“Circumstances are Destiny”: An Antebellum Woman’s Struggle to Define Sphere. By Tina Stewart Brakebill. (Civil War in the North.) Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 2006. Pp. xx, 255. $34.95.
“My destiny,” lamented Ohio native Celestia Rice Colby, “is to act, to do life’s humblest duties, in a narrow, unknown sphere, to crush back the upspringing aspirations that rise in my soul, and to strive for the mastery over my own spirit.” (xii) With this, the reader of Tina Stewart Brakebill’s “Circumstances are destiny”: An Antebellum Woman’s Struggle to Define Sphere, a volume in Kent State University Press’s Civil War in the North Series, is led into one antebellum woman’s thoughts concerning her decades-long struggle against gender-based limitations in American society. Continue reading Book Review: “Circumstances are Destiny”