History
George Peabody Library sits on the Mt. Vernon Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Founded in 1857 with a donation of $300,000 by George Peabody to create an accessible cultural center of learning for all. The original structure was finished in 1866, but the library seen today was finished in 1878 and designed by architect Edmund George Lind. When it opened, it was dedicated to the kindness and hospitality of Baltimore. At its inception, the librarians curated and pursued a list of 50,000 specific books to line the shelves regardless of price or difficulty. Today, the library stacks are home to a collection of more than 300,000 works ranging from rare first editions to 15th century tomes, including first edition Hawthornes, Melvilles, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The rare book rooms’ newest books date from the 1700s. The collection is always growing with a focus on 18th and 19th century works.
Walking into the main atrium, the eye is met with stacks five tiers high, lined by ornamental cast-iron balconies. The library is capped by a stunning skylight soaring 61 feet above quiet readers below, illuminating the entire space with a warm comfort so rarely found in rooms so large. Created to be free and open to the public, despite changing hands multiple times, it is still a free and open library to the public. Though the collection is non-circulating, readers and researchers can explore the works while enjoying its immense beauty.
Visit
Visiting George Peabody Library has been really the only thing left on my Bucket List for years. I have actively been making plans and trying to go for many, many years. Those plans fell through every time. In October, I went on a roadtrip to Washington DC. There were lots of plans with lots of activities. When asked what I wanted to see on the trip, the only thing I said, “I’d like to take a trip to Baltimore and see the library.”
Done.
We took a day trip to Baltimore and I fell a little bit in love with the city. I went when I was 18 and adored it. As an adult with an even better grasp and love for history, I was in heaven. Historically, it’s a fascinating city. Architecturally, it’s stunning. Culturally, wow. It sits at an intersection of so many interests of mine as a human, learner, and writer of social justice. I would love to go back and spend more time existing there.
Parking in front of the Mt. Vernon campus, the building is as gorgeous as every other 19th century building in the neighborhood. But there was nothing differentiating it from all the other incredible façades. So much so, I tried going in the side door as it was just as magnificent as the main entrance. Even standing in front of the door, I was vibrating with anticipation. Actually the whole drive there.
Getting to the library, we had to walk through the entryway, take a left, and then walk through a large room of stuff, which was probably a museum of sorts. I should have looked, but I was ready to see what I had come to see and didn’t really pay any attention. Obviously. And also fighting off an anxious pee feeling that was totally unnecessary and over the top. The moment I could see through the doorway, I started crying. I couldn’t help it. It was very embarrassing. A bad case of Stendahls Syndrome. Of course there’s a video because my friend is an asshat and documents everything. I wandered and cried. Thank God, I eventually stopped crying and kept wandering. I tiptoed through card catalogs, read every plaque, sat in awe of the sheer beauty, size, and knowledge this one room held. I took a crap ton of photos. So many pictures. None of which will ever do the room justice, though they’re brilliant. I don’t know what I expected. But I didn’t expect the library to be just a massive room in an even bigger building, yet it is.
I spent two hours soaking in that moment I had waited so long to enjoy.
More Than Stendahls Syndrome
As I walked into George Peabody Library, I was swept with so many complex emotions. I started crying. I tried to play it cool, but I am not a chill person. Part of me did cry because of the immense, architectural beauty. It’s art. Part of me cried because I was with someone who had no idea how much that moment meant to me but made it happen anyways. Sometimes, small things are not small things.
I stood there crying and sniffling for more than just Stendahls Syndrome.
Libraries always have a tendency to bring up the emotional side of me. It does exist, very, very deep down. As a writer, I know how much effort one book requires. As a writer in the time of computers makes it far easier, faster, and less physically taxing to actually write a book. Imagine writing an entire book with a quill… imagine the typos. My hand hurts thinking about that. The amount of knowledge in that one room alone is more than I will ever acquire no matter how dedicated I am to the pursuit. Libraries are a testament to the lives of people who dedicated themselves to gaining and proliferating knowledge. In their own ways, many of which I do not agree with, they were trying to make the world a better place. That is what I also aspire to do. It’s hard not to be a little overcome with emotion when one steps back from themselves to acknowledge the effort put into the existence and purpose of libraries. I do not believe in God. I do not go to church. I do believe in knowledge. Truth is my God. Libraries are my sanctuary.
