That's from "Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735," a 1976 article by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor of Early American history at Harvard. I'm reading that at Professor Buzzkill because I wanted to know the source of the line I put in boldface, which is a pretty common feminist slogan.
Some people think that quote originated with Marilyn Monroe (or one of many others), but no, it was Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
Anyway, the old saying popped into my head when I saw that title of a new NYT op-ed, "The Unruly Heirs of Sarah Palin" by Rosie Gray. Let's read:
This new generation’s pugnaciousness makes Ms. Palin’s “Going Rogue” days look subdued. Conservative moms from all over the country have turned local school board meetings into contentious showdowns over policy and curriculum, organized by groups like Moms for Liberty who say they are “on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” “We do NOT co-parent with the government,” reads the back of one of the T-shirts for sale in the moms’ online merch store.
Shades of Ms. Palin can be seen in Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whose gun-toting photo-ops recall Ms. Palin’s rural, hunting-and-fishing image. But Kari Lake, the hard-right former news anchor running for governor in Arizona, is perhaps the paradigmatic New Mama Bear. One moment, she’s literally vacuuming a red carpet for Mr. Trump; the next, she’s calling her Democratic opponent a coward and the media the “right hand of the Devil.”...
[W]hile Ms. Palin lost control of her image to a skeptical, often condescending news media (remember the infamous Katie Couric interview in which the candidate couldn’t name any newspapers she read?), the steely, intense Ms. Lake has made a sport of antagonizing the reporters on her trail and excelled at turning the exchanges into content....
I was expecting the article to disparage "unruly" women and that the NYT, but that's not what happened. The old slogan — Well-behaved women seldom make history — makes just as much sense for conservative activists as it does for progressives.
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The woman have had to step up, because the men are such cucks and wimps.
What a surprise to see a reference to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in this post. She is the author of a marvelous book, A Midwife's Tale, that reveals, explicates, and expands on the diary of an 18th century midwife, Martha Ballard, in Maine. Ulrich adds context and flavor with her additional research into the religious, political, social, and medical events of the time.
Heartily recommended for anyone who loves learning about the minutiae of history.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15594.A_Midwife_s_Tale
Well-behaved or not, they're actually the only ones who literally make history. Without children, there is no history. No one to do or to remember.
Sarah Palin was truly inspiring for a time, and in most respects she was miles ahead of any number of male Democrats who never received a hundredth part of the scrutiny she did, but ultimately she was an unprepared disappointment. If she had turned down McCain, finished two successful terms as governor and maybe some time in Congress or as a Cabinet secretary, she would have been a familiar face and would not have inspired the same kind of hateful frenzy she did in those first glorious six weeks in the late summer of 2008. Very likely she'd have been a contender in 2016 or 2020.
Boebert and Greene, as much as I like their policies and their spunk, are circus sideshows who won't progress any farther in politics than their current high-water mark.
Kari Lake is perhaps the greatest menace to Democratic hegemony since Ronald Reagan. Anyone trying to paint her into a Palinesque corner will be handed their own bloody testicles. There is no one else in either party, in my estimation, who is remotely as likely to become the first woman elected President. (I don't say the first woman to become President, because I give cackling Kamala a 50-50 chance of filling a vacancy caused by the death or debility of Biden.) She's got the wholesome PTA/mama-bear vibe of Palin with the communication skills of Reagan, and something else besides, a capacity to smile sweetly while burying a dagger to its hilt that is unusual in men and women alike. From where I sit in Arizona, I will be surprised if she does not win by 54-46 or better, with great results over the next 4 years and an even bigger margin of victory next time.
This new generation’s pugnaciousness makes Ms. Palin’s “Going Rogue” days look subdued.
Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” days really were subdued. Dumbocrats think they have a right to abuse school children. The mommies of those children have another opinion. I wondered when the point would be reached where the neverending culture wars would push too hard and go too far. Looks as though 2021 was that year.
Ill-behaved women make history, as witness Lizzie Borden, Lucretia Borgia, and Margaret Sanger.
Most people who make history don't make it for the better.
Unvirtuous women weren't ministers or deacons or voting or going to Harvard in those days either. Not officially anyway.
Did Sarah Palin ever really "go rogue"? I must have missed it. Everyone in politics is less well-behaved than they were a decade ago. With 24 hour news and social media, even backbenchers can be stars. Differences of opinion are greater, and good manners are rarer.
Humor helps. Men or women can be rambunctious if they are funny.
