A Valentine for Esther
by Neely Steinberg
It’s ironic that the woman who helped create an industry based on love and romance never married herself.
It was said that Miss Esther Howland, dubbed the “Mother of the American Valentine,” lived vicariously through her card empire. To this day, she is often credited as the brainchild behind the production of the first elaborate, European-style, hand-assembled valentines in America.
To be sure, today's multi-billion-dollar greeting card industry is indebted to her foresight and talent. In my twenty-eight years of life, I had never once heard about Esther Howland, but her story – which I somehow stumbled upon while surfing the internet – intrigued me and captured my imagination.
 Esther was born in 1828 and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. She graduated at the age of nineteen from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in 1847. Under the tutelage of Mary Lyon, the school's progressive founder, Esther excelled in her studies.
Judging from what she later accomplished, Esther was undoubtedly inspired by Lyon's words of advice: “Go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do.” After graduation, Esther received an elaborate English valentine from one of her fathers’ business associates. Though impressed by the card, she was certain that she could do better.
As the story goes, Esther convinced her father, Southworth Allen Howland – owner of a successful bookstore and stationery shop, based in Worcester – to order lace paper and other supplies from England and New York City. From these materials, she made a dozen samples, which her brother added to his book and stationery catalog for his next sales trip.
Esther was stunned when her brother returned home with more than $5,000 in advance sales. Armed with a fierce determination to succeed, she laid out plans for production; utilizing an all-female assembly line, Esther’s valentine card business was officially born. Advertising and word-of-mouth, based on a beautiful product and a wide range of prices, led to a $100,000 per year business.
Esther’s entrepreneurial vision was considered revolutionary, not only from a feminist standpoint (at that time, few women had businesses) but also from the perspective of the American valentine industry – one that was lacking in grace, elegance, and beauty. Although much was written about her impressive business successes, other aspects of her existence were a bit hazier.
Unfortunately, my internet sleuthing left me empty-handed when it came to some of the more intimate details of Esther’s life. And so, my imagination got the best of me; I began to creatively fill in the blanks. What was Esther like in her personal life? How did she really feel about love and romance? Did she have many suitors? Why did she never marry? Were the lines on the inside of her cards, such as the following, inspired by a real-life romance?
Love for Love
Dear youth I do accept your heart,
And value much the prize
For tho'you ne'er did tell your love,
I read it in your eyes.
Or was Esther simply more interested in the romance of business than in the business of romance? Did she ultimately sacrifice one for the other? Without knowing the real specifics of her life, other than the fact that she was confined to a wheelchair at 38 and died single and unmarried at 76, I was left to imagine the answers to these particular questions.
As I closed my eyes, I pictured Esther staring out a window as she formulated the poetic words to be written inside her elaborately beautiful lace creations. Maybe the closest thing to romance in her own life was the fantastical world of other people’s romances. Maybe she was content surrounding herself with the idea of love and was just too busy running a Valentine card empire to make room for a little romance of her own. Maybe Esther made the choice of career over love.
These hypotheticals had me thinking about my feelings towards relationships versus the seductiveness of following career dreams. Do women have to choose between the two, as Esther might have done, or can we “have it all?” This was the million-dollar question.
Today in America, female self-sufficiency is a quality prized by many. Moreover, female dominance within the business world is quickly becoming a norm rather than an exception. But has this modern-day phenomenon come with a price?
 Indeed, must this powerful new group of women sacrifice love for career success? Certain feminists of the day would have the fairer sex believe that meaningful careers are the key to happiness; ultimately, we do not need the love of a man to be complete. Others – perhaps those who don’t subscribe to the feminist credo – would argue that the feminist and sexual liberation movement of the 60s has backfired and, consequently, is convincing women of the opposite – that love, family and motherhood are the real keys to happiness.
As I reflected on these questions and on how Esther might have responded, I began to have some doubts about a woman’s ability to have it all. But maybe this wasn’t such a horrid concept. When a woman chooses one way of life over another, she is making a personal decision about what is more important for her own happiness and peace of mind. Neither choice is better than the other. However, when a choice is made, it is not without the sacrifice of something else.
Whether it’s the woman who leaves her boyfriend to pursue a career or the wife who decides to quit her job so that she can stay at home and raise her and her husband’s children or the mom who puts her child in daycare and goes to work everyday, all of these women have something in common: they make a choice and they sacrifice something when they choose. There is no way to have it all, but perhaps we don’t need to have it all.
Even amongst the forefront of these various ideas and questions, it was Esther who remained in the backdrop of my mind’s wanderings. What would Esther have thought about all of this? Would she have been able to succeed in her business if she had fallen madly and deeply in love? Would her career have taken a backseat to marriage, child-rearing, and domesticity?
In imagining the romantic details (or rather, the lack thereof) of Esther’s love life, I couldn’t help but wonder (as most women do around Valentine’s Day) about my own romantic fate. Was I destined to follow the same path as Esther? If and when I do find love, what would I eventually choose to sacrifice for that love? I was always convinced – ever since I was a young girl – that I’d be the girl who would choose love over everything.
However, over the past year, as my career has begun to give more meaning and purpose to my life, I have begun to second-guess that childhood notion. Of course, I don’t know with absolute certainty what I’d do until a situation presents itself; like most hypotheticals in life, emotions, and the behaviors and actions that stem from those emotions are usually unpredictable. Ultimately, even though every bone in my body was screaming for answers, I had to surrender myself to the unknown.
And while my personal quandary remained unsettled, I began to comprehend something very important. As I continued to reflect on what I knew of Esther’s life and what I imagined of her life, it dawned on me that because of Esther – and women like her – who proved to many that a female could hold her own outside of the home, it consequently became possible for other women to at least have choices. Maybe that’s what the feminists have been talking about all along: choice.
Maybe Esther’s sacrifice was more than just a personal sacrifice but a sacrifice for all women who, in the words of her old Mount Holyoke teacher, dare to “go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do.” Indeed, hers was a sacrifice that ultimately allowed women the option to choose between love and career.
For your sacrifice Esther, this is my Valentine to you.
Neely Steinberg is a contributing writer
and editor for nuts4chic. You can email her at neely@nuts4chic.com
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