Arguing that class struggle manifests itself as the conflict between the reproduction and survival of the human race, the general theme of the collected essays leans left and warns of market exploitation, war, and ecological disaster. Spanning nearly six decades and compiling essays that have appeared in anthologies or are selections from Selma James' books—some printed here for the first time—these selections preach equality in wages for men and women alike, especially in nontraditional work environments.

    These stories highlight the little-known lives of women, most of whom were connected to--and overshadowed by--famous men. Women featured are: Anne Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare; Helene Boullé de Champlain, wife of Samuel de Champlain; Molly Brant, sister of Joseph Brant; Laura Secord, who played an important role in the War of 1812; Georgina Hogarth, sister-in-law of Charles Dickens; Marguerite Monet Riel, wife of Louis Riel; Bridget Boland; Alice Seeley Harris; Constance Lloyd, wife of Oscar Wilde; Edith Bolling Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson; Annie Taylor; Syrie Wellcome Maugham, wife of Somerset Maugham; Pilar Casals, mother of Pablo Casals; Lillian Bounds Disney, wife of Walt Disney, Rani Lakshmibai, the ruler of the state of Jhansi who led the Indian Rebellion of 1857; Bertha Fried Hirning, a pioneer in the Spirit River area of northern Alberta and Joan Douglas, daughter of Tommy Douglas.

    With startling frequency, the best mother was absent, disembodied, voiceless, or dead. British culture told tales almost exclusively of wicked, surrogate, or spectral mothers—revealing the defects of domestic ideology, the cultural fascination with standards and deviance, and the desire to police maternal behaviors.Monstrous Motherhood analyzes eighteenth-century motherhood in light of the inconsistencies among domestic ideology, narrative, and historical practice. If domesticity was so important, why is the good mother’s story absent or peripheral? What do the available maternal narratives suggest about domestic ideology and the expectations and enactment of motherhood? By focusing on literary and historical mothers in novels, plays, poems, diaries, conduct manuals, contemporary court cases, realist fiction, fairy tales, satire, and romance, Marilyn Francus reclaims silenced maternal voices and perspectives. She exposes the mechanisms of maternal marginalization and spectralization in eighteenth-century culture and revises the domesticity thesis.Monstrous Motherhood will compel scholars in eighteenth-century studies, women’s studies, family history, and cultural studies to reevaluate a foundational assumption that has driven much of the discourse in their fields.