Kari Lake gives off a bit of Camille Paglia. She’s certainly been effective.
AOC needs to improve her humor. She can be funny here and there but comes off too whiny most times.
ColoComment
Based on your post I went to my library to request this book and found there is also a DVD from PBS based on the book. Asked for both, thanks.
Well-behaved women seldom make history
True. Also
Well-behaved men seldom make history
And
Poorly-behaved women seldom make history
And
Poorly-behaved men seldom make history
The vast, vast, vast majority of people who ever live or will ever live don't make history.
I think Palin advanced the role of women in politics. McCain and his staff were two faced and back stabbing. Why did they pick a running mate and then go off on her. I throw up in my mouth, a little when I remember that I voted for McCain, the Russian Hoax Maniac.
I agree that she should have been friendly to Murkowski and tried for the other AK senate seat or the house seat, and not gone for VP. Merkowski is an enemy you don't need in AK.
Queen Elizabeth II was well-behaved and she made history. Same with Margaret Thatcher. Sandra Day O'Connor was well-behaved and she made history. Marie Curie was well-behaved and she made history. I am rejecting the notion that well-behaved women don't make history or the notion that a woman has to be scandalous to make history.
And why does the Professor conclude that those women back then didn't question God or the magistrates? Or not want to be remembered after death? Assuming facts not in evidence I think.
Every time you hear the name Harvard you should have to drink and sing Fight Fiercely Harvard, to the limits of your memory.
What has Kari Lake said that reflects any insight. I'm not following her but all I've seen is praise without an object. I take it to mean good but for a woman.
Daggers are nice but ad hominems don't count. The right tends to be as idiotic as the left.
Look at the skill of Musk or Trump for a comparison. Their barbs tend to be frame-changing, not in the same universe as their attackers.
People will remember Sarah Palin long after they have forgotten that female SNL person Tania who mocked her about seeing Russia.
From Buzzkill: "They never preached or sat in a deacon’s bench. Nor did they vote or attend Harvard. Neither, because they were virtuous women, did they question God or the magistrates. They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed."
From Proverbs 31:10-17: "A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life ....... She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls ..... She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks."
Sometime in '08 Sarah Palin gave me hope for our Republic. I found out that there were other Americans who felt like me, and this one had the fortitude to stand on a pedestal and shout it to the world.... whether they wanted to hear it or not.
If she had turned down McCain, finished two successful terms as governor and maybe some time in Congress or as a Cabinet secretary, she would have been a familiar face and would not have inspired the same kind of hateful frenzy she did in those first glorious six weeks in the late summer of 2008. Very likely she'd have been a contender in 2016 or 2020.
I doubt it. McCain was a loser and she was why I voted for him. She was always going to be ridiculed as a country hick who went to Bumfuck U to college. She, however, was the first warning of the success of Trump. I don't know if he followed her lead or if it was a coincidence.
I never thought much of McCain's instincts, and when I saw he had chosen Palin I thought, "Well, he's done."
I didn't have any reason to think so except gut feeling--all I knew about Palin was that her name had been mentioned as a dark horse selection and she was not ready for a national office.
Like Hassayamper, I think Greene and Boebert are local phenoms, but Lake has real potential--if she can govern as effectively as she campaigns.
I forgot to add my gloss on the quote about well-behaved women.
Well-behaved men may make history from time to time, but they aren't the ones we tend to remember.
You can or should add AOC and some members of her Squad to "unruly women". I might substitute untasteful for unruly, but that's just me. And of course Crazy Maxine Waters is a whole 'nother can of "unruly".
Hassayamper,
+100. Great comment.
I don't agree with the quote, though. Well behaved people make history all the time, women and men. Well behaved people are thing to be wished for, not denigrated.
In the famous closing to George Eliot's Middlemarch, the author has something to say about hidden women (referring to her heroine Dorothea, who some readers might criticize for retreating into a conventional marriage role after the events of the novel:
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
Squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Sheesh. "Make history". Stalin made history, as did Ghengis Khan. There are people who make the world better, and people who don't.
"Well-behaved women seldom make history....Some people think that quote originated with Marilyn Monroe"
It does sound like a Mae West punchline.
"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
Ulrich's quote is a tip of the hat to these quiet women. They didn't care about being politicians, or discussed national figures, or trailblazers. That kind of recognition would defeat their prayerful purpose.
Careful how you laud. Well-behaved women might be worth encouraging.
