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Summary Of Revolutionary Back Clash By Rosemarie Zagarri

1529 Words7 Pages

Revolutionary Backlash, written by Rosemarie Zagarri, discusses the challenges that women faced during the fight for political rights in Revolutionary America, while focusing on the transformation of women’s political rights into a concept called Republican Motherhood. Zagarri focuses on the struggles and successes of women while also describing the well known leaders of the women's suffrage movement. In general she works to explain how the Revolution profoundly changed the popular understanding of women's political status and initiated a widespread, ongoing debate over the meaning of women’s rights. The result of the suffrage movement is the adoption of Republican Motherhood by women in the Revolutionary period. Republican Motherhood can be described as the …show more content…

For Republican Motherhood, this push for education also allowed mothers to be better equipped to teach their children regarding politics, which would allow them to form their own opinions. While Zagarri focuses on the positives of the development of republican motherhood and an increased involvement in politics, she notes that there was still a large discrepancy between the rights of women and men at this time. From the 1790’s on, there were restrictions put in place where voting could only occur for “males”, “free white males” or “white male citizens”. Even with the rise of republican motherhood, men are still trying to keep voting rights from women. Furthermore, scientists began using differences in physiology and anatomy to reason as to why women could not be trusted in politics. One such scientist, Thomas Laqueur stated the reproductive system imposed limitations on tasks and stated that women were unable to perform these tasks due to mental differences caused by menstrual cycles and

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