Second Thoughts on Gender and Womens History - Essay Example

Number] The Cult of True Womanhood The Cult of True Womanhood has been influential on the Americansociety for a long period of time. This ideology included a set of standards which were received and accepted by the society critically. These set of standards have been created to assess the strong division between the two genders which have caused tension in societies for a long time. The literature and media of the nineteenth century presented an ideal woman as one that has a certain domestic role in the society; a role which was highly approved by all Americans. These women weren’t allowed to participate in the public sphere and served as a submissive homemaker till death. This new ideology subscribed many women to stay at home and raise their children away from manly affairs; however others felt stifled by this gender ideology and were influenced and encouraged to prove they were morally superior to men. These women were encouraged to become involved in social reforms and argued that morally superior women must be out in the real world to engage in reform activities, thus activism in women groups was born in the mid-nineteenth century. The phenomenon of true womanhood was a redefined area in the nineteenth century where the ideal woman was described as strictly revolving around her home. This ideal woman was a submissive homemaker and was conscious about her inferiority. The strict gender roles of men and women which are explained in this ideology are influenced by religion, education, and media. The author has touched each of these areas to explain the gender roles and identities. The literature of the nineteenth century described women as delicate, weak, and sensitive to survive anywhere outside their homes. They believed that women could not fight or compete with the real world of business and politics. Political and economic lives are meant for men while women stay safe and comfortable in their homes raising their children and serving their husbands. Men and women belonged to different spheres of life and had different gender roles in the society; this was evident from the social structure of the nineteenth century America (Isenberg 102). The cult of true womanhood deeply showed the lives of the women in nineteenth century. These women effortlessly took care of their households and had a moral influence on their families. Women were considered to be weak in every sense; for hard labour, rough political life, and competition in the industrial economy. It can be said that the cult of true womanhood instead provided an inaccurate description of the daily experiences faced by women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were examples of nineteenth century women who were privileged but yet lived amongst strongly defined gender roles of women. Susan B. Anthony wasn’t married and nor did she have children. She used to travel, did not stay at home most of the time, and was self-sufficient. Anthony was never close to domestic life unless when she took the household work for Stanton so Stanton could be free to write and think. This was something that the women were assigned to up till the nineteenth century as even prosperous families had wives and mothers who were responsible for cooking, cleaning, nursing sick members, sewing, caring, etc. Lydia Maria Child was an author of the nineteenth century who wrote several articles but along with her work on writing, her diary consisted of an account of her household chores written as “cooked 360 dinners, cooked 362 breakfasts, swept & dusted sitting-room & kitchen 350 times, filled lamps 362 times”. It was thus believed that these household chores were essential for economic survival in the society. Only a few wealthy households could afford all the things that a family needed included servants and workers. However, poor and middle class families had women working in all kinds of areas. Wife’s labour was in washing, cooking, keeping the garden clean, dusting, and maintaining the household in the limited income of the husband. Even though all these chores were hard work but the nineteenth century did not recognize this as a workplace, this was rather a home where a woman comfortably lived. Men earning for living were acknowledged and appreciated while women doing all household chores for free was rarely acknowledged (Welter 171). The cult of true womanhood is an ideology which essentially eliminated the millions of women enslaved in the nineteenth century who laboured in the cash economy directly. Several African American women were laboured extensively and also contributed in the building of the Southern cotton economy through their back-breaking labour. Women were enslaved for jobs such as planting, hoeing, harvesting, and building roads and fences. Frederick Douglass pointed out that being a woman was never a privilege as it did not save women from rape, beatings, hard labour, or family separation. Women had no rights in the society until the nineteenth century even when they were independent and free, they did not hold legal rights on their possessions, bodies, children, or even freedom of movement. As industrialization was a major aspect of nineteenth century, women were seen working for cash on streets as vendors, boarding house operators, domestic servants, prostitutes, garment workers, and several other types of occupations. It was also seen that a surprising number of middle class families had started depending upon the paid labour of their wives. An example of such women in the nineteenth century is Lydia Maria Child who supported her family through the earnings as a writer and editor. Another example is of Harriet Beecher Stowe who earned much more from