Woman of Valor
Authors: Ellen Chesler
“
Woman of Valor
shows us a zesty, authentic heroine who kept on evolving personally and politically, as we all must. I found fascinating lessons for feminists today in Margaret Sanger's struggle for reproductive autonomy. Chesler shows how Sanger transcended both the radical rhetoric and the conventional politics of her day to forge a new day for women.”
âBetty Friedan
“A definitive and intimate biography of America's landmark crusader for reproductive freedom.”
âDavid J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of
Bearing the Cross
“A brilliant biography that restores Margaret Sanger to her preeminent place in the history of American feminism and social reform. Ellen Chester's analysis of the politics of contraception and the relationship between women and their doctors forces us to reexamine the meaning of reproductive rights in this century.”
âDavid J. Rothman, Professor of Social Medicine and Professor of History, Columbia University
“A fascinating book and a compelling story on two counts. One, it is a history of the first struggle for women's control of their bodies, for power over their own lives, a history we are repeating today with, sadly, little difference: We can learn from the first struggle. Two, it is an honest biography of a woman who conformed to none of the accepted recipes for a female life, changed the world, and had a happy and fulfilling time of it.
Woman of Valor
will impress and rouse everyone, except, perhaps, the Reagan-Bush appointees to the Supreme Court.”
âCarolyn G. Heilbrun
“A compelling portrait of a great woman and a great cause. A significant contribution to the history of American feminism and of women's fight for control of their own destiny.”
âRobert Caro, author of
The Power Broker
and
Master of the Senate
“Ellen Chesler has written an extraordinary biography of a remarkable woman. Sanger is surely one of the most influentialâand controversialâwomen of the century. Chesler illuminates Sanger's rich personal and public life with a sophisticated understanding of psychology and history, yet the book reads like a good novel.”
âSylvia A. Law, Professor of Law, New York University
“Chesler succeeds admirably in bringing the extraordinary career and controversial personality of Margaret Sanger to life in this skillfully researched and objective biographyâ¦an outstanding biography of a feminist reformer whose achievements changed the lives of women forever.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“The contemporary social debate over women's reproductive rights provides a timely backdrop for this major new biographyâ¦succeeds admirablyâ¦carefully documentedâ¦a major contribution to women's history.”
â
Library Journal
“A splendid biographyâ¦A riveting warts-and-all portrait of a courageous and determined woman who, in a time of foment, wrought fundamental changes in the human social condition.”
â
Kirkus
“Cheslerâ¦brilliantly reveals and revitalizes Margaret Sanger in the context of the contemptuous public battles for birth controlâ¦brings a keen sense of political nuance to the conflicts that surround issues of reproductive rightsâ¦at once richly detailed and capaciously conceivedâauthoritative, readable and rippling with the energy of life it conveys.”
âDaniel J. Kevles,
The New York Times Book Review
“[A] marvelous biography.”
âAnna Quindlen,
The New York Times
[Op-Ed]
“[
Woman of Valor
's] chief virtue is a sweeping and authoritative grasp not only of Sanger's life but of the political detail and maneuvering behind it.”
âRuth Brandon,
The Washington Post Book World
“The Sanger portrayed by Chesler is compelling, and persuasively counters the tendency of earlier biographers to either eulogize or condemnâ¦Chesler's exhaustive scholarship has yielded not only a fuller picture of Sanger but new knowledge about the history of birth control.”
âRosalind Pollack Petchesky,
Boston Sunday Globe
“This book couldn't be timelier.”
âBruce McCabe,
The Boston Globe
“An important new workâ¦Had I tried, I could not have found more convincing proof of the timeliness of Chesler's absorbing, comprehensive biographyâ¦brilliant.”
âDiane Cole,
Chicago Tribune
“Offers a balanced, provocative examination of a crusader whose mission remains a source of serious dissension in American societyâ¦a respectful biography that never descends to hagiography.”
âSusan Jacoby
“A jam-packed page-turner of a definitive biographyâ¦Chesler's straightforward account of the details is refreshingâ¦this book reminds us how much defense our fragile freedoms of speech and bodily self-determination require.”
