SOURCE: "From Intellectual Equality to Moral Difference: Hale's Conversion to Separate Spheres" in Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors, University of Georgia Press, 1995, pp. 38-58.

In the following excerpt, Okker discusses what she sees as a shift in Hale's writings from a belief in the Enlightenment notion of equality between the sexes to the Victorian notion of separate spheres of endeavor for men and women.

Hale's writings during these early years [of her career] show little sign that she would eventually promote absolute notions of sexual difference and the idea of gendered separate spheres. Hale's novel Northwood: A Tale of New England, published in 1827, reveals her grounding in Enlightenment values. Though the novel does associate women with domesticity and men with politics, it repeatedly portrays ideal men and women as practically identical—rational, industrious, and frugal.¹³ Hale's view of shared...