Women's Struggle for Equality

Book excerpt: Ms. Matthews's new study of the early years of the women's rights movement outlines the period from 1828 to 1876 as a distinct "first phase." She situates this early feminist activity within the lively debate over the Woman Question and pays attention to the opponents of equal rights for women as well as its advocates. Her book demonstrates that the intense conflict generated by the movement was due less to its specific reform proposals than to the realization - among men and women - that these early feminists wanted a complete rethinking of what womanhood meant and of the relations between the sexes. In many ways, as Ms. Matthews shows, the early-nineteenth-century movement - in its origins, individualism, hostility to tight organization, dedication to self-discovery, and concern for health issues - strongly resembled the revived feminism of the 1970s. Like the late-twentieth-century movement, its nineteenth-century precursor fostered an initial yearning for personal "liberation" and opportunity, and was later riven by issues of race and sexuality, and confused over the perennial question of "difference."