Title: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
Author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
She was a Mormon mom in her thirties, trying to balance raising her family and working on her PhD. Writing an article on the funeral practices of Puritan women, she said, "Well-behaved women seldom make history" and probably didn't realize that she was making history of her own with the phrase. Several decades after that fateful article, Ulrich delves into the lives of women who did make history.
Women who make history is a big subject. If I were advising a student who wanted to tackle it, I'd probably give him or her the age-old advice to narrow the topic, and then narrow it more and more. Ulrich, as a college professor, seemed to ignore that cardinal rule. I loved the individual chapters in the book, but the focus seemed so broad that it felt like there was a lot left out. I loved the chapter on Shakespeare's Daughters, and felt that the book was very well-written. It seemed to just skim the surface, though. I feel like it would be a good introductory book, a jumping off point, for women's studies. It made me want to buy a t-shirt or a bumper sticker.
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