Kristina Nohe // Nov 04, 2024

If there is a unifying theme in American Women’s History, it is the constant, never-ending insistence that women exceed expectations to be heard. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s quotation, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” is often misinterpreted as a call to action. In reality, it was the lament of a historian observing that the archive often silences women unless men deemed their behavior problematic because women had no voice in government, no property, no power, and, therefore, left no records.