| Description |
xxxix, 509 p. ; 21 cm. |
| Series |
Oxford paperbacks |
|
Oxford paperbacks.
|
| Note |
Reprint. Originally published: Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill Educational Pub., c1977. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 495-499) and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction --- I. The Female Life Cycle. Chapter I. 1. Training the girl to patience / Louisa May Alcott -- 2. Childhood in slavery / Martha Harrison / Anonymous -- 3. You owe more to your mother and the younger children than you do to any other plans / Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D. -- 4. A mother advises her daughter / Martha Coffin Wright -- 5. In fear of hell and damnation / Mary A. Livermore -- 6. From Frank to Frances / Frances E. Willard -- 7. The childhood of an immigrant working girl / Rose Schneiderman -- Chapter II. Marriage, Motherhood, and the Single State. 8. Engagements / Eliza Lucas Pinckney / Ellen Wright Garrison / Rose Cohen / Harriet Beecher Stowe -- 9. An emancipated marriage / Marius and Emily Robinson -- 10. In woman's sphere and out of it / Jane Swisshelm -- 11. Runaway wives / Elizabeth Perkins / Mary Dodd -- 12. Motherhood in the Minnesota territory / Anonymous -- 13. A difficult childbirth / Fanny Wright -- 14. Why don't I wean him? / Martha Coffin Wright -- 15. A feminist debates marital restraint with her brothers and sisters / Lucy Stone with Francis, William Bowman, and Luther and Sarah Stone -- 16. Marriage / Sarah M. Grimke -- 17. The story of Sadie Sachs / Margaret Sanger -- 18. On spinsterhood / Catharine M. Sedgwick -- Chapter III. Just a Housewife. 19. The practicing housewife / Martha Coffin Wright -- 20. Woman's work and man's supremacy / Jane Swisshelm -- 21. Female trials / Cleo Dora -- 22. Words of comfort for a discouraged housekeeper / Catharine Esther Beecher -- 23. Employments in 1864 / Lydia Maria Child -- 24. The life of an Illinois farmer's wife / Anonymous -- 25. A modern housewife's lament / Herma L. Snider -- 26. The working mother keeps house / Anonymous -- 27. The housewife and the eight-hour day / Theresa Malkiel -- 28. In woman's defense / Mary Inman -- 29. A modest proposal for freeing women from housework / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Chapter IV. Old Age, Sickness, and Death. 30. The death of an aged Quaker woman / Eliza Coffin Yarnall -- 31. The death of a younger sister / Mary A. Livermore -- 32. The death of a mother after childbirth / Anonymous -- 33. Memorial to a female preacher / Salome Lincoln -- 34. The death of a husband at war / Mary A. Dennison -- 35. Nursing an aging mother / Marian Louise Moore -- 36. Duty commands you / Mary Holywell Everett, M.D. -- 37. From family nursing to volunteer nursing in the Civil War / Jane Swisshelm -- 38. Organized charity / Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children / Ladies' Relief Society / Phillis Wheatley Home Association of Detroit / St. Louis Colored Orphan Home --- II. Women in Male-Defined Society. 39. Education for young ladies / The Young-Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia -- 40. A plan for improving female education / Emma Hart Willard -- 41. In a daughter they have a human being ; in a son the same / Frances Wright -- 42. The school marm / Anna Howard Shaw / Susan B. Anthony -- 43. Teaching the freedmen / Mary S. Battey / Lucy Chase / Sarah A. Allen -- 44. The cotton gin school house / Emma J. Wilson -- 45. An Illinois farm girl debates woman's education / Rena Rietveld Verduin -- 46. Academic women attack institutional discrimination / Bernice Sandler -- Chapter VI. Working for a Living. Domestic Work. 47. Domestic help on the farm / Sarah Christie Stevens -- 48. Friendly counsel for domestics / Catharine Esther Beecher -- 49. Anything but housework -- 50. Our feudal housewives -- 51. Collective bargaining for household technicians -- Women in Industrial Employment. 52. Limited choices / Caroline Dall -- 53. An early turn-out / Salome Lincoln -- 54. New York tailoresses organize / Lavinia Waight / New York Sun / Ladies' Industrial Association / Shirt Sewers' Cooperative Union -- 55. Protective legislation / Rheta Childe Dorr -- 56. How to live on forty-six cents a day / Anonymous Cotton Mill Worker -- Organizing Women Workers. 57. Report of the general investigator, Knights of Labor / Leonora M. Barry -- 58. A cap maker's story / Rose Schneiderman -- 59. How to organize women workers / Ida M. Van Etten / National Women's Trade Union League -- 60. A union protects its women members / United Auto Workers -- Chapter VII. Women and Politics. 