Woman, Church & State: The Original Exposé of Male Against the Female Sex

I am looking for a hard-cover version of Woman, Church and State. I had one for years, loaned it to a fellow student and never got it back. This book is essential to anyone studying feminism and general gender or ERA studies. It gives a clear history of the prevailing views of women in early US politics and marriage. The most surprising thing to me is just how many of the issues that were a priority in 1893, when the book was written, are still issues today. The glass-ceiling is still in place in many ways and in many industries. I think this should be required reading for all high-school students, to give a historical view of the importance of equality--gender, racial and class equality. If the content seems harsh, it is important to remember that it was (and still is in many places) a matter of life and death to roughly 50% of the world's population.

Though written over a hundred years ago, this is a great historic work by a leading suffragette. She uses history to show where some of our societies current attitudes towards women come from. Much of this book is dedicated to the middle ages. The chapter on witches in Europe and the US was especially enlightning. As a student of women's history, I was especially interested in the history of wives, our obsession with virginity and the corrupt rulers of the church. Great book for anyone that enjoys reading about women's history or has an interest in the history of the church.

Originally published in 1893, this book is back in print for the first time in 30 years. It is a major feminist work of the Nineteenth Century that identifies the sources of women's oppression as the church and its offspring, the state. With Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the three principle U.S. suffragists. Alarmed by the conservative religious movement of the time that tried to amend the Constitution to declare the U.S. a Christian state, Gage wrote this book to articulate her views that christianity was the oppressor of women. In the first chapter called The Matriarchate, the author tells of the rights women had in pagan pre-christian times. She talks of the Mother-rule, that preceded Patriarchy. She then shows that christianity from its beginning has worked to undermine women's rights. The following seven chapters outline the oppression of women in the west and its sources in first the church, and later in the state that developed its ruling principles from canon law. These chapters deal with Celibacy, Canon Law, Marquette (a term that Gage uses for jus primae noctis, the right of lords to the sexual favors of their peasant women), Witchcraft, Wives, Polygamy, and Work. These chapters are filled with examples from history as well as the contemporary 19th century. The documented examples of women's oppression at the hands of ministers of the church and the law in this section are an impressive collection that makes this book a valuable source for feminist herstory. In the last two chapters, Gage looks at the church of her day and shows that it is still bogged down in the same dogma of women's oppression. She predicts a great revolution which will liberate women and give them equal rights with men in both religion and society. I am sure the women's movement of the 1970s with its emphasis on women's spirituality would have convinced her that she was right.