History By Bonnie Smith Summary

Bonnie Smith does achieve most of the stuff she set out to do in her book such as illuminating the evolution of sexism in western historiography and the varying definitions of masculinity and femininity. To demonstrate her points, Bonnie Smith uses naïve tales of queens and famous ladies of the past to show how women were viewed as superficial and trivial in the past. She uses this to analyse women’s work and to show their amateur status in historical studies. Bonnie Smith used the language of sexuality to show how it became crucial for breakthroughs for women in the study of history and how it helped women to be seen as credible in this field and not just incapable. She encourages thinking about historical practice by applying the gender issues
Bonnie Smith attempted to reframe western historiography and provoke discussion and debates over the nature of modern history. She does this by attempting to discuss not only the role women played in writing history but also she wanted to explore what boundaries the discipline of history had and how much of an effect this had on the women wanting to study, write or teach history. To do this, Bonnie Smith combines multiple disciplines and perspectives from history and she presents a real and equally valuable story about how history has affected women historians. Bonnie Smith provides comprehensive sources to support her points within her book, this help to give her theories credibility. On the other hand, although she is successful when analysing memoirs she is less successful when using certain concepts that involve psychological factors. She also only gives a short consideration to other factors, such as race, that may have influenced the development of women historians and presents a single-minded view on the