As my last selection for the Women Unbound Challenge, I decided to read a book I had parked on my bookshelves for quite some time: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. I thought it would be a nice complement to the other history/biography books I already read for the challenge. Thatcher is a historian and the author of the quote (oft mis-quoted) that gives the book its title.
I thought this was a very good overview of women in history who refused to roll over and take it. Beginning with the Amazons and a chapter on Christine de Pizan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Virginia Woolf, there are many (MANY) of anecdotes and the sheer number adds many more women to Ulrich's history than if she just focused on de Pizan, Cady Stanton, Woolf, de Beauvior, Friedan, etc. However, it felt like we were just skimming the surface of history to create a "readable" book - to avoid creating a very thick, weighty tome. Even with a perceived lack of depth it was still an interesting book and adds many more individual women to the list of famous names we already recognize.
No comments:
Post a Comment