
Sex Wars by Marge Piercy is a historical fiction novel set in Gilded Age New York, focusing on the battle for women's equality in the late 19th century. The book intertwines the stories of real historical figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, and Anthony Comstock with a fictional character named Freydeh Levin, a Jewish Russian immigrant. The narrative delves into the struggles faced by women in a society where they had limited control over their own bodies, legal matters, and freedom, shedding light on important historical events and figures through meticulous research and storytelling.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The book includes content warnings for themes such as censorship, sexuality, women's struggles, and historical injustices.
From The Publisher:
Post-Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison-as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books.
In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.
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