Standing just inside the door as a gay woman, I was hit with more than awe. This library was not meant for me. As a woman, an out gay woman, had I walked into the library upon its construction, I would have been imprisoned existing the way I do. Hell, there are a great many places today I could still be arrested or even executed for existing as I am. It was built in a time when 20% (optimistic) of the population was illiterate and less than 2% of the population went to college. Fuck women on that statistic, there isn’t a percentage available. Wesleyan, the first women’s college, only opened twenty years prior. George Peabody Library was meant for everyone, but not really. It was created in a time where the “everyone” was implicitly understood as white men, maybe refined, respectable ladies who were educated but not too much. I am not either of those things by today’s standards let alone the standards of 1860s America.
The first Ivy’s—Princeton and Yale—didn’t even start admitting women until 1969. Women have had to fight with everything we have, including our lives, for the privilege, the right to receive an education.
Education. Knowledge. That is the path forward. Ensuring women—49.72% of the population—are educated is how the world turns around. Yet there are so many roadblocks for us. They’ve been lessened in this country and others by the lives and fights of so many women who have gone before us. But there are still so many obstacles. From societal pressures, laws, cost, so on and so forth.
Malala was shot in the head because she advocated for girls’ education in 2012.
I’m angry.
I am angry for all women. But this hits home for me. For over a decade I have, in so many unknowing ways, downplayed my fight for education. I have never been quiet about the fact I was a stripper to pay for college. So often, people hear “stripping” and latch on. They want those stories. It’s unique, and I’m open about it. I’m a novelty. I’m an information resource fountain about a taboo yet extremely intriguing topic from anecdotal and scholarly standpoints. I know my shit, and I lived it. The part about stripping to PAY for college is glanced over. I think, emotionally, I always glanced over it too. Standing in the George Peabody Library, for whatever reason, it hit me. I did all of that to learn.
I graduated in 2014 from Cornell College with a triple major in Literature, French, and Russian with an emphasis in Literary Translation and Analysis. I did it in four years. I paid for it by working 100+ hours a week (it is possible, hard, yet possible), taking my clothes off for men who didn’t give a fuck if I lived or died, figuring out better ways to withstand the physical and psychological violence. I did all of that so I could have an EDUCATION. I tried so many other ways. But I was shit out of luck. When I went to the financial aid office, I was told to join the military, get married, have a child, or drop out and wait until I turned 26. None of those were options. So I stepped outside of respectable society for knowledge, ultimately, a piece of paper.
And I am so fucking proud of myself for doing that. I fought for my education. I gave up so much. I still live with the repercussions of that decision and I always will. I knew what I was doing and the ripple effects it would have on my life and future, intellectually. I was not stupid. My eyes were wide open. As much as they can be. Reality is always different. I don’t regret it. I never have. I wish I’d had other options, a choice. I wish the country we live in prioritized people rather than money. I wish men knew how to treat women, all women—sex workers included—well. I wish college wasn’t so expensive. I would also do it again. Knowing everything I know now, I made the right choice when I was left with no choices to make. I chose an education above all else.
The fucked up part… I made that choice twelve years ago.
TWELVE.
A year before Malala was shot on the other side of the world in her own fight for women’s education. I was sitting on a strip club counter studying when the notification popped up on my phone. I live in a first-world country, and I was still forced to fight for an education.
In so many ways, it was a different time, but all that’s really changed is college is more expensive and stripping is only infinitesimally less villainized. Even then, as a poor, desperate college student, I knew I was so privileged. I am a white woman. I was “straight” when I started stripping. I had every seeming advantage. I still had to fight to learn. I dodged sexual assault, rape threats, death threats, a shooting, knives, and more over the course of four years so I could graduate, move on, get a good job, build a life.
My fight for education looks different than most women’s. Yet, it’s so similar. I leveraged sex and femininity in the same way women have for all of written history to access information, power, safety, comfort, literally everything. I took the only thing I had—my body and mind—to dare to grasp for more than what was being offered. I succeeded. I didn’t die. I get to move on and rebuild and heal. I get to use the knowledge I worked so hard for to advocate for other women so one day no woman will be turned away from learning.
bisous un обьятий,
RaeAnna
