They are “Democrats, Republicans, Prohibitionists, socialists, anarchists, liberals and radicals of all opinions.” Sometimes they accuse each other of being “cranks on certain subjects,” but no woman obsessed by a single issue lasts long in their proudly eclectic meetings. To give each other space to doubt and to disagree, the women keep no records of their meetings. They give their secret, unruly club a name that celebrates the difference of opinion: Heterodoxy.
One thing distinguishes the chatter at this gathering from the usual lunchtime buzz: the voices are exclusively feminine. This doesn’t mean it’s much quieter than any other afternoon or that there’s no argument (or, indeed, flirting). But it does change the atmosphere, just a little. In almost every other club and society and discussion group in the bohemian Village, political or artistic or purely social, men are part of the conversation, and their voices tend to carry.
It is hard to talk over them, to interrupt or correct, without being labeled stubborn or strident. Among women, it is easier to be heard. At heart, that is the simple idea that the club’s founder, Marie Jenney Howe, uses to gather the prominent women of her acquaintance into yet another club. What it will become—a network of mutual support whose legacy runs long and deep in the lives of its members—she has no idea, on that first Saturday afternoon.
The women around the table belong to many other groups: leagues, associations, societies, and organizations of all stripes crowd their schedules. They are veterans of social reform efforts and tireless in their work for an array of causes. It’s how women, denied the vote, get things done. This club is different, however, because it isn’t trying to do anything or change anything.
A unique hybrid of the politically oriented Progressive Era women’s clubs and the freewheeling, mixed-sex discussion groups that proliferate in Greenwich Village in the early 1900s, Heterodoxy is “the easiest of clubs . . . no duties or obligations.” It offers a place to meet that is free of rules and formality, a place where ideas burst forth from intimacy. It’s enough to be, as one member puts it, “women who did things, and did them openly.” It’s enough simply to show up.