Newman reinterprets an important moment in the history of the American women's movement. She traces the intellectual roots of the women's movement back to its beginnings, and reveals how it took on racial overtones. The study reveals that the white, middle-class women who were explicitly and implicitly influenced by the American offshoots of Darwin laid the intellectual groundwork for the social movements that followed.

Newman reinterprets an important moment in the history of the American women's movement. She traces the intellectual roots of the women's movement back to its beginnings and reveals how it took on racial overtones. The work effectively demonstrates that the white, middle-class women who were explicitly and implicitly influenced by the American offshoots of Darwin laid the intellectual groundwork for the social movements that followed. Thus, the argument speaks to several of the substantive debates now current, especially the degree to which race constitutes a part of the subjective evaluative position of contemporary feminist scholarship.