Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915

Book Description

In this study of British middle-class feminism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Antoinette Burton explores an important but neglected historical dimension of the relationship between feminism and imperialism. Demonstrating how feminists in the United Kingdom appropriated imperialistic ideology and rhetoric to justify their own right to equality, she reveals a variety of feminisms grounded in notions of moral and racial superiority.

According to Burton, Victorian and Edwardian feminists such as Josephine Butler, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and Mary Carpenter believed that the native women of colonial India constituted a special 'white woman's burden.' Although there were a number of prominent Indian women in Britain as well as in India working toward some of the same goals of equality, British feminists relied on images of an enslaved and primitive 'Oriental womanhood' in need of liberation at the hands of their emancipated British 'sisters.' Burton argues that this unquestioning acceptance of Britain's imperial status and of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority created a set of imperial feminist ideologies, the legacy of which must be recognized and understood by contemporary feminists.

Customer Reviews:

Most intriguing, but incomplete.........2007-03-19

Normally, I start with praise for the book, but I feel that I have to get something stated right out front - the book was not quite what I expected. It was a fantastic book, with great research used to back up the author's thesis, but the name is somewhat misleading - I thought that when the author said "Imperial Culture", she would be referring to culture throughout the British Empire, or at least in several different countries. Unfortunately, she focuses almost exclusively on India and Turkey (which really isn't even a British colony).

After I accepted the fact that the author was going to focus on India & Indian women, I found that I really enjoyed the book. The author's premise is that British feminists impacted Imperial culture through their actions. Her theories are well defended, and use great primary source material (such as contemporary journals and pamphlets, along with written documents from the participants).

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in British Feminism, Indian women in Victorian & Edwardian era Imperial Britain, or one looking for an understanding of how female suffragettes in Britain really pushed their case for female emancipation.

essential reading for students of imperialism.......2001-06-15

The first customer review of this book (by a reader in Atlanta) is completely off. It was obviously written by someone with an ax to grind, but it is not representative of Burton's work. Burdens of History is a nuanced and thoughtful examination of the role of British women both in relation to their efforts to secure the vote, but also (for lack of a better word) their "complicity" in the imperial project.

This is not a matter of anachronistically applying 20th c. liberal ideas to a 19th c. imperial context. Only someone who skimmed the book could think this.

This is a wonderful book which has rightfully earned Burton wide-spread respect throughout the field of British imperial history.

The kind of scholarship that makes me sad........2000-09-03

This is the sort of book that says, "Oh, those naughty people a century ago! They were so unenlightened, compared to us." A hundred years ago, there were these horrible women called "suffragists," you see--sure, they wanted votes for WHITE women, but all the time they had all sorts of horrible, imperialistic stereotypes about people who weren't white! If only they'd had modern academics to keep them in line!

The scholarship here is often as disappointing as the conclusions are predictable. Burton will take an analysis of a single journal and make it do duty for the whole of a movement. Literary-critical types (and I am one myself) shouldn't delude themselves into thinking they're writing history.

Book Description

Arthur Munby (1828–1910) was a Victorian gentleman from a respected family of Yorkshire lawyers. He left behind diaries that record his life-long obsession with working-class Victorian women, whom he interviewed, photographed and wrote about. This obsession led to his relationship with, and eventual secret marriage to, his maidservant Hannah Cullwick.Working women fascinated Munby because they disrupted his Victorian ideal of femininity: their bodies were altered by physical exertion and dirt, and they were also often deformed by disease. Drawing not only on the diaries but also on a vast, untapped archive of documents, photographs, poems and sketches, Watching Hannah is far more than an account of a compulsive observer of working women and a fetishist of hard-working female hands, however. The author analyzes Munby's obsessions in relation to changing definitions of gender, sexual identity and class to reveal wider male preoccupations with femininity, the body, deformity, masculinity and – most of all – sexuality, at a pivotal point in European history.

Customer Reviews:

Lovely and repulsive........2005-01-06

Barry Reay, Watching Hannah: Sexuality, Horror, and Bodily De-Formation in Victorian England (Reaktion, 2002)

This is an entry in Reaktion's Picturing History series. If the other books in the series are as well-written as this one, I will be buying a large number of imports from Reaktion Books this year. (They can be had in America, usually for outrageous prices, unless you find them used.)

