NOTES

CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST COLONISTS

THE EXTREMELY BRIEF STORY OF VIRGINIA DARE

The story of the Roanoke voyage is constantly being reexamined by historians, although the basic facts about who went and how they arrived never change. It was told for the first time by Richard Hakluyt in his reports on voyages to the Virginia colony, and it will never lose its fascination unless, improbably, someone definitively proves what happened to the colonists.

The inaptly named… Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750, p. 41.

The wife of John Dunton… Paula Treckel, To Comfort the Heart: Women in Seventeenth-Century America, p. 47.

“overgrown with Melons…” Henry Burrage, Early English and French Voyages, p. 288.

The Dares and other English… There are almost as many studies on the Native Americans who were living at the time of the first settlements as there were tribes on the eastern seaboard, although few of them focus on the women. For an overview see chapter 3 of Carol Berkin’s First Generations.

“FEDD UPON HER TILL HE HAD CLEAN
DEVOURED ALL HER PARTES”

Sir Thomas Dale… Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown,” Journal of American History (June 1979), p. 25.

The Jamestown that greeted… Julia Cherry Spruill, Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies, p. 20 (footnote).

People gnawed on… Spruill, p. 5.

Anne Burras: Virginia Bernhard, “Men, Women and Children at Jamestown: Population and Gender in Early Virginia,” Journal of Southern History (November 1992), p. 616.

Temperance Flowerdew: See John Henry Yardley’s Before the Mayflower.

Pocahontas: My take on this somewhat mysterious figure is based, in main, on Paula Treckel’s To Comfort the Heart, pp. 58–61. For a full treatment of everything that’s known, or guessed, about Pocahontas, see Grace Steele Woodward in Three American Indian Women.

The bride-to-be did not confide… David Smits, “‘Abominable Mixture,’” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (April 1987), p. 177.

“IT IS NOT KNOWEN WHETHER
MAN OR WOMAN BE THE MOST NECESSARY”

There wasn’t much prospect… Roger Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America, p. 33.

“If any Maid or single…” Spruill, p. 15.

An even more enthusiastic… Spruill, p. 46.

In 1619, the Virginia House… Spruill, pp. 8–9.

“tobacco brides”: David Ransome, “Wives for Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly (January 1991), pp. 10–18.

In October 1618, a warrant… “Kidnapping Maidens, to Be Sold in Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (January 1899), pp. 228–33.

The danger of being dragged… The information in this section comes from William Hart Blumenthal’s Brides from Bridewell, pp. 58–102.

a study in one Maryland county showed… Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife,” William and Mary Quarterly (October 1977), pp. 548–49.

The legislature reasoned… Carol Berkin and Leslie Horowitz, Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives, p. 16.

The court records reveal… Ralph Semmes, Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland, pp. 96–108.

“What we unfortunat…” Nancy Cott et al., eds., Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American Women, p. 41.

“PERFORM THE MOST MANFUL EXERCISES AS WELL AS MOST MEN”

Alice Proctor: Spruill, pp. 233–35.

“Many of the Women…” Cott et al., Root of Bitterness, p. 41.

William Byrd described… Thompson, Women in Stuart England and Amerca, p. 105.

Margaret Brent… This section is taken from Mary Beth Norton’s Founding Mothers and Fathers, pp. 282–87, Julia Spruill’s Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies, pp. 236–41, and Lois Green Carr’s “Margaret Brent: A Brief History” in the Maryland State Archives.

“CONTRACTING HERSELF TO. SEVERAL MEN AT ONE TIME”

The niece of the novelist… Alice Morse Earle, Colonial Dames and Good Wives, p. 11.

“a nest of the most notorious…” Kirsten Fischer, “Common Disturbers of the Peace,” p. 15, in Beyond Image and Convention, Janet Lee Coryell et al., eds.

The average union ended… Carr and Walsh, “Planter’s Wife,” p. 552.

Women’s life expectancy… Berkin, First Generations, pp. 10–17.

One minister sued… Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America, p. 39.

Sarah Offley: Cynthia Kierner, Beyond the Household, pp. 11–12.

In 1624, Eleanor Spragg… Spruill, p. 151.

In 1687, William Rascow… Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America, p. 38.

The people who colonized… See Mary Beth Norton’s “Gender and Defamation in Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly (January 1987), pp. 37–38.

In some areas, a third… Carr and Walsh, “Planter’s Wife,” p. 551.

Ann Fowler: Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs, p. 95.

The Virginia General Assembly…K. Brown, p. 148.

“WHITE PEOPLE. ARE ENTIRELY
RUINED AND RENDERED MISERABLE”

Mary Johnson: Teresa Amott and Julie Matthaei, Race, Gender and Work, p. 143.

In Charleston…This section is based on Robert Olwell’s “Loose, Idle and Disorderly: Slave Women in the 18th Century Charleston Marketplace,” in More Than Chattel, David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds.

In Virginia, officials… Amott and Matthaei, p. 143.

“I FEAR THE POWER OF ENGLAND
NO MORE THAN A BROKEN STRAW”

Except where otherwise noted, this section is based on Susan Westbury’s “Women in Bacon’s Rebellion,” in Southern Women: Histories and Identities, Virginia Bernhard et al., eds.

Sarah Drummond, the wife… K. Brown, p. 166.

Sarah Grendon: Wilcomb Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, p. 109.

The female captives went down…Spruill, pp. 234–35.

Mrs. Grendon then admitted… Washburn, p. 127.

Sarah Drummond’s husband… Spruill, pp. 234–36.

“As I live, the old fool…” Mary Flournoy, Essays Historical and Critical, p. 21.

CHAPTER 2: THE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND

“HIS DEAREST CONSORT, ACCIDENTALLY FALLING OVERBOARD”

That little phrase is all Cotton Mather had to say about Dorothy May Bradford in his biography of William Bradford. It’s in chapter 1 of the second book of The Ecclesiastical History of New England, From Its First Planting in the Year 1620, Unto the Year of the Lord, 1698. Bradford himself wrote a history of the Plymouth Plantation, which tells about the voyage and the early settlement, but mentions Dorothy May not at all.

“NOT SO HUMBLE AND HEAVENLY AS IS DESIRED”

Except where otherwise noted, the information in this section comes from Lyle Koehler’s A Search for Power.

“Touching our government…” Letter of William Bradford and Isaac Allerton, American Historical Review 8 (1903), pp. 294–301.

When the residents of Chebacco… Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America, p. 106.

By the middle of the century… Roger Thompson, Sex in Middlesex, pp. 88–89.

Pennsylvania eventually gave women… Berkin and Horowitz, p. 99.

“PREACHES BETTER GOSPELL
THAN ANY OF YOUR BLACK-COATES”

Unless otherwise noted, the part of this section about Anne Hutchinson is based on Mary Beth Norton’s Founding Mothers and Fathers.

Within a year of her arrival… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 219.

“Preaches better Gospell…” Norton, p. 368.

“a woman of haughty…” G. J. Barker-Benfield and Catherine Clinton, eds., Portraits of American Women, p. 48.

Emboldened by her success… Another theory is that Hutchinson’s undoing came when she became weak from exhaustion, and stumbled into making the heretical admission that she believed herself to be in direct communication with God.

Reverend Cotton urged… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 226.

Once exiled… This paragraph is based on Koehler, A Search for Power, pp. 230–32, and Lying-In, by Richard and Dorothy Wertz, p. 22.

Mary Oliver of Salem: Koehler, A Search for Power, pp. 220–21.

Anne Eaton: Janet Wilson James, “Women in American Religious History: An Overview,” in Women in American Religious History, p. 32.

Lydia Wardell: Koehler, A Search for Power, pp. 251–52.

Susanna Hudson: Berkin, First Generations, pp. 95–96.

Anne Bradstreet… Ola Elizabeth Wilson’s biography in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 1, p. 223.

“CHOPPED INTO THE HEAD
WITH A HATCHET AND STRIPP. D NAKED”

Except when otherwise noted, this section is based on Laurel Ulrich’s Good Wives, and Women’s Captivity Narratives, edited by Kathryn Derounian-Stodola.

Elizabeth Tozier… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 429.

In 1682, Mary Rowlandson… Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America, p. 105.

“BY MY OWN INNOCENCE
I KNOW YOU ARE IN THE WRONG WAY”

The story of the Salem witch trials, which seems to be of perpetual fascination, has been examined more than any other part of the colonial experience. A good all-around, well-written description of what we know is Frances Hill’s A Delusion of Satan. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have done some of the most interesting research into the Salem defendants and their accusers, which they published in Salem Possessed. Boyer and Nissenbaum have also published a documentary record of the episode, Salem-Village Witchcraft. Carol Karlsen approaches the story from a feminist perspective in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman. Except when otherwise noted, this section is based on their books. The most recent important revisiting of the Salem legend is Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare. In it, Norton concluded that the trauma of the Indian wars was at the root of the hysteria.

The trouble began during the long winter of 1691–92… This story of Tituba’s fortune-telling is the way most histories of the Salem witch-hunt begin. In her book, Mary Beth Norton argues that the evidence it really happened is too shaky to be accepted, and she begins her own account with the affliction of the girls at the Parris house.

“little sorceries”… This remark, as quoted in Boyer and Nissenbaum’s Salem Possessed (p. 1), comes from Cotton Mather.

Tituba… Like most things about the Salem story, Tituba is subject to different interpretations. Most historians have identified her as a slave from the West Indies. Norton believes she was a Native American.

One observer reported… Bryan Le Beau, The Story of the Salem Witch Trials, p. 63.

But others described… Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, p. 24.

Cotton Mather had published a description… Le Beau, p. 42.

There were virtually no witch trials… Le Beau, p. 34.

Ann Hibbens: Karlsen, and John Demos, Entertaining Satan, pp. 87–88.

Sarah Good cried back… Le Beau, p. 171.

“He lies with the Indian squaws…” Le Beau, p. 141.

Cotton Mather and Margaret Rule: Le Beau, p. 221.

CHAPTER 3: DAILY LIFE IN THE COLONIES

“MY BASON OF WATER FROZE ON THE HEARTH”

Harriet Beecher Stowe described… Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, p. 135.

Anna Green Winslow: Alice Morse Earle, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, p. xvi.

“Night and morning were made fearful…” Elisabeth Garrett, At Home, p. 111.

There was at most only one real chair…David Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, p. 56.

“This day is forty years…” Nancy Cott et al., Root of Bitterness, pp. 61–62.

Elizabeth Saltonstall… Ulrich, Good Wives, pp. 74–75.

“FOR SHE HAS BEEN AND IS A GOOD WIFE TO ME”

Alice Morse Earle wrote her histories of everyday life in colonial New England more than a century ago, but they’re still in print and well worth reading. I used Home Life in Colonial Days as a reference for this section, except when otherwise noted.

the New England General Court ordered… Elaine Crane, Ebb Tide in New England, p. 101.

Martha Ballard: One of the recent classics on the colonial period is Laurel Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard.

A Maine author… Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, p. 92.

“The women in families…” Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Two Quaker Sisters, p. 37.

In 1664, Elizabeth Perkins… Ulrich, Good Wives, p. 98.

When Ensign Hewlett… Ulrich, Good Wives, p. 46.

“WOMEN CHOOSE RATHER TO HAVE
A THING DONE WELL THAN HAVE IT OFTEN”

On matters of sexuality in American history, I’ll refer again and again to Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America by John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman. Another very readable book on sexuality is The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present, by Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner.

Cotton Mather urged… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 32.

A third of the accused… Norton, Founding Mothers, p. 78.

New Englanders who survived… Richard Archer, “New England Mosaic,” William and Mary Quarterly (October 1990), p. 497.

Daniel Ela… Berkin, p. 31.

One man who had beaten… Koehler, A Search for Power, 140–41.

If a first child… Ulrich, Good Wives, p. 31.

But between 1720 and 1740… John Demos, “Families in Colonial Bristol,” William and Mary Quarterly (January 1968), p. 56.

A visitor to New York… Treckel, pp. 109–10.

Mary Latham: D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 12.

New Haven justices dismissed… Norton, Founding Mothers, p. 76.

Men who read books about sex… Marsh and Ronner, p. 15.

Many couples believed… Marsh and Ronner, p. 13.

but having sex too often… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 79.

“THIS MIGHT POSSIBLY BE THE LAST TRIAL OF THIS SORT”

Elizabeth Drinker: The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, p. 216.

In the malaria-ridden… David F. Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, p. 65.

Benjamin Franklin: Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days, pp. 11–12.

a visitor to Charlestown… Spruill, Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies, p. 46.

Childbirth was a communal affair… My information on childbirth is drawn in the main from Laurel Ulrich’s Good Wives and A Midwife’s Tale.

Samuel Sewall: Sewall, The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall, p. 9.

Midwives were a critical… Claire Elizabeth Fox, “Pregnancy, Childbirth and Early Infancy in Anglo-American Culture, 1675–1830,” doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1966.

One popular physician: Berkin and Horowitz, p. 19.

“IF I ONLY KNIT MY BROW SHE WILL CRY”

Samuel Sewall: Sewall, The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall, p. 11.

Sewall felt… Sewall, p. 2.

In 1740 a virulent… Nancy Dye and Daniel Smith, “Mother Love and Infant Death,” Journal of American History (September 1986), pp. 332–35.

Fanny Kemble: Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, p. 99.

The Puritan minister John Robinson… Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament, p. 37.

Esther Burr: Greven, p. 35.

Madam Coleman: Alice Morse Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days, pp. 101–3.

Susan Blunt… Larkin, p. 34.

There’s a pathetic story… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 190.

Mrs. Walker: Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 115.

Caroline Howard Gilman: Caroline Gilman, Reflections of a Southern Matron, p. 56.

“NOT HAVING BEEN WETT ALL OVER
ATT ONCE, FOR 28 YEARS PAST”

Some excellent books about everyday life through American history are, fittingly, in the Everyday Life in America series. The Reshaping of Everyday Life by Jack Larkin is one of the best. This section is deeply indebted to it, as well as “The Early History of Cleanliness in America” by Richard and Claudia Bushman, published in The Journal of American History, March 1988, and a doctoral dissertation by Elizabeth Claire Fox, “Pregnancy, Childbirth and Early Infancy in Anglo-American Culture.” Anyone who wants to get better acquainted with Elizabeth Drinker, one of the best journal-keepers of her era, can read The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, edited by Elaine Forman Crane.

In 1798, Elizabeth Drinker… Bushman and Bushman, p. 1214.

At the beginning of the nineteenth… Larkin, p. 163.

“The women are pitifully…” Hawke, p. 72.

In Northampton… Fox, pp. 55–56.

Moreau de St. Mèry…Moreau de St. Mèry’s American Journey, p. 297.

It was a practice… Fox, pp. 244–47.

Lewis Miller, writing… Larkin, p. 161.

“STRANGERS ARE SOUGHT AFTER WITH GREEDINESS”

Julia Cherry Spruill is another one of the pioneer women historians, born early enough to have been a supporter of suffrage in her teens. When she was a faculty wife at the University of North Carolina, she enrolled in a graduate history seminar, where she discovered that there had been almost no research on southern women. From this came Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies, which is still one of the most terrific books on women in the South ever written. This section and a great many sections to come are indebted to it.

