AMS 801 The Life, Death and Resurrection of Sunbonnet SueDr. Hart CarlaTilghmanDec 2012

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragonsexist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. -- G. K. Chesterton,ipsissima vox

Fig. 1 Sunbonnet Sue

The Sunbonnet Sue quilt figure has proved to be not only an

enduring image, but also an adaptable one, moving through several

incarnations during her life. She started as a graphic image but

was then adopted by quilters and became a folk image. Sue has

embodied all the ideas against which feminists of the 1970s

raged, only to do re-emerge in the 1990s as an anonymous stand-in

for “bad girl” behaviour. When I first began work on this paper

I had hoped to look at Sue in terms of folk imagery, to explore

the ways in which Sue imagery has changed over the years. I

discovered, however, that that approach was too limiting. There

are times in Sue’s life where I do not think that she can be

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called a folk image. Instead, I have chosen to look at Sue from

the perspective of images of children, images for children, and

changing perceptions of childhood. This brings Sue into a wider

context not only of imagery connected with children, but also of

adult perceptions of children and childhood. It is from this

vantage point that I propose to explore Sue’s origins, her

history as a quilt image, and the variety of late twentieth

century images of Sue. I will discuss Sue’s birth as a graphic

design, and then concentrate on her use as a quilt image,

intentionally excluding embroidered versions of the sunbonneted

little girl in the interest of brevity. I will argue that

Sunbonnet Sue has been used not merely as a quaint quilt figure,

but as a stand-in for changing societal attitudes towards the

place of girls and women in the twentieth century.

It is generally agreed Sue’s origins stem from the

illustrations of British artist Kate Greenaway.1 While Greenaway

did not draw the image that we think of as Sunbonnet Sue, her

work influenced Bertha Corbett, the woman who originated the

image with which we are familiar. Greenaway was an illustrator

of children’s books and also a fashion illustrator whose work was

published in America in the Ladies Home Journal as well as Harper’s in

1 Ina Taylor, Art of Kate Greenaway, [New York: Pelican Publishing], 1991.

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the 1880s and 1890s. Her illustrations of children have some

particular qualities that are important in understanding Sue

imagery, e. g. clothing, setting and the way in which childhood

is portrayed.

Fig. 2 Kate Greenaway book cover

Greenaway intentionally drew children wearing eighteenth

century clothing as opposed to late nineteenth century children’s

clothes which she found to be too restrictive and frankly

unattractive. Consequently, the girls were dressed in the Empire

fashion of loose, flowing dresses and lightweight slipper-like

shoes. Greenaway’s children are always seen in nice, peaceful

English country settings, ‘pre-industrial’ scenes, given that

they never include trains, or cities, or factories. They are

middle-class children seemingly without cares. They can play and

cavort, enjoy the country, and discover the wonders of nature all

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without the burden of adult cares or responsibilities.

Fig 3 Children’s clothing 18th century

19th century

Greenaway’s books were widely circulated in the United

States and her illustrations were familiar to Bertha Corbett, an

artist and illustrator from Denver Colorado, active at the turn

of the century. Corbett studied with Douglas Volk - a figure

painter, at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and then worked

as a sketch artist for the Minneapolis Journal.2

2 Betty Hagerman, A Meeting of the Sunbonnet Babies, Baldwin City, KS, Hagerman, 1979, p. 11.

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Around 1895 Bertha Corbett was contacted by Eulalie Osgood

(a New Hampshire school teacher) who invited Corbett to

illustrate a children’s primer that Osgood was writing. The

collaboration was successful and the Sunbonnet Babies Primer was

born. Like Greenaway, Corbett chose to clothe her children in

out-dated fashion and to place them in predominately rural

settings. While Corbett drew a few boys wearing large hats for

the Primer, most of the illustrations are of little girls engaged

in a variety of activities such as studying, having a tea party,

working in the garden, playing with their dolls, washing doll

clothes, and taking their dolls for walks. The large sunbonnets

completely cover the little girls’ faces, a device that Corbett

used intentionally. She wanted to convey emotion without using

facial features, thinking that this would not only place emphasis

on the figures and their actions but would also allow the reader

to use their imagination when looking at the illustrations.3

3 Ibid. p. 12.

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Fig. 4 Berthe Corbett and a Sunbonnet Baby

Corbett’s (and Greenaway’s) choices of setting, costume and

activity in their illustrations are a direct reflection of late

nineteenth century adult perceptions of childhood, which were an

extension of ideas about childhood that developed in the

eighteenth century. A brief discussion of the ways in which

perceptions of childhood changed will be useful not only in

understanding the development of Sunbonnet Sue, but also in

understanding the ways in which the image was subverted and

changed in the late twentieth century.

