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    Top 12 Women Who Kicked Ass In The 18th Century And Their Modern Counterparts

    Compilers: Edgar Gomez, Elizabeth MacDonald, Hannah Schepler, Devorah Weiner Preface: Our group formed under the common hat of wanting to emphasize confidence and agency in early women’s words. Many of our readings dealt with macabre subjects like infanticide and domestic abuse. As such, we feel it is crucial to illustrate the ways the feminist prototypes we covered rose above their environments and demonstrated their strength. We chose our quotes based on two elements: how securely they perpetuate the concepts of confidence/agency and their ability to resonate with modern audiences. Because of the place the women we have covered fall in a timeline, we understand the difficulty posed in asking readers to connect with the words we have compiled. To appease this problem, we have drawn modern parallels for each of the women in order to accentuate the timelessness of the values they held. Similar to the strategic silences these early women employed to work in subversion, our group used silence by withholding any editorial commentary as to why the parallels we have selected are appropriate. Feminism is dynamic and molded to a person's individual experiences. We want to invite readers to interact with the Buzzfeed and work out why the parallels make sense for themselves as opposed to overtly stating, “This is feminism and confidence/agency and this is why and whatever you’re thinking is wrong.” We believe people can gain more by forming their own connections with the posts as opposed to us projecting our own onto our readers and hoping they will apply. Introduction: The common theme among all these women is the agency they employed under a male-dominated system. For example, Abigail Abbott Bailey’s core method of agency was her separation and ultimate divorce from her husband—an overt act that required defined thinking and an understanding of the consequences. Less obvious examples exist as well, as when Ursula deJesus questions the purpose behind the visions she has seen even when it had been made clear that she doesn’t feel it is her place to question anything. Albeit on different levels, both women act in spite of a hierarchy that has the main goal of the systematic oppression and silencing of their thoughts and actions. By examining these levels of agency and drawing comparisons to more modern or well-known women today, we can better understand these women’s motivations and how they negotiated their own eras. For example, actress Katie Holmes's separation from Tom Cruise, and her subsequent exit from the Church of Scientology, demonstrates a woman in conflict with religion. Holmes has claimed that she left the church to protect the couple’s daughter. Under the Church of Scientology’s doctrines, a person who publicly renounces the religion is seen as a “suppressive person” and is publicly cast out by other Scientologists. Both Katie Holmes and Abigail Abbot Bailey are women in tune with the consequences of their decisions but nevertheless have the confidence to fight for their families. Such analogies between modern and early American women extend to fictional women as well, created as they are with their author’s understanding of gender expectations and necessarily reflecting the author’s own world. Buzzfeed provides an apt framework for showcasing these women. While Buzzfeed itself is a website dedicated more to humor and news, it remains an open forum and is more accessible to the modern public than previous commonplace books, due in part to its online presence as well as its established informal language. The format invites readers to participate and draw connections between the past and present, not only encouraging them to find similarities, but to mark the differences as well.

    1. Martha Moore Ballard and Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw

    2. Abigail Abbot Bailey and Katie Holmes

    3. Phillis Wheatley and The Help’s Aibileen Clark

    4. Katherine Tekakwitha and Malala Yousafzai

    5. Anne Hutchinson and Legally Blonde's Elle Woods

    6. Judith Sargent Murray and Mean Girls’s Cady Heron

    7. Elizabeth Ashbridge and Breaking Bad’s Skyler White

    8. Sara Simon and Matilda

    9. Sarah Pharoah and Martha Stewart

    10. Katherine Garret and Wendy Davis

    11. Anne Bradstreet and Hillary Clinton

    12. Ursula deJesus and Maya Angelou

    Works Cited

    Ashbridge, Elizabeth. Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge. Philadelphia: N.p, n.d.

    Bailey, Abigail Abbot. Religion and Domestic Violence in Early New England. Ed. Ann Taves. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. Print.

    Ballard, Martha M. The Diary of Martha Ballard. N.p.: n.p., 1785-1812. April 24, 1789. http://dohistory.org

    Bradstreet, Anne. "Prologue." The Tenth Muse. London: Stephen Bowtell, 1650. N. pag. General Editor: Marc R. Plamondon.

    Bross, Kristina and Wyss, Hilary. Early Native Literacies in New England: A Document and Critical Anthology. Amheart: University of Massachusetts, 2008. Print.

    Cholenec, Pierre. "The Life of Katharine Tegakouita, First Iroquois Virgin." Ed. Moore, Lisa L.; Brooks, Joanna; Wigginton, Caroline. Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 76-83. Print.

    Hall, David D., ed. "The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown." The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History. 2nd ed.

    Jesús, Ursula De, and Deusen Nancy E. Van. The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula De Jesús. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 2004. Print.

    Murray, Judith Sargent. "On the Equality of the Sexes." The Massachusetts Magazine II (1790): 132+. PennLibraries.

    Wheatley, Phillis. On Being Brought from Africa to America. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773).