“Strangers are sought…” Earle, Home Life, p. 396.

A circuit judge… Spruill, pp. 109–10.

They were a chance… Larkin, p. 298.

Carving became… Spruill, p. 70.

CHAPTER 4: TOWARD THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

“TO SPEND. WHAT OTHERS GET”

Except where otherwise noted, this section is based on Jeanne Boydston’s Home and Work: Housework, Wages and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic.

Hetty Shepard: Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 339.

While he was traveling… Spruill, p. 41.

Women, Cotton Mather told… Boydston, p. 26.

In New Amsterdam… Berkin, pp. 79–87.

A well-known Puritan… William Gouge, as quoted by Ruth Bloch in “American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of the Moral Mother,” Feminist Studies (June 1978), p. 107.

“LEFT TO PONDER ON A STRIP OF CARPET”

Constance Schulz has a good biography of Eliza Pinkney in Portraits of American Women, pp. 65–81, edited by Barker-Benfield and Clinton. Eliza’s letters are still in print, with an introduction by her descendant, in The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739–1763.

“I have frequently seen…” Spruill, p. 71.

Caroline Gilman… Gilman, Recollections of a Southern Matron, pp. 252–56.

“THEY LACED HER UP, THEY STARVED HER DOWN”

“They braced my aunt…” Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days, p. 109.

When upper-class… Ulrich, p. 115.

Nicholas Culpepper… Berkin and Horowitz, p. 19.

Lucinda Lee… Spruill, pp. 105–7.

Dr. William Buchan… Fox, p. 73.

shoes with very high heels… See Alice Earle’s Two Centuries of Costumes, chapter 13.

“Some of the ladies…” Carolyn Shine, “Dress for the Ohio Pioneers,” in Dress in American Culture, edited by Patricia Cunningham and Susan Lab, pp. 43–45.

a Boston journal in 1755… Eric John Dingwall, The American Woman, p. 51.

Cotton Mather, naturally… Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 354.

“MISERABLE OLD AGE AND HELPLESS INFANCY”

Except where otherwise noted, this section is based on Gary Nash’s “The Failure of Female Factory Labor in Colonial Boston,” Labor History (Spring 1979).

The maximum weekly rate… Berkin, p. 153.

Judith Stevens… Berkin and Horowitz, p. 110.

“A VERY EXTRAORDINARY FEMALE SLAVE”

There are several different editions of Phillis Wheatley’s poems in print. This section is based on a biography by Charles Scruggs in Portraits of American Women, Barker-Benfield and Clinton, eds.; as well as the entries in Notable American Women, James and James, eds.; and Black Women in America, Darlene Clark Hine, ed.

“WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH POLITICKS?”

My two favorite books about American women in the Revolutionary War are Linda Kerber’s Women of the Republic and Mary Beth Norton’s Liberty’s Daughters.

Getting the cooperation… Kerber, p. 37.

half of all homes had tea sets… Larkin, p. 174.

Susan Boudinot… Kerber, Woman of the Republic, p. 39.

In 1774, fifty-one women… Kierner, pp. 81–82.

A much-quoted poem… Kerber, Women of the Republic, p. 38.

The Virginia Gazette announced… Kierner, p. 83.

Eliza Pinckney…Pinckney, p. xxiii.

Some women were raped… Berkin, p. 184.

A North Carolina man… Kierner, p. 89.

“We are in no ways…” Abigail Adams to her husband, Sept. 20, 1775. As quoted in Kerber, p. 67.

“And such is the distress…” Abigail Adams to her husband, Sept. 8, 1775, in Charles Francis Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams, p. 124.

In November 1775… Adams, p. 124.

In the summer of 1777… Rosemary Keller, Patriotism and the Female Sex, p. 118.

one South Carolina man claimed… Kierner, p. 95.

Edmund Burke told the British… I found this quote from the Nov. 6, 1776, debate in the House of Commons in Sara Evans’s Born for Liberty. It was first noted by historian Linda Kerber, but neither Kerber nor anyone else appears to have ever found any other references to the woman who burned down New York. One letter written from New York reported: “The first Incendiary who fell into the Hands of the Troops was a Woman, provided with Matches and Combustibles; but that her Sex availed her little, for without Ceremony she was tossed into the Flames.” But other letter-writers named other suspects. (See The Iconography of Manhattan by I. N. Phelps Stokes, Vol. 5. pp. 1020–26.)

Deborah Sampson Gannett: Elizabeth Evans, Weathering the Storm, pp. 303–34.

“Molly Pitcher”: Holly Mayer, Belonging to the Army, p. 21.

Margaret Corbin… Mayer, pp. 50, 144.

Letters to husbands… Keller, pp. 108–14.

Ann Gwinnett… Kerber, Women of the Republic, p. 79.

“Tho a female…” S. Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 48.

Thomas Jefferson wrote… E. Evans, p. 5.

One of the era’s most quoted… Abigail Adams, March 31, 1776, in L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., The Book of Abigail and John, p. 121.

Adams’s response… John Adams, April 14, 1776, in Butterfield et al., eds., p. 122.

“WE MAY SHORTLY EXPECT TO SEE THEM TAKE THE HELM. OF GOVERNMENT”

Except where noted, this section is based on Edward Raymond Turner’s “Women’s Suffrage in New Jersey, 1790–1807,” Smith College Studies in History (October 1915).

In 1797, during… Marion Thompson Wright, “The Early Years of the Republic,” Journal of Negro History (April 1948), p. 173.

CHAPTER 5: 1800–1860

“MAN IS STRONG—WOMAN IS BEAUTIFUL”

One valuable book about this era is The Feminization of American Culture, by Ann Douglas.

Sarah Josepha Hale… Nancy Woloch has an excellent section on Hale in Women and the American Experience. An interesting biography of Hale was published by Ruth Finley in 1931. A good shorter biography, by Paul Boyer, is in Notable American Women, Edward James and Janet Wilson James, eds.

“not to win fame…” Woloch, p. 138.

Harper’s Magazine estimated… Woloch, p. 136.

Its publisher boasted… Woloch, p. 116.

“Our men are sufficiently…” Douglas, Feminization of American Culture, p. 57.

When Mrs. Hale noticed… Glenna Matthews, “Just a Housewife,” p. 71.

qualities of the True Woman… In 1966, Barbara Welter published an essay on “The Cult of True Womanhood” in American Quarterly. Her description of how the early-nineteenth-century mass media—and middle-class society—viewed women was, and still is, one of the most influential pieces of writing on this period. In the spring of 2002, the Journal of Women’s History published a restrospective on it.

“Man is strong…” Boydston, pp. 142–43.

“The majority of women…” Woloch, pp. 127–28

“True feminine genius…” Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” p. 160.

she had to suffer in silence… Douglas, Feminization of American Culture, p. 46.

In the bust of 1818… Celia Morris Eckhardt, Fanny Wright, p. 46.

when the panic of 1837… Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic, p. 294.

The railroads kept having wrecks… Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience, p. 101.

“IN DANGER OF BECOMING PERFECT RECLUSES”

Anyone interested in this section should read Mary P. Ryan’s Women in Public. The observations from Frances Trollope should make it clear that Domestic Manners of Americans is still a great read, almost 200 years after it was written.

Frances Trollope reported from Cincinnati… Trollope, p. 60.

“Staid in…” Ryan, Women in Public, p. 24.

“She has a head…” Wertz and Wertz, p. 58.

Complaining about the constant presence… Trollope, p. 70.

“This darkness…” Trollope, p. 210.

“I hardly know…” Trollope, p. 18.

A Mrs. Hall… Larkin, p. 168.

Mrs. Trollope attended… Trollope, pp. 176–77.

“INITIATED INTO THE ARTS AND MYSTERIES OF THE WASH TUB”

This section, and sections to come, are indebted to three wonderful biographies: Joan Hedrick’s Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, Carolyn Karcher’s First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child, and Kathryn Kish Sklar’s Catharine Beecher: A Study in Domesticity.

“Oh, if we only…” Matthews, p. 23.

published as The American Frugal Housewife … Child’s housekeeping guide is still in print today.

“written for the lower…” Karcher, pp. 133–35.

“wandering like a trunk…” Hedrick, p. 390.

“initiated into…” Catharine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, p. 55.

“HOW COULD I TELL SHE WAS GOING TO BE SO FAMOUS!”

Some of the popular women’s novels of the pre–Civil War period are in print today. They are generally rather heavy going; one of the most accessible to modern women might be Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall. A number of scholars have done the job of reading them for us, however—most recently Nina Baym in Women’s Fiction, a very good guide to both the books and the period.

The Lamplighter, the novel… Nina Baym, in the introduction to The Lamplighter, p. ix.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose writings… Hedrick, pp. 239–40.

was estimated to have “245 tear flows”… Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties, p. 56.

Nathaniel Willis: Pattee, pp. 52–53.

“I love everybody”… Douglas, p. 206.

“I observe that feminine…” Pattee, p. 70.

“My mother, then a loom-tender…” Pattee, p. 53.

“INTEMPERANCE AMONG THE MEN
AND LOVE OF DRESS AMONG THE WOMEN”

Anyone interested in this section should read Lori Ginzberg’s Women and the Work of Benevolence.

The Advocate of Female Reform called… Ryan, Women in Public, p. 100.

When a young man… Barbara Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity, p. 94.

Louisa May Alcott: Ginzberg, p. 58.

A refuge for prostitutes… Ryan, Women in Public, pp. 101–2.

One member of… Anne Boylan, “Women in Groups,” Journal of American History (December 1984), p. 504.

Maria Burley… Christine Stansell, City of Women, p. 71.

“You cannot imagine…” Ginzberg, p. 76.

“STANDING UP WITH BARE-FACED IMPUDENCE”

When Harriet Beecher… Hedrick, p. 238.

Mary Ann Duff… Claudia Johnson, American Actress: Perspectives on the Nineteenth Century, p. 3.

William Wood… Johnson, p. 8.

Wood’s wife survived not only… Johnson, p. 23.

In 1840, when factory girls… Johnson, pp. 54–56.

Fanny Wright: Unless otherwise noted, the information on Fanny Wright comes from Celia Morris Eckhardt’s Fanny Wright: Rebel in America.

Mrs. Trollope said her most outrageous… Trollope, p. 203.

One of Brown’s biographers noted… Elizabeth Cazden’s Antoinette Brown Blackwell, p. 62.

“OUR SIS CAME OFF WITH FLYING COLOURS”

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania… Wilson, p. 153.

Dorothea Dix: See Dorothy Clarke Wilson’s Stranger and Traveler: The Story of Dorothea Dix.

She was on board… Thomas Brown’s Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer, p. 136.

Margaret Fuller: Bell Gale Chevigny has a biography of Margaret Fuller in Barker-Benfield and Clinton’s Portraits of American Women, and Ann Douglas has a very good section on Fuller in The Feminization of American Culture. Those who want to know more about her should find The Portable Margaret Fuller, edited by Mary Kelley.

“Humanity is divided…” Barker-Benfield and Clinton, eds., p. 193.

Antoinette Brown… See Cazden.

Elizabeth Blackwell… Blackwell left her own autobiography of sorts, a collection of letters she called Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women.

“The idea of winning…” Malcolm Sanders Johnston, Elizabeth Blackwell and Her Alma Mater, p. 10.

“A hush fell over the class…” Jordan Brown, Elizabeth Blackwell, Physician, p. 52.

“Our sis came off…” Johnston, p. 24.

“Who will ever guess…” Blackwell, p. 198.

Before she married… Matthews, pp. 58–59.

“APPEAR TO BE AVERSE TO WHAT SHE INWARDLY DESIRES”

Henry Bedlow: To read more about the Bedlow trial, see Christine Stansell’s City of Women and Marybeth Hamilton’s essay, “The Life of a Citizen in the Hands of a Woman,” in New York and the Rise of Capitalism, published by the New-York Historical Society in the spring of 1983.

“Any woman who is not…” Hamilton, “The Life of a Citizen,” p. 233–34.

“in the hands of a woman…” Hamilton, “The Life of a Citizen,” p. 246.

Daniel Sickles… I wrote about the Sickles trial in Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics.

“THE CHANCE THAT IN MARRIAGE SHE WILL DRAW A BLOCKHEAD”

Thomas Jefferson… Boorstin, p. 187.

Sara Hale enthusiastically… Woloch, p. 110.

In a demonstration of Hale’s commitment… Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” p. 167.

Elizabeth Buffum Chace… Chace and Lovell, Two Quaker Sisters, pp. 23–24.

Thomas Gallaudet… Keith Melder, Beginnings of Sisterhood, pp. 24–25.

One superintendent wrote… Jackie Blount, Destined to Rule the Schools, p. 19.

In 1838, Connecticut paid… Melder, p. 25.

In Ohio, the Superintendent… Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, p. 123.

By 1870… Catherine Clinton, The Other Civil War, p. 46.

“They are the natural…” Melder, p. 24.

“They’ll be educating the cows…” Douglas, Feminization of American Culture, p. 59.

Although there have been… Barbara Welter, “Anti-Intellectualism and the American Woman,” Mid-America (October 1966), p. 264.

Margaret Fuller… Douglas, Feminization of American Culture, p. 58.

In Petersburg… Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg, p. 173.

Catharine Beecher’s first… Vivian Hopkins, Prodigal Puritan: A Life of Delia Bacon, p. 20.

“Dear Madam”… Bernard Wishy, The Child and the Republic, p. 14.

“THEY WEAR OUT FASTER THAN ANY OTHER CLASS OF PEOPLE”

A quarter of the native-born women… Maris Vinovskis, “The Female School-Teacher in Ante-Bellum Massachusetts,” Journal of Social History (March 1977), p. 333.

Maria Waterbury… Susan Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed, p. 82.

A special commission in Connecticut… Boorstin, p. 44.

“Went over to make…” Many of these anecdotes are taken from Polly Welts Kaufman’s very interesting Women Teachers on the Frontier, p. 140.

“Teaching before dependence…” Mary Elizabeth Massey, Women in the Civil War, p. 113.

A would-be teacher… Kaufman, pp. 12–34.

Elizabeth Blackwell… Blackwell, p. 17.

Augusta Hubbell… Kaufman, pp. 158–59.

In the South during… Massey, p. 114.

“I AM LIVING ON NO ONE”

By the 1820s, New England… Mary Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 105.

“Don’t I feel independent!”… Woloch, pp. 142–43.

Harriet Hanson…Claudia Bushman, A Good Poor Man’s Wife, pp. 13–14.

In 1833, when President Jackson… Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, Loom and Spindle, p. 50.

A third of the female workers… Bushman, p. 41.

Eliza Hemingway: Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, America’s Working Women, p. 65.

Some women kept…Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham, p. 406.

In 1845, the New York… Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, p. 65.

Millworker Mary Paul… Thomas Dublin, Farm to Factory, p. 136.

Elizabeth Sullivan Stuart… Faye Dudden, Serving Women, p. 66.

“OH LIZZIE! THOU WILL MAKE US RIDICULOUS!”

This section is based on Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s autobiography, Eighty Years and More, and Elisabeth Griffith’s biography of Stanton, In Her Own Right.

