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Role of women in 1800s america
The role of women in American society throughout the years
Significance of women in colonial america
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Most diaries from women on the westward journey show that they struggled with upholding their roles as wives and mothers, but they did the best they could under the circumstances. Most of their responsibilities were similar to those they had at home. Cooking cleaning, doing laundry, entertaining children etc. was women’s work, but these obligations were much more difficult being in the middle of nowhere. Women also had extra duties, such as packing up the wagon, making sure their children were with them, and taking on their husband’s role when he fell sick. It was common for children to be left behind amongst all the chaos, fall out of the wagon, or become struck with a disease. Mothers could only watch helplessly and had to continue with the journey if their child died. The diaries of Narcissa Whitman, Amelia Stewart Knight, and Jane Gould Tortillott all contain entries that suggest they were struggling with their roles as women, but were trying to make the best of it.
Narcissa Whitman and her husband Marcus travelled to Oregon County to begin their missionary work in March of 1836. It is important to note that Whitman was the first woman to cross the Rocky Mountains and her journey began 20 years before Knight’s and 30 years before Tortillott went west. There were no trails left by previous pioneers during Whitman’s journey, but that does not necessarily mean her job was more difficult. Early into her journey, Whitman said timber was their fuel to cook food. However, there was no timber near the Platte, so she used dried buffalo dung instead. Women had to make do with what resources they had, and buffalo dung was the most convenient. Thirty years after Whitman’s journey, Jane Gould Tortillott recorded that her boys went alo...
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...now I must leave it here alone.”
It is important to note that some women did not want to travel west to begin with, but their husbands, fathers, or some kind of male figure coerced them into going. Women had to reestablish their roles on the journey by trying to cook, wash clothes, and do normal “women’s work” in an atmosphere that was always changing. The physical demands of lifting, pushing, unpacking the wagon, etc. challenged their roles because these types of demands were “men’s work.” Women struggled with trying to keep up with the emotional and physical demands of the westward move, as well as trying to find their own identity. The diaries of Narcissa Whitman, Amelia Stewart Knight, and Jane Gould Tortillott as well as the excerpts from Martha Morrison, and the story of Catherine Sager all have a common theme: they were doing their best in this new world.
This novel, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, is based on Ballard’s diary starting in 1785 and ending with her death in 1812. Ulrich takes us step by step through Martha Ballard’s life as a Colonial Midwife. She reveals to us all the marvelous acts that midwives performed for their families and communities. “Midwives and nurses mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness and death. They touched the untouchable, handled excrement and vomit as well as milk, swaddled the dead as well as the newborn” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.47). The novel also reveals that based on the views of societal power, gender roles in the medical environment and personal values, revealed in the diary, women were subordinate to men during this historical time period. Martha Ballard lived and thrived in this inferior atmosphere.
The book begins by explaining the roles that women in this time were known to have as this helps the reader get a background understanding of a woman’s life pre-war. This is done because later in the book women begin to break the standards that they are expected to have. It shows just how determined and motivated these revolutionary women and mothers were for independence. First and foremost, many people believed that a “woman’s truth was that God had created her to be a helpmate to a man” (p.4). Women focused on the domain of their households and families, and left the intellectual issues of the time and education to the men. Legally, women had almost no rights. Oppressed by law and tradition, women were restricted their choice of professions regardless of their identity or economic status. As a result, many women were left with few choices and were cornered into marriage or spinsterhood, which also had its limitations. As a spinster, you were deemed as unmarried who was past the usual age of marriage. Patronized by society, these women were left and stamped as “rejected”. On the other side, If the woman became married, all that she owned belonged to her husband, even her own existence. In exchange to her commitment, if a woman’s husband was away serving in the military or if she became a widower, she could use but not own, one-third of her husband’s property. This left her to manage the land and serve as a surrogate laborer in her husband’s absence. Needless to say, a day in a woman’s life then was filled with a full day of multi-tasking and as circumstances changed, more women had to adapt to their urban
In her book, First Generations Women in Colonial America, Carol Berkin depicts the everyday lives of women living during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Berkin relays accounts of European, Native American, and African women's struggles and achievements within the patriarchal colonies in which women lived and interacted with. Until the first publication of First Generations little was published about the lives of women in the early colonies. This could be explained by a problem that Berkin frequently ran into, as a result of the patriarchal family dynamic women often did not receive a formally educated and subsequently could not write down stories from day to day lives. This caused Berkin to draw conclusions from public accounts and the journals of men during the time period. PUT THESIS HERE! ABOUT HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THE BOOK.
Women of the Western schoolhouse had a reputation for instilling values and lessons to the children of the frontier. They were historical heroines who chose to journey all the way from the East just to hear the sounds of children learning. According to Anne M. Butler, in her book Uncommon Common Women, these women left behind their family and friends, "took teacher training, signed two-year contracts, and set forth for unknown sites " (68). Schoolteachers on the frontier must have had an incredible love for children in order to deal with the difficulties the West placed in their way.
