When Hens Crow: The Woman’s Rights Movement in Antebellum America - Softcover

Hoffert, Sylvia D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253215005 ISBN 13: 9780253215000

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2001

Synopsis

[When Hens Crow] looks in an original way at the ideas of the first feminists... a pioneering work, written in a clear style and firmly grounded in recent scholarship...." ―Journal of American History

In 1852 the New York Daily Herald described leaders of the woman’s rights movement as "hens that crow." Using speeches, pamphlets, newspaper reports, editorials, and personal papers, Sylvia Hoffert discusses how ideology, language, and strategies of early woman’s rights advocates influenced a new political culture grudgingly inclusive of women. She shows the impact of philosophies of republicanism, natural rights, utilitarianism, and the Scottish Common Sense School in helping activists move beyond the limits of Republican Motherhood and the ideals of domesticity and benevolence.

When Hens Crow also illustrates the work of the penny press in spreading the demands of woman’s rights advocates to a wide audience, establishing the competence of women to contribute to public discourse and public life.

About this title

About the Author

Sylvia Hoffert is Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has recently completed a textbook entitled Gender in American Life: A History and is now engaged in a research project on Jane Grey Swisshelm, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and feminist newspaper editor. Hoffert has published articles on Swisshelm in Western Historical Quarterly and Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253215005
• ISBN 13: 9780253215000
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168