American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860Just as she helped launch the rediscovery of literary texts by American women writers, Nina Baym now uncovers the work of history performed by over 150 writers in over 350 texts. Here she explores a world of important writing unknown even to most specialists. The novels, poems, plays, textbooks, and travel narratives written by women between 1790 and the Civil War defy current theories of women's writing that stress a female domain of the private, homebound, and emotional. History is inarguably public in its nature and these women wrote it. In doing so, they challenged the imaginative and intellectual boundaries that divided domestic and public worlds. They claimed on behalf of all women the rights to know and to speak about the world outside the home, as well as to circulate their knowledge and opinions among the public. Their work helped shape the enormous public interest in history characteristic of the antebellum nation, and ultimately to forge our national identity in the history of the world. Nina Baym deftly outlines the master narrative of history implied in women's writings of this period, and discusses in a completely revisioned context the emergence of women's history in public discourse.
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From inside the book
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... mind's being sufficiently matured , and strengthened , to make a proper selection . I was passionately fond of novels ; and , as I lived in a state of seclusion , I acquired false ideas of life . " Adams laments her plight as a typical ...
... mind had no sex , figured impor- tantly in all early claims for expanded education for women . Thomas Prentiss's preface to the third ( 1801 ) edition of Hannah Adams's View of Religions insists that " if an invidious comparison between ...
... mind found epiphany in union with nature , the historical mind found it by merging with history . Elizabeth Peabody , the most theoretical of the women historians , spoke for many in express- ing a preference for history , the domain of ...
Contents
Women as Students of History II | 11 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown