A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

and the spirits themselves both provided vocal support. The Pseudonymous Fred Folio’s Lucy
Boston; or, Women’s Rights and Spiritualism, Illustrating the Follies and Delusions of the
Nineteenth Century makes explicit in its very title the understanding that Spiritualism and
feminism were fundamentally linked. The central conceit of Folio’s novel concerned “a
conspiracy of female spirits to extend the rule of women to earth through Spiritualism—the Fox
sisters having been controlled for this purpose.” 92 Feminism was a popular cause amongst spirits.
The spirit of John Quincy Adams proclaimed that “In every work and reform whose united
object is to correct the evils existing in society…should woman be allowed to labor by the side
of man. God created her on an equality with him, and endowed her with the same glorious rights
and privileges, the same capabilities and powers, to advance His Infinite Kingdom.” 93
In terms of the freedoms that it allowed women in a society that generally granted them
no rights; the role of the medium is perhaps the strongest link between feminism and
Spiritualism. As will become clear below, the role of medium was particularly well fitted to
women of the nineteenth century given the understanding of the feminine ideal that was
operative at the time. 94
It was so well fitted in fact that the general public perception of
mediumship as a profession (Emerson actually listed it among new American professions) was
that it was primarily female even though demographically mediumship was roughly evenly
divided between men and women. 95
The earliest mediums, including the Fox sisters were
teenage girls. Anne Braude suggests that people found spirit
messages most convincing when they came through figures like the Fox sisters:
untrained, unlettered teenage girls. These figures epitomized the ideal feminine
characteristics of the Victorian period: purity, passivity and domesticity. Untainted by
92 Kerr, 90.
93 Josiah Brigham, Twelve Messages from the Spirit of John Quincy Adams through Joseph D. Stiles, Medium, to
Josiah Brigham (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1859) 348-349.
94 See Braude.
95 See Moore.
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