Download or read book Liberty a Better Husband written by Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.”—Louisa May Alcott This sensitive account focuses on the women who chose to remain single in antebellum America. Based on a study of the lives and writings of over one hundred Northeastern women, it describes the reasons why the rejected marriage and the joys and frustrations they encountered in adhering to the tenets of the cult of “Single Blessedness.” Lee Chambers-Schiller sketches the historical forces that allowed middle- and upper-class daughters to leave home in search of personal and economic independence, and she portrays the constrictions of married life from which these women fled. Single women found their own families to be sources of both pain and pleasure, for no matter what their age or position in the world, unmarried females remained daughters with dependent status, their lives continually shaped by the conflicting pulls of work and family. Yet these families—especially sister relationships—provided many of these women with love and intimacy. In fact, an extraordinary number of single sisters pursued join careers: the Weston sisters were activists in abolitionist causes; Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell both practiced medicine; Alice and Phoebe Cary became writers. By demonstrating how these women asserted themselves as individuals, Chambers-Schiller presents them as among the first to articulate the value of female autonomy and as pioneers in expanding the boundaries of women’s progress toward equality.
Download or read book Celibacies written by Benjamin Kahan and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-25 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative study, Benjamin Kahan traces the elusive history of modern celibacy. Arguing that celibacy is a distinct sexuality with its own practices and pleasures, Kahan shows it to be much more than the renunciation of sex or a cover for homosexuality. Celibacies focuses on a diverse group of authors, social activists, and artists, spanning from the suffragettes to Henry James, and from the Harlem Renaissance's Father Divine to Andy Warhol. This array of figures reveals the many varieties of celibacy that have until now escaped scholars of literary modernism and sexuality. Ultimately, this book wrests the discussion of celibacy and sexual restraint away from social and religious conservatism, resituating celibacy within a history of political protest and artistic experimentation. Celibacies offers an entirely new perspective on this little-understood sexual identity and initiates a profound reconsideration of the nature and constitution of sexuality.
Download or read book Navigating Liberty written by John Cimprich and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2022-11-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When thousands of African Americans freed themselves from slavery during the American Civil War and launched the larger process of emancipation, hundreds of northern antislavery reformers traveled to the federally occupied South to assist them. The two groups brought views and practices from their backgrounds that both helped and hampered the transition out of slavery. While enslaved, many Blacks assumed a certain guarded demeanor when dealing with whites. In freedom, they resented northerners’ paternalistic attitudes and preconceptions about race, leading some to oppose aid programs—included those related to education, vocational training, and religious and social activities—initiated by whites. Some interactions resulted in constructive cooperation and adjustments to curriculum, but the frequent disputes more often compelled Blacks to seek additional autonomy. In an exhaustive analysis of the relationship between the formerly enslaved and northern reformers, John Cimprich shows how the unusual circumstances of emancipation in wartime presented new opportunities and spawned social movements for change yet produced intractable challenges and limited results. Navigating Liberty serves as the first comprehensive study of the two groups’ collaboration and conflict, adding an essential chapter to the history of slavery’s end in the United States.
Download or read book All the Single Ladies written by Rebecca Traister and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Today, only twenty percent of Americans are wed by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960. The Population Reference Bureau calls it a 'dramatic reversal.' [This book presents a] portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the single American woman, covering class, race, [and] sexual orientation, and filled with ... anecdotes from ... contemporary and historical figures"--
Download or read book Anchor of My Life written by Linda W. Rosenzweig and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1994-10 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decades between 1880 and 1920 could represent a watershed in the history of the mother-daughter relationship--a subject ripe for extensive investigation. This study investigates conflict and harmony between the generations before, during, and after this period, drawing on a variety of sources: letters, diaries, autobiographies, prescriptive advice or "self-help" literature, and fiction. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Rebecca Gratz written by Dianne Ashton and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first in-depth biography of Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869), the foremost American Jewish woman of the nineteenth century. This is the first in-depth biography of Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869), the foremost American Jewish woman of the nineteenth century. Perhaps the best-known member of the prominent Gratz family of Philadelphia, she was a fervent patriot, a profoundly religious woman, and a widely known activist for poor women. She devoted her life to confronting and resolving the personal challenges she faced as a Jew and as a female member of a prosperous family. In using hundreds of Gratz's own letters in her research, Dianne Ashton reveals Gratz's own blend of Jewish and American values and explores the significance of her work. Informed by her American and Jewish ideas, values, and attitudes, Gratz created and managed a variety of municipal and Jewish institutions for charity and education, including America's first independent Jewish women's charitable society, the first Jewish Sunday school, and the first American Jewish foster home. Through her commitment to establishing charitable resources for women, promoting Judaism in a Christian society, and advancing women's roles in Jewish life, Gratz shaped a Jewish arm of what has been called America's largely Protestant "benevolent empire." Influenced by the religious and political transformations taking place nationally and locally, Gratz matured into a social visionary whose dreams for American Jewish life far surpassed the realities she saw around her. She believed that Judaism was advanced by the founding of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Hebrew Sunday School because they offered religious education to thousands of children and leadership opportunities to Jewish women. Gratz's organizations worked with an inclusive definition of Jewishness that encompassed all Philadelphia Jews at a time when differences in national origin, worship style, and religious philosophy divided them. Legend has it that Gratz was the prototype for the heroine Rebecca of York in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, the Jewish woman who refused to wed the Christian hero of the tale out of loyalty to her faith and father. That legend has draped Gratz's life in sentimentality and has blurred our vision of her. Rebecca Gratzis the first book to examine Gratz's life, her legend, and our memory.
