Consistent Democracy - The 'Woman Question' and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America

Consistent Democracy offers an intellectual history of democracy and the so-called woman question from the 1830s through the 1890s. It shows that in asking and answering questions about women's roles, responsibilities, and rights, Americans grappled with fundamental ideas about democracy.

List of contents

• Acknowledgments


• Introduction


• Prelude: Posing the Woman Question in 1838


• Part I: American Democracy, American Women


• Chapter 1: Observing American Democracy


• Chapter 2: Domesticating Democracy


• Chapter 3: To Make Democracy Consistent


• Interlude: Self-Government on Trial in 1863


• Part II: Woman Questions, Democracy Questions


• Chapter 4: Amending Democracy


• Chapter 5: Reconstructing the Woman Question


• Chapter 6: Unresolved Questions


• Epilogue: New Women, New Questions in 1893


• Notes


• Index

About the author

Leslie Butler is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College and the author of Critical Americans: Victorian Intellectuals and Transatlantic Liberal Reform.

Summary

Consistent Democracy offers an intellectual history of democracy and the so-called woman question from the 1830s through the 1890s. It shows that in asking and answering questions about women's roles, responsibilities, and rights, Americans grappled with fundamental ideas about democracy.

Additional text

Leslie Butler returns readers to a nineteenth century in which disputes over what it meant to make democracy consistent took nothing for granted, showing us how questions about women raised questions about self-government itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources and sparkling with insights, this timely book is a must-read for historians of democracy as idea and practice, as well as for anyone concerned about the fate of government that is of, for, and by all of the people.

Product details

• Authors: Butler, Leslie Butler, Leslie (Associate Professor of History Butler
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.11.2023
• EAN: 9780197685839
• ISBN: 978-0-19-768583-9
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; History of Ideas, HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), HISTORY / Social History, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Comparative Politics, United States of America, USA, History of the Americas, Early modern warfare (including gunpowder warfare), c 1860 to c 1869, Civil wars, American Civil War