Prior to the eighteenth century, children were not viewed as

having a separate life from adults. They might not yet be able

to take on the full responsibilities of an adult, but they were

expected to participate in the working family unit. Paintings

and sculpture show us that there were no distinctions made

between children and adults in matters of dress. Portraits of

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Elizabeth I as a child show her squeezed into Tudor garb, just as

later portraits of Edward VI show him in full male Tudor regalia.

Both children are shown in their adult roles as inheritors of

dynastic power without the sense of their ever having had a time

when they were allowed to play without adult responsibilities or

expectations. In general, children were portrayed as

participating in adult activities: the continuation of dynastic

rule, sexual plays, puns or morals. Even children shown at play

as in Pieter Brugel’s Children’s Game, 1556 are wearing scaled down

versions of adult clothing and ‘play’ at being adults.

Fig. 5 Elizabeth I Edward IV

But in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the

concept of activities appropriate for children changed as did

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ways of portraying them. In 1814, William Hazlett, in writing

about pictures which included children, said: “The one is a

sturdy young gentleman sitting in a doubtful posture without its

swaddling clothes, and the other is an innocent little child,

saying its prayers at the foot of its bed. They have nothing to

do with Jupiter or Samuel, the heathen god or the Hebrew

prophet.”4 This suggests that children were being removed from

the adult world and from participating in adult activities.

Encouraged by writers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, the concept

of childhood as a time of life separate from adulthood was

emerging.5 The notion of preserving and protecting the innocent

child allows adults to deny or forget many aspects of adulthood

or adult society. The construction of innocent children allows

us to forget pain and debt, and the hardships of adult life.6

Consequently, such a construction is as much for adults as it is

about children. This idea is most important when we consider for

whom the art is intended. Children are not purchasing images of

innocent childhood, adults are. Both Greenaway’s and Corbett’s

4 Cited in Anne Higonnet, Pictures of Innocence, London, Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 23. Hazlett (1795-1866) was a British writer and painter who wrote On the Principles of Human Action (pub. 1805), a study in metaphysics andphilosophy.5 Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,[New York: Dover], 2004, 75-82.6 Ibid., p 43.

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images of children are intended to appeal to adults purchasing

books for children.

In art, innocent children are no longer identified with the

responsibilities of royalty (as in the Elizabeth and Edward

portraits), nor are they identified with toil or misery, as they

are in Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s seventeenth-century images of

Spanish beggar children, or even as a working member of a family

unit as they are in Bruegel’s paintings. Instead, the perfect

childhood is one without want: a middle-class life that

identifies itself discretely with affluent cleanliness.

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Fig. 6 Det. of Bruegel’s Children’s Games Murillo’s Beggar

Boy

It is also during the eighteenth century that we see

distinctions being made in the clothing of adults and children.

While adult fashions shift during the century, children’s clothes

remain the same. Adult women’s clothing moves away from the

loose fitting Empire dress (seen at the beginning of the century)

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to the tightly corseted waist and bell-shaped skirt of mid-

century. The century ends with adult women still wearing shape

altering corsets, but trading the bell-shaped skirt for smoothly

fitting bask with a large bustle worn at the back. These

fashion variations serve to change the silhouette of adult women,

emphasizing breasts and hips (femininity and sexuality) despite

the yards and yards of cloth involved.

Fig. 7 1880 Afternoon Dress

Children’s fashions did not change as rapidly. Throughout the

nineteenth century, children continued to wear loose fitting

garments and, until about age eight, there was little distinction

made between what girls and boys wore. Girls were dressed in

clothes that still resembled Empire fashion: loose, short

sleeves, a sash above the waist and a loosely draping gown

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usually ending between knees and ankles.7 Little boys wore loose

fitting dress-type garments until they were allowed to put on

their first pair of pants, thus taking the step from babyhood to

young manhood and more importantly, leaving the realm of women to

enter the world of men. Girls wore the same kinds of dresses

until they were old enough to be presented to society, i.e. until

they were of a marriageable age. Then they lengthened their

skirts and put up their hair. The chronological distinctions

made between boys and girls and their entry into the adult world

imply that innocent childhood lasts longer for girls than for

boys. Girls remain dressed as children longer, and do not alter

their clothing until they are ready to marry and bear their own

children.8 Young boys enter the adult world much earlier, but

without the expectation that they will immediately marry and take

on the responsibilities of household head.

