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Her name is probably Mary or Anna, Margaret or Helen, Elizabeth or Ruth, Florence or Ethel, Emma, Marie, Clara, Bertha, Minnie, Bessie, or Alice. She is probably white—­however that is defined, since whiteness is still negotiable and not automatically accessible to Italians, Jews, Mexicans, Asians, or people of mixed heritage. She is Protestant, native born, goes to church, and doesn’t work out- side the home. On average, she is in her twenties. There is a two-­ to-­one likelihood that she’s married, and she probably married at about age twenty-­one. She has three or four children, fewer than her mother and grandmother had, but she’s had a miscarriage or lost a baby or two in infancy. She was a virgin at marriage and got little or no information about menstruation before her first period. She sometimes has sex with her husband when she doesn’t want to, because law or tradition compels it. She has thought about con- traception and perhaps even taken steps toward it, but she firmly believes, as physician Mary Melendy asserts in 1901, that “maiden- hood, wifehood, and motherhood” sum up the essence of women’s lives and that woman’s most important work lies in shaping the home and the “lofty plane” of guiding children into virtuous adult- hood. She is the average American woman of the Progressive Era.1 But, on the other hand, she’s not that at all. Her name is Ida, Mabel, Eva, Easter, Esperanza, Donaldina, Laan Fan, Some, Anzia, Fannie, or Zitkala Sa. She is African American, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Bulgarian, Comanche, Hupa, Creek, INTRODUCTION: “MAIDENHOOD, WIFEHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD”