Ida Celenire Craddock (1857-1902) was born into a world where middle class women were expected to have little ambition, dutifully marry, and keep their mouths closed about sex. Brilliant and constrained by a domineering mother, Ida wanted more from life. She wanted a career, and she wanted to be heard.
So, she left home to teach stenography at Girard College, a school for orphaned boys and write stenography textbooks. She also applied to the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences. In 1882, she passed the exams and was accepted by the faculty to be the first female undergraduate, but her application was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who claimed it would be too expensive to renovate the buildings for a woman’s sensibilities. (Penn did not admit women for twenty-five more years.)
Ida decided to study on her own and write her own dissertation. For her topic, she chose to research the relationship between religion and sex—Sex or Phallic Worship.
After struggling for years to make a living as a secretary, while carrying out her investigations, Ida began writing a series of marriage advice pamphlets and carrying out marriage counseling, claiming that she had an angel husband and styling herself Mrs. Craddock. This attracted the notice of the post office inspectors, and she was charged with sending obscenity through the mails, illegal under the Comstock Laws. Her mother outraged, accused her of being insane and had her institutionalized twice.
In 1893, she attended the Chicago World’s Fair and took in the danse du ventre or belly dancing performance and wrote an article advocating women practice the belly dance to increase sexual pleasure. Anthony Comstock who tried to close the exhibit down was furious and vowed to destroy her.
My novel Censored Angel is the story of this struggle.
Here are some excerpts from her original article:
The Danse du Ventre in the Cairo Street Theatre of the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Fair, has been so little understood by the crowds that have flocked to see it, that it is usually spoken of as demoralizing. On the contrary, it is a strictly moral dance in its significance. It is a religious memorial of worship that existed thousands of years ago, all over the world, and which taught self-control and purity of life as they have never been taught since. We have travelled fast and far since those old uplifting days of Phallic or Sex Worship. That worship, the vehicle of moral and social teaching to all humanity, at length became corrupt, through causes which it is unnecessary to mention here, and was gradually displaced by Sun Worship: this in turn, yielding to Christianity in some portions of the world. We have gained much by this religious evolution: but we have lost something: that something is (1) the clean-minded consideration of the human form divine, and (2) the recognition of sex as chief educator of the human race in things material and spiritual. We still have something to learn from heathen nations in these matters: and I, for one, rejoice that this Danse du Ventre should have been the appointed means of grace.
But—but—but—why do people all say it is so demoralizing and disgusting and. . .
All people do not call it these things, my friend . . .
First, it inculcates purity of thought toward sexual relation, since the movement of the woman in this dance are performed modestly, and with no evident attempt at lewdness, but merely a natural and legitimate act which has been deemed worthy of a clear and simple presentation, without comment in a public dance, where all may see its details.
2nd. It teaches that prolonged pleasure goes hand-in-hand with sexual self-control.
3rd. It teaches directly, by the six tassels on the dancer’s skirt… the duty of respecting the woman’s tapu period of five days monthly, since these tassels, placed so conspicuously, are a memorial of rejoicing on the sixth day, when the prohibition is removed, and the man is once more free to approach the woman. . .
So far from suppressing the Danse du Ventre, we should have it performed far and wide throughout our country, accompanied by an explanation of its symbolism of purity and self-control, as a prenuptial educator of our young people in the marital duties which they are about to assume. . .
from: “The Danse du Ventre (Dance of the Abdomen) as performed in the Cairo Street Theatre, Midway Plaisance, Chicago: Its Value as an Educator in Marital Duties,” 1893.
Of course the exact opposite happened. The belly dance became a sordid activity of burlesque shows and Ida Craddock reaped Comstock’s wrath.
Thomas Edison made many early films of belly dancers for his peep shows. Here is one much as Ida would have seen at the fair.
Ida Craddock’s Writings
Lunar and Sex Worship by Ida Craddock with an Introduction by Vere Chappell (2010).
Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock edited by Vere Chappell (2010).
Ida Craddock’s letters and diaries can be obtained from the Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Digital copies of her articles and her suicide letters to her mother and to Comstock are available at Vere Chappell’s https://www.idacraddock.com
Learn More about Ida Craddock
Censored Angel: Anthony Comstock’s Nemesis: A Novel by Joan Koster (2023)
Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman by Leigh Eric Schmidt (2010).
Ida Craddock: A Religious Interpretation of Sexuality (1877-1902) by Elizabeth A. Green, master’s thesis, Southern Illinois University (1995).
The Man Who Hated Women by Amy Sohn (2021).
“Our route of travel is so varied. Now up the mountain of joy, now down in the valley of gloom, or maybe straight across the marshes of disappointment.”
Ida C. Craddock, Letter to The Pleiades, September 10th 1879