William L. O'Neill's lively history of American women's struggle
for equality is written with style and a keen sense for the variety
of possible interpretations of 150 years of the feminist movement,
from its earliest stirring in the 1830's to the latest developments
in the 1980s.
O'Neill's most controversial thesis is that the feminist
movements of the past have largely failed, and for reasons that
remains of deep concern; the movements have never come to grips
with the fact that marriage and the family are the chief obstacles
to women's emancipation. O'Neill also holds that the sexual
revolution of the 1920s, far from liberating women, actually
undermined their role in American life.
O'Neill treats seriously the ideas of the great feminist leaders
and their organizations. His was the first book to deal directly
with the failure of feminism as a social force in American society;
to tie together the scattered people and events in the history of
American women; and to examine seriously feminist experience in the
twentieth century. Since the women's agenda is hardly complete, the
women's movement remains active, often militantly so. In this new
revised edition, O'Neill interprets and illumines not only the
history of feminism, but aspects of feminism that still trouble us
today.
O'Neill's book was widely heralded upon its initial
publication. Elizabeth Janeway, writing for Saturday Review, calls
it "a truly intelligent discussion...an extraordinary perceptive
analysis." Carl Degler, in the Magazine of History calls A History
of American Feminism "the most challenging and exciting book on the
subject of women to appear in years." And Lionel Tiger, writing for
the NewRepublic, says that "O'Neill has turned his mastery of a
wide range of historical sources into a lively, engaging, and
almost faultlessly sensible book."
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