Well-tempered women : nineteenth-century temperance rhetoric / Carol Mattingly.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mattingly, Carol, 1945-

Contributor:

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Woman's Christian Temperance Union--Language.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Temperance--United States--History--19th century.

Temperance.

Women social reformers--United States--History--19th century.

Women social reformers.

Women social reformers--United States--Language.

Women orators--United States--History--19th century.

Women orators.

Women orators--United States--Language.

Temperance in literature.

Alcoholism in literature.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xv, 213 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, [1998]

Summary:

In this richly illustrated study, Carol Mattingly examines the rhetoric of the temperance movement, the largest political movement of women in the nineteenth century.

Tapping previously unexplored sources, Mattingly uncovers new voices and different perspectives in looking at temperance fiction, newspaper accounts of meetings and speeches, autobiographical and biographical accounts, and minutes of national and state temperance meetings. She examines the early temperance speeches of activists like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, and Clarina Howard Nichols and at the rhetoric of members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union -- the largest organization of women in the nineteenth century. In discussing perspectives outside those of mainstream, middle-class women, Mattingly focuses on racial conflicts and alliances as an increasingly diverse ship threatened the unity and harmony in the WCTU.

Twentieth-century scholars often dismiss temperance women as conservative and complicit in their own oppression. As Mattingly demonstrates, however, temperance women made purposeful rhetorical choices in their efforts to improve the lives of women. And they were effective, gaining legal, political, and social improvements for women as they became the most influential and most successful group of women reformers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-203) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

0809322099

OCLC:

38732307