Women In The 19th Century

In the early 1800s, women were second-class citizens. Women were expected to restrict their area of interest to the home and the family. Women were not encouraged to have a real education or pursue a professional career. Also, women were considered unequal to their husbands and all males legally and socially. The day-to day lives of men and women were quite clearly divided during the late 1800s. Woman in the late 1800s were treated inhumane because of society, class, and their rights.

In the world today, women have a say in what they want to do and things that they desire to do. Back in the day, before the 1800’s, women had to be submissive to their male counterparts and do according to what was required of them. In the end, this led to the demeaning of the woman and the concept that women were inferior to men. Even though this concept and perception changed, there have been some countries and regions of the world that have not yet recognized the equality that women deserve. Such areas do not allow women to vote, attend school, have a say in the community, and the women are at the mercy of their husbands, fathers or male superiors (Hartmann, Susan M).

Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so.

women had to stay at home to make household goods to use in the 1700s-1800s

In the United States of America, there is always a power struggle. Women of the late 1800s showed men that they were here to change things up. The struggle even came from within, between the white and black women to see who would get power first. So, the struggle in late 1800s America was between the role of a man and a woman and was ultimately changing the role of a female in America, creating hundreds and hundreds of unions and associations, and finally creating many laws that were create an equal opportunity at the American dream.

The way European women were treated in the nineteenth century is very different than the way women are treated in the twentieth century today. Women in the nineteenth century were thought more of as objects or something to look at instead of people. Men were always superior to women. It is not the same in the United States during twentieth century as it was in Europe during the nineteenth century. Race and sexuality plays a huge role in the superiority of genders. By the end of the nineteenth century there were multiple challenges toward sending gender norms.

In the early 1800's, many of the women in the United States were coming to realize that they wanted to obtain more rights. The male gender had way more rights than women, and they had run more things than women. Finally, women began to come forward to voice their opinions about how men and women are made to be equal; no less, no more. It was now time for women to go out and pursue whatever they wanted to pursue and not have to worry about the fact that they are females or that they are weaker or have less education than a man. The Seneca Falls Convention would soon be one of the biggest victories for women's rights.

I have to let the readers know how I stumbled upon this topic to introduce where I get my ideas from. It all started in the archive located on the second floor of the library in a dark corner behind a clear glass doors at the Hunter College. I have been attending Hunter College for four years and never have I stumbled on such an amazing place full of live history. I say live history because all the documents and books that are held in the archive are all preserved originals, which fascinated me. Thinking how people who lived more than century ago wrote and read the same things I’m writing and reading about excited me to my very soul. Archive research though fascinating is not an easy task that can be done in within fifteen minutes like how researches are done these days using convenient technologies at hand.

The 1800s served as a turning point for the role of women in society. Nearing the end of the century, the idea that women should not work outside the home began to be challenged, and women started to hold jobs of their own (Fischer et al., 2000). Great opportunity was given to unmarried women, as they gained independence in living apart from their families (Fischer et al., 2000). Women began to fight for their independence, opposing the idea of only being known as a housewife. Kate Chopin was among the individuals who challenged what the role of women in society was during the late 1800s. Chopin shares her perspective in her two short stories, “The Story of an Hour” and “The Storm.” In “The Story of an Hour,” the main

The history in the 1800s was really rough then now days because they had the Nez Perce war going on and at the same time, we had problems with woman not being able to vote, and the Immigrants were all looking for jobs. As I said earlier about women not being able to vote was a big step back for woman, not so much for men as they didn’t want women to vote. As the author said in the 1840s, emerging from the broader movement for women's rights”(w.i.t.p.n.). Woman were treated imperfect towards men all because they were a different gender, which is unacceptable back in the 1840s and would be now if it happened because we should all be treated the the same and have the same rights. As it says in the text “In order to earn revenue from their land

The roles of women in society have changed a lot since the 1800’s. While in the 1800’s women were viewed as housewives, now it is more common to see something such as single working mothers or a household where the wife is the primary “bread winner”. Today’s women have been provided with the opportunity to get educated, started joining the workforce, and even gained the right to vote. Gaining these rights was not an easy task and it took a lot of hard work and dedication to get them. Even though women have been given these opportunities, women’s rights is still a big and controversial topic in today’s society.

Queen Victoria 's reign saw a great change in industrialisation alongside social change which affected a variety of people and classes.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, America was full of potential. Settlers were cultivating the west, blacks that were once captive were no longer enslaved, and a woman’s role in society was undergoing a transformation. The reality of this all was, blacks were not considered equal status with whites, American Indians were being pushed out west and women were still considered second-class citizens.

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,

Women in the 18th century were looked at as voiceless objects in a world ruled by men. Women and men did not always have equal rights. In the 18th century women were mainly defined by their family and household roles. The woman did not really have legal identity apart from their husbands. Women were look at as slaves because all they did was be at the house and satisfy their husbands in what they wanted. Men would have total control over his wife’s property. The woman also did not have the right to vote unlike men. Some things that women did not have the right of was to vote, own property, could not sit in a jury trial, and could not be a part of a lawsuit. In 1830, a number of women in the United States argued for the right of woman to own their property and to divorce. In the 18th century gothic literature was happening. Gothic literature was in fiction, art, music, poetry, film, and television. Gothic tradition also includes sense with extreme emotion, fear, madness, and death. Death as a tomb, entombment was also used which is to be placed in a tomb be buried. A feminist writer, publisher, social activist, public lecture, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, said that women depending on men made them unquestionable slaves to them in the United States society. Perkins married the artist Charles Stetson in1884, which then both had a daughter named Katherine. A story that she wrote that can illustrate how women were like in the 18th century is “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The story “The