" Interpretations of women in the antebellum period have long
dwelt upon the notion of public versus private gender spheres. As
part of the ongoing reevaluation of the prehistory of the women's
movement, Carolyn Lawes challenges this paradigm and the primacy of
class motivation. She studies the women of antebellum Worcester,
Massachusetts, discovering that whatever their economic background,
women there publicly worked to remake and improve their community
in their own image. Lawes analyzes the organized social activism of
the mostly middle-class, urban, white women of Worcester and finds
that they were at the center of community life and leadership.
Drawing on rich local history collections, Lawes weaves together
information from city and state documents, court cases, medical
records, church collections, newspapers, and diaries and letters to
create a portrait of a group of women for whom constant personal
and social change was the norm. Throughout Women and Reform in a
New England Community, conventional women make seemingly
unconventional choices. A wealthy Worcester matron helped spark a
women-led rebellion against ministerial authority in the town's
orthodox Calvinist church. Similarly, a close look at the town's
sewing circles reveals that they were vehicles for political
exchange as well as social gatherings that included men but
intentionally restricted them to a subordinate role. By the middle
of the nineteenth century, the women of Worcester had taken up
explicitly political and social causes, such as an orphan asylum
they founded, funded, and directed. Lawes argues that economic and
personal instability rather than a desire for social control
motivated women, even relatively privileged ones, into social
activism. She concludes that the local activism of the women of
Worcester stimulated, and was stimulated by, their interest in the
first two national women's rights conventions, held in Worcester in
1850 and 1851. Far from being marginalized from the vital economic,
social, and political issues of their day, the women of this
antebellum New England community insisted upon being active and
ongoing participants in the debates and decisions of their society
and nation.
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