The Female Experience: An American Documentary

American Heritage Series #90

by Gerda Lerner (Editor)

While women's experience encompasses all that is human, while women have participated in history and the making of history through all time, until very recently they have been largely excluded from the writing of that history. Most of what we know of the past experience of women comes to us
largely through the distorting lens of men's reflections and observations.
In the now classic The Female Experience , Gerda Lerner describes history as seen by women, as colored by their values. What she creates is fascinating narrative of the lives and history of ordinary women, a book that provides a new framework for the study of their past experience. If women's
history is now a healthy and ever-growing discipline, we have in a large part this award-winning author to thank.
Avoiding the traditional chronological periods by which U.S. history is most often studied, Lerner groups her sources--many taken from manuscripts previously unknown, and others only available in research libraries--according to the lifecycle of women, their roles in a male-defined society, in the
workplace, in politics, and finally in the contemporary world where feminism is creating an altogether new consciousness. From "runaway wives" in eighteenth-century America, through an anonymous account of a mother's death during childbirth, to appeals in our century for freedom of sexual
preference, The Female Experience recounts history from the woman's point of view, and goes a long way toward reconstructing a female past and analyzing it with appropriate concepts. In the general introduction and chapter essays Lerner offers commentary that not only knits these disparate primary
sources together, but also interprets them in an innovative way.
Now brought up to date with a new preface, The Female Experience is a book that pulses with life, a stunning testament not only to the long-ignored role of women in society, but a pioneering effort to reinvent the way we look at history.

Genres: History, Feminism, Nonfiction

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Gerda Lerner was a historian, author and teacher. She was a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University.

Lerner was one of the founders of the field of women's history, and was a former president of the Organization of American Historians. She played a key role in the development of women's history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women's history course in the world at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University (1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and from 1980 until her retirement as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impressive collection of primary source documents from women- young, old, and of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds- throughout American history. It includes personal letters, treatises, speeches, and essays. The topics that are discussed include women's lives from childhood to adulthood, working women, marriage and childbirth, death, and women's rights.

[Rita]

1977. I HAVE THIS BOOK, but it's probably not the best one of her many for me to read first.
I think start with the autobiography [FIREWEED] or else the 2009
LIVING WITH HISTORY

This book is an anthology of primary sources for the study of women's history, it looks like.