Pictures of women portrayed as professional, athletic, and intellectual seem common to us today, but until the late nineteenth century, such representations of strong, self-reliant women were virtually, if not completely, absent from the visual arts and literature.

Off the Pedestal is the first book to explore the radical change that occurred in the representation of women immediately after the Civil War. Three critical essays draw on the visual culture of the period to show how postbellum social changes in the United States brought issues of subordination and autonomy to the...