Mere equals : the paradox of educated women in the early American republic

Mere equals : the paradox of educated women in the early American republic

Paradox of educated women in the early American republic

Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2012.

xvii, 228 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

371.822 M167 2012

(OCoLC)783861914

Lucia McMahon narrates a story about how a generation of young women who enjoyed access to new educational opportunities made sense of their individual and social identities in an American nation marked by stark political inequality between the sexes ... In the new nation, a pioneering society, pushing westward and unmooring itself from established institutions, often enlisted women's labor outside the home and in areas that we would deem public. Yet, as a matter of law, women lacked most rights of citizenship and this subordination was authorized by an ideology of sexual difference. What women and men said about education, how they valued it, and how they used it to place themselves and others within social hierarchies is a highly useful way to understand the ongoing negotiation between equality and difference. In public documents, "difference" overwhelmed "equality," because the formal exclusion of women from political activity and from economic parity required justification. McMahon tracks the ways in which this public disparity took hold in private communications. By the 1830s, separate and gendered spheres were firmly in place. This was the social and political heritage with which women's rights activists would contend for the rest of the century--Book jacket.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-221) and index.
L2022M99

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