Arthur Munby, pre-Raphaelite, gentleman, member of the idle rich, and friend and compatriot to any number of influential figures in many different schools of thought, was also a sexual fetishist par excellence. His particular fetish, to be overly simplistic about it, was dirt; specifically, that dirt which accrued on the bodies of the "working women" of the time (coal diggers, milkmaids, farm girls, etc.). Combined with the usual sexual fetishes to be found in the art, literature, and philosophy of the late eighteen hundreds in England, and you have quite the heady stew. Barry Reay offers another piece of Munby scholarship, but this one aimed at examining Munby's life through his various fetishes. The picture that emerges is uniformly darker than those of books previously written about Munby (both contemporary and modern), and is utterly fascinating. Through Munby's life, Reay takes the reader on a tour through Victorian sexual mores that sheds very different lights on some of what we thought was common knowledge about the people and their time.

While the book does not spend quite as much time on the subject of Munby and his wife/slave Hannah Cullwick as one might expect given the title, the tangents into which Reay veers to illuminate other parts of Munby's psyche are just as fascinating (and in some cases even more repulsive, for example the chapter on Munby's fascination with noseless women).

It kept me rapt the whole time I was reading it. One of the best pieces of nonfiction to come across my desk, on the readability scale, in some time, and one of the most fascinating in subject matter. Definitely a keeper. ****

Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs

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Wonderfully Accessable Text

Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs
Carol Mavor , and Carol Mavor
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822316196

Book Description

An intimate look into three Victorian photo-settings, Pleasures Taken considers questions of loss and sexuality as they are raised by some of the most compelling and often misrepresented photographs of the era: Lewis Carroll’s photographs of young girls; Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs of Madonnas; and the photographs of Hannah Cullwick, a "maid of all work," who had herself pictured in a range of masquerades, from a blackened chimney sweep to a bare-chested Magdalene. Reading these settings performatively, Carol Mavor shifts the focus toward the subjectivity of these girls and women, and toward herself as a writer.
Mavor’s original approach to these photographs emphatically sees sexuality where it has been previously rendered invisible. She insists that the sexuality of the girls in Carroll’s pictures is not only present, but deserves recognition, respect, and scrutiny. Similarly, she sees in Cameron’s photographs of sensual Madonnas surprising visions of motherhood that outstrip both Victorian and contemporary understandings of the maternal as untouchable and inviolate, without sexuality. Finally she shows how Hannah Cullwick, posing in various masquerades for her secret paramour, emerges as a subject with desires rather than simply a victim of her upper-class partner. Even when confronting the darker areas of these photographs, Mavor perseveres in her insistence on the pleasures taken—by the viewer, the photographer, and often by the model herself—in the act of imagining these sexualities. Inspired by Roland Barthes, and drawing on other theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, Mavor creates a text that is at once interdisciplinary, personal, and profoundly pleasurable.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderfully Accessable Text.......1998-09-12

This book is wonderful for every level of experience and interest. The text is interesting and engaging, the process of reading it is much like attending one of her lectures. Carol examines photographers such as Lewis Carroll with new insight and understanding. She also introduces readers to interesting Victorians such as Hannah Culwick. Her passion comes through in the pages!

Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism

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Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism
Ann Cvetkovich
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Feminist Theory | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0813518571

The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order

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halfway there
Very Brave
Reminding Us All of the Real Feminism
A refreshing oasis from Faludi and idiots
A Credible Challenge to What Has Become an Orthodoxy

The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order
Rene Denfeld
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Feminist Theory | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0446672394

Book Description

The author shows that feminism in the 1990s is anti-men and obsessed with date rape, pornography, and goddess religions, and today's young women have rejected it by the thousands. The author, a working woman and an amateur boxer, pulls no punches about who's at fault and why. The author after dozens of interviews shows how the feminist leaders of the 90s - with their victim-mentality and anti-male stance - are the new Victorians, sexually repressive and self-righteous while insisting they are morally superior to men. The gauntlet has been thrown before the women's movement.

