Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols - Hardcover

Silver-Isenstadt, Jean L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801868483 ISBN 13: 9780801868481

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Though little known today, Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84) was once one of the most infamous and influential women in America, a radical social reformer and pioneering feminist who preached equality in marriage, free love, spiritualism, the health risks of corsets and masturbation, the benefits of the cold-water cure, and, above all, the importance of happiness. A victim of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her first husband, she made it her life's work to ensure that other women were better informed about their bodies and their opportunities than she had been. After leaving her first husband, she became a national figure in the 1840s and '50s by giving anatomy lectures around the country, attended by thousands of women, in which she openly discussed the needs, details, and desires of the female body. With her second husband, medical writer and social reformer Thomas Low Nichols, she embarked on an unprecedented intellectual and professional collaboration, and together they challenged the inequities of conventional marriage, demanded the right of every woman to have control over her body, and advocated universal good health.

Considered too radical and mercurial even by their fellow reformers, especially after their conversion to Catholicism, Mary and her husband were often excluded from the very social causes they had helped to found–just as they have been from the histories of their era. In Shameless, Jean Silver-Isenstadt offers the first biography of this remarkable woman who paved the way for such activists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger. Drawing on the extensive public and private writings of the Nicholses and their peers, Silver-Isenstadt vividly portrays Mary Gove Nichols' courageous life and visionary intellect, revealing the rich diversity of opinion within nineteenth-century America's social reform movements and uncovering the inspiring story of a woman who dared to live by the utopian principles she advocated.

About this title

Book Description

Biography of the influential but now-forgotten 19th-century American social reformer who preached equality in marriage, free love, and the cold-water cure.

From the Publisher

"First-time biographer Silver-Isenstadt carves a space in the annals of feminist social activists, health reformers, and sex educators for Mary Gove Nichols, a forgotten radical thinker who cleared the trail for Margaret Sanger and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Precocious, spiritual-minded, and free-thinking . . . she found her soulmate in her second husband, Thomas Nichols, a journalist turned doctor and an ardent feminist. Together they zealously espoused their belief in the connection between health, sexual liberation, and freedom; founded a school; dabbled in spiritualism; then unexpectedly converted to Catholicism. The Nichols' [Mary and her husband Thomas] story is complex, fascinating and relevant, and Silver-Isenstadt elucidates their lives and ideas with nimble insight and verve." -Booklist

"Shameless is a terrific book, a compelling and brilliantly written narrative of the life, times, and works of the little known nineteenth-century educator and reformer Mary Gove Nichols. Nichols was well ahead of her time on a wide variety of issues—mainly women's issues—and it is satisfying to see her finally getting credit for her courageous work on women's health, on modern marriage, on sexuality, and on community. This book is an eye-opener; it has wonderful descriptions of the water cure, of utopian communes, and of nineteenth century marriages ranging from awful to great. Many well-known figures—Emerson, Fuller, Poe, Whitman, Horace Greeley, Henry James Sr. and Frances Osgood appear as well. This is also a love story. Jean Silver-Isenstadt has written a splendid biography. The vivid narrative is driven by historical fact, responsibly documented and enriched by cultural theory. The result is altogether as attractive as a good novel."—Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: The Mind on Fire

"A pleasure to read. This is the story of Mary Gove Nichols and her second husband, Thomas Low Nichols, nineteenth-century reformers who dabbled in everything from health reform to free love." —Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin, author of Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0801868483
• ISBN 13: 9780801868481
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368