LEADER 04626nam 2200685Ia 450 001 9910785518703321 005 20230126205755.0 010 $a0-8014-6544-3 010 $a0-8014-6588-5 024 7 $a10.7591/9780801465888 035 $a(CKB)2670000000241391 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000721217 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11377950 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000721217 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10687575 035 $a(PQKB)10354387 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0001499952 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3138364 035 $a(OCoLC)809910947 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse28858 035 $a(DE-B1597)478400 035 $a(OCoLC)961586655 035 $a(OCoLC)979740511 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780801465888 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3138364 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10595490 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL681699 035 $a(EXLCZ)992670000000241391 100 $a20120307d2012 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aMere equals$b[electronic resource] $ethe paradox of educated women in the early American republic /$fLucia McMahon 210 $aIthaca $cCornell University Press$d2012 215 $a1 online resource $cillustrations (black and white) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a1-322-50417-2 311 $a0-8014-5052-7 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tPreface --$tAcknowledgments --$tIntroduction: Between Cupid and Minerva --$t1. "More like a Pleasure than a Study": Women's Educational Experiences --$t2. "Various Subjects That Passed between Two Young Ladies of America": Reconstructing Female Friendship --$t3. "The Social Family Circle": Family Matters --$t4. "The Union of Reason and Love": Courtship Ideals and Practices --$t5. "The Sweet Tranquility of Domestic Endearment": Companionate Marriage --$t6. "So Material a Change": Revisiting Republican Motherhood --$tConclusion: Education, Equality, or Difference --$tList of Archives --$tNotes --$tIndex 330 $aIn Mere Equals, Lucia McMahon narrates a story about how a generation of young women who enjoyed access to new educational opportunities made sense of their individual and social identities in an American nation marked by stark political inequality between the sexes. McMahon's archival research into the private documents of middling and well-to-do Americans in northern states illuminates educated women's experiences with particular life stages and relationship arcs: friendship, family, courtship, marriage, and motherhood. In their personal and social relationships, educated women attempted to live as the "mere equals" of men. Their often frustrated efforts reveal how early national Americans grappled with the competing issues of women's intellectual equality and sexual difference. In the new nation, a pioneering society, pushing westward and unmooring itself from established institutions, often enlisted women's labor outside the home and in areas that we would deem public. Yet, as a matter of law, women lacked most rights of citizenship and this subordination was authorized by an ideology of sexual difference. What women and men said about education, how they valued it, and how they used it to place themselves and others within social hierarchies is a highly useful way to understand the ongoing negotiation between equality and difference. In public documents, "difference" overwhelmed "equality," because the formal exclusion of women from political activity and from economic parity required justification. McMahon tracks the ways in which this public disparity took hold in private communications. By the 1830's, separate and gendered spheres were firmly in place. This was the social and political heritage with which women's rights activists would contend for the rest of the century. 606 $aWomen$xEducation$zUnited States$xHistory$y18th century 606 $aWomen$xEducation$zUnited States$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aWomen$zUnited States$xSocial conditions$y18th century 606 $aWomen$zUnited States$xSocial conditions$y19th century 615 0$aWomen$xEducation$xHistory 615 0$aWomen$xEducation$xHistory 615 0$aWomen$xSocial conditions 615 0$aWomen$xSocial conditions 676 $a371.822 700 $aMcMahon$b Lucia$01507048 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910785518703321 996 $aMere equals$93737510 997 $aUNINA