Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. In her first paragraph, she noted that Cotton Mather referred to these women as “the hidden ones” and that they spent their time living quietly and virtuously, giving no speeches, attending no colleges, casting no votes. “Well-behaved women”īack in 1976, in her first scholarly paper, Ulrich was reporting on her research of 17 th century New England women who were unknown except for being the subjects of funeral sermons highlighting their piety. This last sentence comes near the very end of Ulrich’s book, and it suggests why she came to write it. Details keep us from falling into the twin snares of “victim” history” and “hero history.” Details let us out of boxes created by slogans. That’s why details matter….Details help us understand the precise circumstances that allowed Artemisia Gentileschi to become an artist, or Harriet Jacobs a writer. The stories of famous women, Ulrich notes, have routinely been “appropriated for contradictory causes.” For instance, Queen Esther, the Biblical protector of the Jewish people, has been used as a model of political action and of political silence - of revolt and of submission. It is the book of a historian about the history of women that rejoices in details and eschews broad-brush statements. There is a beautiful embrace of complexity, a wonderful delight in ambiguity and amazements, to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s 2007 book of history, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.
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