When the 80-year-old writer set out to write a personal history of women she knew one thing: women have lived under the shadow of the mythical Eve for far too long.
A lover and reader of history—the more ancient the better—she begins with the discovery of a 9000 BCE village where lifestyle differences between men and women appear to be nonexistent. She then traces the changes that women faced throughout history, from mankind’s reverence for the Great Mother Goddess to women being declared—by early Church leaders—“evil incarnate” and “the Devil’s gateway.”
Part I of follows women’s lives from ancient Greece to the French Revolution. Part II begins with the friendship of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton. Gilden uses historical events and her own life experiences to relate women’s progress and setbacks through two world wars, the angry sixties, the winning and losing of legal abortion and more, ending with the second inauguration of Donald Trump.
Throughout the book the writer’s skill succeeds in turning a dull recitation of history into a compelling tale of women’s unending efforts to win acknowledgment of their value, skills, talents—and maybe—true equity with men. It has won praise from readers of all sexes.
When the 80-year-old writer set out to write a personal history of women she knew one thing: women have lived under the shadow of the mythical Eve for far too long.
A lover and reader of history—the more ancient the better—she begins with the discovery of a 9000 BCE village where lifestyle differences between men and women appear to be nonexistent. She then traces the changes that women faced throughout history, from mankind’s reverence for the Great Mother Goddess to women being declared—by early Church leaders—“evil incarnate” and “the Devil’s gateway.”
Part I of follows women’s lives from ancient Greece to the French Revolution. Part II begins with the friendship of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton. Gilden uses historical events and her own life experiences to relate women’s progress and setbacks through two world wars, the angry sixties, the winning and losing of legal abortion and more, ending with the second inauguration of Donald Trump.
Throughout the book the writer’s skill succeeds in turning a dull recitation of history into a compelling tale of women’s unending efforts to win acknowledgment of their value, skills, talents—and maybe—true equity with men. It has won praise from readers of all sexes.
I was 22 and single in 1963, sitting in my San Francisco apartment reading a magazine excerpt of Betty Friedan’s new book, The Feminine Mystique. I was growing uncomfortable as I read; so uncomfortable in fact that I flung the magazine across the room in anger. Not because the situations she so admirably wrote about left me angry, but because she was, step by well-documented step, destroying the image of womanhood I had grown up with, the role I had prepared for, and the silent indoctrination I’d received from my mother, three aunts, friends, television, advertising, books, and the air I breathed. Was what she wrote true? I couldn’t fathom it.
Conversations with roommates and friends soon followed, though none at that point had read the book and for most the topic held little interest. But I began paying attention to the voices coming out of New York and while I listened and read with interest, I remained skeptical. I was not alone.
Two years later I exchanged foggy San Francisco for sunny SanJose, intending to go back to school and finish my degree. Instead, I reluctantly agreed to go on a blind date and met my future husband; a year later we married. Ray was a feminist, though that wasn’t an idea either of us would have recognized. It was he who told me, a few weeks into our marriage, that I didn’t have to try so hard; that everything didn’t have to be perfect. That comment, which I remember so clearly, led to conversations that, over time, convinced me I could be more than “just” a wife and mother. To Ray it was obvious; he was a male, he could live as he wanted and make his own way. He showed me through his words and actions that I was no different; what I wanted from life was as valid as what he wanted.
It wasn’t until the early ’70s that I read Friedan’s book and under-stood: Women’s lives, especially after World War II, were defined only through their husbands and children—a situation that created wide-spread unhappiness and left women without a meaningful identity of their own. Friedan’s clarifying exposure of that empty existence was a loud and uninhibited call to freedom.
By then I’d been part of a female support group that met weekly to share our histories and hopes and, of course, to complain. Thousands of such groups sprang up independently across the country in the ’70s, all of us trying to rid ourselves of years of indoctrination, like brainwashed prisoners. Our group ran about a year, the meetings coming less frequently until there was no need or interest in continuing.