“As Mrs. Mott and I…” Stanton, pp. 82–83.

“There is such a struggle…” Stanton, p. 137.

“with such vehemence…” Stanton, p. 148.

“Oh Lizzie!…” Alma Lutz, Created Equal, p. 46.

“My only excuse…” E. Griffith, p. 59.

CHAPTER 6: LIFE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

“A TERRIBLE DECAY OF FEMALE HEALTH ALL OVER THE LAND”

My favorite essay on this subject is Ann Douglas’s “The Fashionable Diseases” in Clio’s Consciousness Raised, edited by Mary Hartman and Lois Banner.

Catharine Beecher… Woloch, p. 129; Page Smith, Daughters of the Promised Land, pp. 133–35.

by 1840, their life expectancy… Carl Degler’s At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present, p. 28.

The nineteenth century was the first time…Ann Dally makes this point about the “chronic sufferer” in her book Women Under the Knife.

The number of doctors increased… Larkin, p. 87.

“Let the reader imagine…” Caroll Smith-Rosenberg’s Disorderly Conduct, p. 200.

One professor of medicine thought… Douglas in Hartman and Banner, p. 3.

Tuberculosis, or consumption: Anyone interested in this subject should read Sheila Rothman’s Living in the Shadow of Death. The quote from Dr. Sweetser is on p. 16; Mrs. Fiske, p. 120.

In The Young Lady’s Friend … Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” p. 164.

one was so large… Dally, p. 130.

Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach… Dally, pp. 23–24.

J. Marion Sims: The saga of Dr. Sims is told in his own autobiography and from a different perspective in Dally’s Women Under the Knife. For a third view, see Diana Scully’s “From Natural to Surgical Event” in Pamela Eakins’s The American Way of Birth.

Jane Todd Crawford… Dally, pp. 8–19.

Both Harriet Beecher Stowe… Hedrick, p. 175.

A famous English gynecologist… Hartman and Banner, p. 4.

Salmon P. Chase… Wertz and Wertz, p. 68.

It’s no wonder that… A brief overview of the health reformers of the era can be found in the introduction to Susan Cayleff’s Wash and Be Healed. Sylvester Graham claimed… Mary P. Ryan’s The Empire of the Mother, p. 28.

Harriet Beecher Stowe spent… Cayleff, pp. 143–44.

“AFRAID OF NOTHING SO MUCH AS GROWING STOUT”

On the issue of women’s body image throughout history, I’ve relied on Lois Banner’s American Beauty more than any other book.

William Baxter… Banner, p. 54.

Harriet Beecher Stowe theorized… Banner, p. 54.

the corset: Anyone who wants to know a great deal more about the history of corsets should consult Valerie Steele’s The Corset.

A southern woman wrote… Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 99.

“We in America…” Banner, p. 47.

“They never wear…” Trollope, p. 234.

“Remember…not to go out…” Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 100.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton… Stanton describes her love affair with the bloomer outfit in chapter 13 of her autobiography.

Cady Stanton, whose figure… Banner, p. 97.

“ONE OF THE BEST OBSTETRICIANS OF HIS TIME…WAS BLIND”

There are a lot of excellent studies of the history of childbirth in America, but my favorite is Lying-In by Richard and Dorothy Wertz. This section relies heavily on their research, along with the works cited below

In Philadelphia, twenty-one women… Catherine Scholten’s “On the Importance of the Obstetrick Art” in William and Mary Quarterly (July 1977), p. 434.

in 1840 at Bellevue… Janet Carlisle Bogdan’s “Aggressive Intervention and Mortality” in Eakins, p. 83.

William Dewees… Judith Walzer Leavitt, “‘Science’ Enters the Birthing Room,” Journal of American History (September 1983), p. 286.

In 1833 in Boston… Wertz and Wertz, pp. 68–69.

A Virginia doctor… Wertz and Wertz, p. 97.

Dr. Thomas Denman… Scholten, p. 443.

“I confess…” Wertz and Wertz, p. 33.

When Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes… Finley, p. 103.

“MARRIED PERSONS WILL READILY UNDERSTAND
THE NATURE OF THE TOPICS”

Except where noted, this section is based on Janet Farrell Brodie’s fascinating Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America.

by the end of the nineteenth century… Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, p. 48.

In 1840, Priscilla Cooper Tyler… Brodie, p. 31.

But early American recipe books… Baxandall and Gordon, p. 13.

“The Portuguese…” Gordon, pp. 53–54.

One New York firm advertised… Brodie, p. 70.

Frederick Hollick… Brodie, pp. 112–17.

Lester and Lizzie Ward… James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue, pp. 30–31.

“Female Physician in the two…” Gordon, p. 54.

In real life, Madame Restell… Seymour Mandelbaum’s biography of

Ann Lohman in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 2, pp. 424–45.

“TOO SPARING IN THEIR USE OF WATER”

The two main sources of information about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cleanliness in this book are the Bushmans’ “The Early History of Cleanliness” and Suellen Hoy’s Chasing Dirt. The best analysis of how American women handled the problem of menstruation through history is Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s The Body Project.

Lucy Larcom… Larcom, A New England Girlhood, p. 168.

William Alcott… Hoy, p. 24.

The girls at the Euphradian Academy… Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 133.

By 1860 there were only about 4,000… Bushman and Bushman, pp. 1225–26.

“Females, with all…” The American Lady’s Medical Pocket-Book, p. 43.

The idea of washing… Cayleff, p. 37.

“The loss of my teeth…” Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household, pp. 4, 12, 27.

The most important function… Brumberg, p. 37.

At the very end of the nineteenth… Brumberg, p. xxvii.

“BEAT IT THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR”

This section and other pieces of this book that deal with housekeeping rely heavily on Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s More Work for Mother.

“To be sweet, nutritious…” Priscilla Brewer, From Fireplace to Cookstove, p. 98.

In her recipe book… Ellen Plante, Women at Home in Victorian America, p. 114.

In 1850, a Philadelphia… Matthews, p. 12.

“Take eight eggs…” Cowan, pp. 52–53.

Martha Coffin Wright… Boydston, p. 107.

By 1830, about a quarter… Larkin, pp. 139–44.

“Who has not…” Gilman, Recollections of a Housekeeper, pp. 62–63.

“It is all shoreless…” Hedrick, p. 186.

Writing to her sister-in-law… Hoy, p. 10.

The first brooms… Larkin, p. 131.

In Chicago in 1844… Boorstin, pp. 145–46.

“CHILDREN ARE KILLED BY THE MANNER
IN WHICH THEY ARE DRESSED”

When she was five, Helen Hunt… Rothman, p. 94.

One physician announced that… Dye and Smith, p. 344.

The influential Dr. William Dewees… Wishy, p. 40.

An 1833 guide used by… Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 145.

“FADED AT TWENTY-THREE”

A Spaniard, Domingo Sarmiento… Banner, p. 80.

Alexis De To queville… De To queville, Democracy in America, pp. 233–35.

Another visitor… P. Smith, pp. 87–88.

In the 1840s, the Young Ladies…” Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband, pp. 15–28.

An estimated 40 percent… Chambers-Schiller, pp. 27–28.

In 1850, the governor… Chambers-Schiller, pp. 32–33.

CHAPTER 7: AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN

For much of our history, when black Americans were interviewed by social scientists or historians, their answers were transcribed phonetically, complete with the dropping of the g in words like something and the t in words like don’t. The idea was to give a feeling for the rhythms of their speech, but I’ve always found it distracting. Since whites are generally given the benefit of having their words recorded in regular English, I’ve treated the quotes from African Americans the same way throughout this book. No words were changed in the process.

Anyone interested in the history of women in slavery should read two books that actually aren’t about women in particular: Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom and Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll. However, the one book I’ve relied on most for the entire history of African American women is Jacqueline Jones’s Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow.

“THE WOMEN WERE THE PLUCKIEST”

“They are the ones who work…” John Thornton, “Slave Trade and Family Structures,” in Women and Slavery in Africa, Claire Robertson and Martin Klein, eds., p. 44.

“Women are scarce…” Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, p. 167.

One ship, acquiring…Black Voyage, Thomas Howard, ed., pp. 135–36.

In 1721, an African woman… Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?

Female Slaves in the Plantation South, pp. 63–64.

Edward Manning… Howard, ed., p. 166.

Samuel Hall… John Blassingame, The Slave Community, p. 25.

“I NEVER SEE HOW MY MAMMY STAND SUCH HARD WORK”

During the Depression one of the many public works projects underwritten by the federal government, the Federal Writers Project, dispatched workers through seventeen states to interview former slaves. Those interviews, added to ones conducted earlier by researchers from black colleges, saved the voices of an entire people and era. Everyone who cares about American history should bless that project. Those interviews are now included in dozens of books, a number of which are noted below. Others can be found in the bibliography. My own particular favorite is Remembering Slavery, edited by Ira Berlin et al.

Katy Ferguson: Black Women in White America, Gerda Lerner, ed., p. 76.

At a time when a reasonably productive… Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, p. 15.

“The women plowed…” John Blassingame, Slave Testimony, p. 656.

Bob Ellis… Jones, p. 31.

“A child raised…” Wilma King, “Suffer With Them Till Death,” in More Than Chattel, David Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., p. 147.

The Plantation Manual advised… White, p. 100.

“I WANT TO BE IN HEAVEN SITTING DOWN”

Angelina Grimke…Black Women in White America, Gerda Lerner, ed., p. 21.

The image of the slave…Bullwhip Days, James Mellon, ed., p. 42.

“If Marse catch…” Mellon, ed., p. 383.

Milla Granson… Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope, p. 74.

“IT WAS FREEDOM BEFORE SHE COME OUT OF THAT CAVE”

“They’d dig a hole…” Remembering Slavery, Ira Berlin et al., eds., p. 91.

“Husbands always went…” Berlin et al., eds., p. 140.

Leah Garrett… Berlin et al., eds., pp. 23–24.

Salomon Oliver… Berlin et al., eds., p. 49.

“WE MADE THE GALS HOOPS OUT OF GRAPEVINES”

In the 1930s, Violet Guntharpe…Before Freedom When I Can Just Remember, Belinda Hurmence, ed., pp. 5–6.

When Fanny Kemble urged… Kemble, p. 100.

A white Georgian…To Toil the Livelong Day, Carol Groneman and Mary Beth Norton, eds., pp. 79–80.

“Sunday clothes was dyed…” Genovese, p. 555.

“That sure was hard living…” Fox-Genovese, p. 165.

A former slave in Nashville… Tera Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom, p. 12.

Katie Phoenix… Berlin et al., eds., p. 214.

“Slaves lived just…” Weevils in the Wheat, Charles Perdue et al., eds., p. 49.

“All week they wear…” Fox-Genovese, p. 219.

“Couldn’t spring up…” Jones, p. 34.

“A CHANCE HERE THAT WOMEN HAVE NOWHERE ELSE”

Slave women, the well-to-do… Gutman, pp. 63–64.

Priscilla McCullough… Gutman, p. 70.

One black preacher in Kentucky… Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, p. 72.

“We was married…” Berlin et al., eds., pp. 123–25.

“Didn’t have to ask…” Berlin et al., eds., p. 126.

Hannah Chapman… Jones, p. 37.

Mattie Jackson… Gutman, p. 287.

Charles Ingram… Joan Cashin, A Family Venture, p. 50.

“THE GREATEST ORATOR I EVER HEARD WAS A WOMAN”

Cornelius Garner… Gutman, p. 148.

One historian estimated… Mintz and Kellogg, p. 70.

“Oh, my mother!…” Mary Ryan, Six Women’s Slave Narratives, p. 5.

Sojourner Truth’s parents… Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol, pp. 12–13, 39.

John Randolph… Genovese, p. 456.

When Delcia Patterson… Berlin et al., eds., pp. 42–43.

William Massie… Genovese, p. 453.

“One morning we is…” Berlin et al., eds., p. 157.

Laura Clark: Cashin, p. 55.

nearly 20 percent said… Mintz and Kellogg, pp. 69–70.

“I love you just as well…” Gutman, pp. 6–7.

In 1863, an ex-slave… Gutman, p. 149.

“I WAS TOO YOUNG TO UNDERSTAND RIGHTLY MY CONDITION”

But their infants died… King in Gaspar and Hine, eds., p. 150.

More than a third died… Mintz, p. 72.

Octavia George… Berlin et al., eds., p. 114.

“This was the happiest…” Ryan, Six Women’s Slave Narratives, p. 1.

Ellen Betts… Mellon, p. 381.

Leah Garrett… Berlin et al., eds., p. 23.

Angelina Grimke…Black Women in White America, Lerner, ed., p. 20.

Young Henrietta King’s… Berlin et al., eds., pp. 20–21.

“A SAD EPOCH IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL”

Fannie Berry treasured… King in Gaspar and Hine, eds., pp. 171–72.

Harriet Jacobs… Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, p. 26.

Anne Broome… Genovese, pp. 462–63.

One ex-slave told…In Joy and Sorrow, Carol Bleser, ed., p. 64.

Annie Burton…Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life, Bert James Lowenberg and Ruth Bogin, eds., p. 98.

Thomas Foster… Bleser, ed., p. 61.

When Senator Richard Johnson… Collins, pp. 53–54.

In Mississippi shortly before… Bleser, ed., pp. 63–64.

New Orleans had a “fancy girl”…Black Women in White America, Lerner, ed., pp. 10–12.

“IT’SME, HARRIET. IT’S TIME TO GO NORTH.”

This section is based on John Hope Franklin’s short biography of Tubman in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., and Darlene Clark Hine’s in Black Women in America.

“Col. Montgomery and his gallant…” Hine and Thompson, p. 132.

“STOMP DOWN FREEDOM TODAY”

“The news went…” Berlin et al., eds., p. 234.

“I remember the first Sunday…” Berlin et al., eds., p. 267.

CHAPTER 8: WOMEN AND ABOLITION

“THEN LET IT SINK. I WILL NOT DISMISS HER.”

Except when otherwise noted, this section relies on the work in Three Who Dared, by Philip Foner and Josephine Pacheco, and A Whole-Souled Woman, by Susan Strane.

“Then let it sink…” This version of Prudence’s famous quote comes from Strane. Foner uses another version “Then it might sink then, for I should not turn her out.”

One was dumped… Strane, pp. 70–72.

“would not let me…” Thomas Drake in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 1, p. 400.

“WE ABOLITION WOMEN ARE TURNING
THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN”

Except when noted, the information on the Grimke sisters is taken from Gerda Lerner’s biography, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina. More recently, Mark Perry has written a study of both the sisters and their half-black nephews, Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimke Family’s Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders.

Between 1834 and 1837… Julie Roy Jeffrey’s Great Silent Army of Abolition, p. 49.

Ellen Smith… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 198.

“If this is the last bulwark…” Alma Lutz’s biography of Maria Chapman in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 1, p. 324.

One Boston volunteer… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 51.

“Confusion has seized…” Lerner, The Grimke Sisters, p. 145.

“PUTTING THEM ON AN EQUALITY WITH OURSELVES”

For this section, and much else in this chapter, I’m indebted to Julie Roy Jeffrey’s The Great Silent Army of Abolition.

