Skip to main content

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

By
Seeing the anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention brought to mind the book reading we did on Mary Wollstonecraft back in the New York Times.

Foner devoted a lot of attention to the women's suffrage movement in his book on Reconstruction, noting the bitterness that seeped into the movement when black men were given the right to vote but not women. He focused primarily on Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Comments

  1. avrdsJuly 19, 2009 at 5:29 PM

    "The rise of women" and the influence of the women's sphere as a way to "regenerate" the public/male sphere is also something touched on by Lears. Seems like there was much social unrest during this period from all sides.

    He also, by the way, acknowledges the role of McKinley in the invasion/occupation of Cuba and the Philippines, although from my reading of Lears this idea of continuing with the nation's manifest destiny to occupy and control other countries and peoples was in the air.

    Not sure how that was influenced by the Civil War/Reconstruction -- but my guess is it was. It definitely was influenced by the need to expand markets and access to resources, which was modeled in the South.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TripplerJuly 21, 2009 at 4:34 AM

    ''black men were given the right to vote but not women''

    Interestingly, while black men legally had the right to vote earlier, it took the Civil Rights Act many decades later to insure that minorities would be guaranteed access to the voting booth.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NYT PerduJuly 21, 2009 at 6:02 AM

    Well, yeah, there was a difference between law and fact, but still, I get it how women who worked hard for abolition and emancipation for blacks might be a tad annoyed at lack of reciprocation, even if only theoretical, down the road. 50 years between black male suffrage and the vote for women of any color...and the ERA never did pass...and Mondale/Ferraro defeat...then there's Hillary.

    I can't figure out if it means race trumps gender or vice versa.

    ReplyDelete
  4. avrdsJuly 21, 2009 at 6:48 AM

    I think class trumps both to be honest, although I totally get what you're saying.

    But it is interesting that it took the Civil Rights movement to finally reconstruct the south and guarantee access to education and the vote -- what was that, almost another hundred years after the war?

    And we still don't have true gender or "racial" equality in this country (just watch a minute or two of the Southern Senators grilling Sotomayor) -- although I'm beginning to hope that we are finally getting there.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more