her writing than her husband did as a college professor. However, this shows that nineteenth century society did have many women who were far from being just domestic creatures who were too weak for the outer world. The cult of true womanhood rather described the majority of women found in the nineteenth century but ignored millions who stood besides men in suffering brutality at workplaces. Critics were always very insistent about the proper place of women in society because they were commonly seen on streets, on jobs, scavenging for food, or selling goods in open markets. Opposing the cult of true womanhood ideology, there were several women who were involved in the reform movements in the nineteenth century like Stanton and Anthony who were engaged deeply in public affairs, newspaper writing, delivering speeches, lobbying political bodies, and raising money (Welter 171). The cult of true womanhood tended to cover the hard labour and tough lives that women spent and failed to analyze that all women’s lives were not the same; not today and not back then. This new ideology that had circulated in the nineteenth century describing the ‘true womanhood’ raised many defensive arguments and in response to which women were influenced to stand for their rights and involve in the reform movements. This ideology marked the weakness and position of how women were perceived in the society which was debatable (Isenberg 102). However, the ideology proposed some qualities that women had making them morally superior religiously from men. In response to this many women happily accepted their domestic roles and stayed at home while others were enraged and they tended to engage in reformist activities. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, women in America were not permitted to vote or hold the office. Women had just a few rights in the law for owning property and her earnings. Professionally, women were given less opportunities and she was also deprived of getting the custody of her children in cases of divorce. However, during the 1830s, Sarah and Angelina Grimke started to speak and write about slavery and in favour of women’s rights. Angelina Grimke published ‘American Slavery as it’ is in 1839 which turned many readers towards the cause of abolition. Grimke also argued that men and women were created equal and women had a moral right to speak against slavery and have the right to vote similar to men. In 1840, Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the American reformers who went to London to attend the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. They were annoyed to see that women were not allowed to enter at first, and when they were, they had to stay behind a curtain away from the male participants. Thus, both these women organized the first women’s rights meeting in 1848. The convention was successful and it called for social and legal reform through the Declaration of Sentiments (Petty 68). Oberlin College in Ohio was the first college in America to allow women in 1833. Lucy Stone graduated from this college and became an advocate of women’s rights. Susan Anthony continued her efforts in the nineteenth century to fight for women’s right to vote. She even went to the voting polls and casted her vote boldly but she was arrested. Women’s right to property was won in 1848 when the Married Women’s Property Act of New York was passed. This act allowed married women to own property in the state they lived. By 1860, this law was amended and women gained greater rights in property and the wages they earned. Similar laws were passed during this decade by other states. The struggle for women’s rights was made by middle and upper class women who fought for the right to vote, attending college, keeping the maiden name, speaking in public, standing equal to men in public, etc. The women who were also working had different concerns as they worried about the working conditions, low wages, and unsanitary living conditions that they were entitled to. The working class women of this century were motivated to struggle and fight but they were forced to struggle for survival. These women had to wait for another century to address these concerns with their whole society. However, it is true that the cult of true womanhood was an ideology which focused on the strict gender role of women as domestic creatures. According to this ideology, the role of women was as housewives staying in their homes till they die. However, this paper tells us that this ideology did not describe the true picture of the nineteenth century. In fact there were several women in the society who performed hard labour and worked on the streets to earn cash for their survival. These women are often ignored in the society. However, this ideology did not only influence the working women but also the housewives to come out and argue about their position and role in the society (Petty 68). They were considered morally superior who gave them the power to stand equal to or above men; and thus the women activist groups emerged in the society. The cult of true womanhood encouraged the women and they became involved in the social reforms to gin rights for themselves and abolish slavery. The nineteenth century saw a development and revolution in the ideology of gender roles and position of women. Work Cited Isenberg, Nancy. Second Thoughts on Gender and Women’s History. USA: American Studies Association, 1995. Print. Petty, Leslie. Romancing the Vote: Feminist Activism in American Fiction, 1870-1920. USA: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Print. Welter, Barbara. The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860. USA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. Print. Read More