Customer Reviews:

halfway there.......2002-05-24

Rene Denfeld's critique of feminism is right on. Her analysis of Diana Russell and Mary Koss's inflated rape statistics is solid, she offers a strong libertarian argument against the censorship of pornography championed by Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and she condemns the goddess worship of Mary Daly as irrelevant to the political movement and alienating to women. However, while she's done her homework on the feminists, she neglected to study the Victorian era thoroughly, and offers only a superficial comparison, which is unfortunate because her explanation of the failure of feminism is so good. She should have left out the Victorian element entirely if she was unwilling to explore it. Also, Denfeld takes a lot of cheap shots at conservatives, calling them "archconservatives" and "right-wingers" and never explaining, as she does meticuously with the feminists, the actions that have caused them to earn her disgust. She need not like republicans or Christians, but it crowds her work to potray them as the enemy when her focus should be the feminists and (possibly) the victorians. In addition, she makes some suggestions at the end of the book, some of which are laughable, such as creating government-sponsored childcare (a chapter earlier she said taxes were too high, does she understand the system?), and make abortion "simply another medical procedure" (not going to happen, hon). She made some excellent points, but the book has some serious flaws.

Very Brave.......2001-02-04

Rene Denfeld the author of this book is an interesting person. It is not often that a female boxer writes a book. The book is an attack on what some would see as fringe feminism.

Denfeld suggests that what most women want is equality with men, child care, job opportunities and reproductive rights. Feminism however is drifting away from these core concerns and fringe academic groups are defining feminism and what it means to be a feminist.

Denfeld argues that some academic feminists have preoccupations that involve arguing against heterosexual sex, opposition to pornography, the creation of a victim mentality and a bizarre attempt to create a new religion. In her view these currents to the movement are turning away younger women who make more practical demands from the movement and are not interested in obscure ideological debates. The book has a number of chapters which discuss each of these trends.

In the anti-phallic campaign Denfeld argues that a significant number of feminists have argued against penetrative sex and normal sexual practices. She quotes Adrienne Rich's essay on "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience" which suggests that heterosexuality is the model every other form of exploitation. This essay is apparently used in most women's study courses. Denfeld argues that as most young women are heterosexual such essay's tend to turn them away from feminism.

In arguing how a victim mentality is encouraged Denfeld examines a number of prominent studies of female victimization. These include work by Diana Russell and Mary Ross. It is argued that such studies over inflate female victimization by including in rates of sexual assault consensual sex, minor contact such as wolf whistling and phone calls to grossly inflate the rate at which females are subject to sexual assault. Denfeld argues that these surveys trivialize the reality of rape by broadening the definition of rape to include very minor transactions. This leads to scare mongering suggesting that women are in constant danger of leaving home, does if believed restricts their enjoyment of life. It also is an insult to women as it is an attempt to recreate the model of the Victorian defenseless woman rather than today's modern self-confident woman.

The book is challenging and interesting. One suspects that the more doctrinaire will dislike it. It is however a passionate argument for women to equality with men and not to limit themselves by ideologies which will return them to the sheltered status of the women Victorian times.

It is a suggestion for feminism again to become a movement which will achieve things for a broad range of women rather than creating a new self limiting ideology.

Reminding Us All of the Real Feminism.......2000-08-27

Denfeld is dead on target in her scathing but articulate attack on the new feminism. Contrary to what some reviewers have claimed, her writing is lucid and direct--so much so that my EFL graduate students here in Beijing have found it easy to digest and highly compelling reading. Now they have begun to understand what prompted the patronizing antics of so many so-called feminist leaders who spoke at the women's conference here five years ago.

I applaud Denfeld's daring, although as an amateur boxer, she'd probably shrug her shoulders and say, "aw, it was no big deal to write this stuff." Still, it is bold to put your publishing career on the PC chopping block.

