Foreword

Helen Mar Kimball Whitney has been known to readers of Western history and literature through her memoirs published initially inThe Woman’s Exponentand recently compiled inA Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History.¹ But her published accounts end before that point designated by many a woman as the end of her life’s significance: the death of her husband. “After that I just chored around” was a not unusual attitude expressed by widows, dismissing the possibility of significant experience in subsequent years. Of all the “frontiers” women must confront—geographical, material, cultural, emotional—widowhood can be