“Her fine genius…” Michael Goldberg’s “An Unfinished Battle” in No Small Courage, Nancy Cott, ed., p. 228.

In Fall River… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, pp. 43–44.

The Buffum sisters… Chace and Lovell, pp. 31–32.

Hannah Austin… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 45.

“THE MOST ODIOUS OF TASKS”

“How can you eat…” Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 19.

“almost everything good”… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 48.

The Dover Anti-Slavery… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 79.

Even the unstoppable… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 90.

In 1836, 20 percent… Edward Magdol, The Anti-Slavery Rank and File, p. 102.

Embroidered linens… Ronald Walters, The Antislavery Appeal, p. 24.

Lewis Tappen, Garrison’s opponent… Ginzberg, p. 64.

“How heretical, harsh…” Catherine Clinton’s biography of Chapman in Portraits of American Women, Barker-Benfield and Clinton, eds., pp. 150–53.

Julia Lovejoy… Ginzberg, pp. 115–16.

“I AM TRYING TO GET UNCLE TOM OUT OF THE WAY”

Except where noted, this section is based on information in Joan Hedrick’s Harriet Beecher Stowe.

“Many families who…” Jacobs, pp. 14–15

“Why I have felt almost choked…” Hedrick, pp. 204–7.

“I am trying…” Hedrick, p. 221.

the crowd chanted… Hedrick, p. 306.

“I CRAWLED ABOUT MY DEN FOR EXERCISE”

The real Eliza… Henrietta Buckmaster, Let My People Go, pp. 121–22.

Ellen Craft: Lerner, Black Women in America, pp. 65–72; Buckmaster, pp. 157–58.

“The garret was…” Jacobs, pp. 128–29.

Child, the editor… Jacobs, p. xx.

Not every writer… Hedrick, pp. 248–49.

“WHY CAN’T SHE HAVE HER LITTLE PINT FULL?”

Except when otherwise noted, this section is based on Nell Irvin Painter’s Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol.

“See if Im not…” Ginzberg, p. 105.

“If colored men…” Painter, Sojourner Truth, p. 220.

Frances Watkins Harper decided… Painter, Sojourner Truth, p. 225.

“DOES SHE BELONG TO YOU?”

Elizabeth Jennings: This information is taken from “The Search for Elizabeth Jennings” by John Hewitt, New York History 71, no. 4, pp. 387–415.

Frances Watkins Harper had… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 208.

Sarah Walker Fossett… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, pp. 127–28.

In 1865, Harriet Tubman… Massey, p. 269.

Sojourner Truth… Painter, Sojourner Truth, p. 211.

“IT IS PLEASANT TO LOOK AT—ALTHOUGH IT IS BLACK”

Charlotte Forten, a member… Jeffrey, Great Silent Army, p. 196.

Forten’s story… Unless otherwise noted, Brenda Stevenson’s biography of Forten in Portraits of American Women, Barker-Benfield and Clenton, eds., was the source of information for this section.

When she traveled…We Are Your Sisters, Dorothy Sterling, ed., pp. 280–83.

“KEPT MOIST AND BRIGHT WITH THE OIL OF KINDNESS”

“Mrs. Stowe betrays…” Hedrick, p. 232.

Caroline Lee Hentz… Helen Papashvily, All the Happy Endings, pp. 83–86.

Mary Hamilton Campbell… Fox-Genovese, p. 134.

A Southern slave owner… D. White, p. 58.

“THERE IS MANY THINGS TO DO ABOUT A PLACE
THAT YOU MEN DON’T THINK OF”

The classic work about white women on Southern plantations before the war is Catherine Clinton’s The Plantation Mistress. For the relation between these women and their servants, see Within the Plantation Household by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.

When Anne Nichols… Kierner, p. 177.

“It is quite out of…” Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 176.

John Steele… Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 75.

“I would willingly…” Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 29.

Southern men went to spas… Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 151.

“I WOULD NOT CARE IF THEY ALL DID GO”

Charles Eliot Norton… Ann Firor Scott, The Southern Lady, p. 50.

“In all my life…” C. Vann Woodward, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, p. 255.

A New Orleans slave… Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad, p. 58.

Susan Davis Hutchinson… Fox-Genovese, pp. 144–45.

“I sometimes think…” Scott, The Southern Lady, p. 47.

Sarah Gayle… Fox-Genovese, pp. 144–45.

Caroline Merrick… Fox-Genovese, pp. 144–45.

“Slavery degrades…” Virginia Burr, The Secret Eye, p. 169.

Catherine Hammond…The Hammonds of Redcliffe, Carol Bleser, ed., pp. 10–11.

“God forgive us…” Woodward, p. 29.

CHAPTER 9: THE CIVIL WAR

Although there are a disproportionate number of good books about white Southern women during the Civil War, the one I kept going back to while writing this chapter was Mothers of Invention by Drew Gilpin Faust. Two other books I relied on heavily were Victoria Bynum’s Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South and Mary Elizabeth Massey’s Women in the Civil War—an early book by women’s history standards but still extremely useful. They’re all very readable.

“MY STATE IS OUT OF THE UNION”

This section, like many to come, draws particularly on the work of Drew Gilpin Faust.

“Politics engrosses…” Faust, pp. 11–14.

According to the Southern Illustrated News … Faust p. 46.

“DOES SHE MEAN TO TAKE CARE OF ME—OR TO MURDER ME?”

One of the reasons there are so many good histories of Southern women may be that they were such gifted diarists. The most famous is that of Mary Chesnut, a well-to-do wife of a Confederate politician. It’s a great read in C. Vann Woodward’s Mary Chesnut’s Civil War.

Keziah Brevard… Faust, p. 57.

Lewis B. Norwood… Bynum, p. 115.

The wealthy Mary Chestnut… Woodward, p. 199.

“I dread…” Faust, p. 76.

One Georgia slave-owning family… Hunter, p. 19.

Kate Foster… Faust, p. 78.

“THE WOMEN ARE AS BAD AS MEN DOWN HERE”

A book I relied on for much of this section was Bynum’s Unruly Women.

In New Bern… Faust, p. 31.

A soldier’s pay… Bynum, p. 134.

“I do not like…” Faust, p. 47.

“The women are…” Bynum, p. 133.

“The self-sacrifice has vanished…” Faust, pp. 243–45.

“WATCH OVER THEIR DAUGHTERS AS WELL AS THEIR SONS”

Although men still… Ginzberg, pp. 157–58.

The necessary supplies… Alfred Bloor, “Letter to Senator Sumner,” Women’s Work in the War.

In 1863, when Irish… Ryan, Women in Public, pp. 148–51.

“WERE THEY THE SAME SCHOOL GIRLS OF 1861?”

Amy Clarke… Massey, pp. 79–81.

Rose O’Neal Greenhow… Ishbel Ross’s biographical sketch in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 2, pp. 89–90

Belle Boyd: Thomas Robson Hay in James and James, eds., vol. 1, pp. 215–17.

More than 250,000 people… Massey, p. 291.

As the Union forces… Faust, pp. 43–44.

In Vicksburg… Massey, p. 225.

An Atlanta resident… Scott, The Southern Lady, p. 86.

While marching to Savannah… Hunter, p. 20.

Emma Steward… Sterling, p. 241.

“THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE TAKEN PLACE FOR ME”

“Nothing looks funnier…” Faust, pp. 224–27.

Southern women began… Faust, pp. 88–91.

In 1864, when the note signers… Massey, pp. 140–42.

In the North… Massey, pp. 132–38.

“ALMOST WILD ON THE SUBJECT OF HOSPITAL NURSING”

At least 3,000 women… Clinton, The Other Civil War, p. 182.

“Our women appear…” Baxandall and Gordon, eds., pp. 76–77.

“I will not agree…” Faust, p. 97.

Dorothea Dix… Mary Gardner Holland, Our Army Nurses, p. iii.

One young woman… Massey, pp. 45–47.

Elida Rumsey Fowle… Massey, p. 82.

“I AM A U.S. SOLDIER…AND THEREFORE
NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SUSCEPTIBLE TO FEAR”

Except where otherwise noted, this section is based on information in Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Clara Barton, Professional Angel.

Katherine Wormeley: Judith Ann Giesberg, “Katherine Wormeley and the U.S. Sanitary Commission,” Nursing History Review 3 (1955), pp. 43–53.

An army surgeon… Massey, pp. 48–49.

“A HOSPITAL HAS NONE OF THE COMFORTS OF HOME”

Anyone interested in nursing during the Civil War—from the Union perspective at least—should read Our Army Nurses: Stories from Women in the Civil War by Mary Gardner Holland.

Phoebe Yates Pember… Massey, p. 56.

Mary Rutledge Fogg… Faust, pp. 94–95.

“Nobody chided me…” Lee Ann White, “The Civil War as a Crisis of Gender,” in Catherine Clinton’s Divided Houses, p. 17.

“Are the women of the South…” Faust, pp. 101–2.

“I have had men die…” Holland, pp. 84–94.

Anna McMahon… Holland, p. 132.

Rebecca Wiswell… Holland, p. 295.

“We all know…” Kristie Ross, “Arranging a Doll’s House,” in Clinton’s Divided Houses, p. 102.

Francis Bacon… Ginzberg, p. 145.

Doctors on both sides… Barbara Mann Wall, “Called to a Mission of Charity,” Nursing History Review 6 (1998), pp. 85–113.

“GIRLS HAVE MARRIED MEN THEY WOULD NEVER
HAVE GIVEN A THOUGHT OF”

“My happy life!…” The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan, Charles East, ed., p. 29.

In what the whole South came… Massey, p. 257.

There were 80,000 widows… Scott, The Southern Lady, p. 92.

“Girls have married…” Massey, p. 257.

Sarah Morgan wrote… East, ed., p. 62.

One newspaper concluded… White in Clinton, Divided Houses, p. 19.

Jefferson Davis… See Joan Cashin’s essay on Varina Davis in Portraits of American Women, Barker-Benfield and Clinton, eds., pp. 259–77.

“I will not be a dependent…” Massey, p. 110.

By 1883, an Alabama… Scott, The Southern Lady, p. 111.

“IF I STAY HERE I’LL NEVER KNOW I’M FREE”

Like the preceding chapter, most stories about slavery in America stop on the happy ending. Tera Hunter’s To ’Joy My Freedom is a good antidote for that. Except where otherwise noted, this section is based on pp. 29–50 of that book.

Patience, an ex-slave… Jones, p. 51.

In South Carolina an ex-slave named Sue… D. White, pp. 170–71

“Slavery to our Islanders…” Jones, pp. 69–70.

“When I married my wife…” D. White, p. 184.

The white community, however… Jones, pp. 58–60.

CHAPTER 10: WOMEN GO WEST

Perhaps because they were so lonely for home, pioneer women were very generous in leaving behind piles of letters and journals. As a result, tons of books are available on the subject of women settlers in the West. My overall favorite book on this period is Frontier Women, by Julie Roy Jeffrey.

“I THOUGHT WHERE HE COULD GO I COULD GO”

Anyone interested in the story of the migration west should begin with the classic Women and Men on the Overland Trail, by John Mack Faragher.

Nancy Kelsey: Jo Ann Chartier and Chris Enss, With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush, pp. 13–22.

The Daily Missouri Republican advised… Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, p. 7.

“I would not be left…” Luzena Wilson, Luzena Stanley Wilson, 49er, p. 1.

Bethenia Owens-Adair… B. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens Adair, p. 493.

“Some women have very little help…” Robert Munkres, “Wives, Mothers, Daughters: Women’s Life on the Road West,” Annals of Wyoming (October 1970), pp. 189–224.

One pioneer recounted… Lillian Schlissel, Women’s Diaries of the Western Journey, p. 57.

James Clyman… Dee Brown, The Gentle Tamers, p. 104.

Frances Grummond… Dee Brown, pp. 39–40.

“WE SAW LONG BRAIDS OF GOLDEN HAIR”

“Very dusty roads”…Covered Wagon Women, Kenneth Holmes, ed., pp. 131, 142–43.

“Boxes and trunks…” Holmes, ed., pp. 257–58.

“Days passed before…” Dee Brown, p. 209.

Juliette Brier… Jo Ann Levy, They Saw the Elephant, pp. 26–29.

Mrs. Samuel Young… Schlissel, p. 46.

“If there were any graves…” Martha Gay Masterson, One Woman’s West, Lois Barton, ed., pp. 40–41.

One pioneer remembered… Dee Brown, p. 37.

Janette Riker… Dee Brown, pp. 40–41.

“HE WAS IN GREAT HASTE TO MARRY
TO SAVE A HALF SECTION OF LAND”

“Even I have…” B. Wilson, p. 32.

Irwin, Colorado, had… Anne Butler, Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery, p. 53.

The wife of an army officer… Dee Brown, p. 222.

Martha Gay Masterson… Barton, ed., pp. 54–55.

When Elizabeth Gunn… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, p. 156.

“In the short space…” Louise Amelia Clappe, The Shirley Letters, p. 133.

“I like this wild…” Clappe, pp. 177–78.

“MORE ACTIVE AND INDUSTRIOUS THAN THE MEN”

Just as we’re blessed with a bounty of studies about white women in the West, we’re starved for information about Mexican Americans. My single greatest regret in doing this book was my inability to follow their trail further. But new studies are coming in every day, and for those interested in the subject, I’d recommend beginning with Douglas Monroy’s Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California and Richard Griswold del Castillo’s La Familia : Chicano Families in the Urban Southwest.

“Their manners toward…” Del Castillo, p. 44.

“Riding on horseback…” Monroy, p. 151.

Indian women, wrote… Monroy, p. 9.

“She never let them…” Virginia Marie Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, p. 84.

Mexican soldiers had no… Monroy, p. 29.

After the women were raped… Monroy, p. 83.

Narcissa Prentiss Whitman… See Michael Goldberg’s “Breaking New Ground” in Nancy Cotted, No Small Courage, pp. 209–12.

“I WENT INTO THE SPORTING LIFE FOR BUSINESS REASONS”

If you’re interested in this perpetually interesting subject, start with Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery, by Anne Butler.

The Home Missionary … Dee Brown, p. 89.

“I went into…” Brandon Marie Miller, Buffalo Gals, pp. 35–36.

A Frenchman named Albert Bernard… Levy, They Saw the Elephant, p. 163.

On paydays… Anne Seagraves, Soiled Doves, pp. 60–61.

The most desperate stories involved Chinese women… Many Chinese American women in the nineteenth-century West weren’t prostitutes, and the attempt to portray every Asian woman as a brothel worker was one of the tactics used to keep the door locked against female immigration. For the story of all those other women, see George Anthony Peffer’s excellent If They Don’t Bring Their Women Here. For a brief survey of Chinese immigrant women in the nineteenth century, see Lucie Cheng Hirata in Women of America: A History, edited by Carol Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, pp. 224–44.

Lilac Chen… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, p. 149.

Toward the end of the century… Seagraves, pp. 135–42.

“A SMART WOMAN CAN DO VERY WELL IN THIS COUNTRY”

One of the most entertaining and interesting books on the women of early California settlements is They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush, by Jo Ann Levy.

Luzena Wilson… Levy, pp. 91–107.

