Catharine Beecher – 1800-1878

Eldest daughter of revivalist preacher Lyman Beecher, Catharine Beecher worked to advance the cause of public education in America and to define and establish the role of women in American society. Although she was a fierce advocate of equal rights for women, her most influential book, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), was an effort to define and standardize homemaking practices and to exalt domestic values, founded on the proposition that a woman’s place is in the home—the arena from which she could most profoundly influence American society.