âJudith Levine,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Chesler's work is thorough and seriousâ¦Chesler is fair to history and to her brave, complex heroine in a biography that, while honest, is also a tribute.”
âRhoda Koenig,
New York
“The great strength of this biography is Chesler's gift for understanding the daily life of politics, the maneuvers, the assignations with strange bedfellowsâ¦
Woman of Valor
is a treasure. Chesler's serious attention to the evidence creates a rich resourceâ¦gives Sanger the stature she deserves.”
âAnn Snitow,
Los Angeles Times
“A massive, absorbing study of Sanger's life and times.”
â
Newsweek
“A brilliantly paced storyâ¦a marvel of structure and clear prose, a saga that has never been better, or more thoroughly, told.”
âHelen L. Kohen,
The Miami Herald
“Chesler's fine work, equal parts biography and social history, readability and scholarship, should certainly cement Sanger's place in American history.”
âMelanie Lawrence,
San Francisco Chronicle
“A copious and thoughtfulâindeed, definitiveâbiography.”
â
The New Yorker
“[A] fascinating biography.”
âMolly Ivins,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Illuminatingâ¦What makes Sanger's lifeâand Chesler's bookâso fascinating is that behind her overpowering charm, her savvy politics and her unswerving drive breathed a profoundly free-thinking woman.”
âCarol Ness,
San Francisco Examiner
“Fastidiously researched and an indispensable source for understanding the divide between population control interests and feminists around the globeâ¦Perhaps the greatest of this book's virtues is the care with which it documents the contradictions of purpose and philosophy which have vexed the American birth control movement almost from the start.”
âRosalind Pollack Petchesky,
Women's Review of Books
“
Woman of Valor
is essential reading for anyone interested in the shaping of the debate on reproductive rights and women's health issues in the United Statesâ¦the book takes its place in the distinguished company of current feminist writingsâ¦deserves high praise.”
âBarbara Abrash,
Family Planning Perspectives
“Fortunately, Ellen Chesler has no intention of allowing Margaret Sanger to remain trivialized and forgotten. Her finely textured and comprehensive biography supplants the sometimes unflattering treatment Sanger has received from other historiansâ¦The work of a skilled storyteller, this masterfully detailed and penetrating social and political analysis reframes many of Sanger's most controversial decisionsâ¦a perceptive psychological portrait which celebrates Sanger's strengths without papering over her considerable shortcomings.”
âRegina Morantz-Sanchez,
Tikkun
For Matt
SIMON & SCHUSTER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Copyright © 1992 by Ellen Chesler
Afterword copyright © 2007 by Ellen Chesler
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
SIMON & SCHUSTER
and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Chesler, Ellen.
Woman of valor : Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America / Ellen Chesler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966. 2. Birth controlâUnited StatesâBiography.
3. Women social reformersâUnited StatesâBiography. I. Title.
HQ764.S3C44 1992
613.94'092âdc20
[B] 92-11496 CIP
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5369-4
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5369-X
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
Mrs. Margaret Sanger, founder of the Birth Control League, has been awarded the annual medal of the American Woman's Association, which cites her for the qualities of “vision, integrity and valor.” Mrs. Sanger deserves this honor; she deserves more honors than a world against whose darkness of mind she has fought bravely and consistently for twenty years is ever likely to give her. Mrs. Sanger has carved, almost single-handed and in the face of every variety of persecution, a trail through the densest jungle of human ignorance and helplessness. She has been many times arrested, assailed and covered with mudâwhich remains perhaps the most substantial tribute to her pioneering genius. Pretty nearly everything and everyone has been against herâpulpits and legislatures and newspapers, public men and private citizens, and whole regiments of the prejudices, fears, bogeys and dragons that still infest the mind of civilized man.
But such is the common sense of what she has been saying, and so great the courage and conviction of her way of saying it, that people have at last begun to listen and believe. Her victory is not by any means complete, but the dragons are on the run.
âThe
New York Herald Tribune
, November 13, 1931
