The Rise of the New Woman: The Women's Movement in America 1875-1930

The quest for women's rights has been one of America's defining social movements. In this concise, accessible and well-researched history, Matthews (Women's Struggle for Equality: The First Phase, 1828-1876) details how that movement came about and examines its peaks and pitfalls. Chief among the former, Matthews elucidates, was the burst of educational possibilities for women post-Civil War and concomitant options for careers outside the home. Enfranchisement did not, however, immediately engender the revolutionary social change its promulgators had envisioned. Matthews charts the internecine fights between those consumed by the passion for the vote, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and those whose concerns were more expansive, such as Frances Willard, founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, arguably the most influential political and social organization of its era, encompassing concerns about domestic violence and poverty as well as the quest for women's equity inside and outside the home. She illuminates other battles by and between early feminists, including abolition, the 15th Amendment (which effectively delayed women's enfranchisement for another 50 years), divorce, birth control, worker's rights and class conflict. Matthews infuses her history with quotes and anecdotes that serve to bring the era more alive, but her desire for concision sometimes abbreviates more complex issues, like the effects of the Comstock laws and the struggle for viable birth control.