I give this book three stars because there are parts that were good, parts that were excellent, and parts that I despised, and despised Farley for writing, I probably won't read any of her other books. One thing that I was a bit surprised to see that this book lacked was an index, especially since it hops backward and forward in time. I would also liked to point out something that is a pet peeve: carelessness with regard to referents when using pronouns. On page 239 of the 2023 Grand Central Published trade edition that I read, there appears that sentence "After learning of the action that she and Nabarette were organizing with Rosenfelt's help [...]" Given the "she" in this case is paired with [Charles] Nabarette. presumably it refers to Antonia Hernández, who hasn't been mentioned by name since page 236. Several other woman have been named in those pages, and if one followed the rule of going back to last person mentioned by name, it would be Fortuna Valencia. I'm not shaming Farley particularly here, I've called out other people in reviews who were worse, but I have read sentences where I was never entirely certain who the pronouns actually refer to.

I think that Farley wrote this book chiefly to express her disgust with the female roles of the late 19th and more than the first half of the 20th, and the eugenics movement. I can't argue with that. I imagine that using the rather bizarre story of Maryon Cooper Hewitt's decision to latch onto the eugenics movement to involuntarily sterilize her 20-year-old daughter, Ann Cooper Hewitt, before she reached her majority, captured more interest than basing it solely on Farley's political stances. I know that I pick it up after seeing something about this final act of what turned out to be a life-time of child abuse. This sterilization of an upper-class may have been unusual, but perhaps not as unusual as we would think. Joseph Kennedy, Sr., arranged a lobotomy for his difficult eldest daughter, Rosemary, and then institutionalized her to keep her from embarrassing her family. Farley doesn't address this, not that she needed to, but it used to be fairly easy for husbands and parents to institutionalize wives and children.

This is the best part of the book, and I give it five stars. I wasn't totally unaware of this, but eugenics is often described as having ended after World War II, and since Carrie Buck if often the only person mentioned as being wrongly sterilized, it doesn't sound as destructive as it was. Farley makes it clear that it affected thousands upon thousands of people, most institutionalized for some possibly flimsy reason. Ann Cooper Hewitt's case caused a lot of attention, but the failure to convict her doctors, and her later refusal to continue the case against her mother, also created the idea that it wasn't likely to be punished. It continued under other names, like "population control," at least into the 1970s.

From Farley's description of her, Maryon was a beautiful, intelligent, charming, and witty woman of the type that so often fascinates people: the courtesan: Phryne, Jane (actually Elizabeth) Shore, Madame de Pompadour, Lola Montez who become famous for their many affairs with wealthy and powerful men.

Outside of her charms, it is difficult to think of anything about Maryon that makes her more than a waste of space. She loved a good time, an extravagant lifestyle, gambling, and lovers. Only the third of her five marriages, to Peter Cooper Hewitt, ended in widowhood - most of her husbands seemed glad to get rid of her. She had two children. Pedar, Jr., or Peter Bruguière from her first marriage, in whom she seems to have taken minimal interest, and Ann Cooper Hewit, whom she apparently loathed too much to simply fob off on a governess and ignore. Although Peter Cooper Hewitt adored his daughter, he died when she was seven, and it doesn't seem to protected her from her mother when he wasn't around. One of Peter's nurses, incidentally, suspected that Maryon poisoned Peter after his illness became tedious. Maryon apparently hated Ann's dark hair, and made her bleach it for much of her childhood. She informed her daughter and everyone around her that Ann was stupid. When Ann was twenty, and about to get out from under Maryon's control when she turned twenty-one, she was eating with her mother when she suffered sharp abdominal pains. Farley suggests that perhaps Maryon gave Ann something to initiate the symptoms. Maryon diagnosed this as appendicitis, and the doctor's accepted this without examining Ann. Four days later, a long time for appendicitis, she underwent surgery and emerged irreversibly sterilized. The motive for this is usually laid to the fact that Ann's share of her father's estate reverted to Maryon if Ann died childless. As reporters noted, this seems odd, since Maryon who presumably would die before her daughter. Perhaps this was just Maryon's last torment of her hated daughter, or perhaps she had plans for Ann's early demise. Maryon didn't live very long after the trials, dying in 1939.

What disgusts me about this book is that Farley, for all that she relates, seems to have fallen under Maryon's charm and attempts to make her a subversive of society that Farley finds unjust, even though Maryon happily made used of the eugenics movement.

Farley also writes of Maryon, "By seeming to unbridle the scientist's passions, Maryon revealed that elites like Peter had a duty to uphold the virtues of the upper class, whether they wanted to or not."
I don't know about that - Peter kept Maryon as his mistress, often in Paris, for years. That was rather common. There is a saying that according to middle class morality, if something is wrong, you shouldn't do it; according to upper class morality, you shouldn't get caught doing it. If I recall correctly, as I said there is no index, Peter and his wife Lucy had been separated for years before he met Maryon. She was aware of his affair, and only initiated a divorce after Ann's birth, perhaps to allow her parents to marry. Indeed the affair seems to have been an open secret, they just weren't suppose to flaunt it. When they went out to dinner, they sat in a corner to be less inconspicuous. This sort of thing has been going on for millennia - it just became more discreet in some societies that had monogamy, and even so it varied. This is no subversion of traditional male-female roles.

