Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
by Linda Kerber
The University of North Carolina Press, 1997
Frequently if not ubiquitously cited in later studies of women in the Revolutionary era, Women of the Republic holds up in many significant ways to its reputation. Kerber combs through first-hand records—files, letters, documents—to glean information about and, most interestingly, quotes from late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American women to give a glimpse into their private and political lives. Not merely a documentary record, however, Kerber unites her primary sources under subject-specific chapters and knits them together with both insight and theory.
Kerber is equally interested in the theoretical and the everyday, and the mix of the two lends the book a roundedness, since it doesn’t have to live in either realm—something that’s often stifling to women’s history, or any history—but considers and draws from both. The chapter on women in Enlightenment literature, drawing from hefty philosophical texts, is just as engaging as the chapter on divorce, drawing on municipal documents and diary entries, is just as interesting as the chapter on women’s education, which draws on everything from letters to newspapers to more theoretical texts. Together this wealth of sources come together to create a cohesive look at women’s experiences in the early Republic.
Or rather, some women’s experiences in the early Republic—though Kerber is able to include information on middle and lower-class women, at least through official records if not the letters and diaries she uses for upper-class women, Women of the Republic is devoid of evidence of any women who weren’t white. There are only the most oblique of references to anyone at all who might not be white, alluding only in passing to nameless and narrative-less slaves. Race seems not to be a concern in the book, as it labors under the implicit notion that only white women—only white people—exist at all. Native Americans get not even a mention. (more…)