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The Three Waves Of Feminism In America

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Feminism is defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes ("The Feminist Movement). Women have been denied their right of equality for centuries, and three waves of feminism have occurred because of it. Throughout these times of protest and rebellion, works of feminist literature often increased. Waves of feminism in American were defined differently during each period, and their literature and expressions of protest reflected the oppression women felt and continue to feel today (Dorey-Stein).
Women were not viewed with the same respect as men. A change in thinking was needed. The first wave of feminism occurred in the 1830s to the early 1900s. Protests focused on broader and greater opportunities for women, …show more content…

White women and colored women agreed the degraded view on their gender was wrong; they deserved equal opportunities as men. Sojourner Truth, a freed slave, supported this in her writings and speeches. She gave her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. She said, “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again,” (Truth). Truth asked for women to be given the same opportunities as men. She argued that the idea of man being greater than woman is false. A man at the convention shouted that women needed help even getting into carriages and stepping over mud puddles. In response, Truth said, “nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?” Truth had plowed fields, worked as hard and as much as men, bore thirteen children and watched each be sold into slavery, and asked the audience a simple question: “Ain’t I a woman?” …show more content…

In the late nineteenth century all women were seen as weak, fragile beings with little intellectual competence. They were restricted by the paradigm of helplessness, and left only with the responsibility of housework and good health. Gilman, author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story published in 1892, wrote from personal experience. In her first marriage to Charles W. Stetson, she quickly developed depression and was instructed to “rest”, which inspired her first-person narrative in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a work of fiction (Charlotte Perkins). Gilman captures the madness that entrapped women in the nineteenth century upon being deemed useless. In her piece, a woman is confined to her bedroom with a yellow wallpaper she describes as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” She convinces herself that the paper is hiding a woman behind it. “The front pattern does move — and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” She says that the woman is trying to climb through, as women in this time tried to escape the confines of their predicaments, but that “ nobody could climb through that pattern — it strangles so,” (Gilman). Gilman wrote to describe the reality that women were being denied opportunities that were laid at men’s feet. She hoped that through this piece of literature, efforts to change the dominance of males in society would follow, and that the obvious

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