Basing her work on printed sources and monographs, Matthews reviews the 19th-century women's movement during what she terms its first phase: from Fanny Wright to the Centennial Exhibition protest. This phase, she writes, was more like the 1960s and the 1970s than the 1890s. She find the period distinguished by advocates' insistence on equality (transformation rather than reform), their language ... Read moreof natural rights, and repudiation of gender boundaries. Focusing resolutely on the women's movement—rather than domesticity of women's benevolence—Matthews moves briskl . . . .Informed synthesis, sensible readings, and clear prose make this a good overall introduction for undergraduates and general readers. . . .Helpful bibliographic essay. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
CHOICE
Jean Matthews brings to life the women and men who sought gender equality of rights, opportunities, and respect from the earliest years of the crusade through the 1870s. . . .As she examines the work of America's earliest women's advocates, Matthews not only enumerates their contributions to the movement but also provides richly-detailed views of their private lives. . . .Those who believe that they already know the story will discover that they have broadened their understanding of one of the most important forces in the nineteenth-century American history.
Journal of the Early Republic
In Women's Struggle for Equality: The First Phase, 1828-1876, Jean V. Matthews has crafted a concise and highly readable synthesis of recent suffrage scholarship. . . .Matthews herself, like the women she writes about, has bravely ventured into uncharted territory. A narrative history of the early years of the women's movement was sorely needed, and she has provided an excellent example of what a well-written synthesis should be. . . .In Women's Struggle for Equality, Jean V. Matthews has written a skillful introduction to and examination of the early years of a revolutionary movement.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online
Matthews narrates a phrase of women's struggle that shared more conceptions, goals, and methods with the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s than with the more refined movements and disciplined organizations of the later 19th century. The Woman Question, roles and rights, launching the movement, diagnosing the problem, and sex and suffrage are among her topics.
Book News, Inc.
Jean Matthew's Women Struggle for Equality provides an easily-absorbed history of the first phases of the women's movement from 1828-76. These were pivotal early years, marking the birth of one of the most important social movements of the 19th century: opponents as well as advocates of the movement are revealed, placing this a step above the usual biographical or historical focus on advocates alone.
Bookwatch
A wonderful synthesis of the women's rights movement...remarkable.
Wendy Hamand Venet
The Historian
Highly readable...can introduce women's rights and suffrage movements to the reading public...a vital strand of nineteenth-century history.
Ann D. Gordon
Civil War History
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