Murray Women's Rights

As the United States was continuing recovering from the Civil War and embracing the expansion of the West, industrialization, immigration and the growth of cities, women’s roles in America were changing by the transformation of this new society. During the period of 1865-1912, women found themselves challenging to break the political structure, power holders, cultural practices and beliefs in their “male” dominated world.

Linda Kerber’s Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America was a refreshing historian analysis of the role of women in our nation’s history. In the early Revolution eras, the political role of women was nonexistent due to the traditional roles held by the patriarchal society the colonists lived in for most of their years. Kerber intertwined her book with an intelligent analysis, but also conveys this analysis in a clear way so that reader can comprehend further. Throughout the book, chapters divide each segment of women’s rights by explaining the slow, but progressive build of them. The exploration of womens rights in Women of the Republic is developed by each opportunity opened during the American Revolution.

After studying women and gender history in early America for the past semester, my views about American history have changed tremendously. Having very little prior experience with history, I had many assumptions and preconceived notions from high school history classes. Women were never even mentioned in my previous learning about U.S. history, so I assumed they took on unimportant roles and had little, if any, impact on shaping our country’s history. However, after this semester of delving deeply into the women of early America, I could not have been more incorrect. Although they were not typically in the public realm, we cannot fully understand history without studying women. The following readings uncovered the roles of women in the private sphere and were crucial to my new understanding of the importance of women in American history by bringing women to the forefront.

Judith Sargent Murray was a revolutionary woman- born into a socially prominent and wealthy family during the start of the American Revolution, Murray was recognized for her intellect at a young age and given an education along with her brother. Later in life, she had her written works widely published and read during a time when women’s voices were seen as fundamentally inferior to those of men. In one of her most influential and strongly opinionated works, ‘On the Equality of the Sexes’, Murray makes a strong case for the spiritual and intellectual equality of men and women, arguing that women and men are born equal, but that men are simply given more education and

She was able to inform the public of what was happening during the war. She also influenced most of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, and she spoke for women’s rights. Both Abigail and John Adams were her friends (Pavao). John Adams once wrote to Mercy’s husband saying, “Tell your wife that God Almighty has entrusted her with the Powers for the good of the World, which… he bestows on few of the human race. That instead of being a fault to use them, it would be criminal to neglect them” (Pavao). Without her writing, the public might have never known what exactly was going on during the war.

Nature has provided both sexes the same mental capability to learn, yet nurture has limited these opportunities to women. Men are taught to aspire to learn and work, and women are taught to be "confined and limited." Murray ends her argument by questioning whether the unequal treatment of women should be determined by man's social laws. Nature and God made men and women equal, so why would men want to interfere with the "works of Deity," She believes that if every human being, despite is sex, is a work of God, then women should not be degraded. In conclusion, Murray believes that women are worth more than just obeying domestic employments. Also, she believes that women should be given the right to learn and obtain a "cultivated mind." Women are just as capable and equal to men to do anything they set their minds

And they can be equals if they believe they are. The basis of this essay is that knowledge is the solution to possessing value. In On the Equality of the Sexes, she believes women to be slandered in society, and they are only known to be inferior to men simply because men have an unjust difference in education. She declares that an educated woman would only increase her domestic skills and rational thoughts. In Observations on Female Abilities, she amasses an enormous amount of concrete detail to prove the general points she made earlier. Murray was clearly optimistic about the prospects of American women in 1798, imagining that a new era of gender equality was dawning in this "younger world." Yet again, as in her other essays on women's issues, Murray argues that women are rational beings, capable of exhibiting the traits associated with Republican citizenship. Once again she maintains that educated women make the most virtuous mothers and wives. At the same time, she continues to insist that women can be brave, strong, and heroic as well as modest, religious, and chaste.

