Was it the Market Revolution that changed women’s quality of life, the strong will of many women, or both? At the beginning of the market revolution women were just being sought after to join the work place. Beginning a time when women started to question their rights and statues in the United States. Several women decided to stepped forward and raise up for women’s rights by fighting to remove women from the “Cult of True Womanhood”, equal wage rights, higher education and showing the importance of the American women in the workforce. Emma Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Grimke Sisters and many nameless women joined the fight to improve the quality of life for women in the first half of the nineteenth century. The starting of the 19th Century was not kind to women, being seen as less then equal to their male counterparts. Women were not allowed to vote, own land, all their possession belonged to their …show more content…
husbands even the clothes on their back. Even female children were treated as less then equal. Many families not seeing the need to educate girls beyond age 11. The idea was that educating women was a waste of time. Fortunately, on a farm in 1787, a girl with some strong opinions and a strong self-worth was born, Emma Willard. Emma lead the United States in the rights for higher education for women. In 1821, Emma Willard open the Troy Female Seminary. The Troy Female Seminary taught young women in the same style as the Universities taught their young men and at one point was even larger than most men’s colleges. She gave women the education and the lessons needed to survive on their own and to provide for themselves. Many of her students entered the working forces as employable teachers. One of Emma Willard’s most known students was a woman named Elizabeth Cady. Elizabeth Cady, was a woman that like Emma Willard wanted to improve women’s rights. One day a women came to visit her dad, a property lawyer, and an overheard conversation her dad had with a woman changed her life forever. Her dad had told the lady that she had no rights to her property after her husband had died because women had no rights. Elizabeth vowed to change this and even told the lady that she was going to cut the law out of her dad’s law books. Making it her life mission to fight for women’s rights. A newspaper article, published in 1848, announced the First National Woman’s Right Convention led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, New York. This document in the style of the Declaration of Independence “demanded that women “have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.” A quote from the document, That Woman Is Man’s Equal: The Seneca Fall Declaration, “we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Elizabeth wanted women to be seen as equals of men in every way, women were just as smart, hardworking and just as men, but by the time this was written in 1848, the market revolution had been in effect for more than 30 years. During the mid-1800’s women’s roles in the work force started to take shape. “American factories targeted young women as employees: they were cheap to hire because of the limited employment options.” (Roark, 2014) In Employers Advertise for Help Wanted in the 1820’s, they have ads looking for girls as young as 15 and many of these girls and women saw these jobs as opportunities to work and save money. In the article “Cult of True Womanhood” it states “industrialization also forced free women in northern working-class households to labor for cash, as street vendors, tavern keepers, boarding-house operators, paid domestic servants, garment works, prostitutes and a variety of other occupations.” These jobs allowed women, before banned from work, to enter a man’s world allowing for more women to be seen as real people and be able to contribute to their family’s income. Lowell Mills was a clothing manufacturing company that formed in 1821. They employed women or girls to work in their factories and by 1836 more the five thousand young women worked for the Lowell Mills. Lowell Mills required that these women attend church and didn’t drink or conduct themselves in any way though immoral. They also lived in company managed boarding houses. The work was hard but many were grateful for the opportunity. In the article, A Woman Worker Writes Home to Her Father in 1845, it starts out with a letter from a daughter that is excited about her job and the money she is earning but the letter is riddled with dangerous conditions and long hours. She even suggests sending other girls to the factories to work. This letter makes the factories sound like a great place to work despite the harmful environment. The second letter dated 3 years later is of a woman that sounds discouraged and beat down for work. She talks about how hard the work is and how she is unsure of her ability to endure the work. She mentions wages being cut and that the companies are saying they are losing money but keep improving the mill. “In the mid-1830s worldwide growth and competition in the cotton market impelled mill owners to speed up work and decrease wages.” The poor quality of life the women already suffered was made worse but this decrease in wages and increase of work causing many to fight back. In 1834 and 1836 hundreds of women went on strike all over New England. While many of these strikes where not received well and many had dire consequences they did helped to get women’s right noticed especially during a time when many thought women should be at home in the kitchen. A strong suggestion of the time for women was the idea of the true woman.
In the article, Cult of True Womanhood, the underlying theme is of what society thought was the ideal woman. Women of that time where thought of as homemakers “deeply shaped by the so called “cult of womanhood” a collection of attitudes that associated “true” womanhood with home and family.” Women were supposed to stay home and clean and take care of the children while men worked and provided for their families. The misconception that housework was not hard and that even these women didn’t work as hard as paid labors was a strong opinion of the time. “With economic value calculated more and more exclusively in terms of cash and men increasingly basing their claims to “manhood” on their role as “breadwinners,” women’s unpaid household labor went largely unacknowledged.” Many married women ran their households and took on extra work to support their families and many in underpaid positions. Many of these were even in the service of other’s houses working in “true womanhood”
fashion. True womanhood was not for all and in 1837 two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke began touring giving speeches on the evils of slavery. During this time many argued about their rights to speak in public as women, but these sisters stood their ground saying “Whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do” (Roake,2014) Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, 1838, written by Sarah Grimke it states that “fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure, and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary results of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life.” This seemed to be a popular idea of women in this time. Women were to be seen and not heard. The Market Revolution really helped to begin the process of changing this view and this view has continued to change over the last 200 years.
Between the years of 1776 and 1876, a key change came about in America over the women. Before these dates, women were not considered to be very important to the community. The only major role they played was raising children and bringing food to the table. Since the years of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, however, the nation nearly doubled its geographic boundaries and its population. When the Market Revolution hit America, many people felt isolated and cut off from traditional sources of comfort and community.
