![]() ![]() She quoted one woman who attended her lecture and interpreted the sentence to mean, “It is better to be obscene than not heard. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s slogan reads, Well behaved women seldom make history. ![]() When the sentence catches someone’s interest enough to ponder what the author meant, Ulrich turns the question around, asking what it means to him or her. The purpose of Laurel Thatcher Ulrichs textual analysis of her slogan personally provides imagery for me of all the women who have made history and continue to do so by standing up for what they believe in. She also attributed its appeal to its ambiguity. The quotation has taken on a life of its own, and Ulrich said her accidental fame is a result of its new perspective. Cosmo Girl magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, the Raging Grannies of Seattle and an undergraduate thesis eventually all picked up on it. Then a friend called Urlich from Oregon and asked if she could use the sentence on a T-shirt. The interest in her essay quotation didn’t start, however, until 1995, when California journalist Kay Mills found Urlich’s sentence and asked for permission to use it for her book, “From Pocahontas to Power Suits.” She won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812.” Ulrich said that Ballard made history by writing the “humdrum” down. Ulrich, an author and Harvard professor, spoke about her life last Friday in Nunemaker Hall. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich had never intended the sentence “Well-behaved women seldom make history” to make it onto mugs, magnets, bumper stickers or tote bags.īut her words, originally from a 1975 essay published in American Quarterly about Puritan women in funerals, have become more than a simple sentence. ![]()
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