Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
by: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Published by: Vintage Books
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Reviewed by Debra Kiefat
In 1975 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich enrolled in a graduate seminar that focused on early American History. As a housewife, she was interested in the learning about the lives of women who stood behind the men who made history. In her first published article, ”˜Virtuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature 1668-1735,” she discusses how ordinary women lived their day-to-day lives in obscurity. The opening paragraph ended with the most celebrated statement in the world: Well-behaved women seldom make history.
Fast-forward 33 years and again Ms. Ulrich has written a compelling book about women who did not follow the status quo of how women were to behave. But first she traces the history of how the slogan “Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History” developed a life of it own, and when the word ”˜seldom’ was changed to ”˜rarely,’ thus becoming a part of pop culture transcending all generations. I have knew this statement, but not its origins.
Ms. Ulrich interweaves the lives of three celebrated authors who have made history by writing what are now considered to be the classics in Western Feminism. They are Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, Paris, France c. 1400; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More, Johnstown, New York c. 1825; and Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, London, England 1928. She discusses how they turned to history in order to make sense of their lives and how their works have impacted feminism and women’s rights.
She delves further by introducing Harriett Beecher Stowe, a courageous novelist who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, plus three runaway slaves, Harriett Powell, Harriett Tubman and Harriet Jacobs. Their extraordinary feats in their stand against slavery and its unrelenting violence further brings home why these heroines became icons when they laid the groundwork toward significant changes in the attitudes towards the rights of men and women, thus earning their place in history.
The character of all of these women introduced in ‘Well-Behaved Women Seldom make History’ was awe-inspiring for me. The fact that Ms. Ulrich simply reminded me that history is made when women do the unexpected was humbling when I look at my own life of status quo.
Armchair Interviews says: A wonderful and educational read.
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