Renée L. Bergland

Maria Mitchell is a wonderful and brilliant woman to read about. She is incredibly intelligent, talented, humble to a fault, sarcastic in her humor, and even wrote poetry! After reading this, I must revisit her telescope at the Smithsonian.

The book begins by exploring Maria's childhood. Maria's father was an astronomer and a pillar of the Nantucket community and promoted gender equality in the classroom. On her Grand Tour of Europe, Maria met the top astronomers of her day, and even befriended the Hawthornes. The author does an excellent job of describing the interconnection of science and gender, poetry and astronomy. Science used to be considered a feminine subject. It was only post-Civil War that the sciences became "masculine" and professionalized. The author explains exactly when, how and why this gender inequality in the professional sciences began.

However, this book does have one flaw. Earlier in the book, the author points out that "some of Mitchell's chroniclers have tried to defend her from the charges of lesbianism..." As if being gay were a "charge?" It is known that Maria Mitchell did not marry or take any known male lovers, but preferred the company of women. Later the author writes "Mitchell's affections... will never be clearly limned for the historian" and yet on the very next page, firmly states "I don't think she was a secret lesbian." The author is keen to bring it up but immediately dismiss the possibility, rather than make any attempt to explore it. You can be sure I will pursue this point on my own.… (mais)

A biography of a little known female astronomer who was widely known in her day. Why we hear so little about these women is actually a topic taken up in this work. The author discusses the change in attitudes from the time of Mitchell's birth (1818), when science was considered an appropriate field of study for women, and in fact, was considered feminine, while humanities and classics were fields women should not be part of; they were for men only, and the late nineteenth century, when science became professionalized, masculinized, and off limits to most women. Lest the reader should think that the early nineteenth century was some paragon of feminist ideals, the author details the reasons why women were pushed toward science, and it has a lot to do with maintaining the hierarchical order that was seen as appropriate and ordained by God, with men on top (white men, of course). Mitchell was an early mover in the push to gain rights for women, but even in her push, she felt that women needed to remain "feminine", and not become "like men". Well written, and well researched, but with a few minor errors that a good editor could have excised quite quickly (such as one place where she has Mitchell writing a letter to a student in 1960, who was part of her 1859 class - a letter that would have to have been written many decades after both were dead). Not a lot of mistakes, but annoying just the same, and with a tendency to interfere with the narrative.… (mais)