7 One of the earliest paintings of little girls thusly garbed is Sir Joshua Reynolds The Age of Innocence c 1788. It was echoed for almost a century in works like Thomas Lawrence’s Portrait of Mrs. John Angerstein and her son John Julius William 1799 and Emile Munier’s Girl with Kittens, c 1850-60 and John Everett Millais’s Cherry Ripe, 1879.8 The obvious connection here is that girls remain little girls until menstruation begins, at which time they become women, capable of bearingchildren.

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Fig. 8 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Penelope Boothby, 1788

Millais Cherry Ripe, 1897

Remember that Greenaway and then Corbett intentionally

chose to dress their imagined children in the loose-fitting

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Empire dresses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries, a fashion that is intended to evoke nostalgic memories

of an idyllic childhood. But Empire fashions also serve to

preserve the idea of innocent childhood, one without adult

knowledge and, in this case, childhood without sexuality. Unlike

Victorian and Edwardian fashions (which, by cinching in the waist

emphasize the breast and hips) Empire dresses cover the body

without outlining it. The Sunbonnet girls may be engaged in

activities that pre-figure the adult roles that they would assume

(were they ever to grow up), but their clothing helps to preserve

their innocence as children, without reference to anticipated

future sexual behaviour. They may learn the mechanics of child

rearing by taking care of their dolls, but all with an air of

purity. They are merely engaged in play, not the realities of

adult life and responsibilities.

Corbett’s illustrations were widely circulated. The Primer

had sold over 1.3 million copies by 1910.9 The Sunbonnet babies

were reproduced on postcards, wallpaper, wrapping paper, and

china. In 1904 Austin’s & Co. printed a series of pictures from

oil paintings done by Corbett. The Sunbonnet girls were

pictured as being clever, curious, industrious and even

9 Hagerman. p. 12.

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occasionally mischievous. But despite all this energy, they are

images of a childhood that is timeless. These children do not

exist in a world of reality. Instead, they tend their gardens

and dollies outside of the world of the 1890s or the first decade

of the twentieth century. The setting is rural rather than

urban, and like Greenaway’s illustrations, pre-industrial.10

Corbett and Greenaway are not the only ones to be portraying

childhood in this way, and at this moment. Louisa May Alcott had

published Little Women in 1868. Reginald Birch’s Little Lord

Fauntleroy was published in 1886. Goops and How not to be Them:

A Manual of Manners for Polite Infants, by Gelett Burgess was

published in 1892. All of these books, while emphasizing manners

and teaching morals, were aimed at children who had not yet

entered the adult world. The diminutives used in the titles

distinguish children from adults, and imply that children do not

yet have adult knowledge. Again, these books, like Corbett’s

10 The dress and bonnets of Sunbonnet Sue are also often identified withthe loose-fitting prairie dress and large schooner or polk bonnets of pioneer women. But even this association with the frontier retains the idea of childhood innocence. The sunbonnet children don’t appear until the West had been cleared of Indians and was a safe place for children to play. Certainly, children living in the rural mid-west were seen (still are seen) as living a life that is safer than urban life, and onethat shelters children from the harsh realities of city life.

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Sunbonnet babies, show children playing at being adults, but they

remain separate from the adult world.11

Corbett was not the only artist to paint bonneted little

girls. In 1905, Bernhardt Wall illustrated a series of postcards

for Ullman Mfg. Co. This first series showed a little girl in a

red dress with a large white bonnet engaged in activities related

to the days of the week. Thursday was shopping day, and Saturday

was baking day. Later that same year, he produced a Months of

the Year series for the same company.12

11 Even though Alcott’s March sisters come to know the joys and sorrows of life as women, it is not until after they have reached puberty that they come to such knowledge. Interestingly, the sister (Beth) who is most engaged with the duties of the home and the womanly arts never leaves the home, remains the most innocent of adult knowledge, and dies a virgin.12 Hagerman. p. 17. Wall later claimed that he invented Sunbonnet Sue, but Corbett’s illustrations are clearly much earlier than his, and givenhow widely her work circulated, probably inspired his drawings.

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Fig. 9 Bernhardt Wall, Sunbonnet Sue

The translation of the Sunbonnet girls into textile imagery

took place during the 1890s and appears to be a distinctively

American phenomenon. The first recorded cloth image was an

embroidery pattern for a bonneted little girl in the 1888

February issue of Harper’s. The accompanying text used “hillbilly”

jargon to explain that this image was suitable for embroidering

on shoes.13 Early quilt patterns appeared in Godey’s Ladies Book in

April of 1894. The earliest images of the little girl now being

called “Sunbonnet Sue” are associated with ideas of country

living. We do not see images of Sue in the city, and the

advertisements are pitched to appeal to a stereotype of the

simplicity of rural life. By the 1910s, Sunbonnet Sue is no

13 Ibid. p. 18.

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longer produced as a graphic image, but instead is seen only in

textile form. It is at this point that Sue makes the transition

from graphic to folk image.

