Title

America's women : four hundred years of dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines

Description

America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. By culling the most fascinating characters, the average as well as the celebrated, Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times, charts a journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and the early southern tobacco brides who came looking for a husband and sometimes, thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate, wound up marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable shoes mattered a lot, too. "The history of American women is about the fight for freedom," Collins writes in her introduction, "but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's roles that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history.

Identifier

1140197

60185104

Creator

Collins, Gail

Format

1st ed.

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

2003

Program air date: December 14, 2003

Publisher

William Morrow

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
In laid notes, some labeled CD 2-6 in roughly chronological order. Notes list events, names, concepts, and issues affecting American women. The unlabeled note lists women writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Sarah Josepha Hale, and Charlotte Bronte, including others. This note also includes information on teaching conditions during the pre-Civil War period. Other examples include "Eleanor Dare - Virginia Dare," "Mary Johnson - 1st black woman," and "sex/courtship." Examples from CD-2 include: "L. Moot", "Stanton", "Seneca Falls", "Women's Rights Convention", and a list of birth control methods. Terms on CD-3 relate to the abolition movement and include names of famous abolitionists such as the Grimke sisters. Other terms on CD-3 related to westward expansion, the post-Civil War period, and Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley. Notes on CD-4 relate to the Women's Suffrage movement and include notes such as "Alice Paul state by state strategy," "T.R. - waffled," "parades," among others. Notes labeled CD-5 are on two sheets. These notes cover the period between 1919 and post WWII. Concepts recorded here include "Alcohol - women wanted to vote to abolish," "1919 Prohibition," "drunken husband," Margaret Sanger and the early family planning movement, changes of women's dress during the 1920's, the Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt, bras and other undergarments. Notes on CD-6 cover the 1960's through 2000. Terms and concepts on this sheet include "Feminine Mystique," "unhappy housewife," "1970 - 10 women in the House," "3% of women doctors," "Billy Jean King." After "2000" notes listed include "women could be anything they wanted" among others. Front paper notes include a list of prominent American women. Back end page includes the note "Eleanor Roosevelt - possibly the most important woman in American history." Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book. Examples: "tobacco brides," "Hannah Dustan," "Wyoming 1869 vote," "flapper," "corsets," "By 2000 56% of college degrees."

Subject

"Women--United States--History."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

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