All-American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Professor Frances Cogan is my faculty advisor here at the University of Oregon, and the most incredible teacher I've ever had. I decided to pick up one of her books after I finished her Literature sequence. It's an excellent book, though definitely not for the vocabularily-challenged. It describes what young women's lives were like in the 19th century - everything from what women were supposed to be like physically, to what skills they should have, to dating and the "winnowing" process. Cogan draws upon various popular fictional works of the era, thoughts of prominent doctors of the time, and several different areas. Her rather acerbic wit came through nicely in this book, I was pleased to see. Don't mistake this for a light read, however. While not technical, this book is quite verbose. Not for the faint of heart.