| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Leigh Ann Wheeler. Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873–1935. (Reconfiguring American Political History.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2004. Pp. xiii, 251. $44.95.

Leigh Ann Wheeler's book looks primarily at women's anti-obscenity activism from the moment women took control of the movement in the first decade of the twentieth century to the early 1930s, following closely the reform activity of Catheryne Cooke Gilman, an activist from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who earned a national reputation through her attempts to regulate the motion picture industry. Unlike their male counterparts, who dominated the movement before 1910 and who focused their energies on confiscating birth control devices, educational texts, and risqué novels, women focused more on materials that children might encounter, like indecent magazines, movies, and burlesque shows, a shift that Wheeler argues helped legitimize sexual education. Through the mid 1920s, the guiding spirit behind the anti-obscenity movement was the belief in womanhood, the underlying assumption that women shared a superior moral sensibility that united them in the pursuit of protection for children. Under this banner, women forged coalitions with movie executives, organized reform strategies with producers and exhibitors, and maintained influence over various business practices and deals.

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