Woman, Church and State [Paperback]

Matilda Joslyn Gage (Author), Sally Roesch Wagner (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1998

INTRODUCTION BY GOEL, TO PUT IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT RELATIVE TO INDIA; REPRINT.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"a systematic, eminently readable volume [that] should enjoy ever-increasing use as a required text..." --Feminist Collections, Winter 2003 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Matilda Joslyn Gage was born on March 24, 1826, in Cicero, New York. An only child, she was raised in a household dedicated to antislavery. Her father, Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn, was a nationally known abolitionist, and the Joslyn home was a station on the Underground Railroad.

In 1845 she married merchant Henry Hill Gage, with whom she would have four children. They eventually settled in Fayetteville, New York, near Syracuse, and their home became a station on the Underground Railroad. Although occupied with both family and antislavery activities, Gage was drawn to a new cause; the women's suffrage movement. Her life's work would become the struggle for the complete liberation of women.

Unable to attend the first Woman's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, Gage attended and addressed the third national convention in Syracuse, New York, in 1852. She became a noted speaker and writer on woman's suffrage.

During the Civil War, Gage was an enthusiastic organizer of hospital supplies for Union soldiers. In 1862 she predicted the failure of any course of defense and maintenance of the Union that did not emancipate the slaves.

Gage, along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a founding member of the National Woman Suffrage Association and served in various offices of that organization (1869-1889). She helped organize the Virginia and New York state suffrage associations, and was an officer in the New York association for twenty years. From 1878 to 1881 she published the National Citizen and Ballot Box, the official newspaper of the NWSA.

In 1871 Gage was one of the many women nationwide who unsuccessfully tried to test the law by attempting to vote. When Susan B. Anthony successfully voted in the 1872 presidential election and was arrested, Gage came to her aid and supported her during her trial. In 1880 Gage led 102 Fayetteville women to the polls when New York State allowed women to vote in school districts where they paid their taxes.

During the 1870s Gage spoke out against the brutal and unfair treatment of Native Americans. She was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation and given the name Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi (Sky Carrier). Inspired by the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy's form of government, where "the power between the sexes was nearly equal," this indigenous practice of woman's rights became her vision.

Gage coedited with Stanton and Anthony the first three volumes of the six-volume THE HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE (1881-1887). She also authored the influential pamphlets WOMAN AS INVENTOR (1870), WOMAN'S RIGHTS CATECHISM (1871), and WHO PLANNED THE TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN OF 1862? (1880).

Discouraged with the slow pace of suffrage efforts in the 1880s, and alarmed by the conservative religious movement that had as its goal the establishment of a Christian state, Gage formed the Women's National Liberal Union in 1890, to fight moves to unite church and state. Her book WOMAN, CHURCH AND STATE (1893) articulates her views.

While Gage remained a supporter of woman's rights throughout her life, she spent her elder years concentrating on religious issues. A staunch supporter of the separation of church and state, she opposed the religious right's attempt to turn the United States into a Christian nation. She also concentrated on the church's role in creating and maintaining the oppression of women.

Gage died in Chicago, Illinois, on March 18, 1898, five days after suffering a stroke. Her lifelong motto appears on her gravestone in Fayetteville: "There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven; that word is Liberty." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 409 pages
• Publisher: Sky Carrier Pr; Anniversary edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880589273
• ISBN-13: 978-1880589274
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,466,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful history of the Christian Church's oppression of Women, January 2, 2006

By 

M. Johnson (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Woman, Church and State (Paperback)

Though written over a hundred years ago, this is a great historic work by a leading suffragette. She uses history to show where some of our societies current attitudes towards women come from. Much of this book is dedicated to the middle ages. The chapter on witches in Europe and the US was especially enlightning.

As a student of women's history, I was especially interested in the history of wives, our obsession with virginity and the corrupt rulers of the church.

Great book for anyone that enjoys reading about women's history or has an interest in the history of the church.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pivotal book and essential to anyone involved in gender studies, June 20, 2010

By 

L. Stoufer "Healer in training" (Denver, CO, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Woman, Church and State; A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages With Reminiscences of Matriarchate (Paperback)

I am looking for a hard-cover version of Woman, Church and State. I had one for years, loaned it to a fellow student and never got it back.

This book is essential to anyone studying feminism and general gender or ERA studies. It gives a clear history of the prevailing views of women in early US politics and marriage. The most surprising thing to me is just how many of the issues that were a priority in 1893, when the book was written, are still issues today. The glass-ceiling is still in place in many ways and in many industries.

I think this should be required reading for all high-school students, to give a historical view of the importance of equality--gender, racial and class equality. If the content seems harsh, it is important to remember that it was (and still is in many places) a matter of life and death to roughly 50% of the world's population.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential to any feminist herstory collection, January 20, 2003

By 

F. Orion Pozo "Orion Pozo" (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Woman, Church, and State (Classics in Women's Studies) (Paperback)

Originally published in 1893, this book is back in print for the first time in 30 years. It is a major feminist work of the Nineteenth Century that identifies the sources of women's oppression as the church and its offspring, the state.

With Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the three principle U.S. suffragists. Alarmed by the conservative religious movement of the time that tried to amend the Constitution to declare the U.S. a Christian state, Gage wrote this book to articulate her views that christianity was the oppressor of women.

In the first chapter called The Matriarchate, the author tells of the rights women had in pagan pre-christian times. She talks of the Mother-rule, that preceded Patriarchy. She then shows that christianity from its beginning has worked to undermine women's rights.

The following seven chapters outline the oppression of women in the west and its sources in first the church, and later in the state that developed its ruling principles from canon law. These chapters deal with Celibacy, Canon Law, Marquette (a term that Gage uses for jus primae noctis, the right of lords to the sexual favors of their peasant women), Witchcraft, Wives, Polygamy, and Work. These chapters are filled with examples from history as well as the contemporary 19th century. The documented examples of women's oppression at the hands of ministers of the church and the law in this section are an impressive collection that makes this book a valuable source for feminist herstory.

In the last two chapters, Gage looks at the church of her day and shows that it is still bogged down in the same dogma of women's oppression. She predicts a great revolution which will liberate women and give them equal rights with men in both religion and society. I am sure the women's movement of the 1970s with its emphasis on women's spirituality would have convinced her that she was right.