Sunbonnet Sue was/is a quilt image that, unlike other quilt

images, seems to have come exclusively from published patterns.

Pieced patterns have a variety of different names, some of which

describe the look of the pattern (bear-claw, pinwheel, or

pineapple), some of which identify place (The Road to Kansas, or

tornado), or which describe an action or activity (Daisy chain,

Drunkard’s Path). Some quilters handed patterns down to the next

generation while other quilters invented new patterns. Unlike

other appliqué quilts, Sue seems to have generated little

individual imagination and remained a relatively static image

from the early 1900s until the 1970s.14 She is most often

portrayed in profile, sporting a large bonnet (which is

frequently adorned with a ribbon around the crown), and wearing

an enveloping pinafore dress. Her hands look like mittens, and

her feet are usually just hinted at by an ovoid shape peeking out

from underneath her dress. What little ‘skin’ we can see is

distinctively ‘white’.14 Floral motif appliqué quilts (like Grandmother’s Garden quilts) seem to have been quite individual. While the quilter might use published patterns for certain types of flowers, the arrangement and design of thequilt were up to the quilter, or quilting circle.

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There were a number of companies that produced variations of

the Sue pattern. Ladies Art Patterns was founded in St. Louis in

the 1880s (and was still in business as of the late 1970s).

Sunbonnet Sue quilt appliqué patterns were first issued about

1900, but were not included in their catalogues after 1923. The

patterns were available either as a stamped design on cloth

(suitable for embroidered embellishment), or as cutout patterns

for appliqué. McCall’s pattern company also issued a version of

Sue, available from ca. 1900 through the 1930s.15

Patterns were also available through newspapers. The Kansas

City Star published Sue patterns in their Sunday supplement

section. Most of those patterns were designed by Ruby Short

McKim and McKim Studios. Ruby McKim was a graduate of Parsons

School of Fine Arts in New York, who became the director of the

Art Education Program for the Kansas City, Missouri, school

system at the age of nineteen. The syndicated column that

carried McKim’s designs appeared in over 900 newspapers across

the nation, spreading Ruby’s images throughout the Midwest.

There are several Sunbonnet Sue quilts recently donated to the

15 Hagerman, p 10-26. Other pattern companies which carried Sue were: Frank’s of St. Louis, Ordell’s, Mary Webster (Indiana), William Pinch and Rainbow Quilts (Ohio), Bess Bruce (Ohio), Standard Designer Needlework Book, Mrs. Danner’s Quilts (Missouri), and the list goes on.

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Wyandotte County Museum that appear to have been made from the

McKim patterns. The McKim studio closed in the 1930s.

Sunbonnet Sue was a popular image through the 1920s and

1930s. The majority of Sue quilts in most museum collections

date to this period. My mother’s Sue quilt was intended for her

dolls. It measures two feet by one foot and contains just two

panels. Her grandmother in Bandera, Texas, made it, and mom

cannot remember a time when she did not own the quilt.16 Now

considerably faded, the two panels were originally surrounded

with a plain pink fabric. The two panels read like a pendant

pair, with the male figure on the left, facing the female figure

on the right. Both are made from calico fabrics.

Marilyn Stokstad’s Sunbonnet Sue quilt was made by her aunt

Ethel in Edgerton, Wisconsin, in the 1930s. Prof. Stokstad

remembers walking to the local drygoods store to pick out fabrics

for quilts that her aunt made from patterns she found in

newspapers and magazines.17 Stokstad does not remember a quilting

16 Marilyn Tilghman (mom) was born in 1931, and so the quilt was made some short time after that. Mom remembers both of her grandmothers quilting, and remembers the quilting frame that was set up on her paternal grandmother’s porch in the winter. On the other hand, my father’s mother came from an upper crust southern family before moving to St. Louis, Mo. My father has NO memories of his mother, or any of her female relatives quilting.17 Prof. Stokstad said that her aunt wouldn’t purchase all the fabric for a quilt at once, but instead would buy bits and pieces that would later be made into a quilt. Rags, and hand-me-down fabrics were used to

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frame, or a quilting circle. Instead, the women would sit on the

front porch of a summer’s evening each working on their own

project. It was a time of female companionship, and was also

where Prof. Stokstad learned to sew, embroider, knit, and quilt.

