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The Carpenter's Wife Analysis

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Somewhere Between Discord and Solidarity: Industrialization, Conventions and Change in 1840-1890 America. Martha Hodes writes about a historic character, Eunice L. Richardson Stone who experiences challenges to her eternal desire to finally be a conventional woman in the pre-civil war North. A place that is industrializing at a rapid pace starting around the time Eunice was born, and continuing to well after the Civil War. Within this landscape, Hodes examines economic and social institutions, while simultaneously describing Eunice’s experiences. Weaving Eunice’s story, gleaned from letter correspondence and other sources, into these aspects of life, Hodes shows how each affected Eunice in a chapter called The Carpenter’s Wife, in her longer …show more content…

Changing from an agrarian to an urban society encompassed changing perceptions of time, economic systems and family values. Time, on the farm was dictated by the length of the day. Work was done as long as the sun was in the sky, and everyone in the family was involved in some form that contributed to the success and survival of the family. This was disrupted when families moved to urban centers. They were no longer self-sufficient and their barter-based economy was replaced by a cash-based system. Cash was earned at wage-paying jobs, made readily available by cotton mills and other manufactories. Typically, in the 1840s and 1850s, women went off to the cotton mills to earn wages, while men either worked as artisans or traveled far (with the increased reach of railroad) to find work.4 Hodes paints a number of scenes in which she demonstrates fractures; Eunice’s father abandoning the family; her mother going away to marry someone else, her husband leaving for the South to find work and finally the fracture between North and South regarding different ideas about slavery.5 On the other hand, English claims that it was because women spent so much time together in the cotton mills, that they were able to create networks that enabled the support and bonding between

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The labor and women’s movements challenged the nineteenth century meanings of American Freedom. The tragedy received widespread attention to dangerous conditions of the factories

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This speech is being delivered in Philadelphia to a convention of vigorous women who are willing to fight for their desires. An emotional appear is used to target the nurturing side of each and every woman in attendance. The adults of the United States are sound asleep while the sweet, innocent children are slaving away in factories. Kelley even goes as far as to criticize the women for ignoring this fight while “the children make [their] shoes in the shoe factories; knit [their] stockings, [their] knitted underwear in the knitting factories.” The author intends to use this appeal to provoke the motherly instincts of the attendees to join her and her cause.

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In the late 19th century, the United States industrialized. The Western frontier became more accessible as railroads connected the coastlines. The West became less of a place of myth and more of a place of accessibility to those who wanted new opportunities. However, the West was still wild, and a Gilded Age-era woman should not have had to face it alone. A truly western woman faced many contradictions.

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Around the late 18th to early 19th century, colonial American New England life was centered on living independently and being finally free from the British Empire after the Revolutionary War. Establishing control of a newly founded government with set functions and a first president, there were progressive changes that America had to act upon post-war. However, behind the political aspects that are greatly highlighted in American history, the roles of women in society, particularly midwives shouldn’t be cast aside. Although women were largely marginalized in early New England life because of their gender, nevertheless Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale is instructive because it demonstrates the privilege of men’s authority in society

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As a result, numerous slave families like Eliza’s family split up at this time due to increase in the sale of slave from one region to another. Expansion of slavery caused a deep political divide in the country. However, slavery had a positive effect on economy in the South economy. They were beneficial because they were working foundation of cotton picking. Moreover, planters who is large scale farmers with more than twenty slaves appears and as a result, they make slavery much more profitable.

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In the nineteenth century, woman had no power over men in society. They were limited in their freedom, as their lives were controlled by their husbands. Some women did not mind this lifestyle, and remained obedient, while some rebelled and demanded their rights. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are short stories that exposes the lifestyle women lived in the nineteenth century. The protagonists from both stories, Jane and Georgiana, similarly lived a male dominated lifestyle.

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The next chapter highlights the gendered division of labor and the difficulty to keep a family as a slave. Chapter six and seven moves on to the eighteenth century and shows how women have improved in areas such as more political participation and increasing social class of

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During the 19th century, women were overshadowed by the men of their household, therefore they had no sense of independence nor dominance. In Mary Freeman’s short story, “The Revolt of Mother,” the author presents Sarah Penn, a woman who takes a stand against her husband. In the beginning, the reader learns that Sarah is a hardworking mother and wife. She maintains the household work and meets her children needs. She is suddenly confused of her husband’s actions concerning their future.

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Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.

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The Cult of True Womanhood in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In her essay “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860”, Barbara Welter discusses the expected roles and characteristics that women were supposed to exhibit in accordance with the extreme patriarchy of the nineteenth-century America. The unnamed narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is seen to conform and ultimately suffer from this patriarchal construct that Welter labels the Cult of True Womanhood. The narrator falls victim to this life of captivity by exhibiting several of the fundamental characteristics that Welter claims define what a woman was told she ought to be.

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Without opportunities, no one can survive. The cotton system crippled Lalee’s family and the community at large. It left them impaired, oppressed, and helpless. They were oppressed to the point that even after they were freed; they were still slaves mentally and economically. A large group of the people in the community did not move pass “picking cotton”.

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Women who could afford slaves had a life of more leisure, but the less fortunate women in both regions had to prepare their own food, clean their houses, and wash their clothes (Watterson

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