Hit: Essays on Women’s Rights

After the war, Dr. Mary E. Walker 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. Much ahead of her time, she urged women to retain their maiden names after marriage; refused to wear corsets and hoop skirts, instead donning men’s pants, for which she was much ridiculed; inveighed against the harmful effects of tobacco (including second-hand smoke) and alcohol; argued passionately for women’s right to vote; exposed the double standard of attitudes toward divorce, which often ostracised divorced women while fully accepting men’s right to divorce; suggested that women should be compensated for domestic labour; and lambasted the doctrines of Christianity that kept women in subservient roles. With an insightful foreword by Walker specialist Mercedes Graf, this new edition of a little known work by a pioneering feminist will be of great interest to anyone concerned about women’s rights.