On the Equality of the Sexes Murray expresses her distaste in the way that women are looked at as incapable of doing basically anything. She was an advocate for woman’s equality, education, and also economic independence. She believed that women can be independent, women can be educated, and women can make their own decisions. Women aren’t as intellectually lacking as men would make them out to be in the 17 -1800’s. Which she proves by writing under the pen name Mr. Vigilius to get her readers to consider her ideals without dismissing them based off of her gender. Since women were not allowed a higher education they took on unappealing domestic roles. Which gave them no choice but to stick with the ‘needle and kitchen’. Since all weak, unscholarly women do what they do best, knit and cook.

The American Revolution, which happened during the last half of the eighteenth century, reshaped many aspects of life in America. The desire of the Founding Fathers to make America a republic played a very significant part in changing the role of women after the Revolution. The role of women as wives became more important as an emphasis on virtue was established; women were encouraged to find virtuous husbands and utilize their seductive nature to keep men virtuous. The roles of women as mothers also became more important in the republic, as patriarchy loosened and mothers were depended on to educate their children in the republican way. And finally, the role of women in politics was theoretically reduced due to the increasing demands of

The role of women in the Early Republic is a topic mostly overlooked by historians when dealing with this era of American history. The triumphs of the Revolution and the early events of the new nation were done solely by men. However, women had their own political societies and even participated in the Revolution. Women's roles began to take a major turn after the war with Great Britain. This was due in part to their involvement in the war and female patriotism. Others believed it was due to the easier access to formal education for young women. Whatever the reason, it inspired women to challenge the social structure of the Early Republic. The roles of women were changing in the Early Republic. However, progress was slow and little change

In the mid to late 1700's, the women of the United States of America had practically no rights. When they were married, the men represented the family, and the woman could not do anything without consulting the men. Women were expected to be housewives, to raise their children, and thinking of a job in a factory was a dream that was never thought impossible. But, as years passed, women such as Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Blackwell began to question why they were at home all day raising the children, and why they did not have jobs like the men. This happened between the years of 1776 and 1876, when the lives and status of Northern middle-class woman was changed forever. Women began to

In her next chapter, Kerber examines the newfound need for the educating of women. Women were not allowed freedom or a political opinion, but they could not be completely pushed aside. For years women had been taught that education made them undesirable to men and educated women were scorned. Kerber argues that a new need for

Judith Sargent Murray termed a lack of education “mis-education” nearly a decade before Mary Wollstonecraft published her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Judith Sargent Murray drafted an essay titled, “On the Equality of the Sexes.” In her treatise, she argues that education, not nature, renders men and women unequal (“History of feminism”).

At the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century, there were many changes to public ideology that affected the way that women perceived their roles in society. Prior to these changes, women had adopted the beliefs of separate “spheres” separating work into public life and their duties as mothers at home1. Women stayed at home to take care of the children and provide a warm, welcoming home for their husbands to take refuge from public life. Women became aware of their lack of legal and political power after the American Revolutionary War ended as they were denied the right to the same freedoms that granted the right to vote to the white, property-owning male population2. Despite granting women more liberty to run businesses, farms,

In pre-Revolutionary France and America, Women had no political rights and were forced to rely on men. The women were destined to live a life of a house wife, she was only seen competent enough in society to raise and educate kids and take care of her household. In both countries, the revolution increased the population’s attention to political matters and made liberty and equality very important to the people. Unfortunately, Women did not claim any rights during this time, but the women of the French Revolution and the activities they were implicated in heavily influenced the movement and struggle for equal rights. Their March on Versailles, their political clubs and pamphlets, and the prominent women political figures were vital assets that influenced the struggle and movement for equal rights during the 19th and 20th century in France. During that period, due to the abolition of the censorship and the liberty to publish, some writers argued for the women’s struggle for liberation and suffrage like Judith Sargent Murray with her Essay “On the Equality of the Sexes”, which protested the idea that men had greater intellectual capacities then women, As well as other French writers such as Olympe de Gouges who wrote several plays, short stories and novels in which she expressed that women and men are different, but this shouldn 't stop them from equality under the law. Additionally, De Gouges was the author of the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” in