Summary Of Well Behaved Women Make History

Many times when people think of history they think of all those long hours in a boring class on hard cold chairs but history is actually what we are living right now. The fact is that history will change over the years and even though what happened in the past will stay the same meanings will change. In this essay there will be discussion on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s essay “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History” and how her quote has changed meaning over the years. In Ulrich’s essay she speaks about the way she viewed the world and the way that history was and is recorded. In her essay she explains how the way that women make it into history books is very much so backwards. Women made history by misbehaving and standing out. An example would

She explains that in the beginning it meant quite literally what it said, “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History” which means women who are well behaved and good house wives rarely ever make history but they really should. The women who did not make history were women that would be considered good and well behaved. Such as the housewives who did the cleaning and the cooking, who not only took care of the kids but also fed them and made sure they are always clean with clothes on their back. It was really hard for women like this to make history. Ulrich points out in her essay that women who are behaved and have always been good then step put can also make history. Martha Ballard who was one of the women with this scenario is described in the essay, “At a distance, the life or Martha Moore Ballard was the stuff from which funeral sermons were made” (Ulrich, 663). This is exploiting the fact that Martha was a very good person in general with a lovely personality and she was self-sacrificing for others whenever she had the chance. Martha stepped out by starting to write and make journals of her life and stories which was very unusual for women to do in this time period. Ulrich also gives a lot of examples on why and how she thinks that the quote has changed while time has

She talks about how it is what stands out in crazy times that become history. For example in her essay she writes, “History is not just what happened. It is what people choose to remember” (Ulrich, 659). This shows and proves that something that happens every day may not become history because the people are used to it and it doesn’t stick in their brain. On the other hand when things out of the ordinary happen then people remember the event, and it goes into the history records, these events that occur can vary anywhere from simply being a strong and self-confident woman to just having a reputation that is not credible or usual for most women. Overall this way of making history is dependent on the way that the world remembers and the culture in the world during our time. It is also depended on what the world views as right or wrong. Every human being is very much capable of judging the harder part is the recording of the history. When Historians are writing and recording information they sometimes forget the minor details about women who do the considerable right thing in their day. Ulrich believe that these are the women who should be in the text books and not the ones who misbehave and are different because they did not earn it and do all the right things they simply did not do something