The experience of these two women is similar to the other

women whom I interviewed.18 There is of course individual

variation -- Marilyn Tilghman’s female relatives participated in

quilting as a group activity while Marilyn Stokstad’s did not [in

the women’s memories] -- but there are also common threads

related not just to quilting, but to quilting images of Sue. Of

the sixteen women that I interviewed all had either received a

Sue quilt as young girls (mostly during the ‘30s) or had made a

Sue quilt for a young female relative. They agreed that Sue

quilts were made for girls (not by them), that calicos were the

preferred material, and that the patterns came from a published

source. Sometimes they would chose a Sue pattern where she was

doing something (watering the garden, holding a bouquet of

make ragrugs, not quilts.18 In Sept., 2012, I contacted church groups and nursing homes to obtainthe names of quilters who would be willing to be interviewed. All the women I spoke to (16 in all, including Tilghman and Stokstad) had eithermade or had made for them a Sunbonnet Sue quilt. The women’s ages ranged from 65-87, and all lived in the Midwest. See Bibliography for a listing of names and interview dates.

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flowers, reading a book), but often they chose a pattern where

Sue was simply standing, without action or attributes.

Despite the pervasiveness of this type of quilt among

quilters, the extensive quilt literature available today contains

little information on Sunbonnet Sue.19 For example, Robert Shaw’s

American Quilts: The Democratic Art, 1780-2007 contains only one reference

to Sunbonnet Sue while Richard Kiracofe’s The American Quilt: A History

of Cloth and Comfort, 1750-1950 does not include Sue at all. Books that

discuss appliqué deal almost exclusively with the intricate

patterns used in garden or floral bouquet quilts.20 The fact that

Sunbonnet Sue quilts were commonly made, but rarely included in

quilt literature seems to point to two conclusions about the

image. One, the quilts were made for little girls, not for

adults. Two, the quilts were not meant to be a demonstration of

quilting skill. Instead, they are a simple appliqué pattern that

can be made quickly and easily. The intended audiences for such

quilts were not going to be looking at the quilt to see if it was

exquisitely sewn.

19 Even Carrie Hall, the quintessential meticulous quilter, produced a Sunbonnet Sue quilt. Of course, it is far and away above the standards of most Sue quilts, being quite intricately appliquéd and decorated. 20 Robert Shaw, American Quilts, The Democratic Art, 1780-2007 [New York: Sterling], 2009. Richard Kiracofe and Mary Elizabeth Johnson, The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort, 1750-1950 [New York: Clarkson Potter], 2004.

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Despite the lack of literature, during the twentieth

century, Sunbonnet Sue has been one of the most enduring quilt

images. Other patterns have gone in and out of fashion. Crazy

quilts, Baltimore album quilts, bearclaw and Irish chain patterns

have all been the rage for a time, but have suffered the fate of

most fads and are no longer popular patterns. Sue has endured.

Even during the 1940s and ‘50s, when quilting in general was not

a prevalent pastime for women, quilters were still making Sue

quilts for little girls.21 Which returns us to the idea of an

ideal childhood. The concepts that the Sunbonnet girls

represented as graphic images translated into quilt imagery. Sue

may have become a static image when translated into fabric, but

the themes of the rural setting, children at play without adult

responsibilities (or adult knowledge of the world), and the fact

that these quilts were meant for little girls or their dollies

are all still part of those original eighteenth and nineteenth-

century notions of the perfect childhood.

In 1979, two events took place that were each to have

significant impact on the ways in which Sunbonnet Sue would be

portrayed from then on. As a result of renewed interest in

21 John Forrest and Deborah Blincoe, The Natural History of the Traditional Quilt (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995) p. 103.

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quilts after the Whitney Museum’s 1971 Quilt Exhibition, Betty

Hagerman published a book called A Meeting of the Sunbonnet Children.

Hagerman’s slender volume covers the origins of quilted Sue

imagery as well as the plethora of Sue pattern variations. It

also includes names and addresses of companies that in 1979 still

carried Sue patterns and instructions for how to create a

Sunbonnet Sue quilt. The frontispiece of the book is a picture

of Hagerman’s Sunbonnet Sue quilt that was composed of 86

different variations on the Sue design. Hagerman was a long

time Baldwin City, Kansas, resident and quilter. I spoke with

two women who had quilted with Hagerman, and they both credited

her with a Sue revival in the area (Baldwin City and Lawrence,

Kansas).22 Interlibrary loan information located 32 copies of

Hagerman’s book in libraries throughout the Midwest. I was

unable to find the number of the publishing run, but suffice it

so say that her book was fairly widely distributed. I also found

that McCall’s and Simplicity both began to carry Sunbonnet Sue

patterns in their pattern books after 1980.23 I do not mean to

22 Hagerman died in 1980, but family members remember her as an avid quilter, who produced quilts for all the children, grandchildren, niecesand nephews.23 Frederick Warren Turner, Pattern Making [Cambridge, MA: Biblio Life], 2004.

