Well-behaved women seldom make history

Summary: "They didn't ask to be remembered," historian Ulrich wrote in 1976 about the pious women of colonial New England. And then she added a phrase that has since gained widespread currency: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." Today those words appear on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and more--but what do they really mean? Here, Ulrich ranges over centuries and cultures, from the fifteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, who imagined a world in which women achieved power and influence, to the writings of nineteenth-century suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and twentieth-century novelist Virginia Woolf. She contrasts Woolf's imagined story about Shakespeare's sister with biographies of actual women who were Shakespeare's contemporaries. She uses daybook illustrations to look at women who weren't trying to make history, but did. Throughout, she shows how feminist historians, by challenging traditional accounts of both men's and women's histories, have stimulated more vibrant and better-documented accounts of the past.--From publisher description.