Audrey Clare Farley

The title of Audrey Clare Farley’s first book, The Unfit Heiress - The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt, gives a pretty good overview of the story.  Ann was the daughter of Peter Cooper Hewitt and Maryon Andrews.  The Cooper Hewitts were a distinguished family; Peter was the son of NYC Mayor Abram Hewitt and the grandson of Peter Cooper, a famous industrialist.  He was also rich and famous in his own right for inventing the mercury-vapor lamp in 1901.  

Ann’s mother was a socialite, Maryon Andrews. Peter left his first wife when, scandalously, Maryon - then his mistress - became pregnant with Ann. Like tabloid stars of today, Maryon seemed to be a master manipulator of men and the media, a narcissistic, ruthless social climber who would do anything to maintain her luxurious lifestyle – including poisoning her daughter to convince her she needed surgery for appendicitis, when in fact the surgery removed Ann’s fallopian tubes and left her sterile. Ann's forced sterilization may have enabled her mother Maryon to collect more of Ann’s inheritance under the terms of Peter Cooper Hewitt’s will.

You use Ann’s engrossing true story as a vehicle to discuss the broader eugenics movement and the history of forced/coerced sterilization in America, which has disproportionately impacted women of color.

Question 1 I would imagine that a hard thing as a historian and writer is finding the balance between the juicy, scandalous narrative of Ann’s story and the broader history and public policy, which may be more of the ‘nutrition’ or the ‘intellectual vitamins’ in this book. How did you think about balancing these things?

ACF: I tried to think of the scandal surrounding Ann and Maryon as a window into the culture, rather than something I was rehashing purely for entertainment. I give particular attention to the tabloid coverage of the women. Tabloids are a goldmine because they so vividly lay bare a society’s deepest fears and anxieties. (Just look at the tabloid coverage of Meghan Markle, another woman who “crossed the color line” and whose sexuality has been scrutinized from every angle.) I also tried to focus on aspects of the women’s lives that said something about the times. Maryon’s gold-digging, for instance, tells us much about women’s limited social mobility. All this said, I’ve found that many readers clearly preferred either the narrative or analysis. It’s hard to tell a story that satisfies every step of the way when readers have such different tastes. But that’s part of writing, knowing that not everyone will appreciate your narrative choices.

Question 2 The book describes the general acceptance of a concept many of us would find horrifying today – a parent’s basically unquestioned right to direct the sterilization of her minor daughter, so long as she was deemed mentally unfit for motherhood, based on some fairly arbitrary criteria. In your view, what is the contemporary relevance of this story?

ACF: Many people continue to believe that certain individuals don’t have a right to reproduce—and that others have a duty to reproduce. In rightwing circles, you’ll find a lot of anxiety about the “prolific” reproduction of immigrants and people of color coupled with anxiety about a decline in native, white birth rates. In some cases, the people expressing these fears have direct ties to eugenics.

 One example is Dr. James Dobson, who devoted countless hours on his radio program in the ‘90s to birth rates among unmarried, urban (read: Black) women, as well as to encouraging his primarily white listeners to embrace marriage and motherhood as life’s be-all, end-all. As recently as 2019, Dobson visited the Southern border and claimed to fear “illiterate,” “unhealthy,” “violent criminals” would “bankrupt” and “take down” America if immigration wasn’t controlled. Little known is that Dobson got his start working for Paul Popenoe, the eugenicist in THE UNFIT HEIRESS. While working for Popenoe, he learned and trained others to baptize eugenics—essentially, to put a Christian veneer on white supremacist ideas. He called his program “family values.”

 From its inception, the modern anti-abortion movement has been polluted by eugenics. This history was on full display at various “March for Life” events last month, where the neo-Nazi Patriot Front group carried a banner that read “Strong Families Make Strong Nations.” The idea, unchanged from Ann Cooper Hewitt’s day, is that white women are responsible for the proliferation of their race. If you’re white and have an abortion or use birth control, you’re a race traitor. 

 Question 3 I understand you are working on a new project – would love to hear more about it!

 ACF: Yes! The next book, titled GIRLS AND THEIR MONSTERS: A STORY OF MADNESS, FAMILY SECRETS, AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, tells of the Genain Quadruplets, who gained the notice of NIMH researchers when they were all diagnosed with schizophrenia in their early 20s. At first, researchers thought the sisters’ case proved the genetic etiology of mental illness. That hypothesis was complicated by the fact that all four had endured extensive sexual abuse at the hands of their father and other community members. The quads’ parents were also religious extremists, threatening hell to control their every move, particularly when it came to dating.

 I look at the case to tell a larger story about America’s disavowed pedophilic gaze—the way society sexualizes kids while professing to be “saving the children,” most often from racialized others. (Think, for instance, of QAnon conspiracies, which function to demonize Jewish people and other minorities, rather than doing anything to prevent child trafficking or abuse.) Psychiatry, being such a patriarchal and capitalistic institution, has yet to reconcile with the ubiquity of child sexual abuse. Psychiatry has also downplayed religious trauma, although recent events have spurred many to take more seriously the idea that religion can sometimes drive people mad. Because of the way the quads’ parents wielded scripture to guarantee their lifelong sexual innocence, I explore the burgeoning research on the links between modern “purity culture” and psychosis.