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imply that Hagerman’s book was solely responsible for this

revival; however, I find the timing not entirely coincidental.

The second event in 1979 to have an impact on Sue imagery

was a quilt produced by a group of Lawrence, Kansas women calling

themselves “Seamsters Local No. 500.” Sick of what they termed

“that nauseating little girl”, the group of women created a

twenty panel quilt titled The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue. 24 Each panel

shows Sue dying in some horrible way. She’s eaten by a shark,

struck by lightning, swallowed by a snake, run over by a train,

killed in a nuclear accident, and poisoned with purple Koolaid,

(a la Jonestown, Guyana), to mention only some of the panels.

The Lawrence women were specific in saying that they were

interested in killing Sue off “as a means of contesting female

images of passivity, conformity, and propriety.”25

24 The following people made the blocks of the Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue quilt: Cathy Dwigans, Bryan Anderson, Nadra Dangerfield, Carol Gilham, Betty Kelley, Patty Boyer, Bonnie Dill, Georgann Eglinski, Chickie Hood,Barbara Brackman, Laurie Schwarm, and Nancy Metzinger.25 Linda Pershing, “ ‘She Really Wanted to be Her Own Woman’: ScandalousSunbonnet Sue”, Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture, ed. Joan Radner, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1993 p. 114.

25

Fig. 9 The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue, 1979

If Sunbonnet Sue had in any way become an icon for

traditional quilters, then the Lawrence women were iconoclasts,

trying to do away entirely with the image and everything that she

represented. To these women, Sue was the embodiment of

stereotypes about proper womanly activities and behaviors that

were both limiting and demeaning to women. The idea of girls who

do nothing but play in gardens with their dolls until the onset

of their menstrual cycle heralds their physical readiness to take

on the role of woman and mother was exactly the image of women

that feminists of the 1970s were working hard to eradicate. Sue

was no longer viewed as a quaint quilt image, but instead as a

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saccharine one that was not representative of women’s diversity.

She was too firmly connected to ideas of limited female agency.

The phenomenon of killing Sue was not unique to Lawrence,

Kansas. Another group of women in Missouri produced Death Becomes

Her, a quilt which consisted of sixteen panels of gruesome Sue

deaths.26 Other quilters produced individual panels of dead Sues

that they would circulate among their friends. While these

quilts delighted many of the women who either worked on them, or

saw them, they did not meet with universal approval. When shown

at the 1980 Kansas State Fair, The Sun Sets quilt caused such a stir

that it was finally displayed facing the wall. One woman

produced a quilt block of Sunbonnet Sue praying for the souls of

the dead Sues.27 Barbara Brackman (one of the instigators of

the Sun Sets quilt, and author of two of the blocks) was confronted

at a quilt show in Columbia, Missouri, by an angry woman who

accused her of supporting child abuse.28 Emblematic of the

confusions and divided loyalties that women in the 1970s felt

with the feminist movement, Sunbonnet Sue seems to have inspired

diametrically opposed reactions: quilters who despised her, and

those who cherished and defended her.

26 Ibid. p 12827 Ibid. 28 Ibid. p. 124.

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Fig. 10 Block by Patty Boyer “Suestown”,

Laurie Schwarm Metzinger

In addition to feminist perception of the traditional (and

reprehensible) values that Sue embodied, there are two other main

reasons for her unacceptability in feminist camps. First,

despite a revived interest in quilting, quilt imagery, and

women’s handwork (as exemplified by the Pattern and Decoration

movement), Sue was not an image that seemed to fit with new

interpretations of quilt patterns. Most of the P & D artists

were more drawn to geometric patterns, than to figurative ones.

Joyce Kozloff’s work is entirely geometric, as is Ned Smyth’s.29

And while both artists were inspired by quilt patterns, neither

actually worked in fabric. Miriam Schapiro’s work does, on

occasion, incorporate fabric and some quilting techniques but she

is most interested in claiming and valuing women’s work, rather

than criticizing traditional female roles. Artists connected with29 Though there is no evidence that they ever considered using Sue, her traditionally intimate image would have been inconsistent with the largescale, and public spaces of their work.