A woman wrote from California… Dee Brown, p. 253.

One pioneer recalled… Levy, p. 93.

Martha Gay Masterson… Barton, ed., p. xii.

One woman was troubled… Levy, p. 45.

Nellie Pooler Chapman… Chartier and Enss, pp. 79–83.

“A smart woman…” Jeffrey, Frontier Women, p. 154.

Charley Parkhurst… Levy, pp. 122–23.

Lotta Crabtree… There’s a portrait of Lotta in Chartier and Enss’s With Great Hope.

Legend has it… Dee Brown, pp. 168–69.

“STANDING ERECT UPON THE BACK OF HER UNSADDLED HORSE”

This section is based on Glenda Riley’s The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley, and Calamity Jane by Roberta Beed Sollid.

But the real creator… Doris Faber, Calamity Jane, Her Life and Legend, pp. 38–40.

“SHE PUT HER ARMS AROUND A TREE AND HUGGED IT”

It’s either something about the kind of women who go to Kansas or the kind of things Kansas did to the women, but the most amazing books about women farmers on the plains all seem to be about that particular state. My favorite is Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier, by Joanna Stratton.

Julia Lovejoy… Michael Fellman, “Julia Lovejoy Goes West,” Western Humanities Review (Summer 1977), p. 236.

One girl who lived… Stratton, p. 53.

Julia Lovejoy found… Fellman, p. 233.

One female pioneer… Dee Brown, p. 192.

“The wind whistled…” Stratton, p. 52.

“When our covered wagon…” B. Miller, p. 24.

Another woman begged… Stratton, p. 80.

“Many a time my mother…” Stratton, p. 82.

“They commenced on a…” Dee Brown, p. 208.

Another woman remembered… Stratton, p. 103.

A visitor to frontier Illinois… John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek, p. 90.

Matilda Lockhart, who was taken… Dee Brown, pp. 19–20.

George Custer… Elizabeth Custer, Boots and Saddles, pp. 56–57.

Susan Parrish… Schlissel, p. 69.

The Lakota called 1844… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, p. 37.

Pretty Shield… Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, Pioneer Women, p. 66.

“If women could go…” Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes, p. 53.

A Mrs. Miller… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, p. 72.

“I CANNOT MAKE A FRIEND LIKE MOTHER OUT OF HENRY”

Although it isn’t specifically about women, one book that anyone interested in the history of plains farmers has to read is Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban.

In Topeka…Plains Woman: The Diary of Martha Farnsworth, Marlene and Haskell Springer, eds., p. xiii.

A Texas woman… James Featon, “Women on the Staked Plains,” in At Home on the Range, John Wunder, ed., p. 241.

“I have been very blue”… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, p. 73.

Margaret Armstrong… Harriette Andreadis, “True Womanhood Revisited: Women’s Private Writing in Nineteenth Century Texas,” Journal of the Southwest (Summer 1989), p. 185.

Annette Botkin… Stratton, pp. 86–87.

Jessie Hill Rowland… Stratton, pp. 135–36.

Susanna Townsend… Levy, p. 62.

Bertha Anderson… Peavy and Smith, p. 30.

At a luncheon… Dee Brown, p. 48.

Louise Clappe’s remote… Clappe, p. 90.

“Someone had said that…” Stratton, p. 68.

“BESIEGED BY A CROWD OF MEN, ALL ANXIOUS TO EMPLOY HER”

They were called Exodusters…Exodusters, by Nell Irvin Painter, covers this little-known piece of African American history.

“These sable workwomen…” Painter, Exodusters, p. 55.

“The scenery to me…” William Katz, Black Women of the Old West, p. 60.

“In the earliest days…” B. Miller, p. 26.

“I ain’t got…” Katz, p. 73.

Mary Ann Pleasant… A full portrait of Mary Ann Pleasant by Quintard Taylor is included in By Grit and Grace: Eleven Women Who Shaped the American West, Glenda Riley and Richard Etulain, eds.

Clara Brown: Except when noted, information on Clara Brown comes from Kathleen Bruyn’s “Aunt” Clara Brown: Story of a Black Pioneer. in the words of a local paper… Katz, p. 25.

When she died in 1885… Katz, p. 26.

“WE NOW EXPECT QUITE AN IMMIGRATION
OF LADIES TO WYOMING”

Anna Dickinson: The story of Anna Dickinson and Wyoming is told in T. A. Larson’s History of Wyoming, pp. 80–82.

Esther McQuigg Morris: See the profile by Gene Gressley in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 2, p. 583.

William Bright… Larson, History of Wyoming, pp. 91–92.

“We now expect…” Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 80.

Esther Morris’s son… Michael Massie, “Reform Is Where You Find It: The Roots of Woman Suffrage in Wyoming,” Annals of Wyoming (Spring 1990).

“Won’t the irrepressible…” Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 83.

“Many ladies have voted…” Dee Brown, p. 245.

“There was plenty of drinking…” Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 85.

“We will remain out of the union…” T. A. Larson, “Petticoats at the Polls,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly (April 1953), p. 79.

On July 23, 1890… Larson, History of Wyoming, pp. 260–61.

“Neither is handsome”… Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 87.

Grace Greenwood… Dee Brown, p. 248.

When the California legislature… Sidney Howell Fleming, “Solving the Jigsaw Puzzle: One Suffrage Story at a Time,” Annals of Wyoming (Spring 1990), pp. 33–73.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper reported… Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 86.

Discussing her service… James and James, eds., p. 584.

CHAPTER 11: THE GILDED AGE

“THERE WAS PLENTY OF HER TO SEE”

The first part of this section, and much else in this chapter, relies heavily on Lois Banner’s American Beauty, particularly the chapter on “The Voluptuous Woman.” This is also my opportunity to recommend two books by Kathy Peiss: Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture, and Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York.

An Englishman reported… David Macrae, The Americans at Home, p. 40.

Lillian Russell: There are a number of biographies of Russell. I used one by Armond Fields.

“There was plenty…” Banner, pp. 135–36.

In the 1890s, Metropolitan Magazine claimed… Banner, p. 151.

Helen Hunt… Banner, p. 114.

one photographer complained… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 47.

“She is a compound…” Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 27.

They wore elaborate hats… Jennifer Price, Flight Maps, p. 59.

The slaughter of wild birds… Price, p. 99.

“I went down and saw…” Daniel Sutherland, The Expansion of Everyday Life, p. 256.

In New York, one Coney Island… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 127–32.

The single most important new public amenity… To learn more about early department stores, try Counter Cultures, by Susan Porter Benson.

Mary Antin… Antin’s story of her experiences as a young immigrant, The Promised Land, is one of the best memoirs of turn-of-the-century immigrant life.

Nathaniel Fowler… Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture, p. 67.

“QUALITIES WHICH ALL SOUND-HEARTED
MEN AND WOMEN ADMIRE”

Nellie Bly… The definitive biography of Bly and an excellent history of women in turn-of-the-century journalism is Brooke Kroeger’s Nellie Bly.

In 1870, the country had only five female lawyers… Anyone wondering why there weren’t more can read the biography of Myra Bradwell, America’s First Woman Lawyer, by Jane Friedman.

In 1869, a few women… Theodora Penny Martin, The Sound of Our Own Voices, p. 44.

Thanks in large part… Thomas Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, p. 74.

An in-house newspaper… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 49.

The men in the mail-order… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 62.

As the federal bureaucracy… Schlereth, p. 75.

Women were making rapid… Dee Garrison, “The Tender Technicians,” in Hartman and Banner, eds., p. 164.

The typewriter was a new… My information about typists comes, except when otherwise noted, from Margery Davies’s Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter.

when Mrs L. V. Longley… Bruce Bliven, The Wonderful Writing Machine, p. 112.

Marion Harland, in an essay… Davies, pp. 81–82.

At the turn of the century… Bliven, pp. 12–13.

In 1904, the organizer of the first… Bliven, p. 76.

“WE HAD A LOVELY PICTURE OF HER
WE GOT WITH COFFEE WRAPPERS”

The American public fell madly… The best portrait of Mrs. Cleveland is in Carl Anthony’s First Ladies.

Far away in Colorado… Anne Ellis, The Life of an Ordinary Woman, p. 128.

“LURED WOMEN FROM THEIR DUTIES AS HOMEMAKERS”

This section is based on Theodora Penny Martin’s great book about the study club movement, The Sound of Our Own Voice.

Josephine Ruffin… Anne Firor Scott presented a paper, “Most Invisible of All,” on black women’s voluntary associations that was published in The Journal of Southern History in February 1990. Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo has a profile on Josephine Ruffin in Black Women in America, Hine, ed., vol. 2, pp. 994–97.

“WAS THAT CROQUET?”

In 1883, the travel writer… Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 25.

“I saw the scamp…” Sutherland, p. 76.

“ZINC COFFINS”

This section includes information from one of my favorite housekeeping books: Susan Strasser’s Never Done: A History of American Housework.

A study by the Boston… Strasser, p. 41.

All in all, sweeping… Schlereth, p. 131.

Some experts decried the idea of bodily… Sutherland, p. 60.

Even in houses with bathtubs… Maureen Ogle, All the Modern Conveniences, p. 114.

Catharine Beecher… Schlereth, p. 128.

In 1893 in New York, far and… Goldsmith, p. 424.

“OH, DOCTOR, SHOOT ME, QUICK!”

When the reformer… Goldsmith, p. 424. Although this book is, alas, not going into Victoria Woodhull’s career, or the Beecher sex trial that she precipitated, I would urge everybody to take a stroll down that path. Barbara Goldsmith’s Other Powers is the best guide.

Removing the clitoris… G. J. Barker-Benfield writes about this in The Horrors of the Half-Known Life. Except when noted, my information is from her book.

The founders of Woman’s Hospital… Barbara Ehrenreich and Diedre English, For Her Own Good, pp. 123–24.

A report from the American Phamaceutical… David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America, p. 51.

Somewhere between 200,000… David Musto, The American Disease, pp. 16, 50–51, 253–54.

A traveler who spent time… Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, p. 16.

Laudanum, an opium… Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 70.

In 1897, the Sears… James Inciardi, The War on Drugs, pp. 5–6.

“No name is signed…” H. Wayne Morgan, Drugs in America, p. 101.

“Young women cannot go…” Dick Griffin, “Opium Addiction in Chicago,” Chicago History (Summer 1977), p. 108.

A North Carolina doctor… Morgan, p. 27.

The most famous was Lydia Pinkham’s…Female Complaints by Sarah Stage is a fascinating book about both the Pinkhams and the patent medicine industry.

“I do wish…” Stage, p. 126.

Colonel Hoestetters… Maud Banfield, “About Patent Medicine,” Ladies’ Home Journal (May 1903), p. 26.

“THAT SO LITTLE SHOULD BE SAID ABOUT THEM
SURPRISES ME FOR THEY ARE EVERYWHERE”

The post–Civil War… Woloch, pp. 279–80.

“If only you were here…” Cazden, p. 75.

“The loves of women…” Woloch, p. 281.

CHAPTER 12: IMMIGRANTS

Tons of books are available on the immigrant experience, and this is one part of American history where women’s voices are well represented. The two books to which this section is particularly indebted are Elizabeth Ewan’s Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars and Christine Stansell’s wonderful City of Women.

“AS YOU SEE, I AM NOT STAYING FAR BEHIND”

“They say in this country…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 63.

“In the old country…” Ewan, p. 198.

Rose Cohen: Cohen, Out of the Shadow, pp. 153–54.

Marie Prisland…Immigrant Women, Maxine Schwartz Seller, ed., p. 1.

Although some social workers… Ewan, p. 126.

Two of the few who did…Rose Cohen published her memoir: Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side. Rosa Cavalleri’s story was recorded by settlement house worker Maria Hall Ets: Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant.

“When they learned…” Roger Daniels, Coming to America, p. 274.

The terrors and heartbreak… Judy Yung, Unbound Feet, pp. 63–66.

“AMERICA IS A WOMAN’S COUNTRY”

This chapter makes use of another one of those great Everyday Life books, Thomas Schlereth’s Victorian America: Transformations of Everyday Life.

The Irish were the only… Daniels, p. 225.

Overall, one in three… Schlereth, p. 11.

Ukrainian men told an interviewer… Ewan, p. 101.

An Italian immigrant… Ewan, p. 65.

A social worker described… Ewan, pp. 103–4.

Jane Addams surveyed… Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, p. 164.

Handling the finances… For more about this point, see Stansell’s City of Women.

The classic first home… Anyone who happens to be in New York City and wants to see how immigrants lived should visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

“Water…to my mother…” Ewan, pp. 65–66.

Men and women regularly fell… Doris Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 148.

One tenement described by… Fon Boardman, America and the Gilded Age, pp. 107–9.

“It was nothing unusual…” Cohen, p. 292.

“A kind of obligation…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 21.

“The walls are hung…” Schlereth, p. 120.

“I WORKED AND ROCKED THE BABY WITH MY FEET”

“The boss said that a woman…” Rose Laub Coser, et al., Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York, p. 110.

That allowed them to stay… Stansell, City of Women, p. 114.

“I used to cry…” Coser et al., p. 102.

Somewhere between 25 and 50 percent… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 131.

But although the public… Stansell, City of Women, p. 48.

“Those swill boxes…” Ets, pp. 222–25.

Lillian Wald… Wald, The House on Henry Street, pp. 40–41.

“SURE, SIX DAYS IS ENOUGH TO WORK”

The sections in this book about the Irish are based on Hasia Diner’s fascinating Erin’s Daughters in America; unless otherwise noted, the information about domestic service comes from another great book, Faye Dudden’s Serving Women.

The anonymous author of… Dudden, p. 112.

The live-in domestics’ workweek… Woloch, p. 238.

“Especially is objection…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 40.

Lucy Salmon… Schlereth, pp. 73–74

A social service investigator… Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space and Power in Boston, 1870–1940, p. 59.

“I am getting along splendid…” Diner, p. 71.

By midcentury, 74 percent… Stansell, City of Women, p. 156.

Edwin Godkin… Diner, p. 88.

In the book Plain Talk … Dudden, pp. 180–81.

The Irish World examined… Diner, p. 84.

In the South before… Daniels, p. 137.

Irish women often found… See Diner, chapter 5.

Second-generation Irish… Schlereth, pp. 73–74.

“I DIDN’T GO NOPLACE”

“I didn’t go noplace…” Coser, p. 41.

Jane Addams reported… Addams, p. 234.

Rosa Cavalleri… Ets, p. 222.

One member of Addams’s… Addams, pp. 67–68.

Addams was struck… Addams, pp. 72–73.

“One girl told me…” Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 84.

In New York, some tried… Ewan, pp. 149–50.

“WELL, WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THAT YOUNG MAN?”

When Rose Cohen… R. Cohen, pp. 199–207.

Rose Cohen said… R. Cohen, p. 85.

When she grew up… R. Cohen, p. 297.

Hester Vaughn… Goldsmith, pp. 172–73.

Emma Goldman… Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 216.

One Jewish woman… Seller, ed., p. 132.

Abortions, which were illegal… Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 11.

In 1853, the Tribune estimated… Stansell, City of Women, p. 111.

Jane Addams said the first… Addams, p. 112.

