The book is the first to delve deep into the history of an early American same-sex marriage. Cleves sees Drake and Bryant not as an aberration, but as part of a larger history of same-sex partnerships that has yet to be written - one that now exists mainly as clues dropped in family histories and stories told in the archives ... Read moreof local historical societies.
Rebecca Onion, Boston Globe
The moving true story of a same-sex couple who found an honored place in early 19th-century Vermont... Rachel Hope Cleves' new book, Charity and Sylvia: A Same Sex Marriage in Early America, is a slim, tender tribute to this marriage-in-all-but-law... Academic histories capable of bringing tears to a reader's eyes are rare, but Charity and Sylvia is one of them.
Salon
Rachel Hope Cleves offers a lyrical portrait of a same-sex marriage in this new book. Here completely assembled for the first time is the compelling story of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake and their forty-four-year (1807-51) domestic, romantic, and sexual union.... Through nineteen short, crisply composed chapters, readers are drawn into the intimate world of Charity and Sylvia.... Scholars of the history of sexuality and the general reading public alike - but especially those engaged in same-sex marriages in the twenty-first century - will appreciate the depth of research and the beautiful prose of this book. Charity and Sylvia would be proud.
Journal of the History of Sexuality
...Rachel Hope Cleves's Charity and Sylvia is an important contribution to the field. Finally, a historian has documented a long-term same-sex relationship in the early republic.... Charity and Sylvia is a compelling story that fills a long-standing void in the history of sexuality.
Journal of American History
In a year when same-sex marriages are being recognized, unrecognized and rerecognized in courtrooms around the country, historian Rachel Hope Cleves flies us back in time two centuries to a remarkable couple... Drawing on documents and letters, and occasionally reading between the lines and interpreting silences, Cleves meticulously reconstructs their lives together in Charity and Sylvia. She explores fascinating and difficult questions, such as how the two women squared their relationship with their religious community and whether this was a sexual union.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
In telling [the story of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake], Cleves has written more than a work of recovery of a lesbian past. She offers an intriguing inquiry into the language of letters and poetry. Her close reading uncovers hidden meanings to reveal the private coded words of the same-sex female lovers.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Charity and Sylvia is undeniably smart - a devastatingly handsome contribution to our understanding of the history of gender and sexuality in the United States and the history of the early republic and antebellum period generally.
The New England Quarterly
In this beautifully written and utterly absorbing love story, Cleves (The Reign of Terror in America) explores the lives of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, two ordinary middle-class women who serve as a window on historical constructs of marriage, gender, and sexuality in late 18th-century and early 19th-century America... Meticulously researched and brilliantly argued, Cleves has crafted an important work of history that resonates with one of today's most public debates.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[A] remarkable story of which [Cleves] tells with equal parts rigor and sensitivity... Charity & Sylvia is an absorbing and perspective-shifting read in its entirety, chronicling the lives of these two pioneering women, the multitude of challenges, personal and social, they overcame to be together, and the depth and richness of their lifelong love.
Brainpickings
Starting with the birth of the woman on whom author Rachel Hope Cleves focuses most, this book opens with a slice of life during the Revolutionary War. We then move back and forth in narrative, but Cleves never lets us forget the time and space that her subjects inhabited, the social mores, the historical aspects, nor the seemingly-inconsistent attitudes toward romance and sex that our forebears held and that which we've been led to believe they had. I found that deeply fascinating and highly entertaining. I think that if you're a fan of history (LGBT or otherwise), this is something you'll relish. With chaste retelling and its abundant details, Charity & Sylvia is your grandmother's book - and yours, too."
Washington Blade
With Charity and Sylvia Cleves has stitched together a coherent, captivating account, one filled with vibrant details, and she offers a provocative conclusion: however astonishing their story, it might not be that uncommon.
The Gay & Lesbian Review
Cleves has uncovered an astoundingly rich and detailed documentary record about this couple. She tells their story with a grace and style that will captivate readers even as her approach to categorising their relationship raises many questions that will most likely prompt discussion and debate for years to come. This is an important book that deserves to become a classic in the field.
Richard Godbeer, English Historical Review
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