The Great Divorce A NineteenthCentury Mother Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband the Shakers and Her Times (Audible Audio Edition) Ilyon Woo Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
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Ilyon Woo's The Great Divorce is the dramatic, richly textured story of one of 19th-century America's most infamous divorce cases, in which a young mother singlehandedly challenged her country's notions of women's rights, family, and marriage itself.
In 1814 Eunice Chapman came home to discover that her three children had been carried off by her estranged husband. He had taken them, she learned, to live among a celibate, religious people known as the Shakers. Defying all expectations, this famously petite and lovely woman mounted an epic campaign against her husband, the Shakers, and the law. In its confrontation of some of the nation's most fundamental debates - religious freedom, feminine virtue, the sanctity of marriage - her case struck a nerve with an uncertain new republic. And its culmination - in a stunning legislative decision and a terrifying mob attack - sent shockwaves through the Shaker community and the nation beyond.
With a novelist's eye and a historian's perspective, Woo delivers the first full account of Eunice Chapman's remarkable struggle. A moving story about the power of a mother's love, The Great Divorce is also a memorable portrait of a rousing challenge to the values of a young nation.
The Great Divorce A NineteenthCentury Mother Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband the Shakers and Her Times (Audible Audio Edition) Ilyon Woo Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
Of how many impeccably researched histories can it be said, "I couldn't put it down!" Illyon Woo has meticulously pieced together mostly original sources into a book that has the sweep and pace of great drama. She does not invent, but has sources for details right down to the weather and the condition of roads. (I know this because I read both her Sources and Acknowlegdments sections, so curious was I about her methods and so reluctant was I to let go of this book!) As for the story told, it is an extraordinary commentary on the roles and rights of women, the struggle of a new nation to create and then bend and amend its laws, the power of marketing (yes, even in the early 19th century), and the peculiar nature of Shaker culture. Woo says in her Epilogue that the sui generis nature of Eunice Chapman's story has made it a footnote to legal history. But Woo rescues the footnote, showing how both the Shakers and Eunice's struggle against them were peculiarly American, and can tell us much about how we - American women and men of all religious stripes - live today. And why. Whatever Woo writes next, I'm there.Product details
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The Great Divorce A NineteenthCentury Mother Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband the Shakers and Her Times (Audible Audio Edition) Ilyon Woo Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books Reviews
shipped quickly , good condition, thank you
Very historic, a good book
A deceptively easy read, but thought provoking. One almost immediately sympathizes with both Eunice and her husband James, if for different reasons. Opens a window on early 19th century life in America. Unlike similar works that strive to be scholarly and pretentious, this is a good old fashioned story that happens to be true.
"The Great Divorce" is an interesting book that lifts what might otherwise be (as the author acknowledges) a footnote in history to a fully told tale. The story of the miserable marriage of Eunice and James Chapman and of her fight to reclaim her children when her husband joins a Shaker community is thoroughly researched. Through this family, Woo examines early 19th century divorce and custody laws and also gives a full and sympathetic picture of the orderly Shaker communities that were roiled by the fierce battle for custody of the three young Chapman children. The story has a contemporary feel, as it was all too easy then, as now, to incite public antipathy, even mob action, against a little understood and sometimes unpopular religion. Another contemporary aspect is also evident what to do when one parent joins a religious sect and takes the children with him or her?
Woo set out to make this tale, whose bizarre turns titillated newspaper readers in the second decade of the 19th century, one that would appeal to a general audience, as well as an academic one. In this, she is less successful. Sometimes she conjures up the thoughts that Eunice Chapman might have been thinking, given her circumstances, although Eunice is such an odd (and often unappealing) individual that these passages seem contrived. No more successful are Woo's attempts to present Eunice as a kind of early feminist, although the issues this determined and single-minded woman raised certainly shone a (brief) light on the status of women in this period.
Read "The Great Divorce" for the entertaining historical footnote that it is. As for unhappy marriages where we ARE drawn in to what a woman might be thinking and feeling---perhaps this is best left to the 19th century novelists, Chopin, Eliot, James, and Dreiser among them.
M. Feldman
Ilyon Woo tells the story of Eunice Chapman, who fought to regain custody of her children and some control of her own fate, when her husband joined the Shakers in the early 1800s in New York state.
Woo presents her detailed research into the Shaker communities and the life of the Chapman family in a readable, riveting story. Her prose is always grounded in fact and the footnotes are available for checking her sources.
Woo was able to present both sides of the conflict evenly and fairly. She set the whole situation into the cultural context of the day with clarity and insight into the biases and advances of the Shakers and the complex personalities of the main characters. She doesn't whitewash anything, but tries to tell as complete a story as the evidence will support.
The book is also full of interesting details about the Shaker's theology and way of life, beyond the plain facts that they lived simply in sex-segregated communities.
I would recommend this to people who like reading historical books. In this
day and age - we tend to forget how things were "in the day" - I am a child of
the 1950's and can remember how scandalous divorce and pregnancy out of
wedlock were - not that long ago! I feel that our female population doesn't really
understand the progress that has been made in our rights. In this day and age
it is a given that the mother will get custody of children...this wasn't always the
case.... I really enjoyed the book - hope others will also.
I am a history junkie. I especially enjoy works that give a rich, full flavor of a time as well as presenting different views of the same event. This book delivers nicely on both counts, relating the atmosphere in New York State and the country in the early 1800's, especially in regards to religion, the condition of women, and women's rights. The centerpiece is one womans battle to regain her children, who had been spirited away by her husband. At a time when a woman had little recourse against those that harmed or mistreated her, Eunice Chapmans battle was an amazing one. What could have been a small family drama escalated into a war that caught up politicians, lawyers, the Shaker religion and such luminaries as Martin Van Buren and Thomas Jefferson.
All that aside, the author makes the book highly accessible to the reader, writing in an engaging style that makes this a page-turning historical mystery. It is just plain great storytelling!
Of how many impeccably researched histories can it be said, "I couldn't put it down!" Illyon Woo has meticulously pieced together mostly original sources into a book that has the sweep and pace of great drama. She does not invent, but has sources for details right down to the weather and the condition of roads. (I know this because I read both her Sources and Acknowlegdments sections, so curious was I about her methods and so reluctant was I to let go of this book!) As for the story told, it is an extraordinary commentary on the roles and rights of women, the struggle of a new nation to create and then bend and amend its laws, the power of marketing (yes, even in the early 19th century), and the peculiar nature of Shaker culture. Woo says in her Epilogue that the sui generis nature of Eunice Chapman's story has made it a footnote to legal history. But Woo rescues the footnote, showing how both the Shakers and Eunice's struggle against them were peculiarly American, and can tell us much about how we - American women and men of all religious stripes - live today. And why. Whatever Woo writes next, I'm there.
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