Customer Reviews

Ladies of Seneca Falls (Studies in the Life of Women)

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An overview of the women's suffrage movement in the United States during the 18th. Century. This was a time when the legislature of Tennessee declared that women could not own property since they had no souls. In the few states where a women could own property, she had no voice over its taxation, a complaint the Founding Fathers had against the English crown. The book begins with a series of sketchy biographies, and then tells the tale very ably. If you know little of the American suffrage movement two centuries ago, this is a good primer. Truly makes you respect Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, giants in the quest for freedom for all. The irony of newly freed black male slaves, totally unbooked, refusing to be taught by an educated person because they were female and therefore beneath them, was an interesting cocktail of prejudice. Even the great Even Frederick Douglass spoke about his concern that black male suffrage should proceed a woman's...either white or black. Susan B. Anthony thought that equal meant just that, equal rights for both women, blacks, and the white males.

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences." -Susan B. Anthony, 1860.

Our (usually fiction-reading) book club read this in October, 2004. I avoided starting it for a long time, but as soon as I got past the first chapter, I couldn't put it down. It was amazingly well-written with wonderful stories of the women who only earned a passing mention in our 7th-grade history books. This book made me see how many dedicated and strong women were needed to make a basic change in American culture and made each member appreciate her right to vote so much more in the November 2004 election.

A thorough, easily-read, fascinating book about the early American Women's Rights movement. I have read many books on this subject, and rate this as one of the highest in objectivity and appeal. Especially good as a springboard for those not already familar with the subject. Brush up on your HERstory!

This was an excellent historical account of the early phase of the women's rights movement It provides the background of several of the woman viewed as leaders of the women's movement. It provides a perspective and offers details which other accounts fail to provide. The struggles of the women who were at the forefront of the women's movement in its early years is lucidly presented. It is a well written account and added substantially to my knowledge of the early phases of the movement. I highly recommend the book.

Bought three copies of this "old" text book for my grand daughters. A good history about womens struggles in the late 1800's and early 1900's..

March Is Woman's History Month

One of the few historically interesting anecdotes that came our of last year's Democratic Party nomination process during the America presidential election campaign that pitted both the first serious black, Barack Obama, and woman, Hillary Clinton, candidates for that office was the rounding up of a number of very elderly women who were the beneficiaries of the successful struggle for the woman's right to vote by the Clinton campaign to be used as symbol of the need to go that next step and elect a woman president. The historic symbolism of those gestures brought into sharp relief the very long, arduous struggling for the right of women to vote. Equally, it brought into relief the sometimes frictional nature of the two constituencies represented by the two campaigns last year in those earlier days of struggle for increasing the democratic franchise beyond that of then narrow one of white male property owners and their hangers-on.

That tension is the subject, or rather one of the subjects, of this very readable narrative history of the movement that uses the organizing efforts culminating in the famous Seneca Falls Woman's Right Convention in 1848 as its central focus. Moreover, today at a time when there is something of a lull in the current "third wave" women's movement about where it should head and what issues it should fight around a quick read of the past, its struggles, its controversies and its victories seems in order as we commemorate Woman' History Month. A number of books that I review, and the present volume is one such example, concerning important issues for political leftists are older ones. I again provide the caveat that this book is a place to begin and reflects the knowledge and understandings of thirty years ago in the heat of the "second wave" women's movement. It is nevertheless a place to start.

It may seem unbelievable today, and probably even the most hidebound male chauvinist, that in the early part of the 19th century here is the democratic citadel of America that not only were the overwhelming majority of blacks disenfranchised but that was also the case with women. The well-known plight of most blacks as slaves, male and female, reduced them to chattel property with no rights that "a white man need respect." What is not so well-known is that as to property rights, access to the courts, education and most conditions of life the women of America had no rights that "a white male need respect". The struggle to turn this condition of servitude around is quite well detailed in Ms. Gurko's study.

In the early 19th century the role of women in politics, if any, was as an adjunct to men's interests. This was a period, particularly in the "Age of Jackson" when there were a plethora of reform movements led by men. Women centrally concerned themselves with the religious revival, temperance or anti-slavery agitation. The question of women's rights, as it emerged and became a separate issue strangely enough was, at least formally, initially led by men. Thus when the likes Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a couple of the well-studied and quoted heroines of this book, started their efforts those were in a subordinate role to men. The most striking aspect of this role, at least to this reviewer's eyes, was that the first feeble efforts at organizing woman's rights meetings had men as chairmen. By the time of Seneca Falls the `ladies' had gotten the hang of running their own meetings. Thanks, Elizabeth and friends.

Ms. Gurko has concentrated on two main themes in her study. First, a wide- ranging detailed look at the personalities who dominated the early days of the "first wave " of the woman's rights movement. She, thus, gives thorough and thoughtful snapshot biographic sketches of the above-mentioned Mott and Stanton. Needless to say she has words to say about the very pivotal figure of Mary Wollstonecraft as the 18th century forerunner of such efforts, as well. As the story unfold the towering figure of Susan B. Anthony and that of Lucy Stone come forth. Lesser time is spend acknowledging the pioneering efforts of the Grimke sisters, Margaret Fuller and other more episodic figures like Amelia Bloomer and the `notorious' Victoria Woodhull (who has the distinction of being the first woman candidate for president in 1872). Very little attention is paid to later figures who took up the final struggle to get the 19th Amendment passed, ratified and enacted in 1920. That is, in any case, seemingly was left for another author.

Her second theme centers on an analysis of the various strategies, issues, organizing methods and goals that the woman's rights movement fought fight around. This is the most interesting aspect of her study for it goes into some detail about the various controversies that swirled around the movement at the time. Those included such topics as the thorny one of the relationship of the woman's rights movement to the ant-slavery struggle and later to the quest for black (male) suffrage that caused one split in the movement. Whether males should or should not be excluded from the movement, for another... Whether there should be a one issue campaign on woman's suffrage or a whole range of issues of property rights, divorce, education and other forms of advancement that caused another split. Whether woman should `take to the streets' to win their program or depend on strictly parliamentary methods. Whether and in what way propaganda tools like newspapers, meeting and other actions should be undertaken. And, finally, whether and in what form alliances with other formations should be undertaken. (I am thinking here of the alliance with Frances Willard's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, WCTU, and other types of socially conservative organizations).

I have taken some pains to list the questions posed by the "first wave" of the women's movement in the 19th century because, in a general way, those political issues confronted the "second wave" women's movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's as well. To put the question politically, in short hand, the question of which way for the woman's movement-radical reconstruction or piecemeal reforms? Sound familiar? Questions of social reform take life of their own that apparently goes beyond time and place. One ironic (from today's perspective) series of anecdotes that kept coming up in the book was the question of the correct deportment of women in those days, from the question of `proper' dress to whether they should speak in public or travel alone and the like. While those are not, or should not, be issues today those who struggled in the "second wave" or are today struggling through the "third wave" should run through this little book to get a sense of history, woman's history of political struggle.