The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in 19th. Century America

G. J. Barker-Benfield is Professor of History and Women's Studies at SUNY-Albany. He is the coeditor with Catherine Clinton of Portraits of American Women and author of The Culture of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain.

"A 'classic'-a wonderful work." -- Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood of America
"A truly pioneering study . . . that is likely to gain an entirely new readership." -- Bram Dijkstra, author of Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood
"It tells a very important part of women's history-shocking and dreadful . . . when it was first published, it was ahead of its time." -- Robbie Davis-Floyd, coeditor of Cyborg Babies

Part I The Sexes in Tocqueville’s America; Chapter 1 The American Man; Chapter 2 The Arena; Chapter 3 Work and Sex; Chapter 4 Democratic Fathers and Democratic Sons; Chapter 5 Freedom of Intercourse; Chapter 6 Strong Men over Orderly Women; Part II From Midwives to Gynecologists; Chapter 7 The Absence of Midwives from America; Chapter 8 Democratic Doctors; Chapter 9 The Rise of Gynecology; Chapter 10 Architect of the Vagina; Chapter 11 Sexual Surgery; Part III The Lightning-Rod Man; Chapter 12 The Reverend John Todd; Chapter 13 Primers for Anxiety; Chapter 14 Todd’s Masturbation Phobia; Chapter 15 The Spermatic Economy and Proto-Sublimation; Chapter 16 Men Earn—Women Spend; Chapter 17 Woman’s Refinement; Chapter 18 Sex and Anarchy; Chapter 19 From Mother to Mother Earth; Part IV Augustus Kinsley Gardner; Chapter 20 Dr. Gardner’s Education; Chapter 21 Gardner’s Career; Chapter 22 The Physical Decline of American Women; Chapter 23 Punishing Women; Chapter 24 The Great Organ of Communication;