Ann wept at her mother's graveside. Some people attribute this to the paradoxical emotional power that abusers have over the abused. Farley prefers to interpret it as Ann forgiving her mother.

On the last couple of pages, Farley wrote: "In maligning Maryon [...] Ann failed to appreciate the common wounds these women bore."
Like what?

"It never occurred to [Ann] to do what the Madrigal plaintiffs did decades later - uplift other women to resist those doing collective harm."
If Ann had won her case against the doctors, it might have helped other women avoid involuntary sterilization, but she lost.

"Ann may have intuited that there was something frightening about the public's eagerness to condemn Maryon as a monster, even if her mother had indeed acted monstrously and even if she had been the first to portray her as such." (emphasis added).
Or maybe not; I personally think that Maryon deserved condemnation.

"But perhaps, in this moment, Ann simply saw Maryon for what she was: a human being." (emphasis added)
Again, putting thoughts in Ann's head. Personally, I hate it when people say that someone is a human being, not a monster. There is no disconnect between being human and behaving monstrously that I am aware of. All the people that Farley condemns for sterilizing the "unfit" were human beings; she says nothing about forgiving them.

"Most of all, in forgiving Maryon, Ann implicitly acknowledged the dignity and worth of socially outcast women, including herself."
Supposing that she did forgive her, I'm having trouble grasping the connection between women who were involuntarily sterilized for being poor, or uneducated, or Latinas, or Black, or Indigenous Americans, or some other dubious reason, with Maryon, who embraced the eugenics movement to involuntarily sterilize Ann. ( )

An amazing story about a woman who was sterilized against her will by her mother to avoid her inheriting anything from her father's estate.
Eugenics was the "thing" of the day to control women and their bodies. ( )

really interesting period of time discussed here. i found the history more interesting than the person biography that she used as the backdrop of the time and to explain the forced sterilization of so many (thousands!) of people. this whole idea of eugenics and forced sterilization (which means poor women, women of color, and working women were targeted - not just against their will but often without their knowledge) is an awful period of history that we should know more about. this book is a great start for that.

"This popular characterization of white men as blunderers developed in the 1920s and 30s to challenge the Victorian notion that the male species was prone to sexual aggression, requiring the female species to tame it. Social reformers now insisted that men were simply ignorant about the ways to keep their women partners sexually and emotionally satisfied, and so they needed gentle instruction. Black men, long perceived to constitute the greatest threat to white women, continued to be perceived as depraved. The new perspective accorded women some respect in marital matters, while ensuring that men remained in control. Since men were simply buffoons, women no longer had permission to be squeamish about sex." ( )

The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt
by Audrey Clare Farley

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for this very informative and emotional book! The review is all my own opinion.

This book really showed that a lot of research went into this! It is very informative, very frustrating, agitating, and emotional. It not only tells the story about Ann Cooper Hewitt, her horrid mother, her inventive father, but the deliberate laws to make America a white only population!

I would never have guessed that legal laws were on the books to sterilize minorities, "imbeciles", epileptics, rape victims, and the poor. The upper middle class white and rich could also have their children sterilized if they were one of the undesirable.

"Why did the Pilgrims come to America? What is the duration of a presidential term? What is the longest river in the United States? When was the Battle of Hastings fought?"
If you couldn't answer these questions, regardless of age, education, language, disability, well you are an " imbecile " and could be sterilized without your consent. Hundreds of thousands were. These were some of the questions asked to Ann who was not in school often.

The book briefly touches on a couple of other cases to make a few points. One case involved a girl of 18 in foster care which only had a 6th grade education because the foster family took her out of school and made her work the fields. The nephew of the foster family raped the girl and got her pregnant. She was deemed oversexed ( because she was raped), imbecile (because she didn't pass the tests because she wasn't educated enough), and untruthful (probably told about the rape which the foster family was hiding the nephew). The attorney for both sides felt she needed the sterilization! Even her own attorney was against her.

Later, 1940's- 1960's, pressure was put on white women to reproduce. Thus, the baby boom. The sterilization keep going on the undesirables!

Ann Cooper Hewitt was born to a female con artist that was pretty, Maryon. Maryon wanted material things and power. She went through several husbands to get it. Ann was a mistake to Maryon. She didn't want her and let her know constantly. I won't tell you about it except to say she did as the title of the book says, arranged for Ann to be sterilized. The will left by her husband said Maryon gets all the money if Ann is childless. Read the evidence for yourself and decide.

It also goes through a very through look a Maryon's life and Ann's life separately. Each one is extremely sad and pitiful. It seems to me that Maryon was seeking material and Ann was seeking someone just to love her.

In a strange way, Ann's case reminds me of the young Kennedy girl's case. Lobotomy to correct a mental embarrassment to the famous father. A socially excepted thing to do with your undesirables at the time. So sad! What has society turned us into? ( )

Eugenics ( )