ABSTRACT
In previous chapters, we have drawn attention to various aspects of moral reform ideology and activities as they developed in the hands of mostly Yankee evangelical women. This chapter gathers together these strands, and develops and adds to them to present a more complete picture of what moral reform looked like as a thoroughly feminized argument and program. Because it meant different things to different women, and its emphases changed over time, female moral reform was neither monolithic nor static. Yet for all its diverse expressions moral reform was fundamentally different for women than for men in one respect: it gave vent to a rage against men and the injustices of an early modern gender system that no longer accorded with the rising expectations of middle-class northern women. Overall, the content of its words and actions goes a long way in explaining both moral reform’s linkage with in pre-marital pregnancy and fertility declines and its appeal to women in the full range of marital and child-bearing circumstances.
