America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Eleanor Dare must have been either extraordinary adventurous or easily led..." (more)
Key Phrases: tobacco brides, plantation mistress, New York, African American, New England (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Well researched and well written, America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines is a powerful and important book. Starting with Pocahontas and Eleanor Dare (the first female colonist), this lively and fascinating history records the changes in American women's lives and the transformations in American society from the 1580s through the 2000s.

A history of the oft-marginalized sex must often draw from diaries and journals, which were disproportionally written by whites; as a result, African-American and Native American women are not as well represented as white in the earlier chapters of America's Women. However, Gail Collins writes about women of many races and ethnicities, and in fact provides more information about Native Americans, African-Americans, and Chinese, Jewish, and Italian immigrants than some general U.S. history books. She writes about rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, slave and slave-owner, athlete and aviatrix, president's wife and presidential candidate--and, of course, men and women. And some of these women--from the justly famous, like Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, to the undeservedly obscure, like Elizabeth Eckford and Senator Margaret Chase Smith--will not only make any woman proud to be a woman, they will make any American proud to be American.

An editor at the New York Times, Gail Collins has also written Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics and, with Dan Collins, The Millennium Book. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

The basis of the struggle of American women, postulates Collins (Scorpion Tongues), "is the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it." Today's issues-should women be in the fields, on the factory lines and in offices, or should they be at home, tending to hearth and family?-are centuries old, and Collins, editor of the New York Times's editorial page, not only expertly chronicles what women have done since arriving in the New World, but how they did it and why. Creating a compelling social history, Collins discovers "it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." These confusing messages are repeated over 400 years and are typified in the 1847 lecture of one doctor who stated that women's heads are "almost too small for intellect and just big enough for love" (ironically, around this time Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from an American medical school). The narratives are rich with direct quotes from both celebrated and common women, creating a clear picture of life in the 16th through 20th centuries, covering everyday (menstruation, birth control, cooking, cleanliness) and extraordinary (life during war, the abolition movement, fighting for the right to vote) topics. Beginning with Eleanor Dare and her 1587 sail to the colonies and ending with the 1970s, Collins's work is a fully accessible, and thoroughly enjoyable, primer of how American women have not only survived but thrived. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060185104
• ISBN-13: 978-0060185107
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #278,684 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America's Women in Bold Face and Plain, October 16, 2003

By A Customer

In writing the history of America's women Gail Collins tells us that " the pendulum swings wide." In this fascinating book Ms. collins lays out for us 400 years of the history of American women from 1587 to the mid-1970s. The pendulum swings not only through time but it also swings from North to South, from the very poor to the very rich, from the enfranchised to the disenfranchised, from the illiterate to the women of letters, from the vomen desperate to create a home to the women desperate to leave a home.

In the book the author presents us with the history of American women, both the obscure and the celebrated. Who, for example, knew that during World War II Maya Angelou's great ambition was to be a street car conductor? To accomplish her goal she had to spply and re-apply because of the great reluctance to hire a black woman as conductor.

Free from strident ideology Ms. Collins has written 452 pages of text (and 104 more of notes, bibliography and index) with impeccable even-handedness and tongue-in-cheek humor. As a result, reading the book is a highly enjoyable journey during which one meets our very often hardworking, often brave, sometimes extraordinary foremothers. We meet Hannah Dustan who, in 1697 as a captive of a local tribe, scalped her captors and returned home to a herone's welcome.

We meet the visionary Grimke sisters, Southern abolitionists, and we see how they transformed their extraordinary vision, seemingly having arisen from nowhere, into a powerful and far-reaching voice for Emancipation...and we meet many others. We see the pendulum swing of women from Dorothy May Bradford who in 1620 took one look at the wild, uncultivated Plymouth forest and jumped from the ship to Betty Friedan who in 1970 took one look at the thousands of women pouring onto the sidewalks of New York to demonstrate on behalf of themselves. Whereas Dorothy took to the water, Betty took to the street. Indeed, the pendulum has swung wide.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deft and Entertaining as Well as Informative, May 26, 2004

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Last September in Fast Company magazine, there was a brief commentary on this book which caught my eye. It cited a number of historical facts of which I had previously been unaware. For example:

1. In 1637 in Virginia, Ann Fowler was sentenced to 20 lashes after she suggested that Adam Thorowgood (a county justice) could "Kiss my arse." The state's General Assembly then ruled that husbands would no longer be liable for damages caused by their outspoken wives.

2. During the 18th century in Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley, impoverished single women with children were required to wear a P (for pauper) when appearing in public.

3. In the 19th century during Civil War era, about 80% of the reading public was female.

4. "In World War II, 1,000 women pilots flew 60 million miles -- mostly in experimental jets and planes grounded for safety reasons --and often towed targets past lines of inexperienced gunners. Then [they] would get arrested for leaving base wearing slacks after dark."

As Collins examines four centuries of historical material, much (most?) of it is probably unfamiliar to most readers. In process, she focuses on various "dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines" and their diverse contributions -- both positive and negative -- to the evolution of American history. Although Collins is renowned for her work as a journalist (editorial page editor of the New York Times), she displays in this volume all of the skills of an accomplished historian as well as those of a cultural anthropologist. Also, she's a terrific storyteller.

I wholly agree with Ellen Chesler (who reviewed this book in The New York Times) that "vast scholarship on women has dramatically reshaped academic thinking about American history....Curiously little of this scholarship has found its way into popular imagination, however, which is why Gail Collins' book is such a welcome development." My own hope is that America's Women will have substantial influence on the revision of curricula for U.S. history courses, especially those now required in public schools. Presumably Collins and Chesler share that hope. The objective would NOT be instruction driven by gender-specific values from feminist perspectives; rather, what Chesler characterizes as a "deft and entertaining" synthesis of historical materials within "a rich narrative."

Who knows? If American history courses properly acknowledge, indeed celebrate the achievements of women such as the Grimke sisters, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and Dolores Huerta, perhaps (just perhaps) several of the young women enrolled in those courses will be inspired to make their own contributions at a time when opportunities for America's women are greater than ever before.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally an interesting history of women, October 8, 2003

By A Customer

WOW! I love this book. It is enjoyable to read -- not all dry like so many history books. It is interesting and informative. I am using excerpts from the book in my Psychology of Women course. I've recommended this book to my friends and requested the library order it. Great read and I'm learning a lot.