Beecher, Catharine

Catharine E. Beecher (1800–1878) was a social innovator who helped to reshape women’s roles in the mid-nineteenth century and whose writings continued to guide an idealized image of middle-class urban women for decades to come. Beecher’s authority derived from her membership in a famous family of activists and reformers and from her own extensive pioneering of education for single professional women and married women at home. Beecher wrote and lectured widely on women’s issues, intermingling what was sometimes extreme conservatism with far-seeing change.