Download or read book Women and Freedom in Early America written by Larry Eldridge and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is virtually impossible to generalize about the degree to which women in early America were free. What, if anything, did enslaved black women in the South have in common with powerful female leaders in Iroquois society? Were female tavern keepers in the backcountry of North Carolina any more free than nuns and sisters in New France religious orders? Were the restrictions placed on widows and abandoned wives at all comparable to those experienced by autonomous women or spinsters? Bringing to light the enormous diversity of women's experience, Women and Freedom in Early America centers variously on European-American, African-American, and Native American women from 1400 to 1800. Spanning almost half a millenium, the book ranges the colonial terrain, from New France and the Iroquois Nations down through the mainland British-American colonies. By drawing on a wide array of sources, including church and court records, correspondence, journals, poetry, and newspapers, these essays examine Puritan political writings, white perceptions of Indian women, Quaker spinsterhood, and African and Iroquois mythology, among many other topics.
Download or read book Not All Wives written by Karin A. Wulf and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marital status was a fundamental legal and cultural feature of women's identity in the eighteenth century. Free women who were not married could own property and make wills, contracts, and court appearances, rights that the law of coverture prevented their married sisters from enjoying. Karin Wulf explores the significance of marital status in this account of unmarried women in Philadelphia, the largest city in the British colonies. In a major act of historical reconstruction, Wulf draws upon sources ranging from tax lists, censuses, poor relief records, and wills to almanacs, newspapers, correspondence, and poetry to recreate the daily experiences of women who were never-married, widowed, divorced, or separated. With its substantial population of unmarried women, eighteenth-century Philadelphia was much like other early modern cities, but it became a distinctive proving ground for cultural debate and social experimentation involving those women. Arguing that unmarried women shaped the city as much as it shaped them, Wulf examines popular literary representations of marriage, the economic hardships faced by women, and the decisive impact of a newly masculine public culture in the late colonial period.
Download or read book Single White Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth Century American South written by Marie S. Molloy and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad and eloquent study on the relatively overlooked population of single women in the slaveholding South Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth-Century American South investigates the lives of unmarried white women—from the pre- to the post-Civil War South—within a society that placed high value on women's marriage and motherhood. Marie S. Molloy examines female singleness to incorporate non-marriage, widowhood, separation, and divorce. These single women were not subject to the laws and customs of coverture, in which females were covered or subject to the governance of fathers, brothers, and husbands, and therefore lived with greater autonomy than married women. Molloy contends that the Civil War proved a catalyst for accelerating personal, social, economic, and legal changes for these women. Being a single woman during this time often meant living a nuanced life, operating within a tight framework of traditional gender conventions while manipulating them to greater advantage. Singleness was often a route to autonomy and independence that over time expanded and reshaped traditional ideals of southern womanhood. Molloy delves into these themes and their effects through the lens of the various facets of the female life: femininity, family, work, friendship, law, and property. By examining letters and diaries of more than three hundred white, native-born, southern women, Molloy creates a broad and eloquent study on the relatively overlooked population of single women in both the urban and plantation slaveholding South. She concludes that these women were, in various ways, pioneers and participants of a slow, but definite process of change in the antebellum era.
