The First of Causes to Our Sex : The Female Moral Reform Movement in the Antebellum Northeast, 1834-1848

ISBN-13: 9780415979108 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 278 str.

Daniel S. Wright

Opis

""The First of Causes to Our Sex"" is a study of the first movement in the United States for social change by and for women. Female moral reform in the 1830s and '40s was a campaign to abolish sexual vice and the sexual double standard, and to promote sexual abstinence among the young as they entered the marriage market. The movement has earned a place in U.S. women's history, but most research has focused on it as an urban phenomenon, and sought its significance in relation to the cause of women's rights or to the regulation of prostitution. This study explores the appeal of moral reform to rural women, who were the vast majority of its constituency, and sees it as a response to seminal changes in family formation and family size in the context of an increasingly market-oriented and mobile society. It was led by Yankee women who were fired by Second Great Awakening revivals and supported by reformist clergy.

Spis treści

1. The Feminization of Moral Reform  2. Ecclesiastical and Religious Background  3. The Social and Cultural Context  4. The Logical Context of Moral Reform: Family, Class, Politics  5. A Feminized Argument and Program  6. Legislating Moral Reform

O autorze

Daniel S. Wright