As for the book's arguments, she documents her sources well and manages to deftly demystify the often jargon- laden writings of many of the new feminists she so roundly criticizes. I was especially glad to see the even-handed manner with which she treated Gloria Watkins, aka bell hooks. Earlier in the book she credits this feminist critic but takes the latter to task in subsequent references. In contrast, Denfeld's regard for Friedan is sensitive, even poignant.

The book maintains a motif: that a kind of neo-Victorian disposition dominates the new feminists. Although the motif is indeed at times strained, it holds up well overall.

This book should be required reading in womens studies courses which purport to offer divergent feminist points of view but, in fact, assign mostly the radical fringe while conveniently and hypocritically ignoring the emerging mainstream thought (or was it always there beneath the turgid surface?) The sad irony, communicated well in this work, is that the new feminists have marginalized the very women they claim to defend.

I look forward to reading her new, co-authored work on related issues.

A refreshing oasis from Faludi and idiots.......2000-06-12

This book is amazing in that it doesn't pull punches against the people who have spent the last two decades turning feminism into a joke. From Faludi's paranoia and victim mentality (and according to her latest book men are victims too. Isn't it nice when everyone's a victim?) to the exaggerated rape statistics to the flaky ramblings of Daly, Starhawk and Gloria Steinem's inner child, no one is spared. ALthough Dworkin and MacKinnon's anti-porn crusades are dead, the rotting corpses still live on in Women's Studies classes. There is a contigent of feminism that believes that lesbianism is the only politically honest response to the patriarchy (and all the poor lesbians who get stuck with these Women Studies major jerks could start a support group and it would rival AA) and there is a great deal of puritanical zeal running through feminism.

Denfeld's main point is that women are not victims in need of being saved by feminism but real people with real concerns who would benefit from feminism if it addressed the issues (child care, reproductive rights, equal opportunities) instead of flaking out. A must read for all feminists who are getting sick of what passes for feminism.

A Credible Challenge to What Has Become an Orthodoxy.......2000-05-05

Rene Denfeld's is one of those books that make you say, "I knew it! It's not just me! I've been waiting for someone to say this!" She presents an excellent post-boomer perspective (rare enough these days, outside of computers and technology) on what has happened to the once-proud and purposeful feminist movement, and an insightful and well-documented description of how it has changed over the past two decades.

As Denfeld illustrates with quotes from today's generation of young women, the official "feminist" movement has, in their eyes, lost its way. It is no longer about fighting for equal treatment under the law, equal pay in the workplace, or equal respect as individual human beings--all worthy goals which some Gen X and Y'ers have admittedly almost taken for granted in these more enlightened times. Instead, it has come to stand for Woman as Victim. The current focus of the core feminist movement in the past few years has been on protecting women, portraying them as helpless (yet noble and virtuous!) little hothouse flowers who need shielding and special treatment to survive against the onslaught of the big bad world and mean ol' men (all of whom are cast as violent, misogynistic predators, of course). Is it any wonder that so many young women who believe in equality nevertheless are reluctant to call themselves "feminists?"

The movement has been hijacked, as Denfeld amply demonstrates with an array of studies, statistics, and--most tellingly--quotes from the most prominent current leaders of the feminist movement today. What was once considered extremist has become mainstream as the cause has rigidified and polarized itself.

In addition, the book's writing style was a pleasant surprise. Too many books on political issues, particularly gender and family themes, are awkwardly and poorly written, mainly consisting of half-formed thoughts strung together with no regard for logic, organization, or thoughtful presentation. Denfeld is no ranter; she has methodically presented a number of well-researched and carefully organized points and concepts, and followed them up with discussion that is clear and thought-provoking. I found myself engrossed with every chapter.

Two minor quibbles:

1. As another reviewer has commented, I'm not sure that the Victorian analogy is consistent throughout the book. I recognize that in our society, "Victorian" represents backward and repressive thinking, and certainly this is an accurate description of what mainstream feminism has become. However, some elements of the current state of the movement are too new to fit the mold, and the analogy (but not the validity of the critique itself) becomes strained at points.

2. In addition to what feminism currently stands for, I would have liked to see some discussion of exactly how and why the feminist movement was transformed--although that could well have doubled the length of the book. The results of the change are clear, and clearly deplorable--but some more attention to the nature and origin of the change might provide some added insights into how to get feminism "back on track" for the future.