Download or read book The Women s Movements in the United States and Britain from the 1790s to the 1920s written by Christine Bolt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a study of the development of the feminist movement in Britain and America during the 19th century. Acknowledging the similar social conditions in both countries during that period, the author suggests that a real sense of distinctiveness did exist between British and American feminists. American feminists were inspired by their own perception of the superiority of their social circumstances, for example, whereas British feminists found their cause complicated by traditional considerations of class. Christine Bolt aims to show that the story of the American and British women's movement is one of national distinctiveness within an international cause. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of American and British political history and women's studies.
Download or read book Siblings written by C. Dallett Hemphill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a wealth of family papers, period images, and popular literature, this is the first book devoted to the broad history of sibling relations in America. Illuminating the evolution of the modern family system, Siblings shows how brothers and sisters have helped each other in the face of the dramatic political, economic, and cultural changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Hemphill demonstrates, siblings function across all races as humanity's shock-absorbers as well as valued kin and keepers of memory.
Download or read book Mother Reader written by Moyra Davey and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2001-05-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intersection of motherhood and creative life is explored in these writings on mothering that turn the spotlight from the child to the mother herself. Here, in memoirs, testimonials, diaries, essays, and fiction, mothers describe first-hand the changes brought to their lives by pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering. Many of the writers articulate difficult and socially unsanctioned maternal anger and ambivalence. In Mother Reader, motherhood is scrutinized for all its painful and illuminating subtleties, and addressed with unconventional wisdom and candor. What emerges is a sense of a community of writers speaking to and about each other out of a common experience, and a compilation of extraordinary literature never before assembled in a single volume.
Download or read book The First of Causes to Our Sex written by Daniel S. Wright and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First of Causes to Our Sex is a study of the first movement in the United States for social change by and for women. Female moral reform in the 1830s and '40s was a campaign to abolish sexual vice and the sexual double standard, and to promote sexual abstinence among the young as they entered the marriage market. The movement has earned a place in U.S. women's history, but most research has focused on it as an urban phenomenon, and sought its significance in relation to the cause of women's rights or to the regulation of prostitution. This study explores the appeal of moral reform to rural women, who were the vast majority of its constituency, and sees it as a response to seminal changes in family formation and family size in the context of an increasingly market-oriented and mobile society. It was led by Yankee women who were fired by Second Great Awakening revivals and supported by reformist clergy.
Download or read book Schooling the Freed People written by Ronald E. Butchart and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that freedmen's education was largely the work of privileged, single white northern women motivated by evangelical beliefs and abolitionism. Backed by pathbreaking research, Ronald E. Butchart's Schooling the Freed People shatters this notion. The most comprehensive quantitative study of the origins of black education in freedom ever undertaken, this definitive book on freedmen's teachers in the South is an outstanding contribution to social history and our understanding of African American education.
Download or read book The Human Tradition in America from the Colonial Era through Reconstruction written by Charles W. Calhoun and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Human Tradition in America from the Colonial Era through Reconstruction is a collection of the best biographical sketches from several volumes in SR Books' popular Human Tradition in America Series. Compiled by Series Editor Charles W. Calhoun, this book brings American history to life by illuminating the lives of ordinary Americans. This examination of common individuals helps personalize the nation's past in a way that examining only broad concepts and forces cannot. By including a wide range of people with respect to ethnicity, race, gender and geographic region, Prof. Calhoun has developed a text that highlights the diversity of the American experience.
Download or read book Reforming Men and Women written by Bruce Dorsey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Civil War, the public lives of American men and women intersected most frequently in the arena of religious activism. Bruce Dorsey broadens the field of gender studies, incorporating an analysis of masculinity into the history of early American religion and reform. His is a holistic account that reveals the contested meanings of manhood and womanhood among antebellum Americans, both black and white, middle class and working class.Urban poverty, drink, slavery, and Irish Catholic immigration--for each of these social problems that engrossed Northern reformers, Dorsey examines the often competing views held by male and female activists and shows how their perspectives were further complicated by differences in class, race, and generation. His primary focus is Philadelphia, birthplace of nearly every kind of benevolent and reform society and emblematic of changes occurring throughout the North. With an especially rich history of African-American activism, the city is ideal for Dorsey's exploration of race and reform.Combining stories of both ordinary individuals and major reformers with an insightful analysis of contemporary songs, plays, fiction, and polemics, Dorsey exposes the ways race, class, and ethnicity influenced the meanings of manhood and womanhood in nineteenth-century America. By linking his gendered history of religious activism with the transformations characterizing antebellum society, he contributes to a larger quest: to engender all of American history.
Download or read book The Blessings of Liberty written by John Witte, Jr. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A robust defense of the essential interdependence of human rights and religious freedom from antiquity to the present.
