Axe Woman of the LTL
SOLD October 2011 |
Cabinet-card format albumen print circa 1880s, showing a female fraternal or temperance advocate holding a symbolic axe which is inscribed "L.T.L." on its head. On card with photographer's imprint in gilt at bottom, reading "The Westminster Photograph Studio / 171 Westminster St. / Providence, R. I." Card has plain grey back.
I would venture as a guess that the LTL on this woman's axe may refer to the Ladies Temperance League, one of the many incarnations of the womens temperance movement that preceded womens suffrage in the 19th century.
Despite her high-minded intentions, the sitter's frozen glare of righteous indignation recalls to mind that the ubiquitous 19th-century wood axe was also a popular murder weapon. He look reminds us of that other noted example of 19th-century female self-assertion Lizzie Borden, who after an unsuccessful attempt to purchase cyanide poison. according to the period jingle: "...took an axe / and gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one."
