Free Love on the Road

free love satirical cartoon from 1872

While reading the excerpts from Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box Car Bertha, I was struck by Bertha’s frank and thoroughly unabashed recounting of her numerous lovers, and those of her mother. Not only was it inspiring to read about a traveling woman for once, but it was also a pleasant surprise to see Bertha’s unquestioned acceptance of free love and other “societal ills” such as prostitution and theft:

“When I knew a man was stealing, or a woman hustling, or some poor girl going nutty, or that a guy was on a lam, or learned that a pimp was living with four women – it all seemed natural to me…” (7).

Not only does Bertha have numerous lovers, she also shows no sign of jealousy or even insecurity when her lover also has other lovers, saying only that she was appreciative of the nights he spent with her.

In fact, Bertha portrays numerous other women hobos and travelers as being similarly inclined, saying at one point that “a great army of women had taken to the road,” and that their reasons for traveling were much the same as hers: “no work…no prospects of marriage, the need for a lark, the need for freedom of sex and living…” (180).

The nonchalantly political aspect of Bertha’s commentary made her story even more compelling for me, and inspired me to do a bit of research into the background of the philosophies she espoused. According to the Wikipedia page, the free love movement in the U.S. was closely tied to the anarchist and feminist movements, and advocated since the 19th century for a rejection of marriage, especially for women, for whom it was seen as a form of “social bondage.” It sought non-interference from the government in personal affairs, and proponents of free love often also promoted the distribution of knowledge and materials for the purposes of reproductive freedom. This often got free love proponents thrown in jail for violations of the Comstock laws, which prohibited the sending of any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials in the mail, and also outlawed the distribution of information on contraception and abortion. Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman were two prominent feminists and staunch proponents of free love who were arrested under the Comstock laws (though Goldman was also arrested a number of times for being an anarchist).