"This classic history of women's oppression is one of the first attempts to document the legacy of injustice and discrimination against women, which is inseparable from both the history of Christianity and the evolution of the Western state. Pioneering women's rights advocate Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) traces the patterns of male domination in both church and state that kept women in virtual bondage.

Among the topics of her research are the medieval belief that women were unclean and the cause of original sin, their discrimination in canon law, their abuse in the feudal system, the witch-hunts, the virtual slave status of wives and their legal subjugation to their husbands, the debilitating drudgery of women's daily work, and the widespread opposition to women's education.".

"Originally published in 1893, this work was the fruit of twenty years' research. Complementing this edition is an introduction by author and lecturer Sally Roesch Wagner, who helped found one of America's first programs in women's studies. She is Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York."--BOOK JACKET.