A Woman, a Crate, and a Giveaway!

by

A reader recently sent me an article about a woman I had never heard of before. My readers know I love little tidbits of history, and now I can’t stop thinking about her.
In 1843, in an elegant parlor room, a woman named Paulina Wright Davis saw a life-sized model of the human body on a velvet table. It had no skin. Its painted layers revealed muscles, lungs, and a removable heart. How scandalous! 

For most women of that era, even looking at such a thing would have been considered improper. The abomination was for sale, and Paulina, fascinated, bought it.

In the 1840s, respectable women were expected to read poetry, pour tea, and avoid unpleasant subjects. Medicine was a man’s domain. Women were often taught that their own bodies were delicate mysteries best left unexplored.

When they fainted from tightly laced clothing and lack of air, it was called weakness. When they suffered from chronic pain, they were prescribed rest and silence.

Paulina had seen too many women suffer in ignorance. Her own health had been fragile since childhood. She believed women deserved to understand how their bodies worked. So she did something shocking, yet practical in her eyes. She rented public halls and began giving lectures on human anatomy to women.

The model she used was made of painted paper and cardboard, imported from Paris. It had removable layers. She could lift away the chest plate and reveal the lungs. Remove the lungs and show the heart. At one early lecture, the room was packed. Local officials stood in the back, arms folded, waiting for scandal. When Paulina calmly removed the painted chest to reveal the heart beneath, one man reportedly fainted! Ha!

The newspapers took to Paulina’s venture like fleas to a dog and had a field day. She was called improper. Unnatural. Unladylike Bookings were canceled. Doors closed. Critics scoffed that anatomy was too grim a subject for female minds.

Paulina kept going. She packed up her model, traveled to the next town, and opened the crate again.

Layer by layer, she showed women what lived inside their own chests. She explained how blood moved through veins. How lungs filled with air. How muscles carried the body’s weight. Something powerful happened in those lecture halls. Women leaned forward.

For perhaps the first time, they saw themselves not as fragile mysteries, but as thoughtfully designed, capable bodies.
Paulina toured for years. Her quiet persistence helped build momentum for change. In 1848, the New England Female Medical College opened in Boston,  the first medical school in the world established specifically to train women.
She later helped organize the National Women’s Rights Convention, continuing her work to expand women’s opportunities.

What strikes me most about her story isn’t the scandal. It’s the steadiness. She didn’t shout and bluster to the world about it. She simply lifted the chest plate and let women see their own hearts. Paulina’s heart led her to fight for social reform and was part of the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850 of which she became president. 

As writers of historical fiction — especially Western romance — we spend a lot of time imagining brave women stepping into new territories. Some cross prairies while others build ranches. Some start over in rough mining towns. And some open wooden crates in rented halls and refuse to close them again.

Courage doesn’t always look loud. Sometimes it looks like a woman standing calmly in front of a skeptical crowd, explaining how lungs breathe. And sometimes, that’s enough to change the world.

Is there a woman in history you admire? Maybe it’s a relative, or a teacher you had. I have a friend, Jahna. She’s maybe twelve years older than I am but has  been like a second mom to me for years, and I greatly admire her and what she can accomplish in a very short time if she has to. I call her Mamasan. 

I’m giving away an ebook of mine of choice to one lucky commenter!

36 thoughts on “A Woman, a Crate, and a Giveaway!”

  1. One of the most Christ-like people I know is a woman who, with her six children, had been moved to a nearby community by her husband, who worked in Denver, supposedly to get the kids out of the city. In reality, he moved in with another woman in Denver. She divorced him when this was exposed, but she told me that she had told him that he could take whatever he wanted, but please don’t take her ability to continue to love him! She even took care of him in the last years of his life.

  2. I’ve always admired Amelia Earnhardt the woman who flew around the world. Her strength and determination to prove herself always got to me

  3. My Mom and her Mom, etc were all very strong women that did not back down to a challenge – as a farm family with only 3 daughters, they did all the work that usually would have been done by the sons!

  4. Anja Eerikäinen (1933–2002). She was a prominent municipal animal welfare inspector in Turku, but she was well known all over Finland. She was known for her fearless, sometimes combative, approach to exposing animal cruelty, including inspecting farms, slaughterhouses, and animal transports. Eerikäinen was a well-known public figure who often used the media to highlight cases of mistreated animals, including farm animals, pets and wild animals. Even though she officially retired in 1998, she continued her her until the last days of her life.

  5. I had a dear friend who recently died at 100 years old. She was one of the most faith-filled women I’ve ever met and a real prayer warrior. These attributes made her extremely sweet and kind. She was a special lady!

  6. WOW! What an amazing life trailblazing for women! I’d never heard of her either.
    My Mom is someone I look up to with all the little things she’s done in her life that added up to big things.

  7. Great post! I have always admired my older sister. When my mother got hurt my older sister stepped in and took over. She was just 16 at the time and that was a lot to leave to a girl her age. Even when she got married she moved in to the house and took care of our mom and made that her home. My sister has been gone several years now and I still miss her.

  8. Grace Livingston Hill was a woman before her time! Her books are still selling, her truths are still shining forth. Also, Eugenia Price, as it was her books that made me want to visit Savannah, and I felt like I’d already visited when I finally went! Along with my Mom and other ladies I knew.

  9. This is such a wonderfully cool article. Thanks for sharing. I love learning about women and how they find a way to move forward for/with other women. Some I think go a little too far, but most just want others to know they are not simple and stupid. My mom was one of these women and I greatly admired her. She did it all through Christs eyes and she used a voice that other women listened to. No shouting or admonitions. She respected women and men that God had made in His image and treated them all like that. A powerful example for her two girls.

  10. I greatly admire my pastor’s wife. She is a prayer warrior, a teacher, and one of the most caring people I know. She is a Bible scholar as well.

    • I love women like that, Karijean. I have a dear friend like that, a pastor’s wife. Though he’s retired now. I often wondered how she got everything done that she had to do in a day!

  11. How fascinating! Thanks for sharing about this brave, persistent woman, Kit. I love that she thought not only about her own education but about educating women across the country.

  13. Thanks so much for sharing this information about Paulina Davis, I was so amazed by the for-thought she had in sharing the information with other women at that time in history. I have been blessed to have several women in my life that I admire and respect: my grandmother and her sister taught me that hard work and determination can help you overcome the many obstacles that you face in life and my husband’s grandmother (we called her Mockma) helped me see that you should enjoy every minute of life and that a smile and a kind word are important to share with the many people you meet in life.

  15. My dear friend Becky turns 73 years old today. She’s been through so much heartache and tragedy in her life: a childhood filled with abuse, two horrible marriages, going deaf in her 40s, and now, buying a house that turned out to be filled with one problem after another. Yet through it all, she keeps on going, and giving to others with joy. After my divorce, she came to my house and taught me how to replace my rotten porch steps, and fix my leaking toilet. She has been my friend and my cheerleader, and I love her dearly.

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