SOURCE: Kelly, Gary. “Elizabeth Hamilton: Domestic Woman and National Reconstruction.” In Women, Writing, and Revolution: 1790-1827, pp. 265-304. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Kelly provides a detailed analysis of Hamilton's post-1800 works, asserting that she covertly feminized traditionally masculine discourses—such as philosophy, history, biography, and theology—in an environment of post-revolutionary remasculinization.

Helen Maria Williams and Mary Hays found their Sentimental and Revolutionary feminism increasingly under attack in the later 1790s and the Revolutionary aftermath, and had to turn to other ways of sustaining their social critiques. By contrast, Elizabeth Hamilton seemed well positioned to become a major post-Revolutionary critic of feminism. In fact, she moved closer to Revolutionary feminism after 1800, resisting the increasing remasculinization of culture and restriction of women to narrowly defined domesticity. Like a number of other women writers, she did so by following the lead of Hannah More's Strictures on the...