Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Women and Children First
ISBN: 9780803209879
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Nebraska Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Women; Women; Seafaring life; Women and the sea;

At a crucial time in American history, narratives of women in command or imperiled at sea contributed to the construction of a national rhetoric. Robin Miskolcze makes her case by way of careful readings of images of women at sea before the Civil War in her book Women and Children First. Though the sea has traditionally been interpreted as the province of men, women have gone to sea as mothers, wives, figureheads, and slaves. In fact, in the nineteenth century, women at sea contributed to the formation of an ethics of survival that helped to define American ideals. This study examines, often for the first time, images of women at sea in antebellum narratives ranging from novels and sermons to newspaper accounts and lithographs.