Modern day interpretations of pioneer women are mostly inaccurate and romanticized as easy, and luxurious in a new land however, that is far from the truth. Overall, pioneer women had many jobs that were underappreciated, they weren’t valued as men but without them many people in the West wouldn’t have survived and had to leave so much to go on a trip that took weeks and was no vacation, because women pioneers would have to cook and clean and take care of her children and husband, while on a wagon with having to adapt to the changing weather and climates, they did jobs that were considered as “men’s jobs” and worked as hard as men to survive in the west during the Manifest Destiny. Therefore, women pioneers were overlooked as an insignificant part of the Westward Expansion.
Clara Barton’s ‘The Women Who Went to the Field’ describes the work of women and the contribution they made on the civil war battlefield in 1861. Barton highlights the fact that when the American Civil War broke out women turned their attention to the conflict and played a key role throughout as nurses. Therefore, at first glance this poem could in fact be seen as a commemoration of the women who served in the American Civil War as its publications in newspapers and magazines in 1892 ensured that all Civil War veterans were honoured and remembered, including the women. However, when reading this poem from a feminist perspective it can be seen instead as a statement on the changing roles of women; gender roles became malleable as women had the
The small community of Hallowell, Maine was no different than any other community in any part of the new nation – the goals were the same – to survive and prosper. Life in the frontier was hard, and the settlement near the Kennebec Valley was no different than what the pioneers in the west faced. We hear many stories about the forefathers of our country and the roles they played in the early days but we don’t hear much about the accomplishments of the women behind those men and how they contributed to the success of the communities they settled in. Thanks to Martha Ballard and the diary that she kept for 27 years from 1785-1812, we get a glimpse into...
As many women took on a domestic role during this era, by the turn of the century women were certainly not strangers to the work force. As the developing American nation altered the lives of its citizens, both men and women found themselves struggling economically and migrated into cities to find work in the emerging industrialized labor movement . Ho...
“The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston is a publication that demonstrates women’s roles during the antebellum period. Women during this period began to embrace housework and believed their responsibilities were to maintain the home, and produce contented and healthy families. As things progressed, housework no longer held monetary value, and as a result, womanhood slowly shifted from worker to nurturer. The roles that women once held in the household were slowly diminishing as the economy became more industrialized. Despite the discomfort of men, when women realized they could find decent employment, still maintain their household and have extra income, women began exploring their option.
Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so.
In fact, “By the early 1770s,…54 percent of the American fleet (by tonnage) were Nantucket vessels, which brought in 70 percent of the colonial catch” (19). While working for the whaling industry, both men and women faced arduous challenges. “Whatever it was they actually did, women’s efforts were not viewed as so much different from, and certainly not competing with, but rather complementing men’s activities” (36). Women created private schools, accepted borders, worked in stores, sewed, and ran small businesses (158). Norling demonstrates how Nantucket women’s jobs were less treacherous, but as strenuous, and unpleasant, as men’s roles at sea. On Nantucket, Norling asserts the tasks women acquired, were considered to be simply “a mite.” (38). Therefore, due to the extended absences of whalers from the Nantucket community, women procured more power in the town and attained jobs, which were inaccessible to them, when the men were present.
One of the problems that women faced was poor living conditions. They either slept on the ground or in tents. It was not until they knew they had found a productive area would they begin to build a log cabin. This was not much better because log cabins had dirty floors and did not have any window...
Women were perceived as either being a housewife, a nurturer, or a person for company. They did not have the right to vote till later on, work, and if they had an opinion that a male do not agree with, women are considered “wicked”; not savvy, not prudent but wicked to the core. It is unfair, unethical, atrocious, but through it all there was one female who dared to challenge the mind of men and the notion that women can be more than what men perceive them as being. Her name is Margaret Fuller. The goals of Margaret Fuller were precise. Men should realize that women are not an epitome of a statue but human beings, just as men, women can achieve full adulthood and citizenship, but most vitally Margaret aimed to change the assumptions about
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
Women Adrift by Joanne J. Meyerowitz portrays the life of women who had moved to Chicago between 1880-1930. Chicago provided many unique opportunities for women who had grown up across the United States in rural environments. The new economic sector of Chicago allowed for many people to find work and move from the outside country life, to the more urbanized metropolis that was Chicago. This also allowed for a new interdependence for women who had once lived in the country and journeyed away from the farms in hopes of finding work in Chicago. Meyerowitz’ Women Adrift helps capture the struggles of the women wage worker who often took a leap of faith leaving her home life in hopes of finding a new life in the great urban city of Chicago. Meyerowitz argues that Chicago provided new opportunities for women, dispelled the idea of the Victorian woman, and the exploitation of the women wage earners.