Dorothy Dix was also known as Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, who was born on November 18, 1861 in Tennessee. She was a great woman who was known for various accomplishments that reformed and helped the society at the time. She expounded on the prior and afterward challenges in marriages. One of the essays that she wrote was called “Dorothy Dix” while she was working for the Major Burband. This essay talked about about the female’s society, recipes, and fashion. Due to its immediate success, she changed the essay’s name to “Dorothy Dix Talks” highlighted that the essay was her talk show where she would presented all of her information about wives and women. When Major Burbank felt, she joined the New York Journal, where she had to write essays
James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607-1950. Volume III: P-Z. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Print.
"Gilman attached the nineteenth century's configuration of private space as woman's domain and its attendant generalizations about femininity. Gilman seeks to blur the distinction between private and public life. Gilman unflaggingly urged her audience to consider their logic in assigning women to the home. The composition of home life altered radically between the beginning and final decades of the nineteenth century" (17).
In Dorothy’s personal life, she experienced some chaos due to the fact that she believed in God and everyone around her was non-Catholic. She involved herself with a writer, Lionel Moise, who ended up getti...
Romines, Ann. The Home Plot: Women, Writing & Domestic Ritual. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. 1992.
Born in 1860, Gilman’s life, according to our textbook, was not one of convention or stability. Uncommon at the time, her parents divorced when she was nine. She herself was divorced after a ten-year marriage in 1884 that almost drove her insane. This marriage produced the semi- autobiographical work entitled, The Yellow Wall-Paper. Truly a feminist in the purest definition of the word, always active and enjoying whatever passions of life she chose. She even chose the way she left this life in 1935.
Hartmann, Susan M. The Home Front and Beyond: American women in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982
Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 10: Dorothy Allison." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL:http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap10/allison.html (provide page date or date of your login).
Dorothy Rothschild was sent to Miss Dana’s School on Morristown, New Jersey. The school would make serious efforts to turn their students into well-read, well-informed, and well-spoken young women who would be useful in the world. Dorothy graduated from Miss Diana’s before the school got bankrupt and Diana died. When she was in school, she started to write poems. She sent her poem off to magazines, and one was accepted by Frank Crowninshield, the editor of Vanity Fair. "Mr. Crowninshield, God rest his soul, paid twelve dollars for a small verse of mine and gave me a job on Vogue at ten dollars a...
Kessler, Carol Parley. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860 -1935." Modem American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine Showalter, et al. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991. 155 -169.
How society perceives a person is often dictated by their gender. Mrs. Sommers, an 1890’s housewife shrouded by her husband’s name, is often seen as nothing more than a little, insignificant, poor woman. Unlike her male counterparts, she, like many women in this era, is believed to be weak, passive, and familial while men are to be strong, dominant, and independent. Men often attempted to control their wives, and even fashion was constricting in that time period, with corsets tightly clinging to their chests, and crinolines caging their lower bodies. Mrs. Sommers faced this same oppression, especially when she took on her husband’s name and gave birth to children, giving up her own desires and her own self. “The neighbors sometimes talked
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” The American Family in Social Historical Perspective. Ed. Michael Gordon. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1978. 373-392.
In the 1800s, Dorothea Dix was an advocate for the mental health population. She traveled across the United States visiting people who were in jails, poorhouses, as well as barns and was horrified by the conditions in which these people lived. (Smark, 2008). Dix documented all of the conditions she saw throughout her research. She then presented this information to legislators and advocated for the reform and moral treatment of these individuals. She was successful in helping to obtain funding for over one hundred state hospitals.
In her short story "Woman's Rights," published in the April 1850 issue of the popular Godey's Lady's Book, Haddie Lane explores and defines the concept of women's rights through the example of her Aunt Debbie. Aunt Debbie, exasperated by Haddie's sauciness and its rationalization as "woman's rights," takes Haddie on a tour of her daily rounds to teach her the true meaning of womanhood. As we accompany them along their charitable visits to the sick, the impoverished, and other unfortunates, Aunt Debbie's definition of women's rights is explicitly articulated as Haddie "realizes" the moral meaning of each successive stop. After visiting a once-gay schoolmate who now staggers under the weight of her infirm (and abusive) elderly father, Haddie voices her revelation:
You may all be here for an easy A but the grade that matters the most is the one he gives you, not me.” Women are not supposed to expect anything from life but being someone’s keeper – either their husband’s or her children’. According to 1960 Culture website, “the world of American women was very limited in almost every aspect, from family life to the workplace; being expected to follow only one path: to marry in her early 20s, start a family quickly, and devote her life to homemaking.” Another example that shows how gender roles were much reinforced is when Betty Jones writes an article about Katherine’s teaching methods and lifestyle. She writes, “(…) it is our duty- nay, obligation to reclaim our place in the home, bearing the children that will carry our traditions into the future. Miss Katherine Watson (…) has decided to declare war on the holy sacrament of
The "Autobiography". Abrams 1601 - 1604. Mulock, Dinah. Maria. A Woman's Thoughts About Women.