Minnie A. Weeks Pittock Explained

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Minnie A. Weeks Pittock (August 8, 1862 – May 16, 1915)[1] was an American novelist.

Minnie Amelia Weeks was born on August 8, 1862 in California, the adopted daughter of Reuben Weeks and Clarissa W. Churchill. She married George Washington Pittock and they had one son, Reuben Weeks Pittock.[2]

She published a feminist utopian novel, The God of Civilization: A Romance (1890), under the name M. A. Pittock. Pittock's "God of Civilization" is money and how it controls people, particularly women.[3] The novel is set on the idyllic South Seas island of Kaahlanai, where women choose their mates and men are forced to submit upon pain of death. A group of Americans are shipwrecked on the island and embrace the native customs, including twenty year old Mabel Miller, who (in a depiction that was daring for its time) enters an interracial marriage with Kaahlanai native Akleha, who is described as a "black Apollo." Pittock contrasts Miller with her cousin Lucy Maynard, who is trapped in a miserable society marriage in San Francisco. Mabel returns to the US with Akleha, but eventually they return to Kaahlanai with Lucy and her child.[4]

Another novel by Pittock called Was He A Leper? was announced as forthcoming, but it is not known if this was ever published.[5]

Minnie A. Weeks Pittock died on 16 May 1915 in Tucson, Arizona.

Notes and References

  1. "Arizona Deaths, 1870-1951",, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FLND-NQN : Fri Mar 08 18:14:12 UTC 2024)
  2. Book: Gaston, Joseph . Portland, Oregon, Its History and Builders: In Connection with the Antecedent Explorations, Discoveries, and Movements of the Pioneers that Selected the Site for the Great City of the Pacific . 1911 . S.J. Clarke Publishing Company . 786–89 . en.
  3. Book: Feminist literary theory : a reader . 1986 . Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA . Blackwell . 978-0-631-14805-0.
  4. Book: Buhle, Mari Jo . Women and the American left : a guide to sources . 1983 . Boston, Mass. . G.K. Hall . 978-0-8161-8195-7.
  5. Book: Pittock, M. A. (Weeks) Mrs [from old catalog |url=http://archive.org/details/godofcivilizatio00pitt |title=The god of civilization |date=1890 |publisher=Chicago, Eureka publishing company |others=The Library of Congress.