Century of Struggle Women’s Issues (Ready Reference series)

The Work

Eleanor Flexner, a 1930 Swarthmore College graduate, published this scholarly, broad- ranging study of American women’s political, economic, and educational advances at a time when these subjects were generally ignored. The revised edition of Century of Struggle, published in 1975, reflects later scholarship and expands the discussion of African American and working women. While Flexner primarily focuses on suffrage groups and their struggles in the final decades before women won the vote, earlier chapters treat Colonial, African American, immigrant, and laboring women from 1608 to 1920. Chapters document the battle for education, the place of women in the labor movement, and the union of suffrage and Prohibition forces. Anecdotes, poetry, and vignettes enliven the narrative. At its appearance, the book was hailed for its unprecedented, detailed accounts of individuals within a political movement. Some later radicals questioned Flexner’s middle-class stance, but her study remains essential to an understanding of early twentieth century American feminism.

Bibliography

Blumberg, Dorothy Rose. Review of Century of Struggle. Science and Society 25 (Winter, 1961): 90-92. Blumberg admires Flexner’s scholarship in re-creating the past from obscure archival records but wishes that she had placed more emphasis on the role of women in the socialist movement.

Dearing, Mary R. Review of Century of Struggle. The American Historical Review 65 (April, 1960): 620-621. Dearing, in the premier journal for American historians, reviews Flexner’s volume and praises its comprehensiveness and objectivity. The reviewer particularly liked the book’s organization and the many biographical sketches.

Degler, Carl N. Review of Century of Struggle. Mississippi Valley History Review 46 (March, 1960): 733-734. Degler, one of the history profession’s most eminent scholars, reviewed Century of Struggle for this major journal of American history, praising it as readable, balanced, and comprehensive. He noted, however, Flexner’s lack of interest in the ideology of her characters.

Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty. New York: Free Press, 1989. One of the more recent histories of American women which has replaced Flexner’s Century of Struggle in women’s studies courses. Written from a feminist perspective, it carries the history of women through the 1980’s.

Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972. In this prize-winning biography, Flexner tells the story of England’s Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and an inspiration to later generations of women.