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America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls,…
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America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (P.S.) (edition 2007)

by Gail Collins

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1,1432317,325 (4.15)30
America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. By culling the most fascinating characters -- the average as well as the celebrated -- Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times, charts a journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and the early southern "tobacco brides" who came looking for a husband and sometimes -- thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate -- wound up marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable shoes mattered a lot, too. "The history of American women is about the fight for freedom," Collins writes in her introduction, "but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's roles that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history.… (more)
Member:srgaissert
Title:America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (P.S.)
Authors:Gail Collins
Info:Harper Perennial (2007), Paperback, 608 pages
Collections:Your library
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America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins

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Showing 1-5 of 23 (next | show all)
Collins describes the lives of American women from the colonial days to the near present. She describes on the lives of normal women as well as the lives of the women remembered by history. She tells how women dealt with household duties on covered wagons and discusses how the phenomenon "going steady" increased premarital sex. There are stories of how women came together to abolish slavery while denying free colored women membership in their societies. By giving all of these perspectives, Collins avoids painting women as perfect.

One criticism: Collins seems to sometimes gives too little credit to the role of men. However, since she does this by omission, not by belittling men, I suspect that it is just because there was a lot to fit in the book and history from the perspective of men can be found in other places.
  eri_kars | Jul 10, 2022 |
America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history, from the Mayflower to the present. Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience.
  MWMLibrary | Jan 14, 2022 |
This is a good retrospective of women in America from the 1600's to 2000. It touches on all of the notable women of the past 400 years plus a couple of not so famous women. For those who read a lot of American historical fiction/non-fiction there is not a lot of new information to be learned. However, I think it does give one an overall perceptive of the rise of women's status throughout American history, and sometimes how women have had to fight years and years for equal rights and protection and how at other times because of economic changes, women's roles were changed almost overnight.

If nothing else it celebrates and gives credit to all of the American women who have contributed to the molding of our American culture and should be required reading for all high school students.
( )
  tshrope | Jan 13, 2020 |
An interesting overview of women's roles in America and American history over the past 400 years. Not surprisingly, lots of roadblocks and frustrations along the way for women. Given that this covers a long timeline and is not an encyclopedia, individuals and issues are not all covered in depth. But still, this is a good brush-up on American women's history, along with being thought-provoking. ( )
  ValerieAndBooks | Aug 2, 2019 |
Good book. Conditions in the past were often trying at best, with fewer rights for vulnerable people, but at the same time many able people were able to make a way for themselves, as the real world is not always exactly the same as that dreamed up by the propagandists, or by the regressive period of 1946-1964.

It gives you perspective.

.............................

(philosophy of history)

Read intelligently it militates against historical determinism. “In 1890 people were such and such a way” is usually accepted as a truism, but truisms can be exaggerated. We are not a hive mind. There are always some people drawing lines and trying to keep people inside them, at the same time that other people are crossing them anyway.

...................................

Victorianism did not always prevail even in the Victorian Age, because when action is necessary, it is not well to glorify and coddle people who do nothing, to demand that they do nothing.

.......................................

It’s also very enlightened about race.

...............................................

She has a big heart.
  smallself | Jul 12, 2018 |
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Epigraph
When I was young if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealthy, she became a pet and a doll.
—Susan B. Anthony
A smart woman can do very well in this country.
—A young woman in nineteenth-century California
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To my mother
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When I look back through all of American History, the one moment that stays with me is the image of women standing on the deck of the Mayflower, staring out at a whole continent of dense forest.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. By culling the most fascinating characters -- the average as well as the celebrated -- Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times, charts a journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and the early southern "tobacco brides" who came looking for a husband and sometimes -- thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate -- wound up marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable shoes mattered a lot, too. "The history of American women is about the fight for freedom," Collins writes in her introduction, "but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's roles that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history.

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