AMERICAN WOMEN: A STORY Of SOCIAL CHANGE.

By Prof. Robert E.Riegel (History). Rutherford, Madison,and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. 372 pp. $10.

American Women is a timely book. Women are in vogue this year. Everyone is talking about them. Is anything new being said? The answer may be sought by comparing what you read with what Professor Riegel reports about the status of American women from Colonial times to the present with major attention given to the 19th century.

Professor Riegel efficiently presents facts, figures, and original statements, his documents fully substantiated with scholarly precision by notes and bibliography. His report is accurate so far as I know with the exception that Alice Freeman Palmer taught at Wellesley College, not Vassar, but the mistake is the printer’s, I believe. His selection of detail and his emphasis on the nineteenth century are sensible although M. Carey Thomas should have been credited for the development of the graduate school of Bryn Mawr College. Chapters 11 and 12 (1920 to date) are sketchy. They need to be supplemented by the reader, but Professor Riegel has drawn the sting of criticism by warning in his Preface that the role of women in American society is a complex subject, beyond the scope of any one historian to cover thoroughly in all its aspects.

The good-natured and straightforward tone makes this a pleasantly readable book. Never does Professor Riegel descend to the bantering jocularity so much more annoying than either pity or contempt. If the author takes a stand on the relation of women to men—superior, equal but different, inferior —it is that “the correct answer is to treat people as human beings and not as representatives of a sex.” (p. 321) Neverthe- less, he has written a book about American women qua women, and he has stated that “in some fashion or other the status of women has been revolutionized during the past century, . . . .” (p. 11) But men are still debating whether or not to grant women equal rights, and most women are either indifferent to their status or satisfied with it.

If Professor Riegel were to write a book about American men from 1820 to date, I wonder what his subtitle would be, "A Study in Social ?”

Author of The Novel and the Reader; A Primer for Critics and The Art of Greek Comedy, Miss Lever is Professor of English,Wellesley College.