| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York. By Lori D. Ginzberg (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. 222 pp. $49.95 Cloth, $19.95 Paper).

Conventional histories trace the origins of the first feminist movement in the United States to the social reform movements of the 1830s and 1840s. Through participation in temperance organizations, anti-prostitution societies, and antislavery groups, women gained experience in effecting social change. Using a wide variety of tactics, they tried to mobilize public opinion and sway legislators to see the justice of their causes. Yet because women lacked the ability to vote and hold public office, they ultimately came to see the limits of their ability to change the status quo. A knowledge of these limitations, and a growing awareness of the similarities between women's condition and the plight of slaves, culminated in the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. A small number of white women, joined by an even smaller number of men, began to press for more radical changes in women's social, political, and legal status.

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