"This enjoyable and readable book adds significantly to our understanding of the construction and embodiment of gender during the 1860s through the 1920s. A nuanced, complex mosaic of public conversations about gender."--Martha Watson, author of Lives of Their Own: Rhetorical Dimensions in Autobiographies of Women Activists

"Written in a lively style and full of insightful analysis, The Crimes of Womanhood offers an important contribution to rhetorical scholarship. The book will make an excellent addition to courses exploring the intersections of rhetoric, gender, and/or the law in the U.S. I look forward to using it."--Sara Hayden, professor of communication studies, University of Montana

"A provocative read. Carlson illustrates the ways that historical legal narratives--presented as factual, neutral, and objective--were, indeed, highly rhetorical and highly gendered. Her call for a rhetorical reframing of our narratives regarding women, both within the legal realm and outside it, is nothing less than call for expanding our cultural repertoire of the possibilities for successful femininity."--Cindy L. Griffin, coeditor of Feminist Rhetorical Theories: A Reader