Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make Historyby Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Published in 2007. 284 pages (including notes and index).


Almost everyone has seen a version of the statement "Well-behaved women seldom make history," maybe on a bumpersticker or a Tshirt or a coffee mug, but do they know where the statement originated? A single line in a scholarly article published by Pultizer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1976, the statement has become a piece of popular culture. In Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel - who happens to be my aunt - goes beyond the slogan and explores the idea of what it means to make history.

The thesis of the book - "Well-behaved women make history when they do the unexpected, when they create and preserve records, and when later generations care" (p. 229) - is centered around an analysis of three classic works of Western feminism: Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Eighty Years and More, and Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

My favorite sections of the book were "Amazons" - in which Laurel explores women warriors, including Mulan and Wonder Woman - and "Waves" - about the second-wave of feminism in the 1970s.

I'm counting this book for the "Every Month is a Holiday" challenge for Women's History Month (in March) and for the "Back to History" challenge, as well as the Spring Reading Thing.

If you've reviewed Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, please let me know. I'd love to link you here!

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