Before the Women’s Rights Movement women were viewed less than men in every aspect. Pre- Civil War women were viewed as the source of life but viewed less than men intellectually . In the 19th century the ideal women was submissive, her job was to be an obedient, loving wife . There were two important thing that ruled the way that women were treated. One of these was the most important out of the two during this time period this was the Cult of Domesticity, which basically said that women were supposed to do all of the domestic work in a household 3.
Women, like black slaves, were treated unequally from the male before the nineteenth century. The role of the women played the part of their description, physically and emotionally weak, which during this time period all women did was took care of their household and husband, and followed their orders. Women were classified as the “weaker sex” or below the standards of men in the early part of the century. Soon after the decades unfolded, women gradually surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self determination, when they were given specific freedoms such as the opportunity for an education, their voting rights, ownership of property, and being employed.
During the nineteenth century, America went through a number of social, economic and political changes. Revolutions in manufacturing and commerce led to substantial economic growth. Several cultural movements reformed American society. Mary Paul, once just a normal girl from Vermont, led a life that was shaped by the changes of the 1800's. The information gathered from Mary Paul's letters to her father make it clear that Mary's life experiences turned her into anything but an average woman. However, in the scope of the economic and cultural reforms of the nineteenth century, Mary Paul represents the average American.
In the early 19th century, America was experiencing an increase in economic, political, and social changes. One of the mass changes happened during the Market Revolution. What this revolution did for Americans that lived in a more rural environment was basically make things and traded them themselves. They would raise crops and animals to be traded or sold for food, clothing, etc. Factories in the North flourished and the US became more industrialized as people trade money for necessities or wants. The Market Revolution gave women the role of importance in their family life. Women became the new leading member of their family because they were the ones who kept the family together and raised the children and prepare them for adulthood in America. Although the Industrial Revolution brought positive changes to America it also shifted the lifestyles of people and their family.
Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Although all women were effected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or private sphere, a servant tending to the needs of the family. Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and pure even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. Religious piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to insure the passivity and docility of women. Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a deviation from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377).
The conditions of the women in the United States during the nineteenth century, woman were basically expected to obey their husbands and pressure the role of housewife. "The Cult of True Womanhood" by Barbara Welter allows a person to understand the life for a woman during this time. Most women write about fighting for women’s right in the nations, where Welter decided to take a different approach. The purpose of “The Cult of True Womanhood” was to educate people about the life of a woman in the 19th century. According to Welter’s article, she provides information about womanhood and the life of domestication with occupation as the ideal housewife.
The Second Industrial Revolution had a major impact on women's lives. After being controlled fro so long women were experiencing what it was like to live an independent life. In the late nineteenth century women were participating in a variety of experiences, such as social disabilities confronted by all women, new employment patterns, and working class poverty and prostitution. These experiences will show how women were perceived in the Second Industrial Revolution.
states that men are to work and make money for the family. A woman's goal was to
Women were only second-class citizens. They were supposed to stay home cook, clean, achieve motherhood and please their husbands. The constitution did not allow women to vote until the 19th amendment in 1971 due to gender discrimination. Deeper in the chapter it discusses the glass ceiling. Women by law have equal opportunities, but most business owners, which are men, will not even take them serious. Women also encounter sexual harassment and some men expect them to do certain things in order for them to succeed in that particular workplace. The society did not allow women to pursue a real education or get a real job. Women have always been the submissive person by default, and men have always been the stronger one, and the protector. Since the dawn of time, the world has seen a woman as a trophy for a man’s arm and a sexual desire for a man’s
The idea of "The Cult of True Womanhood," or "the cult of domesticity," sought to proclaim that womanly virtue resided in piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. The Cult of True Womanhood article describes a true woman to be judged by her husband, her neighbors, and society. With that being said after reading the article I gained a new understand of why these characteristics (piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity) it was so important to promoting a woman’s "proper role," and how such statements about the roles of women might have served as a response to the growth of industrial capitalism. Both Truth and Stewart were very passionate about equal rights for men and women.
society. Women’s rights and feminism did not exist. In the 1800s divorces were frowned upon and everything was given to the males.
The Victorian era was an extremely difficult time for women in Great Britain. They were subject to gross inequalities such as, not being able to; control their own earnings, education, and marriage. As well as having a lack of equality within marriage, women had poor working conditions, and an immense unemployment rate as well. Not only was the fact that women were viewed as second-class citizens and had limited rights compared to men during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a major problem, but women were also held to a much different standard, and expected to carry out many
Living in the 19th century was a very difficult time for women, as they were not yet granted social equality to that of the man. Women were deemed to be domesticated house slaves who would marry for the want of children and not decide to marry for true love. They had no choice but to stay chaste until marriage and were not even granted to speak to men unless there was a married woman present as a chaperone. Only very few women were able to gain the same education as a man, due to the social norms of the 19th century period. Women were unable to have a voice when it came to political activities such as voting and were instead expected to live their lives largely homebound. In the 19th century women were expected to clean, cook and look after
Throughout the 19th century, feminism played a huge role in society and women’s everyday lifestyle. Women had been living in a very restrictive society, and soon became tired of being told how they could and couldn’t live their lives. Soon, they all realized that they didn’t have to take it anymore, and as a whole, they had enough power to make a change. That is when feminism started to change women’s roles in society. Before, women had little to no rights, while men, on the other hand, had all the rights.