'Reap What You Sow!' How the Michigan State Grange and Its Grange Visitor Gave Rural Women an Opportunity to Realize Their Truest Selves

摘要

The Grange Visitor, the official newspaper of the Michigan State Grange from 1875-1896, was a way to nurture, sustain, and enrich the Grange community. The first "Ladies' Department" column appeared in May 1877. This was a forum in which women were encouraged to explore what it meant to be rural, what it meant to be a woman, and, most uniquely, what it meant to be a rural woman-which was greater and more complex than a mere sum of its constituent parts. This study examines these explorations for theperiod 1877-81, looking for recurring themes that might serve as both a reflec-tion of and a window into the thoughts and feelings of Michigan women Grangers and thus, by extrapolation, rural (Michigan) women more generally.