Question 10-19
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost nothing was written about the
contributions of women during the colonial period and the early history of the newly
formed United States. Lacking the right to vote and absent from the seats of power, women
line were not considered an important force in history. Anne Bradstreet wrote some significant
5) poetry in the seventeenth century, Mercy Otis Warren produced the best contemporary
history of the American Revolution, and Abigail Adams penned important letters showing
she exercised great political influence over her husband, John, the second President of the
United States. But little or no notice was taken of these contributions. During these
Centuries, women remained invisible in history books.
Throughout the nineteenth century, this lack of visibility continued, despite the efforts
of female authors writing about women. These writers, like most of their male counterparts,
were amateur historians. Their writings were celebratory in nature, and they were uncritical
in their selection and use of sources.
During the nineteenth century, however, certain feminists showed a keen sense of
history by keeping records of activities in which women were engaged. National, regional,
and local women’s organizations compiled accounts of their doings. Personal
correspondence, newspaper clippings, and souvenirs were saved and stored. These sources
from the core of the two greatest collections of women’s history in the United States one at
the Elizabeth and Arthur Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, and the other the Sophia
Smith Collection at Smith College. Such sources have provided valuable materials for later
Generations of historians.
Despite the gathering of more information about ordinary women during the nineteenth
Century, most of the writing about women conformed to the “great women” theory of
History, just as much of mainstream American history concentrated on “great men.” To
demonstrate that women were making significant contributions to American life, female
authors singled out women leaders and wrote biographies, or else important women
produced their autobiographies. Most of these leaders were involved in public life as
reformers, activists working for women’s right to vote, or authors, and were not
representative at all of the great of ordinary woman. The lives of ordinary people
continued, generally, to be untold in the American histories being published.
【題組】10. What does the passage mainly discuss?
(A) The role of literature in early American
histories
(B) The place of American women in written
histories
(C) The keen sense of history shown by
American women
(D)The “great women” approach to history
used by American historians
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