preview

Influence Of The Industrial Revolution

Decent Essays

The influence of the industrial revolution caused a difficult division between the gender roles, especially of the upper and middle classes. Men and women were taught to have completely different dispositions, and people saw those differences as a forced separation in society. Men were taught to have attributes appropriate for the public world while women to the private. The attitudes and expectations surrounding gender roles are typically based not on any inborn or natural gender differences, but on stereotypes about the attitudes, traits, and behavior patterns of women and men. Women were continually trained that their divine and social worth resided above all else only in the practice of their wholesomeness.
Regardless of authors trying to discredit the socially constructed characteristics assigned to each gender, the typical stereotypes and generalizations that differentiate a male from a female seem to linger. Female writers have begun to enlighten others on the significance of the struggle through having to be a re-played stereotype. In pieces such as Barbara Welter’s “The Cult of True Womanhood”, Gertrude Steins “The Gentle Lena”, and a love letter titled “Master” by Emily Dickinson, the labels placed upon these female characters seem to all correlate by having a deeper and more reflective essence. For women, virginity was the highest possible state, widowhood the next best whereas marriage came in a distant third. Religion played an important part in the lives of

Get Access