61. Women vote in New Jersey -- 62. Petitioning / Address to Females in the State of Ohio / Fathers and Rulers Petition / Remarks of Rep. Benjamin Tappan / Petition for the Thirteenth Amendment, Women's Loyal National League / Susan B. Anthony -- 63. Why women should not meddle with politics / Lydia Drake -- 64. The Salem, Ohio, woman's rights convention / Memorial to the Constitutional Convention / Resolutions -- 65. Women are enfranchised by the Constitution / Virginia Minor / Victoria Claflin Woodhull -- 66. A black woman appeals to white women for justice for her race / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper -- 67. Voting for school boards in Ohio / Caroline McCullough Everhard -- 68. A Minnesota farm woman in politics / Sarah Christie Stevens -- 69. A woman in Socialist politics / Lena Morrow Lewis -- 70. Rights, not roses - the debate around the ERA / New York Women's Trade Union League / International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union / United Auto Workers --- III. A New Definition of Womanhood. Chapter VIII. Creating the New Woman. Defining Her Own Sphere. 71. A female soldier in the American Revolution / Deborah Sampson -- 72. The female physician: and unlicensed practitioner / Harriot K. Hunt -- 73. The female physician: pioneer work / Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. -- 74. The female physician: an attack and a reply / Ann Preston, M.D. -- 75. The best protector any woman can have is courage / Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- 76. A new self-consciousness / Belva Lockwood -- 77. The woman revolutionary / Elizabeth Gurley Flynn -- 78. Unwanted motherhood / Anonymous / National Florence Crittenton Mission / National Association for Repeal of Birth Control Laws -- 79. Protection from rape and sexual exploitation / A Common Case of Rape / An Act of Terror / Rape Crisis Center Collective / Speaking Out on Prostitution -- 80. Freedom of sexual preference / Radicalesbian Statement / Lesbianism and Feminism / Anne Koedt -- In Union There Is Strength. 81. We didn't none of us eat there / Audie Lee Walters -- 82. Consciousness raising / Ronnie Lichtman -- 83. U.S. National Women's Agenda / Women's Action Alliance -- Chapter IX. The Search for Autonomy. 84. The trial of a heretic / Anne Hutchinson -- 85. Preparation to the death for a Quaker witness / Mary Dyer -- 86. A frontier woman discovers her own kind of feminism / Marian Louise Moore -- 87. She is the arbiter of her own destiny / Sarah Moore Grimke -- 88. While the water is stirring I will step into the pool / Sojourner Truth -- 89. The solution of self / Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- 90. Turning / Lucille Clifton -- 91. The six canons / Muriel Rukeyser. |
| Summary |
While women's experience encompasses all that is human, while women have participated in history and the making of history through all time, until very recently they have been largely excluded from the writing of that history. Most of what we know of the past experience of women comes to us largely through the distorting lens of men's reflections and observations. In the now classic The Female Experience, Gerda Lerner describes history as seen by women, as colored by their values. What she creates is fascinating narrative of the lives and history of ordinary women, a book that provides a new framework for the study of their past experience. If women's history is now a healthy and ever-growing discipline, we have in a large part this award-winning author to thank. Avoiding the traditional chronological periods by which U.S. history is most often studied, Lerner groups her sources--many taken from manuscripts previously unknown, and others only available in research libraries--according to the lifecycle of women, their roles in a male-defined society, in the workplace, in politics, and finally in the contemporary world where feminism is creating an altogether new consciousness. From "runaway wives" in eighteenth-century America, through an anonymous account of a mother's death during childbirth, to appeals in our century for freedom of sexual preference, The Female Experience recounts history from the woman's point of view, and goes a long way toward reconstructing a female past and analyzing it with appropriate concepts. In the general introduction and chapter essays Lerner offers commentary that not only knits these disparate primary sources together, but also interprets them in an innovative way. |
| Subject |
Women -- United States -- Social conditions -- Sources.
|
|
Women -- United States -- History -- Sources.
|
| Added Author |
Lerner, Gerda, 1920-2013.
|
| ISBN |
0195072588 |
|
9780195072587 |
|