A third of all babies… Ewan, p. 137.

Jane Addams reported bitterly… Addams, p. 250.

In 1908, doctors swooped…Ewan, p. 143.

Addams recalled a devoted…Addams, p. 116.

“I WANTED A NEW THING—HAPPINESS”

“I wanted a new thing…” Ewan, p. 195.

“Oh my God…” Ewan, p. 215.

“The Negro race…” D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 196.

“The town is dance mad”… Ewan, p. 209.

“The pimps…” Michael Gold, Jews Without Money, p. 33.

Maureen Connelly… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 61.

“It was quite wonderful…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 43–44.

In 1909, the International Ladies… Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 223.

“I HAVE IT LIKE HEAVEN”

“We liked moving…” R. Cohen, p. 186.

But her success… Thomas Dublin in the introduction to Cohen’s Out of the Shadow, p. xv.

“They wouldn’t dare…” Ets, p. 254.

CHAPTER 13: TURN OF THE CENTURY

“TO DEMONSTRATE PUBLICLY THAT WOMEN HAVE LEGS”

In 1895… Frances Willard, How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, pp. 19, 51.

Lillian Russell began pedaling… Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 108.

Susan B. Anthony enthused… Lisa Larabee in Willard, pp. 84–90.

“A few years ago…” Dulles, p. 267.

Lillian Russell confided… Auster, p. 108.

Life noted approvingly… Patricia Marks, Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers, p. 193.

The Boston Rescue League… Somers, pp. 142–43.

“AGGRESSIVE AS BECAME THEIR SEX”

This section marks the first reference to two books I really enjoyed, Naomi Braun Rosenthal’s very short but very valuable Spinster Tales and Womanly Possibilities, and Sandra Adickes’s To Be Young Was Very Heaven.

Madame Yale… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, pp. 85–87.

In 1896, Life published… Marks, pp. 162–63.

Ladies’ Home Journal, which teetered… Rosenthal, pp. 19–30.

The heroine of the Grace Harlow series… Gwen Athene Tarbox, The Clubwomen’s Daughters, pp. 67–70.

Stanton, addressing the men… Geoffrey Ward, Not for Ourselves Alone, p. 7.

A middle-aged Annie Oakley… Glenda Riley, The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley, p. 142.

Frances Willard said… Willard, p. 75.

“Almost the best…” Adickes, pp. 72–73.

Rose Pastor… Adickes, pp. 61–62.

Alva Belmont: Christopher Lasch has a short biography of Mrs. Belmont in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., pp. 126–28. The story about the costume ball is in Alex Gregory’s Families of Fortune in the Gilded Age, p. 194.

the United States had the highest… Schlereth, p. 281.

Denver would soon… Lynn Dumeril, Modern Temper, p. 130.

“LESS ABOUT SOUL AND MORE ABOUT PIMPLES”

The New York Herald admired… Banner, p. 157.

Lillian Russell… Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 96.

“WHENEVER SHE WAS DISTURBED OR DEPRESSED
SHE WOULD MOVE THE FURNITURE”

Anyone who wants to get acquainted with Jane Addams should start with her own Twenty Years at Hull-House. The two biographies I’ve relied most on are American Heroine by Allen Davis, and the very readable A Useful Woman by Gioia Diliberto.

“fashionable fad”… Diliberto, p. 146.

“Whenever she was disturbed…” Diliberto, p. 173.

Thanks to her example… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 148.

“I FOUGHT THE RATS, INSIDE AND OUT”

This section is based on Elliott Gorn’s very thorough biography, Mother Jones.

In 1930… Dorothy Brown, Setting a Course: American Women in the 1920s, p. 90.

“I sat alone…” Gorn, p. 41.

“She had a complete…” Gorn, p. 74.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn… Gorn, p. 143.

“I have been in jail…” Gorn, p. 178.

“I had sewer rats…” Gorn, p. 210.

Mother Jones organized… Gorn, p. 134.

In 1897, the National Labor Tribune declared… Gorn, p. 119.

“I AM NOW SURROUNDED BY ALL MY DREAMS COME TRUE”

My information on Ida Tarbell comes from Katherine Brady’s Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker. Madame C. J. Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, has written a very interesting biography, On Her Own Ground, on which much of this section is based.

“She could mobilize…” Brady, p. 95.

“Miss Ida Tarbell…” Brady, p. 150.

Harriet Hubbard Ayer… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, pp. 64–71.

“I had a dream…” Bundles, p. 277.

“TELL ME, PRETTY MAIDEN
ARE THERE MORE AT HOME LIKE YOU?”

Floradora Girls: Banner, pp. 181–82.

Dr. Edward Clarke… Solomon, p. 56.

Nevertheless, a decade later… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 147.

The idea of higher education… Rosenthal, p. 46.

By 1910…Woloch, p. 281.

Nearly half of all… Rosenthal, pp. 73–74.

Florence Kelley remembered… A. Davis, p. 12.

When the University of Chicago… Woloch, p. 288.

The year the University of Kansas… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, pp. 233–34.

“SMASHED”

The Cosmopolitan reported… Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater, pp. 162–63.

One former Vassar student… Tarbox, p. 63.

While Jane Addams… Diliberto, p. 243.

Smith, the daughter… Diliberto, p. 191.

“RACE SUICIDE”

When Jane Addams was asked… Diliberto, p. 244.

Nearly half… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 147.

It was the golden age… Rosenthal, pp. 48–50.

“If Americans of the old stock…” Ehrenreich and English, p. 135.

Ladies’ Home Journal, which never…Rosenthal, p. 68.

“LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO SPEND IT DIGESTING PORK”

A great deal of the information in this section comes from one of my favorite books, Laura Shapiro’s Perfection Salad.

“Perhaps the fact…” Janet Wilson James’s profile in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., p. 143.

Richards had opposed… Ehrenreich and English, p. 151.

Boiling a potato… Shapiro, p. 40.

By 1914… Shapiro, p. 175.

“To keep the world clean…” Ehrenreich and English, pp. 158–59.

Lillian Gilbreth… Strasser, p. 213.

“Cooking has a nobler purpose…” Shapiro, p. 67.

Sarah Tyson Rorer… Shapiro, p. 75.

“Dress them, bathe them…” Dorothy Brown, p. 120.

A popular government pamphlet… Ehrenreich and English, p. 201.

Margaret Mead’s… Mead, Blackberry Winter, pp. 25–26.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman… Gilman told her own story in The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Also see chapter 5 of Dolores Hayden’s The Grand Domestic Revolution.

Inez Milholland… Paul Boyer’s profile of Milholland in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., vol. 1, p. 189.

“HAS SUCH A THING EVER HAPPENED…BEFORE?”

Except where otherwise noted, the information in this section is drawn from Dorothy and Carl Schneider’s Into the Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I.

Two thousand black nurses… Lettie Gavin, American Women in World War I, p. 59.

Addie Waites Hunton… “Two Colored Women with the AEF,” in Beyond the Homefront, Yvonne Klein, ed.

“I’m glad you…” Schneider and Schneider, pp. 170–73.

“When a group of colored…” Hunton in Klein, ed., pp. 103–7

“We have only…” Schneider and Schneider, p. 128.

Julia Stimson worked… Schneider and Schneider, p. 111.

Mary Elderkins… Schneider and Schneider, pp. 113, 116.

Jeanette Rankin of Montana… Norma Smith has written a biography of Rankin, Jeanette Rankin: America’s Conscience.

CHAPTER 14: REFORMING THE WORLD

“LIKE ALL THINGS TOO LONG POSTPONED, NOW GETS ON EVERYBODY’S NERVES”

Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick’s Century of Struggle was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1959, and it’s still one of the best and most readable books about the suffrage movement. For Stanton, read her autobiography and Elisabeth Griffith’s In Her Own Right. To go directly to the source on Anthony, see Lynn Sherr’s Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words. Geoffrey Ward has put together a lavishly illustrated book about the two women’s friendship, Not for Ourselves Alone.

“We have got…” Sherr, p. 298.

When Stanton became pregnant… Sherr, p. 4.

And Stanton complained… Goldsmith, p. 118.

the sight of Susan on the doorstep… Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage, p. 20.

At her eightieth birthday… E. Griffith, p. 210.

It was a bitter… Goldsmith, p. 181.

“Mrs. Stone felt…” E. Griffith, p. 111.

“Logically, our enfranchisement…” Goldsmith, p. 435.

All the horrors… Flexner and Fitzpatrick, p. 214.

“To get the word…” Janet Zillinger Giele, Two Paths to Women’s Equality, pp. 112–13.

In 1912, Catt wrote to a friend… Flexner and Fitzpatrick, p. 264.

A former school… Eleanor Flexner has a profile of Catt in Notable American Women, James and James, ed., vol. 1, pp. 309–12. For a more lengthy study, see Robert Booth Fowler’s Carrie Catt: Feminist and Politician.

Harriot Stanton Blatch… See DuBois’s Harriot Stanton Blatch, also Flexner and Fitzpatrick, p. 243.

“Ridicule, ridicule…” Ward, p. 221.

In 1912, a parade… Adickes, pp. 6–7.

Volunteers distributed… I found these particular pieces of memorabilia at an exhibit by the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.

Martha Farnsworth… Springer and Springer, eds., p. 209.

In 1915, Carrie Chapmen Catt… Anne Firor Scott and Andrew M. Scott, One Half the People, pp. 112–13.

Mrs. Frank Leslie… Flexner and Fitzpatrick, p. 265.

“THERE IS NO ALICE PAUL. THERE IS SUFFRAGE.”

Except where otherwise noted, the information on Paul comes from Christine Lunardini’s From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party. Lunardini also has a profile of Paul in Portraits of American Women, G. J. Barker-Benfield and Catherine Clinton, eds.

A magazine writer… Lunardini in Barker-Benfield and Clinton, p. 432.

Always small and frail-looking… Lunardini in Barker-Benfield and Clinton, p. 432.

He and the second… Flexner and Fitzpatrick, pp. 271–72.

“Yesterday was a bad…” Seller, p. 284.

It was a moment some men… Flexner and Fitzpatrick, p. 283.

The president then took… This section is based on Flexner and Fitzpatrick, pp. 302–15

The Tennessee House… Flexner has a good account of the drama in Tennessee, and there’s an entire book on the story, The Perfect 36 by Carol Lynn Yellin and Janann Sherman.

“BELIEVE…AT LEAST FOR THE TIME BEING,
IN THE SYMPATHY OF WOMEN”

The story of the fight for suffrage from the African American woman’s point of view is recounted in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920. This section is based on the information in her book.

“If the Illinois women…” Terborg-Penn, p. 122.

When the suffrage movement held its first… Terborg-Penn, p. 111.

“When women like you…” Terborg-Penn, p. 116.

Mary Turner: Terborg-Penn, p. 96.

“LIPS THAT TOUCH ALCOHOL”

An American gentleman… Andrew Barr, Drink: A Social History of America, p. 127.

A reporter from Cincinnati… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 126.

The ultimate symbol… Paul Messbarger has a good profile of Nation in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., pp. 609–11.

In one story, a farmer… Giele, pp. 70–71.

“DO EVERYTHING”

Except where noted, this section is based on Ruth Bordin’s biography, Frances Willard.

In the 1890s, ten times… Degler, At Odds, p. 317.

Tampa alone had three… Nancy Hewitt, Southern Discomfort, Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s–1920s, p. 63.

In one eighty-day period… Bordin, p. 80.

Everett Hughes… Giele, p. 89.

In 1905… Bordin, p. 6.

“BEAUTIFUL WHITE GIRLS SOLD INTO RUIN”

The classic book on the way Americans have handled sex throughout the country’s history is Intimate Matters, by John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman. I’ve relied on it throughout this book, including this section.

raising the age of sexual consent… Giele, pp. 100–106.

Dr. Prince Morrow… D’Emilio and Freedman, pp. 204–5.

One psychologist studied… Allan Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880, p. 38.

A women’s college graduate… Anonymous, “The Harm My Education Did Me,” The Outlook (November 30, 1927), pp. 396–405.

when Ladies’ Home Journal ran… Brandt, p. 24.

In 1870, St. Louis… D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 149.

One reformer noted wryly… Reed, p. 58.

“Beautiful White Girls…” D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 209.

“CAN THEY NOT USE SELF-CONTROL?

Birth control in America is the topic of a number of good books, including James Reed’s From Private Vice to Public Virtue. My favorite book on the 1800s is Jane Farrell Brodie’s Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America. For the twentieth century, my choice would be Andrea Tone’s Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America, which you’ll be seeing a lot of in notes to come.

Comstock arranged for the adoption… Brodie, p. 274.

Once, when a journalist asked… Tone, p. 16.

“A bloody ending…” Tone, p. 34.

Another of his targets… D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 161.

When Comstock brought… Tone, p. 34.

But the Comstock Act did not… Schlereth, p. 274.

“WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW”

Margaret Sanger wrote her autobiography and there is a good biography currently available, Ellen Chesler’s Woman of Valor. This section is based on it unless otherwise noted.

Mabel Dodge called her… Chesler, p. 96.

An observer remembered that Sanger spoke… Reed, p. 78.

“If some persons would…” Chesler, p. 127.

The New York Times discreetly refused… Chesler, p. 129.

“I opened the doors…” Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography, p. 216.

CHAPTER 15: THE TWENTIES

“FLAPPERS ARE BRAVE AND GAY AND BEAUTIFUL”

The survey book I found most useful when studying the twenties was Dorothy Brown’s Setting the Course.

Margaret Mead arrived… Mead, p. 90.

“‘Feminism’ has become a term…” Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Feminist—New Style,” Harper’s (October 1927).

Mead transferred… Mead, p. 102.

“Flaming youth…” Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen, pp. 175–76.

Jane Addams said… Mary Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 256.

A much-quoted article…The Outlook (November 30, 1927), p. 405.

“I think a woman…” Evans, Born for Liberty, pp. 175–76.

“SKINNY AND FLAT-CHESTED AND POPULAR”

A survey in Milwaukee… Gerald Leinwand, 1927, p. 174.

“That’s what’s the matter…” Gilbreth and Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen, pp. 177–79.

When the manager… Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s, p. 2.

In summer…The American Sexual Dilemma, William O’Neill, ed., p. 39.

The president of the University of Florida… Barr, p. 150.

“Ten years ago…” Jenna Weisman Joselit, A Perfect Fit, p. 60.

“Thanks to cosmetics…” Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 141.

By 1927, a survey found… Leinwand, p. 174.

Aviatrix Ruth Elder… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 186.

One Ponds cold cream ad… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, pp. 137–38.

“A LOT OF LASHING AND LATHER”

A writer for… Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel, p. 139.

“The girl with sport…” Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, p. 307.

More women—perhaps… Reed, p. 61.

surveys of college men… Fass, p. 277.

they were only about half… Reed, p. 61.

An editor of… Woloch, p. 413.

Middle-class girls… For more about this switch in the concept of courting, see Beth Bailey’s From the Front Porch to the Back Seat.

A college friend told… Mead, p. 103.

Another of Fitzgerald’s… Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 238.

By 1920, 200 books… Dorothy Brown, p. 18.

Lysol became a popular… Harvey Green, The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, p. 132.

