The Remembered Gate

Book excerpt: From the Blurb: In this groundbreaking chronicle of the beginning of woman's emancipation Barbara Berg refutes the traditional interpretation that the women's movement emerged from the experiences of female abolitionists. Instead, she place the inception of feminism in the earliest years of the nineteenth century. Dr. Berg finds its roots in the complex responses to intricate social change that accompanied the urbanization of America, maintaining that the rise of the industrial city precipitated the subordination of women. Quietly tucked inside, the woman was expected to preserve the home as a haven of peacefulness and order-an artificial environment to compensate for the jarring world outside. Thus women fell victim to the "woman-belle ideal"--The monolithic creed that held women inferior, denying them access to the provinces of knowledge, responsibility, and dignity. Berg shows how women perceived and responded to this situation through an analysis of female invalidism, diaries, and works of fiction. In time, resigned listlessness gave way to an anguished search for identity, as women threw themselves into voluntary benevolent associations, activities that set the stage for a compelling feminist ideology. These activities took women outside the home, creating a context for the recognition of their oppression and helping them muster the spirit to elevate their self-image and, ultimately, their place in society. The effects of urban growth on the transformation of women's consciousness became evident through a study of the extant records of more than 150 female voluntary societies that flourished between 1800 and 1860. Newspaper accounts, municipal records, city guidebooks, and even popular songs reveal the gradual transformation of the ideas of women and men about themselves, each other, and their society. This book is the latest volume in The Urban Life in America series, edited by Richard C. Wade.