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the Pattern and Decoration movement wanted to create images of

healing that would revitalize society and unite humanity,

bridging the divide between women’s and men’s work, making it

whole again. Sunbonnet Sue, despite having been such a popular

image made by women for girls, was too quaint an image to fulfill

the ambitious mission of P & D artists. Sue was too ringed with

little girl associations to be a monumental image able to carry

the weight of healing the world.

Fig. 11 Miriam Schapiro Anonymous was a Woman

The second reason for Sue’s demise as a popular quilt image

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comes from another camp of early feminist artists such as Judy

Chicago who were interested in body imagery and “core” imagery.

Some of the early work by feminist artists included an

exploration of the ways in which men and women are different. By

exploring and valuing those differences, women believed that they

could learn about themselves as women, find strength and wisdom

as women without paternal dominance. Consequently, artists such

as Ana Mendieta produced works including her Silhouette series that

not only explored women’s biological distinctions, but also

claimed a close connection between women and nature. Mendieta’s

Tree of Life not only referred to her cultural background, but also

to the idea of women as earth mothers or goddesses of the land,

Demeter reincarnated.30

30 While early feminist literature frequently refers to earth Goddesses and to Demeter as connected with the land, the image of a strong women, capable of birthing crops and life with male help…I find it curious thatshe was also the Goddess of Marriage.

30

Fig. 12 Judy Chicago Childhood Rejection, 1974 Ana Mendieta,

Tree of Life, 1976

Women were exploring their own bodies (remember the scene

from Fried Green Tomatoes where the women’s group are all going to

look at their vaginas?) to find their inner being, the source of

their strength and power as women. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills

questioned, challenged, and played with constructed female roles

and identity. All of these women were promoting the idea that

women were strong, that they could choose their roles in life.

The diminutive, static image of Sue did not fit this new

image of women. Sue’s activities were limited; she lived in an

idyllic world of flowers and dolls. Sue didn’t even have a body

that she could explore. Instead she was covered up by a

sunbonnet that rendered her faceless, and a dress that rendered

her bodiless. At a time when women wanted to have knowledge of

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the world, and wanted their girls to have much the same

knowledge, Sue’s representation of protected female innocence was

suspect and offensive. And so, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s,

Sunbonnet Sue died.

And yet, in the late 1980s, the faceless little girl is

resurrected. Starting around 1988, women began producing quilt

blocks that are referred to as “Bad Sue” blocks. As feminists

began to move away from body imagery and biology (finding it too

reductive), they began to explore the concept of “female” and

“feminine behavior.” Why do we think of pink as a feminine

color, and blue as a masculine color? Why is it that girls who

smoke are ‘bad girls’, and boys who smoke are ‘tough’? While

examining the ways in which society has constructed our

perceptions of gender, women began to question intentionally

those perceptions by subverting them. Cindy Sherman continued

her photographic work about constructed identities. Annie

Sprinkle questions societal conventions about the roles of women

and our concepts of good and bad behaviors, specifically related

to sexual roles. Sprinkle’s work challenges the idea that women

who have sex when and where they want (including those who are

paid for sex) are bad women, women who have fallen from grace,

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women who live their lives outside of “normal” female roles.31

Some of Lynda Benglis’ work poses questions about power based

gender (just as in the photograph where she poses, sporting an

enormous phallus).

Fig. 13 Annie Sprinkle Lynda Benglis

Art Forum ad

Anatomy of a 1980s Pinup

31 http://www.heck.com/annie/index.html

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Numerous women have chosen to use the image of Sunbonnet Sue

to subvert traditional perceptions of women and their place in

society. Instead of tending a garden, or taking care of her

dolls, the Bad Sue blocks show Sue reading Playgirl, burning her

bra, dancing a striptease, smoking, or mooning the boys next

door. These images are intended to be a humorous way to question

perceptions of appropriate behaviour related to traditional

gender roles. These blocks invert/subvert the recognizable

images of ‘good girl’ behavior while the quilters take joy in

being bad. By acting out, by questioning the distinctions

between good and bad behavior as a way of defining gender roles,

these women hoped to breakdown such barriers. It should not

matter that the belch you heard from the table next to you came

from a woman or a man. Men should not be the only ones allowed

to read racy magazines. If women want to be strippers, or turn

tricks, let ‘em. These quilt blocks represent the idea that

women are not just interested in becoming doctors and lawyers and

CEO’s (traditional male jobs), they want to be able to do

ANYTHING. Using Sunbonnet Sue (a recognizable ‘good girl’ image)

acting out has been a way for women to challenge perceptions with

humor and irreverence.

