Bonnie G. Smith begins book announcing: "This book inserts term 'gender' account historiography West In many ways, one can read Bonnie G. Smith's book The Gender of History, as merely stating the obvious. That she does so in an abu7ndance of detail and varying perspectives while stratifying some of the fundamental concepts that make up historiography makes her conclusion none the less obvious. One can simply deconstruct the term history and see that there are inherent gender implications -- professional and scholastic history is, for the most part, the account of some man or men (typically Caucasian) rendering an 'official' accounting of events past. As such, that accounting is going to be written from the perspective of this universal male symbol of authority and address those things that he wants addressed, while favoring those things he believes posterity will need to regard as important. The author's assertion (1998), then that "the development of modern scientific methodology, epistemology, professional practice and writing has been closely tied to evolving definitions of masculinity and femininity" (p. 1) is exceedingly accurate (and only omits the question of race, which is equally as prevalent and important). In fact, the author's statement serves somewhat as a guide through the various tenets and eras of historiography that her manuscript covers.

One of the most basic principles of Smith's work is that during the time period in...

Not surprisingly, the works of the latter were professional and deemed as more valuable and authoritative than those of the latter, which were frequently trivialized as amateur. This fact is of immense importance especially in terms of providing the validity of Smith's thesis (that historiography has been stratified to favor the perspective of men), because it suggests that the historical writings that have populated contemporary academia did not have to be written solely by men.
More importantly, however, the author propounds the notion that in the 19th century, history was effectively dichotomized between the two genders. There were facets of history which were generally considered feminine (and therefore less important) than other facets of history which were considered masculine. This dichotomy came from some of the writers which were comprised of women and who wrote history which was not professional or academic in nature. Oftentimes, such historical accountings were largely about social and cultural issues, and offered a plethora of detail about the intricacies of a particular setting or clothing that an important personage (many of whom were women) wore. Therefore, the history that was written by men was somewhat reactionary to the writing of women's history in that it focused less…