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Women's Role In The 1800s

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At the start of the 1800’s, the terms ‘separate spheres’ and ‘true womanhood’ began to describe the expectations of women at the time (Dr. Etcheson, Women). The responses ranged from complete agreement to total rejection. This caused debates and conferences to discuss the true place for women in the society of the day. Individuals such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Sojourner Truth fought for their ideas and beliefs on the role of women in society at the time. Despite their efforts, there was still controversy over where the woman fit into the equation. Women’s roles in the nineteenth century, although largely similar, were based on status, location, and personal belief.
A woman’s status in the 1800’s could make or break her …show more content…

For women of color, the only real status was being a slave. Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, writes about her duties and her worries as a slave girl. While the only duty she mentions having is being a nurse for her master’s child, it is clear that Jacobs was a domestic slave (Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl). This did not, however, make her exempt from the evils of slavery. She writes, “If God has bestowed beauty upon [the female slave], it will prove her greatest curse.” Jacobs refers to how if a slave woman is beautiful, she will catch the eye of her master. For Jacobs, the woman’s role to was to keep her head down and do her work, without finding oneself in the master’s …show more content…

Catherine Beecher, an icon of the nineteenth century, wrote A Treatise on Domestic Economy in response to the idea of separate spheres and true womanhood. Beecher believed that it was right for the woman to stay in the domestic sphere of life (Dr. Etcheson, Women). However, she also felt that it was necessary for women to receive proper education so that they may take good care of the household and be efficient in their work (Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy). Beecher felt that it was the woman that taught men to be of good moral character and make good decisions for their families. She also says, “The proper education of a man decides the welfare of an individual; but educate a woman, and the interests of the whole family are secured…”. Beecher also felt that while and education was vital, outside exercise for growing girls was even more so. She firmly states that “American women…[have] a delicacy of constitution [health], which renders them early victims to disease and decay.” She continuously pushes for education for young girls so that they may become the responsible and dutiful women they are supposed to

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In the nineteenth century America and Europe were a man’s world (319). A woman's role was solely to be barefoot pregnant engineering her husband a sandwich (notes). Additionally, women were seen as objects and could be beaten and her rights were that of a black slave without a vote and owned by her husband. Therefore, many female reformers began fighting for women's rights, temperance, and the abolition of slavery (319). Another, feminist movement for women's rights was the Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls.

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America in the nineteenth century was a time that many upper and middle class women were socialized to become the epitome of perfection and domesticity, with their identities deeply bound up in their relation to men. Rula Quawas discusses this point by presenting the four attributes of ‘the cult of true womanhood’ that governed the lives of these Victorian women: “’Piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity’. Put together they ‘spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife – woman” (35). These are the oppressive ideologies that the women protagonists in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s

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Not only, did Mrs. A. J. Graves support the pastoralization of housework and gender spheres so did Catherine Beecher. Beecher argued that housework was hard work, but believed women’s work in the home administered the gentler charities of life. Boydston writes, “Beecher enjoyed the new standing afford middle-class women by their roles as moral guardians to their families and to societies, and based much of her own claim to status as a woman on the presumed differences between herself and immigrant and laboring-class women.” For middle-class women, women were given more of an influence in their

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