Sumblog 5: Harriet Martineau

Sumblog 4

Harriet Martineau formulated a comparative method for studying societies and analyzed the new American culture by measuring it against carefully stated principles. Quite possibly, she wrote the first "methodological essay" ever published, How to Observe Morals and Manners. She made enough profit from this one book supplement her income for the entire revolution.  

Harriet Martineau was a lifelong feminist, and she became one early and on her own. "The woman question" was what she and other like-minded nineteenth-century thinkers and activists called what we call feminism.  In addition to giving her individual attention to women and women's concerns Martineau participated in groups in both England and the United States that were fertile environments for deliberate efforts on women's behalf. Probably not too much should be made of the fact that she wrote admiringly of women writers in her first published piece ("Female Writers of Practical Divinity") or that she went to some length to establish the fact that the form she used for her political economy tales was derived from a woman. Still, these attributions acknowledged influences from women that she valued from the first.

Claudette Colvin Was First to Refuse Giving Up Seat on Montgomery Bus in March of 1955.  She was just fifteen years old (She was not pregnant when she was on the bus, it was shortly after). Most people know about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system.  Why are some people not acknowledged for what they have accomplished?