Germany manufactured the best… Tone, p. 126.

At Barnard, Margaret Mead… Mead, p. 104.

In 1926, a play about… Marybeth Hamilton, When I’m Bad, I’m Better, p. 98. This biography of Mae West also has some fascinating information on the way sex and gender were treated in popular entertainment during the early part of the century.

“SOAP TO MATCH HER BATHROOM’S COLOR SCHEME”

Martha Farnsworth… See Plains Woman: The Diary of Martha Farnsworth, Marlene and Haskell Springer, eds.

For the first time… Cowan, p. 87.

many women sent their clothes… Green, p. 64.

“Today’s woman gets…” Dumeril, p. 129.

the department stores spoiled… Benson, pp. 88–94.

Ready-to-wear maternity… Reed, p. 59.

“Two yellow capsules…” Dorothy Brown, p. 111.

During World War I… Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 26.

An early ad… The Ad Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment Library 2000 Fund, has a collection of ads for feminine hygiene products over the years. You can access it on the Internet.

Other companies had attempted… This is from another good source of information on what women did when they got their period over history: the Museum of Menstruation.

“REACH FOR A LUCKY INSTEAD OF A SWEET”

A child of the era… Banner, p. 153.

Marmola: Leinwand, p. 223.

“When I was a boy…” Barr, p. 151.

Pauline Sabine… Barr, p. 152.

“SPLINTERED INTO A HUNDRED FRAGMENTS”

“The American women’s movement…” Dorothy Brown, p. 50.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association… Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 254.

A man in Indiana… Allen, Only Yesterday, p. 39.

In 1920, Warren Harding’s… Collins, pp. 125–27.

“TOO MUCH PERSONALITY”

“It came with a rush”… Allen, Only Yesterday, p. 65.

By 1929, a third… Green, p. 188.

In 1925, a journalist named… Michelle Hilmes, Radio Voices, p. 130.

one much-quoted poll… Hilmes, pp. 142–43.

More than any other decade… Haskell, p. 49. Anyone interested in the period might start with Cari Beauchamp’s Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood.

Mary Pickford: My information comes from Scott Eyman’s Mary Pickford.

Theda Bara: See Eva Golden’s Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara.

“IF I SHOULD BOP OFF, IT’LL BE DOING
THE THING THAT I’VE ALWAYS MOST WANTED”

Women had been getting… Scharff, p. 25.

“sensational cross-country run”… Scharff, p. 51.

The Motor Girls… Bobbie Ann Mason, The Girl Sleuth, p. 11. This is my chance to recommend this book, one of my all-time favorites.

Starting the early model cars… This is all based on information in Scharff. the Flying Girls… Mason, p. 14.

Early aviation was another… The rest of this section is indebted to Gene Nora Jessen’s The Powder Puff Derby, a very readable book about women’s role in early American aviation.

Bessie Coleman… There’s a profile of Bessie Coleman by Elizabeth Hadley Freydberg in Black Women in America, Hine, ed.

Amelia Earhart… Katherine Brick has an essay on Earhart in Notable American Women. For a full biography, see Susan Butler’s East to the Dawn.

SWIM GIRL, SWIM

Gertrude Ederle: Kelli Anderson, “The Young Woman and the Sea,” Sports, Illustrated (November 29, 1999), p. 90, and Paul Gallico’s The Golden People, pp. 49–65.

The older generation… The two books by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey are a really pleasant way to get a picture of family life in the early part of the century. Chapter 5 of Belles on their Toes has a wonderful portrait of the generational divide on bathing suits.

When the first Miss America… Banner, pp. 267–69.

“THE REASON NOBODY WILL GIVE”

This section is indebted to Jacqueline Jones’s Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, one of the very best books on African American women in this country’s history.

In 1929… Cowan, p. 182.

A survey of black… Dorothy Brown, p. 94.

African American women of middle age… Jones, p. 193.

Addie Hunter… Jones, p. 179.

There was a sexual imbalance… Jones, p. 156.

Black wives were five times… Jones, p. 162.

Unlike immigrants, black parents… John Bodnar et al., Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900–1960, p. 92.

Marita Bonner… Cheryl Wall, Women in the Harlem Renaissance, p. 4.

Madame Mamie Hightower… Piess, Hope in a Jar, pp. 112–13, 117.

In 1920, Mamie Smith’s… Susan Douglas, Listening In, p. 90.

“IF I WERE BORN 100 YEARS FROM NOW, WELL AND GOOD”

“Within the space…” Leinwand, p. 49.

The proportion… William Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, p. 159.

They made much less than men… Leinwand, p. 51.

“I pay our women…” Scharff, p. 54.

F. Scott Fitzgerald… Fitzgerald, p. 237.

Only about 10 percent… Dumeril, p. 113.

“There must be a way…” Solomon, p. 174.

CHAPTER 16: THE DEPRESSION

“ROMANCE CAN BEGIN AT THIRTY-FIVE”

When NBC radio moved… Hilmes, Radio Voices, pp. 150–51. This is my favorite book about radio in the pre-TV days.

Helen Trent’s attempt… Robert LaGuardia, From Ma Perkins to Mary Hartman: The Illustrated History of Soap Operas, p. 7.

Mary Knackstedt Dyck… Mrs. Dyck’s journals can be found in Waiting on the Bounty, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, ed.

In October 1936… Riney-Kehrberg, ed., p. 26.

Echoing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s… Joseph Blótner, Faulkner, p. 938.

The actress who played… LaGuardia, p. 9.

“The man in the wheelchair…” James Thurber, The Beast in Me and Other Animals, p. 221.

“DOING IT YOURSELF THESE DAYS?”

Many of the voices of women in this chapter come from Studs Terkel’s great oral history, Hard Times. This is also an opportunity to put in a plug for a longtime favorite book, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life by Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg.

Diana Morgan… Terkel, Hard Times, p. 181.

The writer Caroline Bird… Bird, The Invisible Scar, p. 273.

The average family income… Mintz and Kellogg, p. 134.

“endless little economies…” Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s, p. 2.

in Indianapolis, more than half… Mintz and Kellogg, p. 135.

An ad for bleach… Cowan, p. 176.

Sally Rand… Terkel, Hard Times, pp. 198–205.

“Many a family…” Mintz and Kellogg, p. 136.

“Do you realize how…” Terkel, Hard Times, p. 447.

The birthrate plunged… Mintz and Kellogg, p. 137.

The birthrate was about… Green, p. 78.

In the 1930s, Caroline Bird… Bird, p. 289.

Lillian Wald’s… A section of Wald’s book Windows on Henry Street appears in Women of Valor, Bernard Sternsher and Judith Sealander, eds., p. 39.

“I have watched…” Woloch, p. 451.

In New York, Meridel… Meridel LeSueur, “Women on the Breadlines,”

New Masses (January 1932).

“dressed in slacks…” Green, p. 79.

“A few women…” Ben Reitman, Boxcar Bertha, p. 69.

Peggy Terry… Terkel, Hard Times, pp. 67–68.

Pauline Kael… Terkel, Hard Times, p. 51.

One of Lillian Wald’s… Sternsher and Sealander, eds., p. 38.

“THE MOST LIBERATED WOMAN OF THE CENTURY”

There is a library’s worth of biographical work on Eleanor Roosevelt; a reader with plenty of time might want to start with Blanche Wiesen Cook’s two wonderful volumes on Mrs. Roosevelt’s life up to World War II, move on to Doris Kearn Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time for the war years, and then to Joseph Lash’s Eleanor—The Years Alone. For a very quick first immersion, try the essay in Susan Ware’s Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century.

one cousin called it… William Chafe’s profile in Barbara Sicherman and Carol Green, Notable American Women, The Modern Period, p. 595.

“I was your real…” Ware, Letter to the World, p. 10.

“The bottom dropped…” Joseph Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 220.

“Eleanor, I think she’s…” Terkel, Hard Times, p. 448.

“My dear, if…” Ware, Letter to the World, p. 5.

The gossip about her was vicious… Collins, pp. 148–50.

One historian… Joseph Lash, “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Role in Women’s History,” in Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women, Mabel Deutrich and Virginia Purdy, eds., p. 244.

“I DIDN’T LIKE THE IDEA OF BEING IMPEACHED”

“Twelve appointments…” Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal, pp. 89–90.

Florence Allen… See her autobiography, To Do Justly.

“When I wanted help…” Ware, Beyond Suffrage, p. 10.

Mary McLeod Bethune… See Elaine Smith’s “Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Youth Administration” in Deutrich and Purdy, eds.

Frances Perkins: This section is based on information from Frances Perkins: Champion of the New Deal by Naomi Pasachoff.

“It was always up and down…” Pasachoff, p. 39.

When Perkins was honored… Ware, Beyond Suffrage, p. 28.

On April 12… Ware, Beyond Suffrage, p. 131.

“A MENACE TO SOCIETY”

In 1932, Fortune, in a peculiar… Bird, p. 279.

Pollster George Gallup… Ware, Holding Their Own, p. 27.

Usually, the issue… Mary Hargreaves, “Darkness Before the Dawn: The Status of Working Women in the Depression Years,” in Deutrich and Purdy, eds., p. 181.

“I think the single girl…” Gerald Moskowitz and David Rosner, Slaves of the Depression, p. 154.

Even Frances Perkins… Woloch, p. 452.

Eleanor Roosevelt called the law… Lash in Deutrich and Purdy, eds., p. 249.

More than three-quarters… Penny Colman, Rosie the Riveter, pp. 24–25.

Despite all this… Winifred Bolin makes this point in “The Economics of Middle-Income Family Life: Working Women During the Great Depression,” Journal of American History (June 1978).

The hopes that female fliers… Ware, Holding Their Own, p. 177.

The New York City board… Bird, p. 53.

“NOT A BIT OF DUST FOR THIS GREAT 4TH DAY OF FEB.”

In 1935, more than… Robert Caro, Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, p. 516.

Only 20 percent… Green, p. 101.

A researcher visiting… This is drawn from Margaret Jarman Hagood, Mothers of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman.

The New Deal program… Robert Caro has a riveting description of the coming of electricity to the Texas hill country in his first Johnson book, pp. 502–15.

“Just at noon…” Joan Ostrander, Bits and Pieces of Way Back When, pp. 36–37.

“Not a bit of dust…” Riney-Kehrberg, p. 117.

“GOODNESS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, DEARIE”

This section is based on Marybeth Hamilton’s When I’m Bad, I’m Better.

“I HAD A WIFE ONCE BUT SHE VANISHED
INTO THE NBC BUILDING”

she was, as one critic pointed out… Haskell, p. 125.

Margaret Mitchell, the author… Pierpont, p. 93.

As novelist Bobbie Ann Mason… Mason, pp. 52, 67.

Dorothy Thompson… This section is based on Susan Ware’s portrait in Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century.

CHAPTER 17: WORLD WAR II

“I AM GOING TO ASSIST IN BUILDING A PLANE TO BOMB HITLER”

But their meals… This note introduces one of my all-time favorite books on life on the home front during World War II—Amy Bentley’s Eating for Victory.

Women who failed… Leila Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War, p. 156.

One of the many… Rupp, Mobilizing Women, p. 157.

Constance Bowman… Bowman and Allen, Slacks and Calluses, p. 31.

Copywriters for public… Straub in Deutrich and Purdy, eds., p. 215.

The government and the media… Bentley, p. 137.

In Atlanta, Helen Dortch Longstreet… Paul Casdorph, Let the Good Times Roll, p. 137.

“A WOMAN’S ARMY…THINK OF THE HUMILIATION”

American historians are obviously doing a good job of preserving the oral histories of women who took part in World War II, either in the military or on the home front. One of my favorites, done by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, is Women Remember the War, Michael Stevens, ed., and as a result the voices of women from Wisconsin get what is probably more than their share of space in this book.

“By voting for me…” N. Smith, p. 176.

Congresswoman Rankin rushed… Smith, pp. 183–85.

Two months after… D’Ann Campbell, Women at War with America, p. 7.

She had gone overseas… Lisa Meyer, Creating G.I. Jane, p. 11.

For a while, the War Department… Meyer, p. 55.

Officials also stressed… Susan Hartman, “Women in the Military Service,” in Deutrich and Purdy, eds., p. 196.

Frieda Schurch… Stevens, ed., pp. 56–57.

There was a widely reported… Helen Rogan, Mixed Company, p. 142.

The FBI was called… Campbell, p. 37.

“A woman’s Army…” Meyer, p. 13.

“The efforts of…” Meyer, p. 40.

A WAC in Birmingham… Stevens, ed., p. 53.

But Evelyn Fraser… Studs Terkel, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, p. 123.

“THREE HOLES IN THE TAIL, BOYS, THAT’S A LITTLE TOO CLOSE”

My single best source of information on women who served overseas during the war was Helen Rogan’s Mixed Company, which is, alas, out of print. If you want to read more about the WASPs, try Sally Van Wagenen Keil’s Those Wonderful Women in their Flying Machines. The part of this section on the WASPs is based on that book unless otherwise noted.

The first five WACs… Rogan, p. 133.

More than 5,000 women… Rogan, p. 143.

“Three holes…” Keil, p. 269.

An army flight surgeon… Keil, p. 169.

It wasn’t the only theory… Campbell, p. 28.

Jill McCormick… Keil, p. 303.

“LITTLE DID I DREAM THAT WE WOULD BE
ALWAYS HUNGRY, ALWAYS FRIGHTENED”

A very thorough recounting of the story of the Bataan nurses is We Band of Angels, by Elizabeth Norman. Helen Rogan also has interviews with a number of the survivors in Mixed Company.

Toward the end of the war… Doris Weatherford, American Women and World War II, pp. 19–20.

one nurse in training… Campbell, p. 57.

“We lived high…” Rogan, p. 260.

“Little did I dream…” Weatherford, American Women and World War II, p. 3.

As Japanese warships… Norman, p. 43.

“I can remember…” Rogan, p. 262.

“I was continually amazed…” Weatherford, American Women and World War II, p. 63.

Brunetta Kuehlthau… Norman, p. 55.

Most of the nurses… Thousands of American civilian women and children were interned in Japanese camps in the South Pacific, including missionaries, wives of businessmen, and teachers. Theresa Kaminski collected information about them for her book Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific.

General Jonathan Wainwright… Norman, p. 238.

“SHE’S MAKING HISTORY, WORKING FOR VICTORY”

“While other girls…” Colman, pp. 15–16.

Ladies’ Home Journal ran a story… Rosenthal, p. 127.

Peggy Terry… Terkel, The Good War, pp. 105–6.

As a result of the great migration… Colman, pp. 42–43.

“Darlin, You are…” Judy Barrett Litoff and David Smith, Since You Went Away, p. 146.

Rose Kaminski… Stevens, ed., pp. 11–12.

The Office of War Information… Colman, p. 51.

The owner of the Chicago Cubs… The story of the All-American Girls League is told in Sue Macy’s A Whole New Ballgame.

Ads and movie newsreels… Colman, p. 10.

nearly 90 percent of the housewives… William Tuttle, Daddy’s Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America’s Children, p. 71.

Congress didn’t appropriate money… Woloch, p. 474.

Agnes Meyer… Tuttle, p. 74.

