Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men through American History / Edition 1

by Mary P. Ryan

Overview

In a sweeping synthesis of American history, Mary Ryan demonstrates how the meaning of male and female has evolved, changed, and varied over a span of 500 years and across major social and ethnic boundaries. She traces how, at select moments in history, perceptions of sex difference were translated into complex and mutable patterns for differentiating women and men. How those distinctions were drawn and redrawn affected the course of American history more generally.

Ryan recounts the construction of a modern gender regime that sharply divided male from female and created modes of exclusion and inequity. The divide between male and female blurred in the twentieth century, as women entered the public domain, massed in the labor force, and revolutionized private life. This transformation in gender history serves as a backdrop for seven chronological chapters, each of which presents a different problem in American history as a quandary of sex. Ryan's bold analysis raises the possibility that perhaps, if understood in their variety and mutability, the differences of sex might lose the sting of inequality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807859452
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/01/2009
Series:	Latin America in Translation/en Traduccion/em Traducao Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mary P. Ryan is John Martin Vincent Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Mysteries of Sex returns to — and fundamentally reinterprets — the theme of her first book, Womanhood in America (1975). Ryan's other books include Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in Nineteenth Century America; Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880; and Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865.

Table of Contents

Introduction I

Part I Making Sex in America: 1500-1900

Chapter 1 Where Have the Corn Mothers Gone?: Americans Encounter the Europeans 21

The Coordinates of Gender: Asymmetry, the Relations of the Sexes, and Hierarchy 25

The Sexual Frontier 42

Warriors and Farmers on the Gender Frontier 49

Chapter 2 Who Baked That Apple Pie and When?: How Domesticity Conquered American Culture 61

The Prehistory of Feminine Domesticity: 1620-1692 64

Between Patriarchy and Domesticity: 1750-1840 80

Homemaking in Antebellum and Victorian America 88

Chapter 3 How Did Race Get Colored?: Gender and Sexuality in the American South 103

How Slavery Became Colored African American 105

The Gendering of Slave Society 116

Civil War and the Reconstruction of Race and Gender 124

The Sexual Politics of Jim Crow 137

Part II Dividing the Public Realm

Chapter 4 What Is the Sex of Citizenship?: Engendering the American Political Tradition from the Revolution to the New Deal 147

When Citizenship Was Male: 1776-1865 149

The Mother as Citizen: Segregated and Secondary 162

The Woman Citizen Goes to Washington 174

Second-Class Citizenship: Male and Female 188

Part III Women remake Gender in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 5 How Do You Get from Home to Work to Equity?: 1900-1960 201

Who Made the Woman Worker?: An Overview 203

The New Woman Goes to Work: 1890-1940 207

A Private Detour through the 1920s 214

The Next Generation Combines Work and Family: The 1940s and 1950s 227

The Mystery of the Feminine Mystique 238

Chapter 6 Where Does Sex Divide?: Feminism, Sexuality, and the Structures of Gender since 1960245

The Second Wave of Feminism: 1960-1970 248

Sexual Revolution and Gay Rights 265

Restructuring Gender Differences: 1980-2000 276

Chapter 7 Where in the World Is the Border between Male and Female?: Immigration and Generation in the Twentieth Century 291

The Generations of Gender 295

New Immigrants Meet Postmodernity: 1965-2000 302

Joining Together to Remake Male, Female, and America 314

Notes 325

Bibliography 361

Acknowledgments 409

Index 411

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Mysteries of Sex is an engaging and sure-footed account of American women's history. Filled with interesting interventions, observations, and formulations, it helps make sense of what is now an overwhelming body of work. Ryan's strong and intelligent narrative voice provides just the sharp perspective we need at this juncture.—Stephanie McCurry, University of Pennsylvania

This is a wonderful book that captures and helps crystallize transformations in American and women's history scholarship over the past two decades. It makes a major intellectual contribution to the development of both fields.—Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers University

Mysteries of Sex is a daring, ambitious enterprise, creatively imagined and conceived. Based in a deep reading of both American history and gender theory and informed by years of teaching, it explores the conundrums created by the sex/gender divide across the broad expanse of the American historical experience.—Elisabeth Israels Perry, St. Louis University

Mary Ryan proves herself a sage gender detective as she guides us through the mysteries of sex in this compelling book. Her bold synthesis of the real and constructed relationships between men and women across time, space, and social categories not only builds on thirty-five years of scholarship but also offers an original take on the subject. By structuring her story around a series of intriguing questions—such as 'Who Baked That Apple Pie and When?,' 'How Did Race Get Colored?,' and 'What Is the Sex of Citizenship?'—she enables both specialist and lay readers to delve deeply even as they move across more than 500 years of American history. Ryan has done herself—and the field—proud.—Barbara Sicherman, Trinity College

Elegantly written, Mysteries of Sex briskly propels the reader through a full four centuries of American history, from settlement to the present. It draws together an extraordinary range of examples into a vision of the American past that is Mary Ryan's own.—Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

Editorial Reviews

An original interpretation of the complexities of gender in private and public life." —CHOICE



A remarkable synthesis that covers vast chronological, geographical, and topical terrain. . . . Intriguing. . . . Likely to remain the most compelling and definitive interpretation of its subject for decades to come.—Indiana Magazine of History



A lively gallop through the history of women and gender in America from the Native Americans to the twenty-first century. . . . An excellent synthesis of massive amounts of material.—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society



Ryan has . . . written a history of the oppression of women. It's a solid review of how 'gender asymmetry' evolved.—BUST



From the book's very title . . . to its very last pages, Ryan presents her readers with a most generous abundance of information, ideas, and inquiries to reflect upon, impart to our students, incorporate into our scholarship, and argue about.—American Historical Review



A beautifully written and engaging study of how sexual differentiation has driven American history.—History News Network

From the Publisher