Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America

by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg

Book Overview

This first collection of essays by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, one of the leading historians of women, is a landmark in women's studies. Focusing on the "disorderly conduct" women and some men used to break away from the Victorian Era's rigid class and sex roles, it examines the dramatic changes in male-female relations, family structure, sex, social custom, and ritual that occurred as colonial America was transformed by rapid industrialization. Included...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195040392
• ISBN13: 9780195040395
• Release Date: May 1986
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A readable, valuable, US history

I found this book to be full of surprises. I now know that it is possible for a thorough, well researched history book to still be very readable. I quickly discarded my fear that a feminist history might be lacking in rigour or respectibility. As a Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiast I am pleased to see bad steroetypes of the victorian era trounced. When I read the discussion of the origins of the AMA, and saw how this relates to its behavior today, I decided this small section alone made the book worth having.