In 1943, two San Diego high school… Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen, Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory. This little book, which is still in print, gives you a very good feel for what defense work was like for two middle-class women.

“I was tireder…” Bowman and Allen, p. 42.

“It was a great shock…” Bowman and Allen, p. 69.

When four WASPs… Keil, p. 259.

“Whether they are…” Bowman and Allen, p. 67.

“VARIETY MEATS: THEY ARE GOOD,
ABUNDANT, HIGHLY NUTRITIOUS”

Except where otherwise noted, the information in this section comes from Amy Bentley’s Eating for Victory.

“Never in the long…” Bentley, p. 3.

A government-issued… Bentley, p. 97.

“My mother and all…” Terkel, The Good War, p. 234.

“Give us housewives…” Bentley, pp. 106–7.

It was in World War II… Bentley, pp. 67–68.

“WE WOULD GO TO DANCES
AND GIRLS WOULD DANCE WITH GIRLS”

A Seattle paper… There’s a reproduction of this cartoon on p. 98 of Colman’s Rosie the Riveter.

Dorothy Zmuda of Milwaukee… Stevens, ed., p. 47.

“The pressure to marry…” Terkel, The Good War, p. 114.

Dorothy Zmuda was casually… Stevens, ed., p. 45.

“The girls that I knew…” Stevens, ed., p. 35.

The Baltimore Sun noticed… Bentley, p. 44.

“It was very important…” Stevens, ed., p. 36.

Jean Lechnir… Stevens, ed., p. 84.

“WELL OF COURSE, SO WERE THE JAPANESE”

One good memoir of life in the relocation camps is Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston.

Anne Dinsmore… Stevens, ed., pp. 92–94.

Earl Warren… Casdorph, pp. 27–28.

“These poor women…” Lawson Fusao Inada, Only What We Could Carry, p. 61.

JeanneWakatsuki was seven… Wakatsuki Houston and Houston, pp. 14–15.

Yoshiko Uchida… Inada, pp. 69–80.

The Department of the Interior… Bentley, p. 121.

When one of the first groups… Meyer, p. 67.

“HITLER WAS THE ONE THAT GOT US OUT
OF THE WHITE FOLKS’ KITCHEN”

a young Maya Angelou… Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, pp. 265–69.

In New York, other black women… Karen Anderson, Wartime Women, p. 84.

In 1943, at the height… See Karen Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers During World War II,” Journal of American History (June 1982).

“Despite all…” Brenda L. Moore, To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas During World War II, p. 19.

Pauli Murray…Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II, Maureen Honey, ed., pp. 277–79.

Elsie Oliver… Moore, p. 18.

Despite its grave… Campbell, p. 64.

Major Harriet West… Meyer, pp. 90–93.

At Fort Devens… Meyer, pp. 97–99.

“My sister always…” Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited, p. 23.

“IT JUST ENDED OVERNIGHT”

“Ohh, the beautiful…” Terkel, The Good War, p. 109.

“They always got priority…” Stevens, ed., pp. 23–24.

“It just ended…” Gluck, p. 65.

William Mulcahy… Colman, pp. 21–22.

“I happen to be a widow…” Colman, pp. 97–98.

Peggy Terry, the Kentucky woman… Terkel, The Good War, p. 107.

“We got a chance…” Terkel, The Good War, p. 112.

“They realized that they were…” Terkel, The Good War, p. 119.

CHAPTER 18: THE FIFTIES

“I DREAMED I STOPPED TRAFFIC IN MY MAIDENFORM BRA”

My two favorite books on women in the 1950s are Stephanie Coontz’s The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, and Jessica Weiss’s To Have and to Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom and Social Change.

“In order to wear…” Benita Eisler, Private Lives: Men and Women of the Fifties, p. 120.

Women looking for a more modern… William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, p. 126.

But plenty of women worked… Coontz, The Way We Never Were, p. 31.

Then suddenly, 60 percent… Coontz, p. 24.

Ebony enthused… “Hello Mammy, Good-bye Mother,” Ebony (March 1947), p. 36.

“I MADE TERRIFIC FRIENDS RIGHT AWAY”

“Our lives are held…” K. Jackson, p. 235.

“I made terrific…” Eisler, pp. 212–16.

In Levittown, outdoor… K. Jackson, p. 236.

“IF MY WIFE HAD HER WAY I THINK WE’D ALL BREATHE IN UNISON”

“Emphasis on family…” Dorothy Barclay, “Family Palship—With an Escape Clause,” The New York Times Magazine, November 18, 1956, p. 48.

Dr. Bruno Bettelheim… Bettelheim, “Fathers Shouldn’t Try to Be Mothers,” Parents (October 1956), p. 40.

“Adventure is a father’s…” Weiss, p. 90.

Betty Furness… David Halberstam, The Fifties, pp. 498–500.

“ALL THE GANG HAS STARTED THEIR OWN SETS OF STERLING”

Like almost half… Brett Harvey, The Fifties, p. 70.

“Not so long ago…” Weiss, p. 123.

“All the gang has…” Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, p. 220.

Suzie Slattery… Eisler, p. 104.

Once married… Harvey, p. 70.

The proportion of women… Harvey, p. 70.

a professor at Smith complained… Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, p. 152.

“The thing you didn’t do…” Harvey, p. 61.

A survey in 1958… Bailey, p. 132.

The wife of a college… Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, p. 71.

“I felt increasingly…” May, Homeward Bound, p. 71.

The male president… Harvey, pp. 46–47.

“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LIKE IT, GEORGE.
SHE’S AN OLD MAID.”

In one much-quoted… Coontz, p. 25.

The 1947 best-seller… Ferdinand Lunberg and Marynia Fannham, Modern Woman, the Lost Sex, pp. 364–65.

The National Woman’s Party… Leila Rupp, Survival in the Doldrums, p. 19.

An editor at Mademoiselle told… Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, p. 56.

“Except for the sick…” Douglas Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were, p. 152.

A study in one Pennsylvania… Bailey, p. 48.

Carol Cornwall… Eisler, p. 129.

“No boy—no matter…” Bailey, p. 90.

In 1953, he released… Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, pp. 287, 416.

“It is impossible…” Halberstam, p. 280.

“To go out and actually…” Harvey, pp. 11–12.

As a result, an estimated… May, Homeward Bound, p. 136.

“IT WAS…SO OUT OF CONTROL”

In 1956, the average teenager… Stuart Kallen, The 1950s, p. 61.

Back in the nineteenth century…Banner, p. 179.

The sixteen-year-old Fabian… John Jackson, American Bandstand, pp. 137–38, 145.

“SOME VERY SENSIBLE GIRL FROM A NICE FAMILY”

A great book on the media’s view of young women in the fifties and sixties is Susan Douglas’s Where the Girls Are.

In 1946, there were only… May, Homeward Bound, p. 153.

I Love Lucy: Halberstam, pp. 196–20.

When her husband asked… Halberstam, p. 509.

Father Knows Best: Douglas, Where the Girls Are, pp. 37–38.

“WOMEN CAN STAND THE SHOCK AND STRAIN
OF AN ATOMIC EXPLOSION”

A great book about women and the Cold War is Homeward Bound, by Elaine Tyler May.

Jean Wood Fuller… Fuller, “L.A. Woman in Trench at A-Blast,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1955, p. 2.

Fuller’s mission in life… May, Homeward Bound, p. 91.

“You all know women…” Shapiro, pp. 214–15.

The first elected official… The information on Senator Smith comes from

Janaan Sherman’s No Place for a Woman: The Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

Betty Friedan theorized… Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, p. 54.

The heroine in one… Josephine Bentham, “I Didn’t Want to Tell You,” McCall’s, January 1958.

“THEY’VE MESSED WITH THE WRONG ONE NOW”

Anyone interested in the role of women, black and white, in the civil rights movement in the South should read Lynne Olson’s Freedom’s Daughters.

it was the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system… The two women most centrally involved in the Montgomery bus boycott have written their accounts of what happened: Rosa Parks’s My Story and Jo Ann Robinson’s The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It.

“Some drivers made…” Parks, p. 77.

She was “happy as I…” J. Robinson, pp. 15–16.

“The only tired…” Parks, p. 116.

“My God, look…” Parks, p. 125.

“They’ve messed…” Parks, p. 133.

“You’ve said enough…” Parks, p. 130.

King urged one old lady… Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested, p. 61.

Many years later… Raines, p. 57.

Ruby Hurley… Raines, p. 131.

Autherine Lucy, who became… Raines, p. 326.

Bates, the daughter… Olson, p. 136.

Autherine Lucy would return… Raines, p. 327.

On the fortieth anniversary… Jack Schneider, “British Film to Revisit Crisis at Central High,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 17, 1999.

CHAPTER 19: THE SIXTIES

“YOU SHOULD SEE MY LITTLE SIS”

A Ladies’ Home Journal poll… Barbara Ehrenreich (with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs), Re-Making Love, pp. 24–25.

“Every week the skirts…” Sara Davidson, Loose Change, p. 150.

“GREGORY, CAN’T YOU DEVISE SOME SORT OF PILL
FOR THIS PURPOSE?”

This section, all the way down to the Loretta Lynn song, is based on information in chapter 9 of Andrea Tone’s history of contraceptives in America, Devices and Desires. Notable American Women, James and James, eds., has a good portrait of Katharine McCormick by James Reed.

“ONE VAST, ALL-PERVADING SEXOLOGICAL SPREE”

Reader’s Digest fretted… Douglas, Where the Girls Are, p. 61.

“I told a date…” Gloria Steinem, “The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed,” Esquire, September 1962, p. 156.

Producers started churning… Douglas, Where the Girls Are, pp. 73–80.

Marriage, she told her public… Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, pp. 2–4.

“Obscene is not…” D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 306.

as late as 1969… May, Homeward Bound, pp. 198–99.

In 1975, TV reporter… Weiss, To Have and to Hold, pp. 170–71.

“MOVE ON, LITTLE GIRL”

Most of the memoirs of women in the New Left are interesting, and actually getting more so as the era becomes more and more distant. But the best all-purpose book on this subject I’ve found is Sara Evans’s Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left.

Jane Alpert…Alpert, Growing Up Underground, p. 344.

During a climactic… Evans, Personal Politics, pp. 198–99.

The Yippees… Robin Morgan, Saturday’s Child, p. 237.

like Stokely Carmichael… Carmichael defended himself by saying he was joking, but he made the comment so often, he obviously enjoyed the joke. See Jones, Labor of Love, p. 283.

In 1965, at a meeting… Evans, Personal Politics, p. 160.

“NOWADAYS, WOMEN WOULDN’T STAND
FOR BEING KEPT SO MUCH IN THE BACKGROUND”

The March on… This account is based on Lynne Olson’s Freedom’s Daughters, pp. 284–90.

“Nowadays, women wouldn’t…” Parks, p. 166.

“There is always…” Jones, pp. 279–80.

Even Rosa Parks’s lawyer… Parks, p. 82.

“All of the churches…” Olson, p. 143.

“Around 1965 there began…” Joanne Grant, Ella Baker, p. 229.

In Americus, Georgia… Olson, pp 279–80.

In Albany, Georgia… Olson, pp. 244–45.

In Indianola… Olson, p. 301.

The most famous example… This information on Fannie Lou Hamer comes from Kay Mills’s biography, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer.

Mexican American women were torn… Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End, pp. 33–34.

“YOU CAN’T EVEN SAFELY ADVERTISE FOR A WIFE ANY MORE”

For an extremely thorough history of the woman’s movement, see Flora Davis’s Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement in America Since 1960.

When the landmark… See F. Davis, pp. 38–45, and Jo Freeman, “How ‘Sex’ Got into Title VII,” which is available on her website, www.jofreeman.com.

“Bunny problem indeed!… “De-Sexing the Job Market,” New York Times, August 21, 1965, p. 20.

Gloria Steinem had just written… “A Bunny’s Tale,” Show, 1963, reprinted in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions as “I Was a Playboy Bunny.”

A personnel officer for an… “New Hiring Law Seen Bringing More Jobs, Benefits for Women,” Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1965, p. 1.

“It’s the sex thing”… F. Davis, p. 21.

Representative Griffiths angrily… Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open, p. 73.

At one point, Friedan… Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood, p. 135.

Friedan thought up… Betty Friedan, Life So Far, p. 174.

“SHE IS DISSATISFIED WITH A LOT THAT
WOMEN OF OTHER LANDS CAN ONLY DREAM OF”

Any study of the women’s liberation movement ought to begin with reading The Feminine Mystique. Except where otherwise noted, this section is based on that book and Betty Friedan’s autobiography, Life So Far.

“Usually, until very…” Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, p. 199.

“She is dissatisfied…” Sandie North, “Reporting the Movement,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1970), pp. 105–6.

“LADY JUROR BAN ENDED BY COURT”

the New York Times printed… Elizabeth Fowler, “Some Women Find Discrimination When Trying to Establish Credit,” May 15, 1972, pp. 53, 55; Georgia Dullea, “Women Demanding Equal Treatment in Mortgage Loans,” October 29, 1972, pp. R1, 10.

In North Carolina… D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 314.

In Alabama, the idea…“ Lady Juror Ban Ended,” Huntsville Times, February 8, 1966, p. 1; Helms, “Reaction on Jury Ruling,” Alabama Journal, February 8, 1966, p. 9.

In 1970, 3 percent… “Who’s Come a Long Way, Baby,” Time, August 31, 1970, pp. 16–21.

At Newsweek one of the fifty-two… F. Davis, pp. 110–11.

Flo Kennedy… M. Cohen, p. 152.

“DEGRADED MINDLESS BOOB-GIRLIE SYMBOL”

President Nixon said… M. Cohen, p. 150.

A group of women… There are many stories recounting this protest. Robin Morgan, the leader, tells her version in Going Too Far, pp. 62–77, and in her autobiography, Saturday’s Child, pp. 259–63.

The New York Times story… Charlotte Curtis, “Miss America Pageant Is Picketed by 100 Women,” September 8, 1968, p. 81.

In the spring of 1970… Friedan, Life So Far, pp. 238–39.

EPILOGUE

“DRAGGING THE WORD ‘HOUSEWIFE’ THROUGH THE MUD”

Alice Paul was still alive… Marylin Bender, “Liberation Yesterday—the Roots of the Feminist Movement,” New York Times, August 21, 1970, p. 41.

“It’s time for housewives…” “They’re Housewives and Proud of It,” New York Times, April 3, 1972, p. 44.

“Housewives have been called…” New York Times, April 3, 1972.

The number of women medical school graduates… S. Evans, Tidal Wave, p. 82. This is virtually the only good survey of the history of American women since the epochal 1970s.

“MY WIFE: I THINK I’LL KEEP HER”

Radical feminists claimed… S. Evans, Tidal Wave, p. 109.

In 1986, Newsweek warned… “Too Late for Prince Charming?” Newsweek, June 2, 1986, p. 54.

“They have more attitude”… Alex Kuczynski, “She’s Got to Be a Macho Girl,” New York Times, November 1, 2002, sec. 9, p. 1.

Nobody was happy that while… Joan Brumberg makes this point in the introduction to Girl Culture, by Lauren Greenfield.