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REVIEWS
| Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics ofWomanhood in America, 1873–1935. By Leigh Ann Wheeler (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 251 pp.).
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| This book fills an important gap in historical understanding about anti-obscenity movements in the United States. As Wheeler observes, there are studies of Anthony Comstock and his colleagues in the late nineteenth century, and the issue has also generated controversy among feminists in recent decades. This book fills the void in between by describing the efforts of organized clubwomen to deal with the growing commercialization of sex in the early twentieth century. Using maternalist arguments, women often justified their reform activity by insisting that as mothers concerned with the well-being of their families they had to take public action, simultaneously subverting and reinforcing the idea that proper women belonged exclusively in the domestic sphere. Wheeler observes that this powerful paradigm has its limitations, nevertheless her analysis relies heavily on its explanatory force. Yet not all women are mothers, reformers used a variety of arguments, and while maternalism can help bind together disparate groups of women, it can also suggest a false unity among them. In this case, maternalism was an appropriate and comfortable approach for the elite clubwomen who dominate the book, but it worked against the interests of female performers and audience members at racy shows, as well as political radicals who saw anti-obscenity reform as stifling sexual expression and free speech. These people receive little attention, mostly to point out the failure of the clubwomen to understand that maternalism did not successfully appeal to everyone. |
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