Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

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Summary: The origins of women's political activism in America
Review: Kerber effectively demonstrates the limits of women's roles at the outset of the American Revolution and shows how these roles changed. For instance, Enlightenment thinkers, such as Rousseau, thought that women should be confined to politically passive domestic duties (a view which prevailed at the beginning of the Revolution). Kerber focuses on several women--Mercy Otis Warren, Abigail Adams and Mary Wollstonecraft--who exeplified politically active women that defied these 'Enlightenment' views. Though these women were the exception, they influenced other women that it was acceptible to be politically informed and still excell in their domestic duties. According to Kerber, this led to a political transformation of women's roles termed "Republican Motherhood," a concept that encouraged women to be informed politically and use their domestic influence to raise virtuous republican sons, and to politically influence brothers, husbands and fathers. This transformation from politically inactive domestic roles to active, Kerber argues, laid the foundation for the women's rights and abolitionist's movements.