Defining Womanhood: 14 Classic Books on Women's Roles and Society
Classic Essays on Suffrage, Marriage, Education, Work, and Women's AutonomyBy Magdeleine Marx, Marietta Holley, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Virginia Tatnall Peacock, Elizabeth Cooper, Charles Sainte-Foi, Max O'Rell, Suzanne La Follette, Alfred Brittain, William Hard, William J. Robinson, Selina A. Bower, Benjamin Griffith Brawley, Pierre de Bourdeille Brantà ́me
Length92h 13m
About this audiobook
Defining Womanhood gathers fourteen classic texts that interrogate women's roles across domestic life, education, sexuality, labor, marriage, citizenship, and social reform. Moving among polemic, social commentary, satire, historical reflection, advice writing, and literary essay, the volume reveals that "womanhood" has never been a fixed category. Its most arresting selections expose the tensions between prescribed femininity and women's intellectual, economic, and bodily autonomy, situating private experience within larger structures of custom and power. The contributors represent markedly different national, professional, and ideological settings: reformers, journalists, educators, humorists, physicians, historians, and social critics. Their collective presence traces a long conversation extending from early modern observations of gendered conduct through nineteenth-century debates over separate spheres to twentieth-century arguments about emancipation and social equality. Rather than offering a single doctrine, these voices illuminate the conflicts within feminist, liberal, moral-reform, and anti-conventional thought, while also preserving positions that later readers may wish to question. Recommended for students and general readers of women's history, gender studies, and literary culture, this anthology offers an unusually capacious introduction to changing definitions of female identity. Reading the works together invites comparison across genres, eras, and political commitments. The collection's educational force lies in that dialogue: it demonstrates how arguments about women's place in society are made, contested, revised, and inherited.
Audiobook details
GenrePsychology, Literary Classics
Length92 hrs 13 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 4, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Roman Women
2PREFACE
3II
4IV
5V
Show all chaptersShow less
6VII
7VIII
8X
9XII
10XIII
11The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women
12INTRODUCTION
13CHAPTER I EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST
14CHAPTER II THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN
15CHAPTER III MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY
16CHAPTER IV THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT
17CHAPTER V INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE
18CHAPTER VI INDIAN HOME LIFE
19CHAPTER VII MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN
20CHAPTER VIII INDIAN MOTHERHOOD
21CHAPTER IX WOMAN’S SORROW
22CHAPTER X HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN
23CHAPTER XI MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA
24CHAPTER XII BURMAH
25CHAPTER XIII BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION
26CHAPTER XIV THE LADY OF CHINA
27CHAPTER XV THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE
28CHAPTER XVI WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE
29CHAPTER XVII CHANGING CHINA
30CHAPTER XVIII JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME
31CONCLUSION
32Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century
33Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century
34PREFACE
35ELIZABETH PATTERSON (MADAME JEROME BONAPARTE)
36CORA LIVINGSTON (MRS. THOMAS PENNANT BARTON)
37OCTAVIA WALTON (MADAME LE VERT)
38SALLIE WARD (MRS. GEORGE F. DOWNS)
39EMILIE SCHAUMBURG (MRS. HUGHES-HALLETT)
40MATTIE OULD (MRS. OLIVER SCHOOLCRAFT)
41NELLIE HAZELTINE (MRS. FREDERICK W. PARAMORE)
42NEW YORK AS A SOCIAL CENTRE
43Serious Hours of a Young Lady
44Serious Hours of a Young Lady
45PREFACE.
46CHAPTER VII.
47CHAPTER XIII.
48CHAPTER XX.
49Woman
50Woman
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