Hit: Essays on Women's Rights

by Mary Edwards Walker, Mercedes Graf (Introduction)

The only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War, Dr. Mary E. Walker (1832-1919) was a surgeon, a public lecturer, and an outspoken champion of women's rights. One of the first women in the country to be awarded a medical degree, she served as an assistant surgeon for the 52nd Ohio Infantry and was cited for valor in going behind enemy lines to attend to the sick.

Though her early career was highly distinguished, her subsequent life became controversial and in some respects tragic. Always a woman of great independence, she publicly expressed strong opinions about the need for women's rights and harshly criticized prevailing patriarchal attitudes and the enforced subservience of women. After the war she published Hit, an enigmatically titled book in which she advanced her radical ideas on topics from love and marriage and dress reform to woman's suffrage and religion.

With an insightful foreword by Walker specialist Mercedes Graf (professor of psychology, Governors State University, University Park, Illinois), this new edition of a little known work by a pioneering feminist will be of great interest to anyone concerned about women's rights.

Genres: Nonfiction

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1871

About the author

Mary Edwards Walker, commonly referred to as Dr. Mary Walker, was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war, and surgeon. She is the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.

Reviews

[Maryclaire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dr. Mary Walker was a woman of her own mind. Look out anybody male, or female who she saw as a hold back to the future of the female population. Her dress reform was smart and practical. Her desire to be a physician and proving she could do as well as the rest, rang true. I wish I would could of known Dr. Mary Walker.