The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women's Rights and Woman's Sphere / Edition 1

by Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley, Anne Margolis

Overview

In a century almost continually at odds with the proper place of females, Catherine Esther Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker shared a commitment to women's power. Although they did not always agree on the nature of that power, each in her own way—Catherine as educator and author of advice literature; Harriet as author of novels, tales, and sketches; and Isabella as a women's rights advocate—devoted much of her adult life to elevating women's status and expanding women's influence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807842072
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/29/1988
Series:	Gender and American Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	393
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Jeanne Boydston, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is author of Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic.

Mary Kelley is Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture, and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.

Anne Margolis, formerly assistant professor of English and American studies at Williams College, has edited the papers of Isabella Beecher Hooker and is currently a student at Western New England College School of Law.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A sophisticated blend of the authors' analysis of the 19th-century debate over women's rights and the letters of Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker. . . . The introductory essays for each section do draw upon the latest scholarship and enhance the usefulness of the book for student and scholar.—Choice



A fascinating account of the three Beecher sisters, participants in the debate concerning women's rights that emerged in the wake of the Civil War. As the authors deftly demonstrate, the siblings influenced each other throughout their lives, and shared a commitment to female power, although their visions often differed.—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

A fascinating account of the three Beecher sisters, participants in the debate concerning women's rights.

"Publishers Weekly"

"A fascinating account of the three Beecher sisters, participants in the debate concerning women's rights.

"Publishers Weekly""

The introductory essays for each section do draw upon the latest scholarship and enhance the usefulness of the book .

"Choice"

From the Publisher

This is a fascinating account of the three Beecher sisters, participants in the debate concerning women's rights that emerged in the wake of the Civil War. As the authors deftly demonstrate, the siblings influenced each other throughout their lives, and shared a commitment to female power, although their visions often differed. Daughters of the eminent minister Lyman Beecher, they inherited his call to actively promote social justice as well as his desire for prominence in society. Each sister in her own wayCatharine Esther Beecher as an educator and writer of advice literature; Harriet Beecher Stowe as an author of novels like the abolitionist Uncle Tom's Cabin; and Isabella Beecher Hooker, as an active suffragistdevoted much of her adult life to elevating women's status and expanding women's influence in 19th century America. Their numerous skillfully selected and edited letterswritten to others and to each otherreflect their eloquence, intelligence as well as their heartfelt pain in attempting to resolve the conflicts between motherhood and career, a dilemma that resonates today. Boydston is a history professor at Rutgers; Kelley, a history professor at Dartmouth, wrote Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America; and Margolis has edited the papers of Isabella Beecher Hooker. Illustrated. (April)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly