Abigail Blodgett Stickney Lyon’s Observations on Free Masonry: with a Masonic Vision Addressed, by a Lady in Worcester, to Her Female Friend (1798)
Issue: Vol 4 No. 1 (2013) Vol. 4. No 1 - 2 (2013) : Women and Freemasonry
Journal: Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
DOI: 10.1558/jrff.v4i1.44
Abstract:
In her pamphlet, Observations on Free Masonry: with a Masonic Vision Addressed, by a Lady in Worcester, to Her Female Friend (1798), the New England writer Abigail Blodget Stickney Lyon—a well-educated woman for her time—voiced strong views about women and freemasonry. The dominant interpretation of her work has been that she approved of women’s total exclusion from freemasonry, her work described as antimasonic, and even a warning against illuminism. This article presents a different interpretation, that it is an advocacy of women only lodges, where women could labor within their own spheres in parallel with—and just as well as—men.
Author: Karen Kidd
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