Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History

We did this for book group this month (in May actually. I started writing this post in May!). I loved the book, and had a great time reading it. It was rich with interesting ideas and Ulrich is a great writer. I have a couple other of her books on my list to read. Like American Women, there were a lot of stories of different women and lots of them didn't stick with me. But, Ulrich did a great job tying them together, not by chronology, but by connections to three main women: Christine de Pizan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Virginia Woolf, now three of my heros. (I have since read A Room of One's Own and have started City of Ladies). She spends an early chapter devoted to the three of them, showing how their early exposure to an odious text shaped their views and writing about women.

There were so many great vignettes about their lives that I really related to. Every single one of them saw the disadvantages they faced as women and longed to be a man. Stanton had a brother that died at a young age, and her father ever after lamented the lack of a son. Stanton did all she could to take the place of her brother, excelling in her studies, and striving to be both "learned and courageous". But, her father could only say, "I wish you had been born a boy." She sums this up by saying, “To think that all in me of which my father would have felt a proper pride had I been a man is deeply mortifying to him because I am a woman." I loved the description of Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists invading Independence Hall in 1876 with their Declaration of the Rights of Women. "Yet we cannot forget that while all men of every race, clime, and condition have been invested with the full rights of citizenship, all women still suffer the degradation of disenfranchisement.”

In later chapters, she connects other women to key parts of their writing and lives. For example, Stanton was involved in the abolition movement and was directly or indirectly tied to four different Harriets (including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman). In the first part of this chapter, Ulrich discusses these four women, and then connects the abolition movement to the women's rights movement. Ulrich looks for women's lives in the daily humdrum of the ordinary. She has a great section on the three waves of feminism. One of the things that happened in the 70's was that historians began to refocus the historical lens, looking to see where women were throughout history. I was caught up in the section of the women's movement in the 70's with all its excitement and idealism. I love the way women tried to locate ignored women in history, to find a place for them and let their voices be heard. The story group of women that Ulrich worked with in Boston to research Mormon history and uncover my femal spiritual ancestors is inspiring and amazing.

One thing that I like in this book more than in Collins was that Ulrich draws larger conclusions and women and their place in history, rather than simply marching through lives, era by era.

Now that it's been many months since I read this: my overall reaction to this book is the feeling of excitement and empowerment--to see strong and able women through the ages and to feel a kinship to them. The quotation at the top of my blog is from this Ulrich book, and the picture of Christine de Pizan at her computer, by Mary Yaeger, were taken from the book. When I read Ulrich's concluding paragraphs, I almost leapt off the elliptical machine at the gym I was so taken with it. And if I had not just lent it out to a friend, I would quote the entire paragraph here.

Instead, I will just reiterate this sentence: "A woman who write her own stories has no fear of demons."