Mary Edwards Walker

Through years and years of countless awards in U.S. history, only one woman has been awarded the Medal of Honor. Presented to her by Andrew Johnson for her great medical advances, she battled through judgments and stigmas to achieve her goal in life. However, she opposed pressure from others and even when having her award taken away she persevered. Her name is Mary Edwards Walker. Mary Edwards Walker was born in Oswego, Nov 26, 1832. She was a huge social reformer for women, while working to introduce a new wave of opportunities for women. She tried to change the norm of women wearing frilly inconvenient clothes instead of men’s clothing. Stoutheartedness is the mental strength to keep going even when being put down. Courage is when you no longer care what others think and you do what you want to do and you believe in yourself as you do it. Mary Edwards Walker possesses courage and stoutheartedness, therefore she is a hero.

Mary Edwards Walker with her awarded Congressional Medal of Honorwikipedia.orgMary Edwards Walker shows great heroism through her actions and qualities. Mary Edwards Walker shows a great amount of stoutheartedness from her great mental strength and unwavering loyalty to her cause of allowing women to wear the clothes they want. ”Nevertheless, she is most often remembered for her audacity in wearing the full men's attire that she adopted later in life, including a frock coat, trousers, shirt, tie, and top hat. Though viewed in her time as a curiosity and an eccentric, Walker demonstrated the possibilities available for women who were willing to forgo accepted roles and norms of appearance during the second half of the nineteenth century” (Franzen 1). Mary dressed very eccentrically for women at the time, she endured verbal abuse for dressing like men, however she wanted to create true equality for women. Women could vote but they were not actually equal, they wore clothes that were uncomfortable just because men wanted them too. Walker was arrested multiple times just for wearing men’s clothing. Walker was not only a social activist but she was also a wartime medical surgeon, and she even was awarded a Medal of Honor from President Andrew Johnson. ”In 1865, President Andrew Johnson awarded Walker the Congressional Medal of Honor for her service to the United States. Walker remains the only woman to receive this award-the military's highest honor” (Franzen 5). Mary was appraised by the people that she worked with and they said that she was an expert surgeon. When Mary took a mandatory medical test for the military she failed and the man who hosted the test said that she didn't know a thing about medicine. Everyone who ever spent time with Mary in the military knew she was an elite surgeon, we can only assume that the test was rigged. However, through all of this she stood strong and became a civilian nurse afterwards.

Mary Edwards Walker's book "Hit"gegensatzpress.comCourage is a very rare attribute, and even if someone does have it it may only show rarely. But Mary Edwards Walker displayed courage throughout her whole life.Mary Edwards Walker does not only show her courage through her medical valor on the battlefield but also as a beacon of hope for women. ”She was a believer in spiritualism and possessed a highly inpidualistic literary style for which she found outlet in two books: Hit (1871), and Unmasked, or the Science of Immorality (1878)” (“Mary Edwards Walker”).Walker went above and way beyond the average woman at her time.Mary was a truly amazing role-model she achieved so many things in her average life span and attempted to make so many changes in so many ways.My hero is truly special for all the persity in jobs that she had, these jobs all helped spread her social activism greatly.”Following her resignation from the army in June 1865, she worked for a short time on a New York newspaper--one of the first women in America to be so employed--and then set herself up as a practising physician in Washington, D. C. “ (“Mary Edwards Walker”).My hero Mary Walker had a vast knowledge on writing and used that as she wrote newspapers and books on women's rights and topic as such.She skillfully used her many skills in order to spread her thoughts, and ideas.Mary Edwards Walker was a woman with so many talents and so many good ideas, however because of the time she lived in, her ideas were not easily accepted and she was met with a lot of resistance even from other women.

Mary Edwards Walker wearing a frock coatrvanews.comMy hero Mary shows her stoutheartedness and courage through her many achievements. Walker is a very unique hero because many saw her as more of a bad role-model in her time. However now that we are well into the future we can look back and realize that what she did was actually amazing. Mary Edwards Walker is a true hero. Mary Walker is a huge inspiration to not only women but to males as well, she has pressed onwards with her beliefs so hard that she has overachieved most males. Mary wrote 2(two) books in her life as she had so many occupations. It's incredible to see how much someone can do with their life. Mary truly did not care what others thought of her, but she wanted to live the way she wanted to. Mary Edwards Walker died virtually penniless and on her family's farmland. She was buried with her frock coat. When she was alive her word was taken as a word of a lunatic but, as we look back now, we realize how much she has helped start. Mary may have died with no money but with what she left behind she shaped our world.

Works Cited

Franzen, Trisha. "Mary Edwards Walker." Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and

Transgendered History in America, edited by Marc Stein, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004.  

Biography in Context,https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K3403600527/BIC1?u=powa

9245&xid=483966f5. Accessed 30 Jan. 2018.

"Mary Edwards Walker." Contemporary Heroes and Heroines, vol. 3, Gale, 1998. Biography in

Context, https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1607000271/BIC1?u=powa9245&xid

=8f7c52c2. Accessed 30 Jan. 2018.

"Mary Edwards Walker." Gale Biography in Context, Gale, 2002. Biography in Context,

https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1650002499/BIC1?u=powa9245&xid

=fc4d6eeb. Accessed 30 Jan. 2018

"Mary Edwards Walker." Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936.

Biography in Context,

https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/BT2310001348/BIC1?u=powa9245&xid=d28247ff.

Accessed 30 Jan. 2018.

“Dr. Mary Edwards Walker” Changing the face of Medicine, 2003, Celebrating America’s Women

Pysicians,https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_325.html Accessed 4 Feb.2018.