Volume 30, Number 4 · March 17, 1983
The House of Feminism
By Nancy F. Cott
True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society
by William Leach
Basic Books, 449 pp., $18.00
The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities
by Dolores Hayden
MIT Press, 367 pp., $9.95 (paper)
American feminists of the nineteenth century—women's rights women—felt they needed a doctrine that would help make their demands for social reform legitimate and at the same time serve as a powerful instrument in their criticism of the conservative institutions under-pinning American society. In flight from the orthodox church at a time when organized religion was still by far the strongest of these institutions, feminists were forced to invent their own god—a god who they felt did not endorse and perpetuate patriarchal systems.
Review, 4741 words
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