The Female Experience: An American DocumentaryWhile women's experience encompasses all that is human, while women have participated in history and the making of history through all time, until very recently they have been largely excluded from the writing of that history. Most of what we know of the past experience of women comes to us largely through the distorting lens of men's reflections and observations. In the now classic The Female Experience, Gerda Lerner describes history as seen by women, as colored by their values. What she creates is fascinating narrative of the lives and history of ordinary women, a book that provides a new framework for the study of their past experience. If women's history is now a healthy and ever-growing discipline, we have in a large part this award-winning author to thank. Avoiding the traditional chronological periods by which U.S. history is most often studied, Lerner groups her sources--many taken from manuscripts previously unknown, and others only available in research libraries--according to the lifecycle of women, their roles in a male-defined society, in the workplace, in politics, and finally in the contemporary world where feminism is creating an altogether new consciousness. From "runaway wives" in eighteenth-century America, through an anonymous account of a mother's death during childbirth, to appeals in our century for freedom of sexual preference, The Female Experience recounts history from the woman's point of view, and goes a long way toward reconstructing a female past and analyzing it with appropriate concepts. In the general introduction and chapter essays Lerner offers commentary that not only knits these disparate primary sources together, but also interprets them in an innovative way. Now brought up to date with a new preface, The Female Experience is a book that pulses with life, a stunning testament not only to the long-ignored role of women in society, but a pioneering effort to reinvent the way we look at history. |
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Contents
chapter one Childhood | 3 |
You owe more to your mother and | 17 |
Mary | 25 |
Frances | 32 |
The childhood of an immigrant working | 38 |
and the Single State | 42 |
Eliza Lucas Pinckney | 49 |
Marius | 59 |
Anything but housework 1910 | 265 |
Women in Industrial Employment | 273 |
Rheta Childe | 286 |
Organizing Women Workers | 293 |
Rose | 300 |
chapter seven Women and Politics | 317 |
Women vote in New Jersey 17901807 | 323 |
Address to Females in | 330 |
Jane | 69 |
Protection from rape and sexual exploi | 79 |
Sarah M Grimke 18521857 | 87 |
Margaret | 98 |
Catharine M | 104 |
Martha | 115 |
Herma L | 130 |
A modest proposal for freeing women | 143 |
From family nursing to volunteer | 180 |
Society for the Relief | 191 |
chapter five The Right to Learn | 203 |
The Young | 209 |
In a daughter they have a human being | 223 |
Anna Howard Shaw | 230 |
A Allen 1871 | 237 |
Emma | 244 |
Academic women attack institutional | 251 |
chapter six Working for a Living | 257 |
Why women should not meddle with | 338 |
Women are enfranchised by the Consti | 347 |
A black woman appeals to white women | 354 |
Morrow Lewis 1907 | 373 |
chapter eight Creating | 391 |
pioneer work | 401 |
an attack and | 408 |
The best protector any woman can have | 415 |
The Right to Her Own Body | 423 |
Rad | 444 |
In Union There Is Strength | 453 |
chapter nine The Search for Autonomy | 463 |
Preparation to the death of a Quaker | 471 |
While the water is stirring I will step | 487 |
Lucille Clifton 1974 | 493 |
| 501 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
able activities Amendment American Answer asked become called cause child College death document domestic domestic workers duty equal experience fact father feel female feminist friends girls give hope human husband industry institutions interest keep kind labor Ladies learned leave legislation letter living look male marriage married Mary means meeting mind mother movement nature never night nurse offer once organization person petitions political poor position practice present protection question received seemed sister social society suffrage teachers teaching things thought tion trade union United vote week wife woman women workers York young
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Female Experience: An American Documentary Oxford paperbacks The American Heritage Series Women's studies |
| Author | Gerda Lerner |
| Editor | Gerda Lerner |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 1992 |
| ISBN | 0195072588, 9780195072587 |
| Length | 509 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |