laurel thatcher ulrich well behaved women

Thus comes the song cycle Well-Behaved Women by Broadway music director Carmel Dean, herself a composer-lyricist of some fame. Labor without complaint, and be asked to do even more poorly or uncompensated work. Ask for the same thing as your male counterpart, and you are demanding. Be a woman and speak out, and you’re pushy. It’s a dichotomy that says much about American society then and a bit more than desired about American society today. In 1976, the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote in an article, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Ulrich’s commentary was double: on the one hand, the women condemned by the early Puritans of New England were excoriated in histories for their alleged misdeeds, while their “well-behaved” counterparts where written out wholesale from the pages of history books. Ulrich's work is also featured on an award-winning Web site, poster riffing on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s infamous quotation, showing “transgressive” women from different periods. Recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and two awards from the NEH, she has been honored with excellence in teaching awards at Harvard. Ulrich is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named a MacArthur fellow in 1992. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 1995, she taught at the University of New Hampshire for 15 years. She also wrote Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Early New England, 1650-1750 (1982) and The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Making of an American Myth (2001). Ulrich's most recent book is Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History (2007). The book examines the life of Northern New England midwife Martha Ballard, and provides a vivid examination of ordinary life in the early American republic, including the role of women in the household and local market economy, the nature of marriage and sexual relations, aspects of medical practice, and the prevalence of violence and crime. She is the author of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990) which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 and became the basis of a PBS documentary. Ulrich's major fields of interest are early American social history, women's history, and material culture. The talk asks what it means to make history and what if anything that has to do with being well-behaved.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar at Hamilton and the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University, will present a lecture titled 'Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History,' on Wednesday, March 5, at 8 p.m.

Laurel thatcher ulrich well behaved women