This photo of VA Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears is my personal favorite of the Conservative Women Behaving Badly genre.
I can just imagine time traveling back to 1967 and showing that photo to a member of the Black Panther Party and telling him that this women, gun and all, is second in charge of Virginia in the former Capital of The Confederacy.
I'm sure it would just blow their minds.
The media thinks that we don't see their trick, i.e. taking positions so radical that they are truly revolutionary and then pointing the finger at those who object as being radical. They do it over and over again and think we don't notice. Or perhaps they are doing it for the valueless lefties who find what the media is doing as perfectly rational.
The media/left is going to get a democracy suppository in the midterms.
Well-behaved women seldom make history [books]. The first New England women left their farms in England for Holland, left Holland for America (the same women), lived though the first winter in Massachusetts, learned to cook tribal foods or their families would have starved, had children without a doctor in attendance, and believed through it all that no sacrifice was too great to make if it meant that their families could live in a godly way. "well-behaved" isn't really a good description either of them or of those who came after but a feminist of today would think so. And these women made history since they made and raised babies but, as I say, they did not make the history books. There's work to be done there but anyone acceptable to the NYT won't be able to do it.
They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed. Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history...
Jesus teaches us to do magnificent things in secret, when only God can see it. That's a true power.
Christianity is filled with anonymous people and no-names, with fantastic saints whose stories are barely remembered.
If you want to, you can model your life on Cleopatra. But if you think about it, maybe that murderer is not actually the path to a glorious afterlife.
None of us know the name of the widow who gave all her money to the poor. But Jesus had something to say about her.
“Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”
Celebrity is a false god. Do amazing things in secret. You might be surprised how that works out.
Well-behaved or not, they're actually the only ones who literally make history. Without children, there is no history. No one to do or to remember.
Exactly, the very model of fitness, equal and complementary. With social progress, women's status in society and humanity has been deprecated. That said, life is not so short, reconcile.
Ms. Palin’s “Going Rogue” days look subdued
Ms. Palin the woman, the wife, the mother, the civil leader. Subdued, in some pretentious fashion, envy, perhaps.
Well-behaved men seldom make history either. Neither do poorly-behaved men or women. Hardly anyone makes history. Such sayings about how wonderful the rebels and the uncomfortable people are have always struck me as a set-up excuse for obnoxious people to evade responsibility in one more way.
The Puritan women are a particularly poor example to choose, also. They had many more rights than women in other parts of England and then in America, rivaled only by the Quakers. The saying was something like "Many Puritans succeeded in dragging their husbands to America." As in many things, the puritans were strict about keeping to form and propriety as they saw it, but they were fiercely convinced that women were the spiritual equals of men and should be treated as such.
Ah, yes. All those cantankerous clamoring cunts conniving to change the curriculum.
Oh, wait! They are *against* the change.
(checks reference) NYT opinion. Whoda thunk?
History remembers Bloody Mary, Queen of England. Burning dissenters alive at the stake. Not very well-behaved. A psycho bitch.
rhhardin said: "What has Kari Lake said that reflects any insight. I'm not following her but all I've seen is praise without an object ...... Daggers are nice but ad hominems don't count."
Wow. Apparently you have not heard her position on Arizona southern border.
selfanalyst said...
11/5/22, 5:39 PM
Yes, last January a friend mentioned the PBS drama based on the Ballard diary. My local library didn't have a DVD copy. so I tried streaming it from my library's "film on demand" service, but the audio didn't play very well on my laptop. I see where they now offer it on Hoopla and Kanopy, which weren't offered before. I'll give those a try.
In the mean time, there's this:
https://dohistory.org/diary/
>>Every time you hear the name Harvard you should have to drink and sing Fight Fiercely Harvard, to the limits of your memory.
Sorry, the drinking part is OK, but I never learned that song, which is a total snooze. The better and more popular Harvard fight song is Ten Thousand Men [sic] of Harvard. Including the added "dog Latin" Illegitimi Non Carborundum verse that ends in "ipso facto." Which invariably is orally rendered as something more reminiscent of "Let's Go Brandon."
--gpm
I miss the days when Freeman Hunt and I engaged in discussions in [way, way] earlier blog discussions (though not just that). Early Althouse, for an example. Not the only one, though.
Interesting post, Althouse. You’re still at it. Two decades and counting.
Enough time, for example, my nostalgia with regard to earlier, if not earliest, posters, but also for my kid, who’s now verging on 22 + 1/2.
