on the night of its incineration.
It was, after all, Chava’s forebears who had purchased the charred remains of the sanatorium (pictures of which were in Chava’s personal collection). The fire, the deaths, the eight chimneys—all belonged to the narrative Chava had grown up with. A narrative that now included a woman Chava had, this semester, learned to appreciate.
Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Activist: Sarah Jane Westerhargen
Sarah Jane Westerhargen was born in the city of Portasheer on 3 January 1858, the second child of Wilhelmina Jane Westerhargen and Jochen Hans Westerhargen. Sarah was only about eight months old when her father was killed. A railway foreman, Jochen managed a large group of men who were cutting a path through the mountains for rail lines to be laid. Jochen’s office hut was at the workers’ camp, some distance from the blast site; however, the late winter dynamiting of a hillside triggered a massive avalanche that swept away the campsite.
Sarah’s mother, Wilhelmina, was born into a middle-class family and was groomed by her mother, who, buttoned to the neck and dragging her dress behind her, instructed Wilhelmina against the evils of immorality, idleness and impiety. Her mother’s singular devotion in preparing Wilhelmina to be the wife of one man continued even after Wilhelmina’s marriage to Jochen and was relieved only by Jochen and Wilhelmina’s departure to the city of Portasheer.
Sarah Jane Walker, in ‘Bouquet’ by Sasha Deane.
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