Book Description

During her lifetime, playwright and novelist Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) was regarded as highly as Eugene O'Neill and Edith Wharton. Winner of the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for drama (for Alison's House), she was cofounder of the Provincetown Players, the little theater that "discovered" O'Neill. Later, Glaspell was instrumental in introducing American drama to English audiences when her play The Verge was produced in London. Yet despite her many accomplishments, Glaspell is often overlooked in the standard histories of American theater. Now, Barbara Ozieblo returns this intriguing and important figure to the spotlight.

Ozieblo combines an engaging narrative of Glaspell's life with insightful analysis of her creative works. Rebelling early against the expectations imposed on women of her era, Glaspell grappled with the conflict between Victorian mores and feminist aspirations throughout her life. In Trifles, now recognized as a groundbreaking feminist drama, she explored the reasons for a woman's extreme response to her husband's demanding, authoritarian stance. Ozieblo also investigates Glaspell's relationship with dramatist George Cram Cook, exploring the scandal that surrounded their courtship and marriage as well as the life they led among the bohemians of Greenwich Village.

Customer Reviews:

A Necessary Voice in American Theatre.......2001-04-10

This book is especially recommended for theatre lovers and constitutes an essential contribution to the history of women in the US during the twentieth-century. Following Virginia Woolf, Barbara Ozieblo has as her goal to "capture" Glaspell's personality, but the results go far beyond this original purpose. Seduced by a brilliantly polished, engaging narrative, the reader is presented with a new perspective on the development of American theatre in the first half of the twentieth century by means of a smooth movement between identification with Glaspell and a fine and suggestive analysis of her writings.

For the theatre critic / lover, the most relevant dimension of Susan Glaspell's life is her involvement in the creation of the Provincetown Players, either as promoter, actress or playwright. In this regard, a new focus on her standpoint is worth considering, being both protagonist and witness in the development of George Cram Cook's visionary efforts. No doubt, her point of view enables a more accurate, fresher account of the true nature and evolution of Cook's relationship with Eugene O'Neill.

The reader becomes Glaspell herself while witnessing this crucial part in twentieth-century American drama. The implication is that, from her position between external spectator and measured participant, we can reach a more suitable evaluation of the Provincetown Players' contribution to US theatre. This fact is accounted for by the author's decisiveness at drawing consistent conclusions at the right time within the narrative.

An outstanding student and vocational writer, Glaspell also offers an invaluable personal story of abnegation and endurance. The chapter devoted to Cook's final days in Greece does justice to her position as committed wife and sacrificed woman. Here we have an example of a woman's ambivalent role regarding the rules imposed by the society of the time. The main question is whether Glaspell would have utilized her talents in a better way without the burdens imposed by marriage. However, the narrative efficiently locates us within Glaspell's persona, and her constant sufferings caused by her true love for Cook, indeed a demanding and dependent dreamer.

Finally, Glaspell's life as a widow back in the US becomes an example of the unrewarding, sometimes miserable life of twentieth-century women involved in the artistic sphere. Recognized writer, Pulitzer-prize winner and generous mentor, Glaspell keeps on being "too" generous, especially in her relationships with men, and for most of her life remains a solitary individual whose loneliness is only alleviated by the company of her friends and animals and, ultimately, her love for the theatre.

Customer Reviews:

i would like to buy this book how the hellcan i 701 8422746.......1999-06-25

i want to get this book will you call me and let me know as to ordering. phone 701 842 2746

Victorian Feminists (Clarendon Paperbacks)

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Victorian Feminists (Clarendon Paperbacks)
Barbara Caine
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0198204337

Book Description

This is a study of Victorian feminism which focuses on four leading feminists: Emily Davies, Frances Power Cobbe,Josephine Butler, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett. This approach enables Barbara Caine to uncover the range, diversity, and complexity of Victorian feminism, and to examine the relationship between personal experience and feminist commitment. Professor Caine sets her carefully researched biographical studies of the four women, each with her own fascinating history, in the context of the Victorian feminist movement. She explores the ideas and strategies of feminists in the late nineteenth century, analysing the tensions which arose as they sought to achieve their aims. In particular, she traces the complex relationship between party politics and feminist commitment. Barbara Caine's insight into the vision and beliefs of these Victorian feminists is balanced by her scholarly understanding of the society within which they worked. She gives us vivid and perceptive portraits of four very different individuals, who nevertheless shared a commitment to improving the lot of women.