Homeschooling happened. Plus states.
rcommal
reader_iam
Regards,
Lori
P.S. Here’s waving at all of you! All best for your efforts.
OK, just looked it up and saw that Fight Fiercely Harvard is supposedly a Tom Lehrer song, so maybe I need to give it another look.
"And it was National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week, etc."
Though possibly my favorite is Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky. OK, nah, it's definitely The Vatican Rag.
--gpm
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.
Trump 2016 doesn't happen without Palin. All the Establishment had every reason to fear her. And she's still winning.
"Kari Lake is perhaps the greatest menace to Democratic hegemony since Ronald Reagan. Anyone trying to paint her into a Palinesque corner will be handed their own bloody testicles."
Best sentence ever. thank you.
Well-behaved women seldom make history
Yeah, but neither do well behaved men
[W]hile Ms. Palin lost control of her image to a skeptical, often condescending news media (remember the infamous Katie Couric interview
Palin was screwed over by McCain's staff. The new women won't let that happen
rhhardin said...
What has Kari Lake said that reflects any insight. I'm not following her but all I've seen is praise without an object.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/11/03/kari-lake-perfectly-responds-to-accusations-from-brian-sicknicks-mother-about-january-6th-n653537
Brian Sicknick’s mother made a bullshit ad blaming the Jan 6 protesters for her son's death, even thought he autopsy was clear that his death had nothing to do with the protests.
Some "reporter" asked her about the ad.
She handled it beautifully, far better than I would have
"she was not ready for a national office"
As was obvious then, and is even clearer now, it doesn't matter if someone is "ready for a national office."
All that matters is getting enough people to (appear to) vote for you.
Palin vs. Harris: compare and contrast.
Palin was more prepared than Harris. She did better with a hostile press than Harris did with a supportive one. It's always easy to throw stones. The left would have savaged her regardless of when she went national. It's what they do. She had (has) more grace and character than any of her detractors.
"Couldn't name"? She said she read all of them, like all of us do in the modern world, the days of having a single newspaper at your door in the morning were gone. But these lefty hoaxes die hard.
This quote was dug up to cover up for Hillary's utter disregard for laws.
@YoungHegelian, no, the thing that would totally blow their minds is that Winsome Sears is a Republican. And in 2025 she will be running for governor. I voted for her in last year’s election, and I will be voting for her in 2025.
Speaking of Ulrich’s, the Ann Ann Arbor bookstore of that name closed for good on October 31.
With the announcement of Sarah Palin as what's-his-names' Vice Presidential candidate, the New York Times flew 7 reporters out overnight to dig through her trash, and Saturday Night Live started inventing the Palin everyone would be quoting.
I remember that as the remarkable debut of the naked manufacture of comprehensive defamation by our #WorstRulingClassEver News Hustlers.
We were watching the birth of ObamaNation. We are in its fourth installment now, and every federal office building in DC is in the tank, every corporate and university hallway stinks of #SwawellBreath, but no heads have ever rolled.
G*dspeed, America
Unless defined very loosely, hardly anyone "makes history", so this includes "Well-behaved women," poorly behaved women and every kind of well behaved or unruly man and child.
I never voted for Palin or Harris, so there.
I believed at the time and continue to believe that if you had locked McCain, Obama, Biden and Palin in room with a deck of cards she would have emerged with all the money and their clothes. Not one of those guys on their own would have been able to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on heel.
I sometimes wonder if she wasn't selected with the object of destroying her. Interesting that there was a mention of Camille Paglia in this thread as she described Paiin as being "whip smart." Certainly smarter than any of the men I mentioned earlier.
One of the catch phrases in the Sci Fi series, Firefly, is when Captain Malcom Reynolds says, "I aim to misbehave."
I think some reflection on that phrase, "well-behaved" is merited. It speaks to an expectation which involves staying within the lines, staying in one's place as deemed by society? Right? How condescending! As if there are roles for ye and thee which must be adhered to, right?
Nobody ever did anything worth doing by meeting expectations. Exceed them, always.
Well behaved men, as in disciplined front line fighters have made much of history, not that we know their names, but that is who won wars
Certainly, unruly women and men through history have served strong principles and ideas where retiring people have no impact.
But if there's no strong principle or idea being served, then unruly and aggressive and abrasive are just . . . unpleasant. And too many people these days - women in particular - seem to have confused being unpleasant with being more important or virtuous or admirable or powerful.
Jerks in the defense of liberty are great. Not so much the just-plain-jerks.
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