Prepare to Be Furious! Women of a Promiscuous Nature Will Make You Angry!

Melissa Gouty
6 minutes ago
5 min read

Donna Everhart's 2026 Novel

Females who may have been picked up or accused of being "Women of a Promiscuous Nature."

Deep Disquiet

Sleeplessness doesn't happen to me often. I am one of those people blessed with a staunch Circadian Rhythm and a solid sleep schedule. Most nights, I fall asleep around 9:30, and I wake up between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. But sometimes, something disturbs my rest. When I woke up the other night at 3:00 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep, I realized that it was because of the deep disquiet I'd experienced reading Women of a Promiscuous Nature, a historical fiction novel by Donna Everhart.

Since sleep eluded me, I decided I'd just get up and finish the novel, finding out what happened and dealing with the anguish I felt for these fictional characters. (Seems strange, doesn't it, that I was so riled up about these made-up women?) But that's what's so compelling about Historical Fiction. Even though it's fictionalized, it's based on very real situations, documented histories, and characters modeled after real people.

The truth that Women of a Promiscuous Nature is based on

Here's the truth:

In 1918, before the end of WWI, and in reaction to the huge number of American servicemen who had sexually transmitted diseases, two Congressmen came up with a law that allowed law enforcement agencies to target women who might be spreading these infections. (It made NO difference if the women were sexually active, completely healthy, or had any connection to the infected men whatsoever.)

The Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918, was named for Senator George Earle Chamberlain of Oregon and Representative Julius Kahn of California, and it created "An American Plan" to protect the servicemen and the male population of the United States by authorizing the secretaries of War and the Navy to help states care for civilian people whose:

“detention, isolation, quarantine, or commitment to institutions may be found necessary … against venereal diseases.”

No guidelines existed describing what caused it to be "necessary" for a woman to be committed. It may have been for talking to a serviceman, living alone, walking alone, being unconventional in dress, occupation, or habits. Misogynistic lawmen now had authority to arrest "uppity" or "questionable" women.

The Chamberlain-Kahn bill created funding for work farms and mental institutions to house these questionable women. The bill's language was gender neutral, but we all know what happened. Only women were picked up as threats. (We've all heard of the term "loose women," but there is no parallel term for men who freely "use their tool" and "sow their seeds." Somehow, being a "player" doesn't have the same pejorative impact.) It was women who were deemed to be dangerous to the health of American servicemen. Under the American Plan, police and health officials used suspicion of sexual immorality to detain, forcibly examine, and indefinitely confine thousands of women—often without charges, trial, or meaningful due process. Donna Everhart’s Women of a Promiscuous Nature gives human faces to women caught inside that system.

The Characters:

Believe me. Much of my discomfort while reading this book was because of the injustice done to women, both real and fictional. In the book, a beautiful, 24-year-old woman named Ruth Foster is picked up by the police because she lives alone and she was walking to her job at the diner by herself. (Respectable women would have a husband, after all, and they certainly wouldn't be working outside the home!)

Then there's Stella. Fifteen years old and very intelligent, she comes from a horrible home life with consequences too dire to discuss until you've read the book. Of course, Stella's problems are not of her own making. Even so, her family sends her to a work farm to be "reformed."

Prepare to be furious. . . and frightened!

So how do you "reform" hundreds of "promiscuous" women?

You mete out severe and rigid discipline through self-righteous women convinced that their conformity and religious mores are the cure-all for the world's evils.

Enter Mrs. Dorothy Baker, the superintendent who truly believes that she is doing what is right for the girls by manipulating them, putting them in solitary confinement so they can "meditate" on their behavior, and giving demerits for the tiniest infractions. Even the powerful superintendent is not without sin - although she does everything she can to cover them up.

Why read such a distressing book?

One of the great things about reading historical fiction is that I learn so much. I had NEVER heard of the Chamberlain-Kahn Act before this book (had you?) and I certainly never knew that thousands of women who had done nothing wrong were held against their will, given horrible treatments and doses of mercury to heal non-existent infections to keep our servicemen "safe." Some were even sterilized without their knowledge.

My theory is that if I don't know about our history, I can't keep those horrible incidents from happening again. I can't be vigilant, or cautious, or afraid of people who think their way is the only way and who oppress the people who are different from them.

If I hadn't read this book, I wouldn't have known what could happen. Granted, I might have gotten one more peaceful, full night of sleep instead of spending the wee hours finishing this book that disturbed me deeply.

Anger, Still...

Not only was I appalled that this outrageous law was passed and that it did indescribable harm to women who might have been "different," impoverished, or alone, but I am angry about the attitude that existed then and still exists now. Men are expected to, allowed to, and forgiven for having relationships with women. In Congress, in society, in legal arenas, the belief was that men were being harmed by women, all of whom were supposedly infected. (As if the men had no choice in what they were doing!) No one seemed to care that the servicemen themselves could have been spreading these horrible infections, sometimes on unwilling women; sometimes on prostitutes. No one ever told the men to keep their parts in their pants. No one reprimanded licentious male behavior, or put men in reform schools, or gave THEM mercury treatments and drugs to keep their infections from harming others! Men were not sterilized to keep them from spreading disease.

GRRRR. It still gets to me!

Important, but not happy

I am glad I read this book for the information I ingested. I felt connected to the characters imprisoned unfairly in the reformatory and was very aware of the sad, tragic stories of many of the women. But I was furious - and frightened - at the ability of humans to hurt each other in their continual quest to "make you like me."

If you're looking for a light, happy, upbeat read, this is NOT it! But if you care about injustice and want to understand our history, read Women of a Promiscuous Nature.

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