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Find out who the most Sapphic poet of the Victorian Period was!

Victorian Sappho
Yopie Prins
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691059195

Amazon.com

A remarkable new addition to the fields of gender studies, classical studies, and modern poetics, Yopie Prins's Victorian Sappho sends off many casually brilliant sparks, with a broad appeal that easily transcends disciplines. "Invoked as a lyric muse in antiquity and mythologized for posterity by Ovid," Sappho has always been "a figment of the literary imagination." Prins traces the 19th-century recovery of new fragments of Sappho's poems and the allure they held for classical philologists, who attempted to piece together not only her lyrics but her absent, impossible self--the feminine voice and the female body. In scholarly writing, as well as the work of Swinburne and countless popular poets like Felicia Hemans, Sappho eventually came to embody the Victorian definition of the lyric. The era's fascination with the "incomplete" Sappho carried over to this century in the modernist idealization of the fragment. The book features engaging scholarship--the introduction alone establishes Prins as a strong and subtle thinker--and is gorgeously written. --Regina Marler

Book Description

What is Sappho, except a name? Although the Greek archaic lyrics attributed to Sappho of Lesbos survive only in fragments, she has been invoked for many centuries as the original woman poet, singing at the origins of a Western lyric tradition. Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealized feminine figure through reconstructions of the Sapphic fragments in late-nineteenth-century England. Yopie Prins argues that the Victorian period is a critical turning point in the history of Sappho's reception; what we now call "Sappho" is in many ways an artifact of Victorian poetics.

Prins reads the Sapphic fragments in Greek alongside various English translations and imitations, considering a wide range of Victorian poets--male and female, famous and forgotten--who signed their poetry in the name of Sappho. By "declining" the name in each chapter, the book presents a theoretical argument about the Sapphic signature, as well as a historical account of its implications in Victorian England. Prins explores the relations between classical philology and Victorian poetics, the tropes of lesbian writing, the aesthetics of meter, and nineteenth-century personifications of the "Poetess." as current scholarship on Sappho and her afterlife. Offering a history and theory of lyric as a gendered literary form, the book is an exciting and original contribution to Victorian studies, classical studies, comparative literature, and women's studies.

Customer Reviews:

Find out who the most Sapphic poet of the Victorian Period was!.......2005-10-05

Are you studying Sappho? How about Michael Field or Algernon Swinburne? This book covers in detail how Victorian poets were or were not like the Greek poet Sappho. During the Victorian time period, fragments were published of Sappho's work. This took the Victorians by storm. Dr. Henry T. Wharton published a book about Sappho entitled "Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation." Many writers and artists of the time were mesmerized by his book. Prin tells us that his book had a "broad circulation" and was reprinted 4 times between 1887-1907.

Prins is a Victorian scholar with a great deal of knowledge to bestow. In this particular book, she talks about the connection between Sappho's writing and legend and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Christina Rossetti; Mary Robinson; John Addington Symonds; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning; and many others. Prins states in her book "Rather than organizing the chapters to imply a developing tradition or a linear progression, I emphasize the continual recirculation of Sappho within Victorian poetry" (p. 15).

The American Victorian Woman: The Myth and the Reality (Contributions in Women's Studies)

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The American Victorian Woman: The Myth and the Reality (Contributions in Women's Studies)
Mabel Collins Donnelly
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0313253277

Book Description

This new socio-historical study explores the dynamics of growing up female in the second half of the nineteenth century--a time when traditional patriarchal standards were beginning to be questioned by small groups of courageous reformers. Donnelly chronicles the lives of middle class and working women--white and black--from childhood to old age, the hardships they endured, their daily activities and their concerns, pleasures, and accomplishments.

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