In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice Against Women
Joshi starts his (yes, his) history of prejudice against women off with a bang. "And now bear with me . . . while I show you what you, dear ladies, cannot do." This, from -nineteenth-century Congregational minister John Todd's pamphlet entitled "Woman's Rights," presages the thrust and purpose of all the essays to follow. From Dr. Edward H. Clarke's flagrant disdain for female intelligence in an 1873 essay in which he opines that too much education robs the so-called more important female reproductive organs of the blood they need by channeling it to the brain, to Professor Stephen Goldberg's 1973 polemic regarding the "Inevitability of Patriarchy," Joshi's compilation of articles, excerpts, and treatises traces more than a century of the most vitriolic anti-feminist writings from preeminent scholars, clergy, physicians, and politicians. Anyone wishing to understand the overwhelming challenges faced by women's-rights activists from the movement's earliest days to the dawn of the Second Wave need look no further than Joshi's illuminating and downright infuriating examples of pervasively misogynistic thinking.Carol HaggasCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved