Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist (2018)

I received this book through Librarything.com Early Member Giveaway for an honest review of the book. This is my own opinion and thoughts of the book. I never have heard of Matilda Joslyn Gage until I read this book. She was apart of the Women Suffragist along with Susan B. Anthony and others. She was the forgotten one in history. ( )

I was glad to win an uncorrected proof of Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist by Angelica Shirley Carpenter through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program because I hadn't heard of her. Susan B. Anthony has a chapter in my girlhood copy of Great American Heroines by Arnold Dolin, and of course I've heard of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but Ms. Gage, who was just as big a mover in the Women's Suffragist Movement as they were? No. She was pretty much written out of the movement's history. Just yesterday I learned that movie Star Hedy Lamarr had a brilliant technological mind that came up with frequency hopping (the eventual basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), during World War II. She'd even patented it in 1942, but the knowledge of her role isn't widely known today. I'm used to men hiding women's achievements in what's been considered 'men's work' since ancient times, but how could Ms. Anthony and Ms. Stanton do that to one of their own? I had to read through much of the book before I learned the reason for their falling out. Luckily, that was no hardship.

This biography is meant for young adults, who have less tolerance for scholarly dullness than adults, so it's very readable. Matilda Joslyn Gage was an excellent writer and speaker. She wanted to be a doctor, but could not gain admittance to medical school. What medicine lost, political activism won. Ms. Gage didn't just fight for women's right to vote. She was a historian and scholar of the movement. She was also pretty scathing about the role Christianity took (after its earliest period), in oppressing women, as well as no longer acknowledging the feminine elements, as well as the masculine, of divinity. (See chapter 21). Ms. Gage knew Greek and Hebrew, so she wasn't dependent on others' translations of Holy Writ. Her book, Woman, Church, and State, included information about anthropological and historical discoveries, societies in which women had greater rights and roles than allowed in her day, the witch-hunting period, and how Christian churches and our government failed to protect women even as they claimed they were our protectors. (I was horrified to learn that in the early 1890s Delaware's legal age for feminine consent to have sex was SEVEN years old!)

The Joslyn family home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Matilda was trusted to keep that secret a little girl. ( )

Well, I don't exactly know what I was expecting. This was a pretty good book, focusing on Matilda J. Gage.

I think the Suffragist movement needs a little more spotlight these days. Especially with the current political trend of repressing the vote and gerrymandering.

Pretty great book. Would recommend. ( )

What a great book at an interesting time in women's history. A book about a woman who was an abolitionist, suffragist, freethinker and radical. I enjoyed reading about this remarkable woman and look forward to sharing her history with my children. I highly recommend this very readable book. ( )

Biography of one of the least known leaders of the early Woman's Rights movement. Not just the story of a woman who was essentially written out of history, but the story of the early (1830's - 1890's) of the movement itself. By following the life of Matilda Joslyn Cage and by extension that of her children, we see the movement as it moves across the country - from the settled East to the newly settled Mid-West (much on the Dakota Territory). ( )