This “second wave” feminist movement (the first wave was the long struggle for the vote) influenced women across the country and parts of Europe, helped by the activist words of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Ms. magazine. Those three women, along with others, formed the Women’s Political Caucus in 1972 and led the way for the rest of us. The change that Friedan had called for wasn’t immediate. It didn’t reach every woman, or touch every heart. But even women like me, who had so much indoctrination to shed, began to see more clearly; and then we began to hope.
Many of us resolved to participate in the political realm. Political change was happening, and optimism prevailed. When Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981, we cheered. “Finally!” And, without fanfare, I suddenly had the choice of a female doctor.
The war in Vietnam dampened some of that enthusiasm, but the anti-war movement that shook campuses proved that women could and would speak out and organize. While more young women were choosing college, others were looking around and saying to themselves, “I can do that. In fact I can do it better!” Women opened their own businesses, ran for local school boards, county and state offices, and finally for Congress. It was definitely progress.
Despite the hard work and advancements that women have achieved since The Feminine Mystique was published, as I write today it feels like women haven’t progressed at all. The same issues remain, and so does the outrage.
From my first angry encounter with feminism in 1963 until today, life as a female has improved in many ways. We have no-fault divorce. I have my own credit. I can buy a house or start a business. But I have never received equal pay for equal work, nor have I enjoyed the certainty provided by the Equal Rights Amendment. We are now 25 years into the third millennium AD and women in the U.S. and around the world still suffer from patriarchal governance and misogynistic policing. Those are not my terms but Kate Manne’s, writing in Down Girl: The Logic
of Misogyny. She defines these concepts far more brilliantly than I could:
“Misogyny upholds the social norms of patriarchies by policing and patrolling them; whereas sexism serves to justify these norms—largely via an ideology of supposedly ‘natural’ differences between men and women with respect to their talents, interesits, proclivities, and appetites.” More specifically, “Sexism taken alone involves believng in men’s superiority to women in masculine-coded, high-prestige domains . . .” whereas “Misogyny taken alone involves anxieties, fears, and desires to maintain a patriarchal order, and a commitment to restoring it when it is disrupted.. . . Sexism has a theory; misogyny wields a cudgel.” [1]
Thus patriarchy not only continues to exist, to the detriment of women, but is protected by those who benefit from it, i.e., not women.
Mysogyny and sexism, in its many imaginative forms, remains and even blossoms today. Unwanted touching, abuse, violence, and rape still happen, and too frequently remain unreported out of fear of not being believed. But women and their supporters will never stop fighting. Afterall, E. Jean Carroll took Donald J. Trump to court and won. Twice.
I love reading books about women and nothing pleases me more than discovering new female characters from history who have pushed the boundaries or been courageous in the face of hardship, all in the name of women's rights. And this is one of the things that Karen Gilden does in this book: she points her reader towards influential figures, a lot of them women (but not all) who have furthered the reputation of women or been proponents of the search for equality or even just been exceptional people (who happen to be women).
This is a tour through history with a female perspective to some degree and as the title suggests, Gilden starts at what is considered by Christians the very beginning - with Eve and the original temptation. Gilden discusses this as a biblical story but also in terms of the shadow that it has since cast for women everywhere in terms of blaming them for, well, a lot. This may or may not have started the vilification of women by some men, or at least, set out the first stone on the path to subduing females as lesser beings but Gilden's book proposes the discussion of this and how Eve has been held up as an example of what women are. What Gilden is excellent at is offering many more examples and considerably more positive ones at that, who have been largely overlooked as they do not support the patriarchal view of male supremacy that needs to be upheld at all cost.
Gilden takes the life that she has known as a woman and a lot of what she has learnt in the living of that life as a framework on which to hang a discussion of women, feminism, womanhood - whatever you want to call it. Her book is a blend of memoir mixed with history as well as the previously mentioned biblical discussion but she also draws on classical mythology and cites quotes from academic texts and researchers, making for a nuanced read. There is an obvious purpose in writing this but it's not didactic - it's a view expressed intelligently with resources and research to reinforce it.
Gilden is keen to highlight the fact that women should be respected and at the forefront, not merely sidelined to the home: this is a role that has importance but it is not all that women can be.