WellBehaved Women Seldom Make History,New

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Chapter One: Three WritersHere are the stories of three women making history. One was a poet and scholar attached to a French court, another was an American activist, the third an English novelist. None was a historian in the conventional sense, but all three were determined to give women a history. The settings in which they worked were radically different. The problems they faced were surprisinglydisturbinglythe same.For each, a moment of illumination came through an encounter with an odious book.Paris, France, c. 1400Christine de Pizan sat in her study. Weary of serious reading, she opened a satire someone had given her for safekeeping. She knew better than to take its diatribes against women seriously, yet somehow its arguments disturbed her. Even the sight of the book made her wonder why so many learned men had devilish and wicked thoughts about women. She took more volumes from their shelves. Mens opinions spilled out like a gushing fountain, filling her with doubt. I could hardly find a book on morals where, even before I had read it in its entirety, I did not find several chapters or certain selections attacking women, no matter who the author was. She began to think God had made a vile creature when he created woman.[1]In her despair she began to pray, asking why she could not have been born male. As she sat with her head bowed, tears streaming from her eyes, she discerned a beam of light falling on her lap just as a ray of sun might have done if it had been the right hour of the day. Looking up from her shadowed corner, Christine beheld a vision: standing before her were three radiant women. Terrified, she made the sign of the cross.The first woman spoke. Dear daughter, do not be afraid, for we have not come here to harm or trouble you, but to console you. Identifying herself as Lady Reason, the specter held up to Christine the mirror of selfknowledge. Come back to yourself, recover your senses, and do not trouble yourself any more over such absurdities. She told Christine that she and her companions, Lady Rectitude and Lady Justice, had come to help her build a city in which the fame of good women would endure against all assailants. Together they would restore the reputations of those unjustly accused.[2]Guided by her three visitors, Christine went back to books and discovered the lives of worthy womenqueens, princesses, warriors, poets, inventors, weavers of tapestries, wives, mothers, sibyls, and saints. From their stories, she would build a city fit for the Queen of Heaven.Johnstown, New York, c. 1825Elizabeth Cady sat quietly in her fathers law office listening to the complaints of his widowed clients. Absorbing their tales of woe, she wondered why her father couldnt do more to help them. When she asked him, Daniel Cady took a lawbook from its shelf and showed her the inexorable statutes that gave husbands the right to pass over their wives in favor of their sons. Married women, he explained, were civilly dead. Amused by Elizabeths distress, the law students in Cadys office joined in the exercise, reading her the worst laws they could find. One teased her by saying that if she should grow up to become his wife, her new coral necklace and bracelets should be his. I could take them and lock them up, and you could never wear them except with my permission. I could even exchange them for a box of cigars, and you could watch them evaporate in smoke.[3]Elizabeth puzzled over the power of her fathers books. When he wasnt looking, she began to mark the offending statutes with pencil, planning when alone in the office, to cut every one of them out of the books. Fortunately, she confided her secret to a housekeeper, who alerted her father. Without letting her know that he had discovered her secret, he explained how laws were made, telling her that even if his entire library were to burn, it would make no difference, b