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Fig. 14 Sue as an Ax Murderer Sue as a Peeker Sue

as an Exotic Dancer

Sunbonnet Sue remains alive and vital.32 There are numerous

websites devoted to publishing Sue patterns and displaying Sue

quilts. Today, both Good and Bad Sue quilts flourish, and they

are found side by side on the same websites. It seems that Sue

is a flexible enough image to accommodate being used to represent

traditional concepts of feminine behavior, or to subvert them.

Contemporary Good Sue quilts are intended to be affirmative

images, portraying Sue in a wide range of roles, and engaged in

many different activities. While some of these quilts are made

32 Interestingly enough, in the 1990’s Sunbonnet Sue returns to graphic imagery by way of logos. Betty Hagerman used a Sunbonnet logo for the column that she wrote for the Baldwin City Ledger; Enola Gish, Joyce Aufderheide and Cathy Banks all use Sunbonnet images for their stores (all of which sell quilting supplies). A more in-depth study of logo imagery is, sadly, beyond the scope of this paper.

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for shows or competitions, most of the Good Sue quilts are still

made for young girls, frequently relatives of the quilter.33

One hundred years after her birth as a textile image, the

sunbonneted little girl has proved herself to be an enormously

adaptable image: moving from graphics, to textiles, from being a

didactic text illustration to a folk image. Sue has represented

traditional female roles and concepts of constructed childhood.

She has survived multiple murder attempts. Rolling with the

punches of the late twentieth century, Sue continues to be used

by women both to subvert perceptions of gender roles and to

perpetuate the idea of a childhood where children (especially

little girls) are protected from full knowledge of the adult

world.

By returning to my original premise of looking at Sue within

the context of how childhood has been constructed and perceived,

we can see that for most of her life, Sue has represented the

original idea of childhood put forth in the eighteenth century.

By looking at the ways in which Sue imagery is used after the

1970s we can see that a shift has taken place in some perceptions33 The Bad Sue images are mostly commonly produced as single blocks to be scanned onto websites, or circulated among friends. A few groups produce whole quilts, but these seem to be only given as gifts to adult women friends (such as the Scandalous Sunbonnet Sue quilt made by the Bee There quilting circle of Austin, Texas, for circle member Karen Horvath).

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of childhood. Many people, particularly women, are no longer

interested in completely protecting children from adult

knowledge. As a matter of fact, most feminists regard

that kind of protection not as an attempt to allow little girls a

period of innocence in their lives, but instead as a patriarchal

construction that keeps women ignorant of a larger sphere of

social activity and responsibility. The change in Sunbonnet Sue

imagery goes hand in hand with the idea that women (and little)

girls should NOT be protected from knowledge of the world. Both

the good and bad Sue images now include Sue engaged in a plethora

of activities, very few of which have her playing with dolls.

While there are still some quilters who want to preserve Sue’s

traditional attributes and place within the quilting lexicon,

there are more quilters who seem willing to let Sue expand her

knowledge of the world, to become a more knowing child.34

The story of Sue is not at an end. Her resurrection in the

1980s has breathed new life into the image, and given her proven

adaptability. Who knows what her next incarnation will be?

34 Higonnet, p. 124. Higonnet does not use this phrase in terms of quilt imagery, but I have found it useful in trying to understand the shifts in Sue quilts. The knowing child is one who has knowledge of theadult world, and it shines out through their eyes. They are still children, but they’ve seen pictures of death, and they know where babiescome from.

37

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women’s Folk Culture. Ed. Joan Newlon Radner. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1993.

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http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/my-little-pony-as-an-agent-of-culture-shift-in-gender-identity/

Interviews

Hagerman, Evelyn (daughter of Betty). 11 Oct 2012. By phone

Stokstad, Marilyn. 30 Oct 2012.

Tilghman, Marilyn. 30 Sept 2012.

The following women were interviewed on 12 Oct 2012: Judith Corwin, Jean Castle, Mabel Hodges, Mary Crane, Bertha Fish, and Marla Johnson.

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The following women were interviewed on 15 Oct 2012: Gertrude Gresham, Gretchen Steinbach, Marilyn Thompson, Nancy Gibson, Mary Rogers, Mary Anne Craig.

(Cherry Ripe is an English song with words by poet Robert Herrick (1591–1674) and music by Charles Edward Horn (1786–1849) which contains the refrain,

Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, Ripe I cry, Full and fair ones Come and buy. Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, Ripe I cry, Full and fair ones Come and buy)

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